The Globe 100 was published ten days ago – November 22nd – so this annual look at the newspaper's best book picks of a century past may seem late.
It is not. November is far too early.
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| Melvin Ormond Hammond |
Certain folks like history and biography under the evening lamp. Others – younger and more romantic, perhaps – want poetry. A few ask for essays and fine reading of a reflective type, something different from the cross-word puzzle. Some desire serious studies of a devotional character. Probably the reading preferred by the largest class is fiction.Was the Arts editor behind this dreary headline?
The whole thing makes for exhausting reading, though there is much of interest. For example, the first page features this, which to that time was the greatest recognition of Canada's authors in the annual list:
What's more, only Canadian books feature in the page, beginning with Chez Nous by Adjutor Rivard.
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| Three that made the cut. |
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| Six that didn't. |
Foreigners don't do too well in the 1924 list, contributing just eighty-six titles. Canadian books number forty-seven, more than any previous list. Somehow, Hammond believes there are fewer. He's particularly down on Canadian verse, lamenting that it has been "a rather a slim year in new poetry so far as Canada is concerned;" but then he presents a list of eight titles, seven of which are Canadian:
Canada My Home - Grant BalfourDream Tapestries - Louise Morey BowmanFlower and Flame - John Crichton [N.G. Guthrie]The New Spoon River - Edgar Lee MastersVerses for My Friends - Bernard McEvoyA Book of Verses - Gertrude MacGregor MoffatWhite Wings of Dawn - Frances Beatrice TaylorEager Footsteps - Anne Elizabeth Wilson
Hammond is far more positive when it comes to Canadian history and biography, recommending titles both familiar (Canadian Federation by Reginald George Trotter) and unfamiliar (Memoirs of Ralph Vansittart by Edward Robert Cameron). I'd forgotten about John Buchan's Lord Minto. As a biography of a past Governor General by a future Governor General, it is probably worth a look, but the book I most want to read is Pioneer Crimes and Punishments in Toronto and the Home District by James Edmund Jones:
A readable record of early of early methods of administering justice, which shows the progress toward humane treatment made during the past century. The writer, one of Toronto's Police Magistrates readily admits the is room for further improvement.I'm less likely to read Presbyterian Pioneer Missionaries in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia by Rev Hugh McKellar, D.D.
Continuing on a personal note, what surprised me most about Hammond's list is that I hadn't read one of its forty-seven Canadian titles.
A Passage to India, on the other hand...
No surprise there.
