It's Canada Reads time again. This is the contest between the five books chosen to represent a theme that five Canadian "celebrities" have to defend as being the one book everyone in the country should read. I started to follow this process a couple of years ago with one of my bookclubs. Last year we all took one of the final five and defended it to our group. We then voted and hoped the one we chose would be the Canadian winner. Last year it was. We chose The Orenda by Joseph Boyden and it won!! It was fun so we took it on again this year. Lots of reading in a short time but the finalists were kinder to us this year in that they wrote shorter books.
What is the one book to break barriers? That's the question host Wab Kinew will be asking for the 14th edition of CBC's battle of the books.
This year the five finalists were:
 |
Difficult to find a cover photo of this one.
Rosa defended this book.
|
We didn't have fancy photos done for us by professional photographers. But we were very articulate in our defense of "our" book!!!
 |
| Her book was sheer poetry! |
_________________________________________________________________________________
 |
| Nancy defended this book. |
 |
| She found her book Tolerable. |
_________________________________________________________________________________
 |
| She was convinced she had the winner |
 |
| Carol defended this one. |
________________________________________________________________________________
 |
| Time out for a cigar after all that reading. |
 |
| Seriously considers the content using her political science background. |
 |
| Maxine and I defended this one. |
_____________________________________________________________________
 |
| Shirley and Linda supported this one. |
 |
| Not really keen on her book this year! |
 |
| We do enjoy a good meal when we are discussin
g our favourites |
Had we had the CBC machine behind us we would have posed with our book covers in the same way as these folks.
In case you don't have time to listen to Canada Reads on CBC you should know that our group tied between The Inconvenient Indian and And the Birds Rained Down.
Our voting was somewhat skewed in that Rosa had to leave early to pick up her granddaughter. There wouldn't have been a tie if she had voted. We do vote with secret ballot rather than telling each other our choice to eliminate. We want to stay friends for many more years to come.
Truth be told although I found all of them compelling in one way or another I believe And the Birds Rained Down to be the best choice for this year. But we will all have to wait for March 19th.
Isn't it terrible I haven't seen these books and the guardian tends to be inclusive of most english speaking countries? I will skim and try to read one for my holiday coming up so I know what's going on with the Canadian psyche!
ReplyDeleteAs I wrote I would go with either Ru or And the Birds Rained Down--but you may like one of the others better. Reading is so subjective.
ReplyDeleteHave not read any of them, yet. Must get at it!
ReplyDelete