My Favourite Non-fiction Books of 2011

Paul Shaffer – We’ll be Here for the Rest of Our Lives.  I enjoyed this memoir very much.  The tone is peppy all the way, rocking along like high energy music. You can almost dance to this book

Under the Northern Lights: My Memoires of Life in the Finnish Community of Northern Ontario by Nelma Siilanpaa.  Good memoir with an excellent introduction outlining the various political ramifications of Finnish immigrant existence. 

 
Alan Bennett: Written on the Body. A memoir.  A young diffident gay boy grows up. Anything by Bennett is worth reading.

Great Plains by Ian Frazier. Superbly written, this book outlines the history past and present of the area of the United States set between the Mississippi and the mountains. 

Not Yet by Wayson Choy.  So well written it makes me jealous.  Everything flows.  The plot is slight, the heart attack and recovery and then the failure to follow through with the various treatments and then the second heart attack.  Along comes a Vietnamese woman who convinces him that he is being shadowed by two ghosts.

Wayson Choy