Feb 23

Written by: Joe Longo
Saturday, February 23, 2008 

Visit www.cbc.ca to learn about this year’s “Canada Reads” program which has the following information about a great Canadian celebration of books and reading.

Canada Reads is an annual literary event on CBC Radio One where five celebrity panelists are asked to defend their favourite Canadian works of fiction. Day by day, books are voted off the list, until one panelist triumphs with the book for Canada to read this year. The half-hour debates will air from February 25 to February 29 at 11:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m.

No one is expected to love every title on the short list, any more than every one of the panelists is expected to love them all. Books are a matter of personal taste, and each one has its detractors and its fans.

You’ll enjoy listening to the debates whether or not you’ve read the books, but reading them first will add to the fun. Visit the website for regular updates and features on this year’s panelists, books and authors. You can vote in a weekly poll and compare your reading preferences and habits against those of the nation.

Borrow all the books from our library.

“Brown Girl in the Ring” by Nalo Hopkinson is set in a bleak Toronto of the near future. While the wealthy prey on the residents of a crumbling inner city, Ti-Jeanne must fend for herself and her newborn child. In the process, she uncovers a family mystery, encounters deities and has to create new legends.

The nine stories in “From the Fifteenth District” by Mavis Gallant explore life in Europe after the Second World War portraying the foibles and dilemmas of expatriates and Europeans.

“Icefields” by Thomas Wharton blends history and fiction during an expedition to the Arcturus glacier in 1898. When British doctor Edward Byrne falls into a crevasse, he spies something magical in the ice. Byrne returns to the glaciers again and again, and discovers people who are as mysterious as the landscape.

“King Leary” by Paul Quarrington has a former hockey great coaxed out of his small-town nursing home to record a ginger ale commercial in Toronto. A madcap journey ensues as full of misadventures as it is of memories for the man who was once dubbed the “King of the Ice.”

“Not Wanted on the Voyage" by Timothy Findley is an imaginative re-telling of the story of the great flood and the first time the world ended. The novel infuses the Old Testament legend with elements of fantasy, and speaks to such timely social issues as the environment and the dangers of fundamentalism.