Twenty-eighteen was a year of great change. In April, we sold our home of ten years and started packing up our belongings. We moved in early July, settling several hundred kilometres to the northeast. The books that once surrounded now lie boxed in the dark basement of the house we're renting on the banks of the Rideau Canal.
Living in a house without bookshelves is disorienting. Where I once knew where everything was, passing by the same books day after day, month after month, year after year, I now spend hours hunting. This past summer I bought a copy of James M. Cain's
Serenade because I wanted to reread it. There's a copy in the basement... but where?
I purchased fewer books this year. Why add to the confusion? This annual list of ten best buys – best acquisitions, really – was made strong through the generosity of friends.
Philistia
Grant Allen
London: Chatto & Windus, 1901
"A NEW EDITION" of Allen's first novel, published two years after his early death, this copy is well travelled. It began life in a Boots Booklovers Library, and somehow made its way to a British Columbia bookseller's shop. The book now sits on my desk, one hundred or so kilometres from Allen's birthplace.
Brother, Here's a Man!
Kim Beattie
New York: Macmillan, 1940
This birthday gift from my friend James Calhoun is the only biography of
Joe Boyle. An extraordinary man, had Boyle been born south of the border, there would've been a movie and and a two-part
American Experience documentary. We Canadians are so bad at these things.
Murder's No Picnic
E.L. Cushing
London: Wright & Brown, 1956
The first and only English edition of Cushing's 1953 debut novel, it vies Margerie Bonner's
The Shapes That Creep as the worst mystery read this year. And yet my research into this forgotten Montreal mystery writer continues.
Maid-At-Arms
Enid Cushing [and Andre Norton]
New York: Fawcett, 1981
A curious romance about a closeted, corseted, petticoated poet and his masculine twin sister, written by an unsuccessful mystery writer in collaboration with a Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame member. Need I say more?
Rebound
Dick Diespecker
Toronto: Harlequin, 1953
After years searching for the great – only? – Vancouver post-war pulp, I asked my friend bowdler of
Fly-By-Night if he might have a spare copy. He did... and gave it to me as a gift. It didn't quite live up to expectations... but that cover!
The Magpie
Douglas Durkin
Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1974
Reviewing Basil King's
The Empty Sack here last month, I wondered whether it might just be the Great Canadian Post-Great War Novel. Beau not only suggested
The Magpie, but gave me a copy. To be read after the holidays.
The Arch-Satirist
Frances de Wolfe Fenwick
Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard,
1910
A first novel by a journalist and elocutionist who once served as secretary to fellow novelist Sir Andrew Macphail. Described as a "clever novel" in the April 1910
Canadian Bookman.
The Complete Poems of
John Glassco
John Glassco
London, ON: Canadian
Poetry Press, 2018
A gift from Brian Treherne, who worked for over a decade editing this monumental work. Invaluable to any Glassco scholar.
The Street Called Straight
Basil King
New York: Harper, 1912
I read two Basil King novels this year, both of which made
my annual list of three out-of-print books deserving reissue. This book was purchased in error from
Babylon Revised Rare Books for US$75. What I'd meant to buy was their signed copy, listed at US$100.
Je ne regrette rien
Christie Redfern's Troubles
[Margaret Murray Robertson]
London: Religious Tract Society,
[c. 1866]
The most popular novel ever written by an instructress of the Sherbrooke Ladies' Academy, Sherbrooke, Canada East. Despite its commercial success, used copies are uncommon. I was fortunate in spotting this one being offered online from a UK bookseller.
Bonne année!
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