Best books and movies of 2011
The book that most changed my perspective on life and the world last year was Rambunctious Garden: Saving nature in a post-wild world by Emma Marris (2011). Change is natural and inevitable, she argues. Our traditional strategy of securing ecological stability through preservation is usually pointless. To fight climate change and the natural evolution of ecosystems by trying to restore our environment to some artificial and inscrutable baseline (e.g. the arrival of Europeans in the Americas) is naive and counterproductive. It is natural for organisms to alter their environment, and preservation is only another form of manipulation. We need to understand and focus on our conservation goals: biodiversity? stability? adaptability? sustainability? economic value? All these have their benefits, and the priority will vary from one community to the next.
Another terrific non-fiction book: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver (2007), a memoir of her family's year-long locavore experiment.
Best novels: A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews (2004) about a girl growing up and resisting the restrictions of a Mennonite town in Manitoba; and Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay (2010), a devastating and beautiful historical fantasy based on China's Tang Dynasty.
Favourite new movies: Midnight in Paris and Hugo.
I kept a complete list of books read (19) and movies and complete TV series viewed (94) in 2011. Keeping track was motivational and fun.