There are so many amazing lists in the archives of 49th Shelf, it's impossible to get them all in one post. This is just going to have to be a multi-part sort of deal. In this installment, everything including love, laughter, pain, sisters, and sex.
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Backlist, Baby: A list of great Canadian books published prior to 2013 that the 49th Shelf community created to combat our sometime tendency to prioritize the new over the good.
Feel the Love: A list of 74 books with powerful love stories in them. Created with the help of the 49th Shelf community.
Heavyweight Titles: Poet Kerry Ryan compares books to boxing in her preface to this list, and says of her “heavyweight” selections: “They have all, in one way or another, knocked me out."
Couldn’t Put It Down: We asked a bunch of Canadian publishing insiders for the books they couldn't put down. The resulting list had everyone talking (and buying books!)
Books That Made Me Laugh Out Loud: Kathleen Winter’s list of books that had her giggling in public.
Rewriting Women in Canadian History, by Diana Davidson: Books that depict women through history—mostly novels but a few works of exceptional non-fiction.
Funny, Funny: Stephen Leacock, you’ve got competition!
To Screen, Please: Books the 49th Shelf community thinks would make amazing movies.
Trevor Ferguson’s 10 Books I Digested Early: Ferguson’s notes on the reads he tore through as a young man are incredible.
Bad Jobs, by Grace O’Connell: One character on this list writes suicide notes for those who are checking out and lacking in literary skill. That’s bad.
Books to Read When Sick, by Marina Endicott: You know there’s no better time (unless it hurts to have your eyes open).
Tired Masculinity, by Garth Martens: The books on this list “don't offer new visions of masculinity, but they complicate the stereotype, the archetype, of the ordinary heterosexual man, whoever that is.”
CBC Writers to Watch 2014: Books by some of our best emerging writers.
Mysterious Non-Mysteries, by John Goldbach: This list is all about puzzles and questions—books that intrigue and delight.
Sisters in CanLit, by Vicki Ziegler (Bookgaga!): Love, hate, everlasting bonds.
Barefoot Girls and Wild Women, by Karen Hofmann: The characters in the books on this list do everything from cursing to, well, shooting at people.
Red Letter Day picks: On Red Letter Day, we ask writers to tell us the books they’re dying to read as well as the ones they’d buy for a struggling student (it is a day where all is possible). This list represents the picks of writers including Jon Paul Fiorentino, Alexi Zentner, Stephanie Domet, Eliza Robertson, Katherine Kuitenbrouwer, Gary Barwin, Aislinn Hunter, and Elizabeth Renzetti.
CanLit’s Sexy Side: Oh, there is one, yes indeedy.