Category Archives: Canada Reads

A Canada Reads challenge

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Canada Reads 2012

Want to follow along with the Canada Reads 2012 debates and add your own element of challenge to it, that will benefit the library, book or literacy cause of your choice? Read on!

The Canada Reads: True Stories battle lines have been drawn. Here are the five non-fiction titles and their defenders, who will launch into extensive literary debate (not to mention trash talking) starting now and culminating in a series of debates come February:

As host of the debates Jian Ghomeshi contends, “With this combination of powerful personalities and compelling true stories, we expect sparks to fly in the debates.”

Leading up to the debates, here’s a way to get some more sparks flying between you and your book friends and tweeps.

  1. Pair up with a book friend or tweep and challenge each other to two things: identify a favourite library, book or literacy cause, and predict the outcome of the Canada Reads 2012 debates. Speak aloud your favourite cause, but keep your predictions under wraps (for now).
  2. Write down your Canada Reads predictions – the order in which the 5 books will finish – and seal them in an envelope.
  3. Exchange your envelope with your book friend, who will also have sealed his/her predictions.
  4. Shake hands with your book friend, and commit to two things: to not open those envelopes until the Canada Reads debates finish in February, 2012, and to donate to your friend’s library, book or literacy cause if your predictions are the least accurate of the two.
  5. Tweet who you are pairing up with for the challenge and promote the library, book or literacy cause that will benefit when you win and your opponent must make a donation. Tweet to @BookMadam and/or @bookgaga, and we’ll keep track of everyone who is taking the challenge.
  6. When all is revealed in February, you and your book friend/challenge partner open your envelopes and determine whose predictions were closest. Whoever predicted closest to the final Canada Reads results asks their challenge partner to make a donation as the “loser” (no one’s really a loser, though) of the bet.
  7. Tweet your results and mention again the cause that benefits from your challenge.

    8.  

Julie Wilson (aka BookMadam) and I have already challenged each other to make our Canada Reads predictions. At the official exchange of the envelopes, we’ll tweet the causes who will stand to benefit from our challenge. Won’t you join us?

Happy reading or re-reading of the Canada Reads contenders!

Julie Wilson

 

 

 

Named by Open Book Ontario as a Rabble-Rouser, Julie Wilson is the Literary Voyeur behind SeenReading.com, The Madam at Book Madam & Associates and the Host of CanadianBookshelf.com. Julie’s short fiction collection, Seen Reading, will publish with Freehand Books in April 2012. Follow her on Twitter: @BookMadam and @SeenReading.

 

 

 

Vicki Ziegler

Vicki Ziegler is a Web site/online/social media manager who is privileged to work with the Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry, among other amazing clients. She reads steadily and omnivorously, blogs about books from time to time at www.bookgaga.ca, and tweets regularly about things literary via @bookgaga.

Canada Reads 2012: True Stories

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Canada Reads 2012

For the first time in its 10-year history, CBC’s Canada Reads is turning to non-fiction. Canada Reads: True Stories is all about finding the memoir, biography or work of literary non-fiction for the entire country to read. Starting this week and wrapping at midnight ET on Friday, October 14, Canada Reads is asking for recommendations from Canadian readers of every stripe, interest and inclination. I think Canada Reads is really on to something, and I’m jazzed at the thought that the now familiar Canada Reads process, combining polls and discussions online and offline, will open the diverse realm of non-fiction to a whole new and enthused readership.

I’m also thrilled to have been asked to weigh in with some suggestions, which are being featured on the Canada Reads 2012 web site. (Additionally, I’m thrilled to be in the company of three really insightful Canadian book bloggers: Amy McKie, Sean Cranbury and Allegra Young.) I thought long and hard, and had a much longer list before I had to rather painfully whittle it down to five suggestions, but it was great to contemplate all the literary non-fiction riches this country has produced … and perhaps not fully appreciated.

Applying literary styles and techniques to factual material can pose challenges – ones not always successfully met. The challenges are to keep something factually sound, but to also take those facts and give them new resonance and dimensions. When it is executed freshly but also with sensitivity to the material and the spirit of the real life characters connected to it, literary/creative non-fiction can open up history, biography, memoir, critical thought and more to larger, receptive audiences who will not only benefit, but will be captivated and compelled to learn more and perhaps be influenced in their own work and thoughts.

I believe that my Canada Reads 2012 True Stories choices all venture into uncharted terrain, in terms of both the subject matter and how it is viewed, crafted and retold. Some of that uncharted terrain is literal, and much of it is cultural, intellectual and emotional. Some of it is modest in literal scale – the life, or part of the life, or the thoughts of one person – and some of it is vast in geographic or psychic scale (from the Arctic to, well, mortality). All of it is vast in terms of capturing and re-articulating experiences and perspectives with which the reader might not be familiar.

Through all of the explorations I’ve chosen, the authors resourcefully and creatively probe if not solve mysteries, reveal new worlds and ways of looking at the world, but also open up new emotional and intellectual terrain. Here are my recommendations, with links to reviews previously posted on this blog.

To vote for any of these or the other intriguing and diverse recommendations from Amy, Sean and Allegra, click here.

 

    Cambodia: A Book For People Who Find Television Too Slow, by Brian Fawcett

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    Cambodia: A Book for People Who Find Television Too Slow, by Brian Fawcett

    This is a thorny, challenging, brilliant book.

    Fawcett serves up a series of memorable and provocative essays illustrating and reflecting on the effects of mass media. The sequence of essays is anchored by a running commentary (placed in the footnotes and intentionally not sync’ed to the beginnings and ends of each essay) on how the Khmer Rouge destroyed the memories and imagination of the Cambodian people and culture.

    Canada Reads 2012

    Cambodia is one of the Canadian non-fiction titles I’ve recommended for Canada Reads 2012: True Stories. If you’d like to support this book as a possible Canada Reads finalist, you can vote for it here, as well as perusing some other great recommendations.

    The Red Shoes – Margaret Atwood Starting Out, by Rosemary Sullivan

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    The Red Shoes - Margaret Atwood Starting Out, by Rosemary Sullivan

    Rosemary Sullivan does a superb job of balancing her portrait of the young Margaret Atwood in her childhood, young adulthood and early career with a solid critical assessment of the burgeoning Canadian literary scene and canon. Sullivan also ably dovetails Atwood’s place in the Canadian literary realm, as well as Atwood’s precocious and always growing potential at that point to influence and shape it. Sullivan also captures Atwood’s own sense of balance, grounded in a loving and supportive upbringing, between personal and emotional health, artistic exploration and integrity, and professionalism. Here is an excerpt that expresses it well:

    “Margaret made a distinction: personally, art was a vocation, a gift, which required all her imagination and commitment. But publicly, it was also a profession, with rights and responsibilities. Ironically, the romantic notion of the artist confronting demons alone in an attic freed society of any responsibility for art. The artist suffered, by definition, and was placeless in a culture where he or she had no social role. Margaret was beginning to see the artist as completely different from the romantic cliche. The artist was meant to actively shape society, and not be its victim. When the artist actually spoke out, though, society often felt threatened.”

     

    Atwood is and continues to be engaged and impressive (for example, the Globe and Mail just named her Canada’s Nation Builder of the Decade in Arts, and she tweets voraciously at www.twitter.com/MargaretAtwood), and Sullivan is impressive in her portraiture and context setting. Even if one does not particularly care for Atwood’s works (although there is a range of genres and subject to please most omnivorous readers) or politics, “The Red Shoes” is still an absorbing and inspiring examination of a life and a calling well, healthily, optimistically and fiercely lived.

    Canada Reads 2012

    The Red Shoes is one of the Canadian non-fiction titles I’ve recommended for Canada Reads 2012: True Stories. If you’d like to support this book as a possible Canada Reads finalist, you can vote for it here, as well as perusing some other great recommendations.

    February, by Lisa Moore

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    February, by Lisa Moore

    This moving book captures powerfully the sheer physicality of enormous, yearning grief. Lisa Moore has forged a memorable portrait of a brave, no nonsense individual on her journey to a form of peace after devastating loss. Moore traces in plain-spoken but evocative prose Helen O’Mara’s happy, passionate early life as a wife and mother, to the shattering loss of her beloved husband Cal in the Ocean Ranger disaster, to her struggle to raise her family and keep herself emotionally afloat. Moore engages the reader simultaneously on many levels, from the sensory to the functional aspects of getting on with one’s life to hints of the spiritual. While the focus is on Helen, the subplot involving John, her oldest child and only son, is also absorbing, tracing his development from childhood to adulthood, his career path and his acceptance of unexpected new responsibilities in his life. Throughout, the feisty resilience of the entire cast of February and their ability to even find rueful humour in life’s challenges is both diverting and inspiring.

    February by Lisa Moore has been selected as a finalist for Canada Reads 2013. The book will be championed by comedian Trent McClellan, and represents the Atlantic Provinces region in the “turf war” themed competition.

    February 14, 2013 – 31 years ago today, the Ocean Ranger sank. How fitting that today, February has been recognized as the book that all Canadians should read. What a fine way to honour the memory of the 84 men who perished in that disaster.

    In the Land of Long Fingernails, by Charles Wilkins

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    In the Land of Long Fingernails, by Charles Wilkins

    Charles Wilkins’ memoir In the Land of Long Fingernails is an intriguing and (dare I say) lively glimpse into the world of cemeteries and what goes on behind the scenes in enacting the final chapter of people’s lives. Wilkins looks at not just the processes involved and where those processes can go awry, comically or tragically, but he also casts an eye, that of his adult self filtering his youthful perceptions, on the individuals who carry out those processes, which most people do not want to know about, much less be called upon to take them on themselves.

    In a fashion that is kind of Roy MacGregor meets Six Feet Under, the memoir recounts Wilkins’ one summer working in a graveyard. That summer happened to be 1969, a year pivotal in general and historical consciousness, and also so for the young Wilkins, who was a recalcitrant university student at the time. As such, his insights into the workings of the graveyard are intermingled with his own personal turmoil, as he struggles with decisions about his future and his relationships with friends and family. His is not the stylish angst of Nate Fisher, but something much more down to earth (guess that’s a pun) and not without a sense of humour.

    Wilkins’ observations are never macabre or overly unsettling, and ultimately the book is quite respectful and compassionate of both the living and the dead.

    Canada Reads 2012

    In the Land of Long Fingernails is one of the Canadian non-fiction titles I’ve recommended for Canada Reads 2012: True Stories. If you’d like to support this book as a possible Canada Reads finalist, you can vote for it here, as well as perusing some other great recommendations.