nicola simpson | derek beaulieu's blog

Each December I reflect upon the best of what i’ve read of titles published this year. Like previous years, this year’s “most engaging books” list reflects what i found most fascinating / useful / generative. Seek out these volumes, every one will reward the search. Your local, independent, bookstore can help….

This is the cream of the crop for 2017, seriously:

Poetry

Howe, Susan. Debths. (New Directions)

Métail. Michèle. Wild Geese Returning: Chinese Reversible Poems. (NYRB)

Queyras, Sina. My Ariel. (Coach House Books)

Rinne, Cia. L’Usage du Mot. (Gylendal)

Villoro, Federico Pérez and Christopher Hamamoto. Printer Prosthetic: Futura. (Printed Matter)

Wolf-Rehfeldt, Ruth. Signs Fiction. (Motto Books)

Fiction

Crowe, Michael. An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in GTA Online. (Studio Operative)

Desnos, Robert. The Punishments of Hell. (Atlas Press)

Garréta, Anne. Not One Day. (Deep Vellum)

Non-fiction

Briggs, Kate. This Little Art. (Fitzcarraldo Editions)

Hunt, Andrew and Nicola Simpson, eds. dom sylvester houédard. (Richard Saltoun)

Krukowski, Damon. The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World. (The New Press)

Scott, Jordan. Lanterns at Guantánamo. (SFU writers in residence chapbook series)

Photography (& more)

Zelazo, Suzanne, ed. Janieta Eyre: Incarnations. (Coach House Books)

For the last two years I have posted my “most engaging books” list (2011’s list, 2010’s list) with a selection of what i considered the most fascinating / useful / generative books of the year. Seek out these volumes, every one will reward the search (and your local, independent, bookstore can help…). This is the cream of the crop for 2012:

Jaap Blonk Traces of Speech / Sprachspuren. (Berlin: Hybriden-Verlag.)

Amaranth Borsuk. Handiwork. (New York: Slope.)

Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse. Between Page and Screen. (Los Angeles: Siglio.)

Sophie Calle. The Address Book. (Los Angeles: Siglio.)

Natalie Czech. I have nothing to say. Only to show.(Leipzig: Spector Books)

Johanna Drucker. Druckworks: 40 years of Books and Projects. (Chicago: Columbia College)

Craig Dworkin, Simon Morris and Nick Thurston. Do or DIY. (York: information as material.)

Emma Healey. Begin with the End in Mind. (Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring.)

Dennis Lee. testament. (Toronto: House of Anansi.)

Edouard Leve. Autoportrait. trans. Lorin Stein (London: Dalkey Archive Press.)

Silvio Lorusso and Sebastian Schmieg. 56 Broken Kindle Screens. (print on demand.)

Jena Osman. Public Figures. (Middletown: Wesleyan UP)

Tom Phillips. A Humument. 5th edition (London: Thames and Hudson.)

Nicola Simpson, ed. Notes from the Cosmic Typewriter: The Life and Work of Dom Sylvester Houédard. (London: Occasional Papers)

Barrie Tullett. A Poem to Phillip Glass. 2nd edition. (York: The Caseroom Press.)

Most Engaging Books of 2017

most engaging books of 2012