Top 5 Books In My “To Read” Pile:

I grew up in a house where there were books on more or less every flat surface. Both my parents are teachers so perhaps that isn’t a great surprise, and since I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life working in bookshops or publishing, neither is the fact that my own house is also overrun with books. Needless to say, I have a pile of unread books next to my bed. Here are the five books at the top of the heap:

1.  Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong by Terry Teachout
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ISBN 9780151010899)

Besides the books, I grew up with records by Armstrong, Bechet and Beiderbecke, and I’m generally curious about what makes creative people tick (particularly when they’re under-appreciated). I borrowed Teachout’s new and well-received Armstrong biography from Toronto Public Library (the largest public library system in North America and an amazing resource for what it’s worth) and I’m currently on page 267. It’s interesting so far… Teachout is especially good on Armstrong’s prodigious weed habit and why he’s underrated as a jazz musician, but he does get a bit mired in the technical aspects of the music on occasion…

2.  The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson
(NYRB ISBN 9781590173299)

Finnish author Jansson is best known for her Moomin stories and comics (published by Farrar, Strauss & Giroux and Drawn & Quarterly respectively), but The True Deceiver is an adult novel. I think there’s often something interesting about authors best known for their kids books writing adult fiction and a lot of people have recommended this to me. I love Jansson and NYRB anyway so I can’t wait to read this.

3.  The Blue Fox by Sjón
(Telegram Books IBSN 9781846590375)

From Finland to Iceland… I seem to be interested in novels from Northern Europe right now—When I Forgot by Elina Hirvonen (Finland), The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson (Sweden), and The Conspiracy and Other Stories by Jaan Kross (Estonia) are also in the pile… Sjón is an Icelandic author and poet perhaps best known for his collaborations with Björk. The Blue Fox won the Nordic Literary Prize and was nominated for the Icelandic Literature Prize. I first heard about it from a review at ReadySteadyBook a couple of years ago. Then Scott Pack banged on about the book on his blog Me and My Big Mouth for ages and eventually named it his favourite book of 2009. I don’t think it’s widely available in North America, so I finally caved and bought it from a bookstore in the UK in January because it sounds awesome.

4.  Britten and Brülightly by Hannah Berry
(Metropolitan ISBN 9780805089271)

I don’t know where exactly I heard about this graphic novel. I think it just kept cropping up in all the right places and I like that it doesn’t look or sound like a traditional Anglo-American comic… It’s the story of a depressed private detective investigating an apparent suicide which is pretty much all I needed to know really. And the noir-influenced, European-style art looks great.

5.  The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Reinvented Capitalism
by Matt Mason
(Free Press ISBN 9781416532200)

A friend sent me this and it is slowly making its way up the “to read” pile. I’m worried it will make me feel like a doddering underachiever… I can’t imagine why I haven’t read it yet! It might be a good partner for Jaron Lanier‘s You Are Not a Gadget which I do plan to read very soon, so maybe I will get to The Pirate’s Dilemma before the end of the year!

-Dan Wagstaff works in sales and marketing for Raincoast Books, and blogs about books and design at The Casual Optimist. He lives in Toronto.