Best Books of 2018 (none of which are from 2018)

I'm right now reading Thomas Jerome Seabrook's Bowie in Berlin, a book that has nothing at all to do with Canadian literature. The next up on deck is The Great Gatsby, which I'm in the habit of rereading every three, four or five years. Given this busy season, it's doubtful that I'll read another Canadian book before year's end. And so, the time has come for my annual reading obit, beginning with the three out-of-print books most deserving of reissue:

The Thread of Flame
Basil King
New York: Harper, 1920

The first novel the reverend wrote after the Armistice, this is the story of a man who, suffering from shell shock, loses his identity and memory. Essential reading for anyone studying the depiction of PTSD in literature.

The Empty Sack
Basil King
New York: Harper, 1921

A tale of two families, both trying to make sense of the post-Great War world. Murder features, rather unexpectedly. I dare not spoil, but I have reason to think that it influenced Ben Hecht's The Front Page.

Blencarrow
Isabel Mackay
Toronto: Allen, 1926

The last of five novels penned by a woman known more commonly as Isabel Ecclestone Mackay, its depiction of failed promise and domestic abuse had me wondering how it is that she is so forgotten.

Between this blog and my Canadian Notes & Queries column, I read and reviewed twenty-five forgotten and/or neglected Canadian books this year, five of which are actually in print:

It's rare that I let a year go by without tacking a Grant Allen novel. Miss Cayley's Adventures is one of the most popular, but not with me. Oh, I liked it well enough... but there are much better. In the midst of reading the novel I posted a list of my ten favourite Grant Allen novels. Revising that list, I would place Miss Cayley's Adventures at number eight, between The British Barbarians and Recalled to Life.

What fun! Last year, Robert Barr's Revenge! made my list of three books most deserving of a reprint. The Triumphs of Eugène Valmont would've been a shoe-in for this year had it not been available from the good folks at Gaslight Crime of Harpenden, Herts. Their edition features "The Adventures of Sherlaw Kombs" and "The Adventure of the Second Swag," two Sherlock Holmes parodies not included in the original. The most entertaining read this year.

The Invisible Worm, Margaret Millar's 1941 debut had been long beyond both my financial reach and that of Ontario's interlibrary loan system. At long last, I was able to read it thanks to Syndicate Books' Collected Millar. Or is it called The Complete Margaret Millar? Either way, I'm appreciative. Collectors should take note that a copy of the first UK edition (above left), published in 1943 by John Long, is still available from Dacobra Books, Belleville, NSW, Australia. Price: US$520.

The Lively Corpse is Rose's Last Summer under another name. Margaret Millar's tenth novel, it closes The Dawn of Domestic Suspense, the second volume in the Collected Millar. The third volume is titled The Master at Her Zenith. This is Millar ascending.

The author's second novel, The Box Garden was published fifteen years before The Stone Diaries made her a household name. I'm embarrassed to admit – yet I must admit – that it is the only Carol Shields novel I've ever read. On the other hand, does her work really have a place in a blog devoted to forgotten, neglected, and suppressed writing?

This year I was involved in returning John Buell's Four Days to print. The author's second novel, it isn't so well known as his debut, The Pyx, but I think it is his best (and here I acknowledge that I haven't yet read his 1976 novel Playground). A Ricochet Book from Véhicule Press, the new edition features an introduction by Trevor Ferguson (aka John Farrow).

I didn't publish a book this year, but did contribute a few photos, ticket stubs, and a handbill to my friend Jim Dooley's Red Set: A History of Gang of Four. This is what comes from being a pack rat.

Praise this year goes to American Frank L. Packard scholar Michael Howard, who has begun reissuing the Jimmie Dale/Grey Seal novels in annotated editions.

The next, featuring The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale and Jimmie Dale and the Phantom Clue, will be released in the New Year. True labours of love, they can be purchased through American online booksellers.

Resolutions, I have a few:

• I resolved last year to read more books by women. And I did! Eleven of the twenty-five I reviewed were by women writers. Let's see if I can't improve on that number.
• I resolved last year to read more books by French language writers... and failed miserably. What I'd thought was an all-time low in 2017 – one! – was surpassed with a zero count in 2018. I hang my head in shame.
• I resolve to finish one of the two books I'm currently writing.
• Finally, as always, I resolve to continue kicking against the pricks.

How 'bout you?

Related posts:

The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2017
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2016
The Year's Best Books in Review - A.D. 2015
The Christmas Offering of Books - 1914 and 2014
A Last Minute Gift Slogan, "Give Books" (2013)
Grumbles About Gumble & Praise for Stark House (2012)
The Highest Compliments of the Season (2011)
A 75-Year-Old Virgin and Others I Acquired (2010)
Books are Best (2009)

The Adventures of a Globe-Trotting Girton Girl
Starting in on Grant Allen: A Top Ten
Grant Allen Tells It Like It Was
Mister Allen Writes a Murder Mystery
The Unexpected Robert Barr
A Conceited, Entirely Likeable Private Detective

Margaret Millar Makes Something of Herself
A Margaret Millar Mystery Spoiled
In 1977, I Hope I Go to Heaven

A Man Forgets His Identity (but not his manners)

The Great Canadian Post-Great War Novel?

The Promise of a Man, a Mother in So Much Pain
Four Days in Darkest Quebec
A Teenage Rock Photographer Between the Covers

Red Set: The History of Gang of Four is Launched!

I'm honoured to have been invited to interview author Jim Dooley at the Canadian launch of Red Set: A History of Gang of Four, published by Repeater Books.

Jim's an old friend.

The band is an old favourite.

Because I'm old, I was around to take some of the photos in the book.

It'll all go down in the nation's capital:

Black Squirrel Books and Espresso Bar

1073 Bank Street

Ottawa 

Thursday, July 12, 2018

9:00pm

Ottawa friends and readers, please come by.

No weak men in the books at home!

Related posts:

A Teenage Rock Photographer Between the Covers

My Career as a Teenage Rock Photographer

A Teenage Rock Photographer Between the Covers

Longtime readers may remember me writing here of teenage adventures smuggling cameras into concerts. Sadly, in middle age, those acts still rank amongst my most daring. What I  failed to mention is that the resulting photos ended up in the pages of Bandersnsnatch, the student newspaper of John Abbott College, for which I served as entertainment editor. We were offered press screenings to Hollywood films and had tickets waiting at the Centaur Theatre box office, but music dominated our coverage. Anyone distributed by Polygram had a

A Durutti Column column

leg up because the company sent us records. The Durutti Column received more notice in Bandersnatch than all the Southam and Thompson papers combined.

Lest anyone think we teens could be bought with freebees, two non-Polygram acts, David Bowie and Gang of Four, received by far the most column inches. I penned the paper's reviews of Scary Monsters, "Up the Hill Backwards," Baal, "Under Pressure," and "Cat People," as well as reissues of his own teenage work with the Mannish Boys, the King Bees, and the Lower Third.

Gang of Four didn't have nearly so long a history. Bandersnatch was there from the beginning, praising Entertainment! and the Gang of Four EP. I wrote those reviews, and saw the band's 4 July 1981 concert at Montreal's Beer Gardens. The photos I took at that show – with smuggled camera – decorated further reviews of Solid Gold, Another Day/Another Dollar, and everything else I wrote about Gang of Four.

Going over old issues of Bandersnatch – even then, I knew to save them – I see those same photos have taken on a sepia tone. They're cleaner in Red Set: A History of Gang of Four, a new book by my friend Jim Dooley.

I first met Jim the year after those heady days at Bandersnatch came to an end. Back then, I doubt either of us would've dreamt – or even dared dream – that he'd one day write the authoritative history of this band we both loved so much. I can say with certainty that I never thought the photos I took all those years ago at the Beer Garden would feature in that same book.

I'm honoured. Jim is one of the most astute critics and music historians I've ever read.

Today marks the UK release of Red Set, published by London's Repeater Books. On June 19, the book will be available in Canada and the United States. Well worth the wait.

Again, I'm honoured.

Congratulations, Jim!

Congratulations all around!

Related post:

My Career as a Teenage Rock Photogapher