40 Years. 40 Books. One Shelf: A List and Contest

For The Bookshelf's fortieth birthday, we've put together a list of forty key books we've sold that have been published over the last forty years (see below). This isn't so much a "best of" list as a list of books that have been consistent bookseller or customer favourites over the years or that have been publishing firsts. In a sense, the books on this list embody what the Bookshelf has been about these last four decades.

Now that we've given our choices, we're interested in hearing about yours! Email us the titles of one or two of your own favourite books that have been published over the last forty years, aside from the ones on our list, and we'll enter your name in a draw to win all forty of the books below. Our address for suggestions is 40years@bookshelf.ca. And if you add a brief explanation of why a book touched you, we'll enter your name for other prizes. We look forward to hearing from you!

We'll post (anonymously) your suggestions. To check out the customer suggestions that have already been submitted, click here.

And now our own 40 Years, 40 Books, One Shelf picks: 

• Alligator Pie is one of the sweetest and most fun kids’ books ever published.
• Beloved, which won the Pulitzer Prize, is one of my personal favourites. I was completely stunned by both the story and the richness of the language.
• A Brief History of Time turned many on to the world of science writing and, of course, to Stephen Hawking.
• Autobiography of Red, by the Genius Award winner Anne Carson, changed my notion of poetry beyond metre and rhyme.
• Birds of America, a bookseller pick, will show you how much punch and poignancy a short story carries.
• Breakfast of Champions (really a stand-in for Cat’s Cradle) is a great example of the satire and affection shown by one of our bestselling backlist authors.
• The Cinnamon Peeler, by Michael Ondaatje, is another great illustration of how a few words on a page can express as much as a novel.
• Cloud Atlas, another bookseller pick, introduces you to the wild and lovely mind of David Mitchell.
• A Complicated Kindness, a Canada Reads and G.G. winner, turns you on to the wonderful voice of protagonist Nomi Nickel.
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a personal favourite of many booksellers, who loved getting to know Oscar, a boy whose father died in the 9/11 attacks.
• Famous Last Words is a literary mystery by one of The Bookshelf’s most beloved writers.
• A Fine Balance is another perennial favourite of Bookshelf staff and customers.
• The Golden Spruce, winner of the G.G. award, is an amazing amalgam of biography, science, and politics.
• Guns, Germs, and Steel, another Pulitzer Prize winner, asks why Europe conquered America. The answer is surprising.
• Half of a Yellow Sun, another bookseller pick, narrates the tragic story of the abortive independence struggle in Igbo land (Biafra), Nigeria.
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone  Enough said.
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is wunderkind Dave Eggers’s breakout memoir.
• If on a winter’s night a traveler will introduce you to a superb piece of postmodern writing.
• Into the Wild is another great work of speculative journalism.
• Love in the Time of Cholera is a precious story about love from the Nobel Prize-winning magic realist Marquez.
• Love You Forever, from our own Bob Munsch, is one of the bestselling kids’ books ever.
• Manufacturing Consent is Chomsky’s most famous work of speaking truth to power.
• Maus was the first graphic novel to take on the Holocaust.
• Me Talk Pretty One Day combines gay writing with wicked humour.
• The New Moosewood Cookbook was the first cookbook to alert people to things other than meat and potatoes.
• No Logo was the political bible of Gen X.
• Oryx and Crake is Atwood’s prescient dystopian novel of climate change and genetic mutation.
• Our Bodies Ourselves told women they didn’t have to listen to the male medical hierarchy.
• Persepolis is a graphic novel arising out of the Iranian revolution.
• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek showed us how good nature writing can actually be.
• A Prayer for Owen Meany is a favourite of all booksellers.
• The Satanic Verses led to the fatwa that changed Rushdie’s life.
• Sexing the Cherry is another startling work of magic realism.
• Small is Beautiful is the ur-text of sustainable economics.
• The Stone Diaries shows us why we must never forget Carol Shields.
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is from the master of Cold War espionage.
• The Wayfinders is a Massey Lecture about how we should pay attention to reverse innovation.
• When Things Fall Apart gives Buddhist insights into surviving the modern world.
• Who Do You Think You Are is a masterpiece by our very own world-renowned short-story guru, Alice Munro.
• Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance presents the counterculture’s investigation of philosophy and madness.

Wouldn't you love to win them all!

Bookshelf Home

Bookstore Page