For booksellers, publishers and authors, the holiday season is one that’s looked upon with great anticipation. For book lovers, of course, December is also a time to eagerly contemplate what new titles might end up stuffed in a stocking or tucked under the tree.
Those looking to make a weightier splash with book lovers this year might consider opting for the ever-popular coffee-table book, which typically combines insightful text with stunning images or illustrations. From art forgeries to an ER doctor’s perspective on the pandemic to the beautiful bison and beyond, here are 10 books bound to become coffee-table staples.
A Stunning Backdrop: Alberta in the Movies, 1917-1960
By Mary Graham (Bighorn/University of Calgary Press, $55)
A Stunning Backdrop
Graham, a writer and film historian, compiles her 12 years of research on Alberta’s film industry in the first half of the 20th century in this new collection. In addition to explaining the ways in which the province worked as the setting for many a frontier/western film, all manner of black-and-white photographs, film stills and contextual tidbits are provided throughout, with images offering a glimpse behind the camera at Alberta’s stunning landscape and some of the biggest names in cinema at the time.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
Acting Class
By Nick Drnaso (Drawn & Quarterly, $35)
While not a coffee-table book in the strictest sense of the term, Nick Drnaso’s weighty new graphic novel Acting Class is an eye-catching book of big proportions. In a storyline that sounds like it could have been plucked from HBO’s Barry, Drnaso (author of the Booker-longlisted Sabrina) brings together a group of relative misfits, outcasts and generally awkward folks under the guise of the titular acting class, in a book bursting with beautiful browns and sepia tones to help tell their story. Great for graphic-novel buffs as well as neophytes.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
Wendat Women’s Arts
By Annette W. de Stecher (McGill-Queen’s University Press, $50)
The women of Quebec’s Wendat First Nation have been creating intricate artworks made from moose hair and quill embroidery for centuries, imbuing their work with profound meaning and storytelling. In University of Colorado Boulder professor Annette W. de Stecher’s richly illustrated book, many of these artifacts are displayed for the first time, their historical and cultural context and significance explored and explained.
Dark Days at Noon: The Future of Fire
By Edward Struzik (McGill-Queen’s University Press, $40)
Our ever-changing climate has resulted in an increase in the number of wildfires ravaging North America, particularly along the West Coast. Struzik takes a deep dive into the history of such fires on our continent, offering insight about what the years ahead might hold for us and illustrated with dramatic photos of landscapes, fires and their aftermath.
The Ecological Buffalo: On the Trail of a Keystone Species
By Wes Olson and Johane Janelle (University of Regina Press, $40)
The Ecological Buffalo
The third collaboration between bison expert Wes Olson and photographer Johane Janelle (following 2005’s Portraits of the Bison and 2012’s A Field Guide to Plains Bison), the pair’s latest volume offers detailed information about the lives of buffalo interspersed with stunning and insightful wildlife photography of buffalo and other fauna, all of which helps illustrate this comprehensive look at the stunning creatures and their surroundings.
The Great Canadian Art Fraud Case: The Group of Seven & Tom Thomson Forgeries
By Jon S. Dellandrea (Goose Lane, $48)
After Dellandrea acquired the last effects of an obscure artist, including chronicles of a 1962 art forgery trial involving Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven, he was moved to reexamine the events around the case. The result is a brisk account that reads almost like a thriller, illustrated with all manner of art by the group — as well as remarkably well-done facsimiles and fakes.
The Last Steam Railways – Volume 1: The People’s Republic of China
By Robert D. Turner (Harbour Publishing, $80)
The Last Steam Railways, Vol. 1
Turner has spent the last four decades traveling the globe to write about and photograph steam engines, and for this handsome new hardcover series takes readers into and throughout China. Over 500 colour photographs of trains, people and places are contained within the first volume of The Last Steam Railways, offering a fascinating glimpse into the last two decades of steam trains in China — once the benchmark of mining and passenger transportation, numbering in the thousands, and now with just a handful still in operation.
Out of the Studio: The Photographic Innovations of Charles and John Smeaton at Home and Abroad
By John Osborne and Peter Smeaton (McGill-Queen’s University Press, $50)
Out of the Studio
Charles and John Smeaton weren’t well known inside or outside the world of photography, but the brothers, born in Quebec in the first half of the 19th century, documented life in the province and later in Europe with remarkable attention to detail. Before his death in 2021, John’s great-grandson Peter offered up a number of photo albums to Osborne, an academic, who in turn compiled many of them in Out of the Studio to go along with his chronicle of the brothers.
Shadows and Light: A Physician’s Lens on COVID
By Heather Patterson, MD (Goose Lane, $40)
While working as an emergency-room physician in Calgary during the COVID-19 pandemic, Heather Patterson turned to her beloved hobby of photography to help cope. As the pandemic wore on she began chronicling the goings-on at the hospital through her stark, emotional black-and-white photography, which is collected (along with her reflections on working on the front line) in Shadows and Light. The highs and lows experienced by medical staff, patients and families is captured here in dramatic fashion.
Wendat Women’s Arts
By Annette W. de Stecher (McGill-Queen’s University Press, $50)
Wendat Women’s Art
The women of Quebec’s Wendat First Nation have been creating intricate artworks made from moose hair and quill embroidery for centuries, imbuing their work with profound meaning and storytelling. In University of Colorado Boulder professor Annette W. de Stecher’s richly illustrated book, many of these artifacts are displayed for the first time, their historical and cultural context and significance explored and explained.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
If you value coverage of Manitoba’s arts scene, help us do more.
Your contribution of $10, $25 or more will allow the Free Press to deepen our reporting on theatre, dance, music and galleries while also ensuring the broadest possible audience can access our arts journalism.
BECOME AN ARTS JOURNALISM SUPPORTER
Click here to learn more about the project.
Ben Sigurdson
Literary editor, drinks writer
Ben Sigurdson edits the Free Press books section, and also writes about wine, beer and spirits.
Read full biography
