My Top Ten lists

(…ok, not always 10)

Best Fiction

1. Wallace, Infinite Jest (1996)
2. Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (2004)
3. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
4. Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
5. Lowry, Under the Volcano (1947)
6. Kavanagh, Gaff Topsails (1996)
7. Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (1981)
8. Beckett, Watt (1953)
9. Carey, Oscar and Lucinda (1988)
10. Eliot, Middlemarch (1872)

Best 21^st C Fiction

1. Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (2004)
2. K. Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (2006)
3. Redhill, Martin Sloane (2001)
4. Powers, The Time of Our Singing (2003)
5. Franzen, Freedom (2010)
6. McEwan, Saturday (2005)
7. Zadie Smith, White Teeth (2000)
8. Atwood, Oryx & Crake (2003)
9. Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story (2010)
10. Owuor, Dust (2014)
11. Abani, Graceland (2004)

Best 20th C Canadian Fiction

1. Kavanagh, Gaff Topsails (1996)
2. Atwood, Cat’s Eye (1988)
3. Munro, Lives of Girls and Women (1971)
4. Richler, St. Urbain’s Horseman (1971)
5. Williams, The River Horsemen (1981)
6. Hollingshead, The Healer (1998)
7. Vanderhaeghe, The Englishman’s Boy (1996)
8. Cohen, Beautiful Losers (1966)
9. Richler, Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989)
10. Kroetsch, What the Crow Said (1978)
11. Shields, The Stone Diaries (1993)
12. Vonarburg, The Maerlande Chronicles (1992)
13. Bergen, A Year of Lesser (1996)

Best Canadian 21^st C Fiction

1. Redhill, Martin Sloane (2001)
2. Atwood, Oryx & Crake (2003)
3. McAdam, A Beautiful Truth (2013)
4. Bonert, The Lion Seeker (2013)
5. Alexis, Fifteen Dogs (2015)
6. Bergen, The Matter with Morris (2010)
7. Catton, The Luminaries (2013)
8. Cole, The Fearsome Particles (2006)
9. MacNeil, The Dhow House (2017)
10. Mandel, The Glass Hotel (2020)
11. Boyagoda, Governor of the Northern Province (2006)
12. Theis, If Sylvie Had Nine Lives (2020)

Best American Fiction, pre-2000

1. Wallace, Infinite Jest (1996)
2. O’Brien, Going After Cacciato (1978)
3. Melville, Moby Dick (1851)
4. O’Connor, Wise Blood (1949)
5. Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894)
6. DeLillo, Underworld (1997)
7. Cabell, The Cream of the Jest (1917)
8. Duncan, The Brothers K (1992)
9. Twain, Huckleberry Finn (1884)
10. Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom (1936)
11. Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)
12. Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850)
13. McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses (1992)

Best American 21^st C Fiction

1. Powers, The Time of Our Singing (2003)
2. Franzen, Freedom (2010)
3. Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story (2010) 
4. Egan, A Visit From the Goon Squad (2010)
5. Vollmann, Europe Central (2005)
6. Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics (2006)
7. Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007)
8. Powers Generosity: an Enhancement (2009)
9. McCarthy, The Road (2006)
10. Franzen, The Corrections (2001)
11. Robinson, Jack (2020)

Best British Fiction

1. Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (2004)
2. Austen, Pride & Prejudice (1813)
3. Lowry, Under the Volcano (1947)
4. Eliot, Middlemarch (1871-2)
5. Beckett, Watt (1953)
6. Dickens, Our Mutual Friend (1864-5)
7. Hardy, Jude the Obscure (1896)
8. Dickens, Great Expectations (1860-61)
9. Joyce, Ulysses (1922)
10. McEwan, Saturday (2005)
11. Zadie Smith, White Teeth (2000)
12. Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010)
13. Dasgupta, Solo (2009)
14. McEwan, The Children Act (2014)

Best World Fiction

1. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
2. Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (1981)
3. Carey, Oscar and Lucinda (1988)
4. Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988)
5. White, Voss (1957)
6. Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (2006)
7. Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (1866)
8. Lem, Solaris (1961)
9. Narayan, The Vendor of Sweets (1967)
10. Owuor, Dust (2014)
11. Chinodya, Harvest of Thorns (1989)
12. Mo Yan, Frog (2009)
13. Lem, A Perfect Vacuum (1971)
14. Abani, Graceland (2004)

Best SF

1. Atwood, Oryx and Crake (2003)
2. Lem, Solaris (1961)
3. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)
4. Dick, The Man in the High Castle (1962)
5. Vonarburg, The Maerlande Chronicles (1992)
6. Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles (1946)
7. Herbert, Dune (1965)
8. Percy, Love in the Ruins (1971)
9. Calvino, Time and the Hunter (1967)
10. Wilson, Schrödinger’s Cat (1979)
11. Ruff, Sewer, Gas and Electric (1997)
12. Bakis, Lives of the Monster Dogs (1997)
13. Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)

Best Fantasy

1. Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (1981)
2. Cabell, The Cream of the Jest (1917)
3. Fowles, The Magus (1965)
4. Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)
5. Mitchell, Ghostwritten (1999)
6. Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988)
7. Borges, Labyrinths (1956-60)
8. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings (1954)
9. Fowles, A Maggot (1985)
10. Garner, Red Shift (1973)
11. Lessing, Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971)
12. Lewis, The Narnia Chronicles (1950-56)
13. Cabell, Jurgen (1919)

Best Poetry Books

1. Collins, Sailing Alone Around the Room (2001)
2. Coles, Forests of the Medieval World (1993)
3. McFadden, Gypsy Guitar (1987)
4. Olds, The Gold Cell (1987)
5. Yeats, Selected Poems (1889-1939)
6. Cohen, Stranger Music (1993)
7. Dickinson, Final Harvest (1860s-1886)
8. Coles, Kurgan (2000)
9. Sexton, The Awful Rowing Towards God (1975)
10. Arnold, Poems (1853)
11. Atwood, Selected Poems, 1966-1984 (1990)
12. Blake, Songs of Experience (1794)
13. Kroetsch, Seed Catalogue (1977)
14. Lynes, Left Fields (2003)

Best Plays

1. Shakespeare, King Lear (1605)
2. Kushner, Angels in America (1992)
3. Beckett, Waiting for Godot (1954)
4. Euripedes, The Bacchae (406?)
5. Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611)
6. Sophocles, Oedipus Rex (430)
7. Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (1604)
8. Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale (1610)
9. Churchill, Top Girls (1982)
10. Cook, Jacob’s Wake (1975)
11. Strindberg, A Dream Play (1902)
12. Walker, Love and Anger (1989)
13. O’Neill, A Long Day’s Journey into Night (1955)
14. Stoppard, The Real Inspector Hound (1968)
15. Pownall, Master Class (1983)
16. Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962)

Best Canadian Plays

1. Cook, Jacob’s Wake (1975)
2. Walker, Love and Anger (1989)
3. MacLeod, Toronto, Mississippi (1987)
4. Redhill, Goodness (2005)
5. Mighton, A Short History of Night (1989)
6. Rebar, Bordertown Café (1987)
7. Tremblay, Les Belles Soeurs (1965)
8. French, Saltwater Moon (1984)
9. Ross, FareWel (1996)
10. Hollingsworth, Ever Loving (1981)
11. MacLeod, The Valley (2013)
12. Lakevold, Notes Towards a Speech Re: My Ex- (2001)
13. Panych, Benevolence (2007)

Best Short Stories

1. Borges, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”
2. Dinesen, “Sorrow-Acre”
3. Barth, “Lost in the Funhouse”
4. Fitzgerald, “Babylon Revisited”
5. MacLeod, “The Boat”
6. Malamud, “Naked Nude”
7. Carver, “Where I’m Calling From”
8. Gallant, “Ice Wagon Going Down the Street”
9. Munro, “Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You”
10. Atwood, “The Age of Lead”

Best World Short Stories

1. Borges, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”
2. Dinesen, “Sorrow-Acre”
3. Mansfield, “A Doll’s House”
4. Calvino, “The Distance of the Moon”
5. Spark, “The Dark Glasses”
6. Achebe, “Girls at War”
7. Babel, “Sunset”
8. Carey, “Do You Love Me?”
9. Naipaul, “B. Wordsworth”
10. Lem, “Les Robinsonades”
11. Borges, “The Library of Babel”
12. Gordimer, “Six Feet of the Country”
13. Mansfield, “The Garden Party”
14. Okri, “Incidents at the Shrine”
15. McFarlane, “Exotic Animal Medicine”

Best Canadian Short Stories

1. MacLeod, “The Boat”
2. Gallant, “Ice Wagon Going Down the Street”
3. Munro, “Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You”
4. Munro, “Spelling”
5. Atwood, “The Age of Lead”
6. Vanderhaeghe, “Man on Horseback”
7. Laurence, “To Set Our House in Order”
8. Shields, “Hazel”
9. Rule, “Slogans”
10. Atwood, “The Sin Eater”
11. Crummey, “Bread”
12. Birdsell, “The Wednesday Circle”
13. Redhill, “The Flesh Collectors”
14. Christie, “The Extra”
15. Mistry, “Swimming Lessons”
16. Maitland, “The Stone Lion”

Best American Short Stories

1. Barth, “Lost in the Funhouse”
2. Fitzgerald, “Babylon Revisited”
3. Malamud, “Naked Nude”
4. Carver, “Where I’m Calling From”
5. Hempel, “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried”
6. O’Connor, “Parker’s Back”
7. Oates, “How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again”
8. Roth, “The Conversion of the Jews”
9. Wallace, “The Suffering Channel”
10. Godwin, “Dream Children”
11. James, “Daisy Miller”
12. Spencer, “The Girl Who Loved Horses”
13. J. Williams, “The Farm”
14. Cheever, “The Country Husband”
15. LeGuin, “Schrödinger’s Cat”

Best Manitoba Novels

1. Williams, The River Horsemen
2. Shields, The Stone Diaries
3. Laurence, The Stone Angel
4. Bergen, The Matter With Morris
5. Roy, The Road Past Altamont
6. Kroetsch, What the Crow Said
7. Bergen, A Year of Lesser
8. Cook, The Full Catastrophe
9. Sweatman, Fox
10. Birdsell, The Chrome Suite

Best Non-Fiction

1. Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature (2011)
2. Taylor, Sources of the Self (1989)
3. Gombrich, Art and Illusion (1960)
4. Vollmann, Rising Up and Rising Down (2004)
5. Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel (1997)
6. Fortey, Life: The First Four Billion Years (1997)
7. Henrich, The Weirdest People in the World (2020)
8. Elias, The Civilizing Process (1939)
9. Pinker, Enlightenment Now (2018)
10. Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms (1976)
11. Hrdy, Mother Nature (1999)
12. Diamond, Collapse (2005)
13. Packer, The Unwinding (2013)
14. Anderson, Imagined Communities (1983)
15. Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought (2002)
16. Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault (1993)
17. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971)
18. Taylor, A Secular Age (2007)
19. Buss, The Evolution of Desire (1994, 2003)
20. Bauman, Liquid Modernity  (2000)
21. De Waal, Good-Natured (1996)
22. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1901-2)
23. Boyd, On the Origin of Stories (2009)
24. Haidt, The Righteous Mind (2012)
25. Westad, The Cold War: A World History (2017)

Best Movies

1. And the Ship Sails On (E la nava va, 1983)
2. The Seventh Seal (Det sjundte inseglet, 1956)
3. Brazil (1985)
4. Jesus of Montreal (Jesus de Montréal, 1989)
5. La Strada (1954)
6. Being John Malkovich (1999)
7. 8 1/2 (Otto e mezzo, 1962)
8. Autumn Sonata (Höstsonaten, 1978)
9. Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander, 1982)
10. Winter Sleep (Kış Uykusu, 2014)
11. Fargo (1996)
12. Solaris (Solyaris, 1971)
13. Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
14. The Great Beauty (La Grande Belleza, 2013)
15. Apocalypse Now (1979)
16. Tomorrow (1972)
17. Bliss (1985)
18. Breaker Morant (1980)
19. Adaptation (2002)
20. 21 Grams (2003)
21. Dancer in the Dark (2000)
22. Rules of the Game (La Règle du jeu, 1939)
23. Short Cuts (1993)
24. Prairie Home Companion (2006)
25. Amélie (Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain, 2001)
26. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
27. Fitzcarraldo (1982)
28. The Player (1992)
29. C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005)
30. I ♥ Huckabees (2004)
31. The Night of the Shooting Stars (La notte di San Lorenzo, 1981)
32. Empire of the Sun (1987)
33. Red Sorghum (Hong gao liang, 1987)
34. Babe (1995)
35. The Big Sleep (1946)
36. Jean de Florette (1986)
37. The Sacrifice, (Offret, 1986)
38. Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin, 1987)
39. City Lights (1931)
40. Shakespeare in Love (1998)
41. The Sweet Hereafter (1997)
42. How Green Was My Valley (1941)
43. Nashville (1975)
44. Toy Story II (1999)
45. Amélie (Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain, 2001)
46. Wild Strawberries (Smultronstället 1957)
47. The Farewell (2019)
48. Ship of Fools (1965)
49. Mephisto (1981)
50. Dead Man (1995)

• De Waal, Different: Gender through the Eyes of a Primatologist (2022)
• Turchin, End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration (2023)
• Twenge, Generations (2023)

Recent Great Reads: Fiction

• Powers, The Overstory (2018)
• Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land (2021)     
• Egan, The Candy House (2022)
• Owuor, The Dragonfly Sea (2018)
• Vanderhaeghe, August into Winter (2021)
• Anand, A Convergence of Solitudes (2022)
• Sunga, Because of Nothing at All (2022)
• Catton, Birnam Wood (2023)
• Cook, The Full Catastrophe (2022)