My Favorite Books of 2018

Now that the holidays are winding down, I find myself in that weird limbo period that exists between Christmas and New Years. I’ve had way too more food and wine than was good for me, got to spent Christmas with my family for the first time in seven years, and spent roughly twenty-seven hours in a car in order to do it. Now I’m back in Toronto and enjoying a few more lazy days before returning back to work and the real world.

Before the second official oneyearonehundredbooks challenge kicks off next week, let’s take a look back at some of the best books I read this year. It was so hard to narrow this list down to only twelve novels, but I finally picked my favorites. Beginning with the honorable mentions:

 

Honorable Mention: The Wolves of Winter by Tyrell Johnson

 Post-apocalyptic novels are always fun, and this novel really benefits from its strong heroine. I definitely recommend this one for a cold winter’s day.

Honorable Mention: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

This memoir, about a girl growing up with a highly unusual family, is equal parts heartbreaking and uplifting. It will make you see the value of family in a new light.

10) Night Film by Marisha Pessl

This was a very hit-and-miss year for thrillers, but Night Film was one of those novels that kept me turning pages late into the night. The creative formatting and captivating plot line all work together to create a genuinely suspenseful experience.

9) Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

 Horror novels and graphic novels are two of my very favorite genres, so it comes as no surprise that I was blown away by the five short stories presented in Through the Woods. This is a book that I am determined to add to my own library someday.

8) Dead Mountain by Donnie Eichar

 The true story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident has fascinated me since I first learned about it more than five years ago. This nonfiction novel fleshes out the final days of the doomed hikers and offers up a new and interesting theory as to what may have caused the deaths of the nine hikers in 1952.

7) You by Caroline Kepnes

 This novel wins this year’s “Creeper” award hands-down. The twisted narrator who becomes obsessed with a young woman could give Patrick Bateman a run for his money. This book grabbed me from page one and didn’t let up for a second.

6) The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

 Kristin Hannah is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. This historical fiction novel, set in the Alaskan wilderness of the 1970’s, deals with the dysfunctional love that often exists in a family. I definitely looked into Alaskan cruises after reading this book.

5) The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See

 I lived in China for almost three years, but never managed to visit the tea hills in the southern part of the country. Lisa See has been one of my favorite authors for years. I love her focus on female relationships and the bonds between mothers and daughters.

4) everyone’s a aliebn when ur a aliebn too by Jomny Sun

 Earlier this year, I was battling a depression I didn’t even know I felt. This graphic novel, about a aliebn who travels to Earth to learn about its inhabitants, helped me find a release I wasn’t aware I needed. Another book I need to add to my personal library.

3) Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant

 I will always drop whatever I’m doing to read the latest novel by Mira Grant. She expertly blends science with fiction with horror and this book, about a research expedition to the bottom of the Marina Trench, was a masterpiece of claustrophobia.

2) The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

 This novel, about the Nazi occupation of the British Isles during World War II, deals with some rather bleak subject material. Despite that, or perhaps because of it is, TGLAPPPS has a cheerful tone and a dry sense of humor that left me feeling optimistic and full of hope. I also reviewed the film, which was released earlier this year.

1.) The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

 This dark fairy tale set in medieval Russia is the perfect book to read on a winter’s night. Katherine Arden’s writing style is hypnotic, she paints a version of the Russian forests that is somehow comforting and threatening at the same time. I also reviewed the sequel to this novel, The Girl in the Tower. The third and final installment, The Winter of the Witch, is scheduled for release on January 9, 2019.

The second year of oneyearonehundredbooks will kick off on January 1st.

Happy new year everyone!

 

 

 

Book Review: The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See (2017)

Review #24

 

Li-yan lives a secluded life in the mountains of southern China. A member of the Akha ethnic minority, the upheavals of the Communist Revolution have left her isolated community relatively untouched, and her people still adhere to the ancient spirits and rituals that have been practiced for generations. But as the modern world begins to encroach on their lives, Li-yan and her family are all affected by the changes that begin sweeping into their quiet village.

I’ve been a big fan of Lisa See’s work since I read Snow Flower and the Secret Fan almost ten years ago. Her novels tend to focus on the lives of Chinese women and the struggles that they undergo, and The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane is no exception. It is a powerful story of the bonds between women and how even under the oppressive thumb of a strictly patriarchal society, women will always find a way to express themselves independently.

I had never heard of the Akha tribe before reading this novel, and I highly recommend that you do a little bit of research into this fascinating minority culture. The Akha managed to remain almost completely ignored by society until the 1990’s. Their belief system is a mixture of ancestor worship and animism, the idea that everything on Earth has its own spirit. Their lives are dominated by religion, omen, and tradition, and can seem incredibly backward to our “modern” sensibilities. During one horrific sequence early in the novel, we find out what happens when “human rejects” are born into the Akha community.

The protagonist of the novel, Li-yan, has been raised to believe the same things that her ancestors have believed for thousands of years. But then something happens that opens her eyes to the possibilities of the outside world. Li-yan goes to school. She learns to speak Mandarin Chinese, which makes her the designated translator when a stranger shows up in their village one day. The stranger is in search of a special kind of tea that can only be found in these isolated mountains, and according to him it is worth a fortune. This one event changes the course of Li-yan’s life. I won’t say anything further, but suffice to say that the repercussions of the tea-buyer reverberate down the years and even across the oceans.

It’s difficult to place a theme to this novel. It’s about the bonds of mothers to their daughters. It’s about the inevitable march of progress and how powerless we are to stop it. It’s about trying to find a sense of belonging in a world that is changing too quickly. One of the reasons I loved this novel so much was that it asked so many different questions, and offered a thousand possible answers in return.

This was yet another knock-out story by Lisa See. I highly recommend it.

My rating: 4.5/5

You can find The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane here on Amazon or here on Book Depository.

Happy reading everyone!

Book Review: Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident by Donnie Eichar (2013)

Review #16

 

In January of 1959, nine experienced Russian hikers lead by twenty-three old Igor Dyatlov began a hiking expedition deep into the Ural Mountains. Weeks later, all nine hikers were found dead under mysterious circumstances, scattered throughout the snow without proper clothing, bearing strange injuries, and with traces of radiation on their clothing. Known as the Dyatlov Pass Incident, this occurrence has become a popular unsolved mystery. Everything from an avalanche to the KGB to the yeti to UFOs has been suggested to try and figure out what happened to the nine hikers. When documentary maker Donnie Eichar’s imagination is sparked by this story, he delves into the case files, flies to Russia, and even attempts to recreate the Dyatlov group’s journey in order to find a definitive explanation for the incident.

I first learned about the Dyatlov Pass Incident through a 2013 found-footage horror film called Devil’s Pass. The film is actually pretty good if you are a fan of found-footage horror films, and I was immediately intrigued by the unsolved mystery of the Russian hikers. I fell down a Wikipedia hole and tried to learn everything I could about it. I am a junkie for unsolved mysteries, so this was a delightful new find. When I heard about Donnie Eichar’s Dead Mountain, I immediately put myself on a wait list at my local library for the chance to learn more about this strange occurence.

Eichar’s book reads like a written version of an Unsolved Mysteries episode. He sets roughly half of the chapters in 1959, recreating the last few days of the doomed hikers. He manages to put a human face on the young Russian students, and uses diary entries and photographs to paint a picture of a group of young people who are passionate about nature and enthusiastic about life in general. This easily answers the most obvious question, which is why in the world nine people would go hiking in northern Russia in the middle of winter. Eichar also gives us a broad stroke lesson on the historical context of the time. Stalin has recently died, and while Russia is still under the heavy hand of Communism, the country is slowly healing from the cultural and military wars of the previous decade. These chapters are interspersed with others set in 1959, and told from the perspective of the rescue team workers who are utterly baffled by strange deaths of the nine young hikers.

The rest of the book takes places in 2012. We follow Eichar as he chases down lead after lead. He manages to track down Yuri Kuntsevich, the president of the Dyatlov Foundation. He flies to Russia and somehow secures an interview with Yuri Yudin, the tenth member of the original Dyatlov team who had to turn back on the first day due to illness and therefore managed to escape the fate of his friends.

Eichar manages to avoid the “conspiracy nut” path that I think could have been very easy to follow. He immediately discredits the idea that the mountain the hikers were found on (Holatchahl) is supposedly cursed by the local native groups and named “The Mountain of the Dead”. He argues that this is a mistranslation, and the mountain is in fact called “Dead Mountain” due to the fact that nothing grows on it. He discounts the theories of aliens and yetis without giving them much thought. Eichar is utterly practical and devoted to legitimate research and citable sources. He devotes a sizable chunk of the book to methodically listing out all of the possible things that could have caused the deaths of the Dyatlov party and systemically ruling them out. Afterwards, he presents his own theory which he believes can finally explain what happened on that February night. Whether or not you choose to believe him is left up to the reader.

Overall, I enjoyed this book because it appealed to the part of me that loves the inexplicable. I would definitely recommend it, but perhaps not on a ski trip.

My rating: 4/5

You can find Dead Mountain here on Amazon or here on Book Depository.

Happy reading everyone!