descriptions/short reviews of each book, which i tried adding in the initial post but tumblr ate it, because this website is nonfunctional:
Bad Cree: A horror novel focusing on a young Cree woman being haunted by strange supernatural dreams about her dead sister, as well as a suspicious murder of crows. Takes indigenous tropes often stereotypically used in horror and utilizes them for a broader decolonial metaphor.
Cannon: A graphic novel centred around a friendship between two people who were once the only queer second-generation Chinese women in suburban Quebec, who now have to reexamine their codependency in as adults in Montreal. Also features a suspicious flock of birds, funnily. I'm not usually a graphic novel person but this one sucked me in!
The Cure for Drowning: I'm obsessed with this book and have told everyone I know to read it. A queer historical fiction novel, it tells the saga of a nonbinary child of a farmer in Southern Ontario, and the daughter of a German doctor who moves to their small town. Starting in the 1930s and spanning decades, it's like a queered George Eliot novel. It was like the author reached into my mind and wrote the perfect book for me personally.
Dayspring: This book is a truly singular work of art. It's a novel-length poem that blends metafiction and verse to do a queer retelling of the relationship between Jesus Christ and John the Baptist. It's not exactly easy reading, but you'll never read another book like it.
The Idea of an Entire Life: I could have put anything by Billy Ray Belcourt on this list because he's one of the greatest writers in our country right now, but this is the one I've read the most recently. This collection is Belcourt's signature autofictive voice used to examine Canada in the twenty first century through Indigiqueer and decolonial lenses. It's obvious the poet was a Rhodes Scholar - this is the smartest poetry collection you'll ever read.
Little Blue Encyclopedia: Similarly to Dayspring, I've never read anything like this novel. Little Blue is an epistolary love letter about a queer trans woman's unrequited love for her dead trans friend, portrayed through encyclopedia entries about a fictional eccentric TV show they both loved. Incredibly affecting for how short it is!
Pitiful: A poetry collection that explores the poet's history and struggles with disordered eating through a variety of modes, ranging from the autofictive to odes about fictional characters including Dean Winchester and Spike. I was at the launch of this one and thought wow Tumblr would love this.
Run Towards the Danger: Sarah Polley is a former child actor, current director and Oscar winning screenwriter, and general Canadian icon. Each essay in this collection details a different traumatic experience across her decades-long career in the industry. My favourite was "Alice, Descending," which is a really interesting metatext with Polley's 2012 documentary Stories We Tell.
We Breed Lions: Every hockey fan (and every Heated Rivalry fan, frankly) should read this book. It's a triumph of long form investigative journalism that looks into systemic misogyny and sexual violence within professional junior hockey leagues in Canada. Westhead broke the news of the lawsuit against the 2018 Canadian World Junior Team, reported on all eight weeks of the trial, and donated all proceeds from this book to the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre. It's a hard read, but well worth it.
Xanax Cowboy: This might be my favourite poetry collection I've ever read. The poet writes about her experience with addiction through the voice of an alter ego called the Xanax Cowboy, often blending genre and form - several poems in this collection are written in the form of screenplay. It's a voice I had stuck in my head for weeks after I read it.
romaincrisis
snowghoul
origamiaround
baratheonpilled
