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| Hearsay: |
CBC’s annual horse race, Canada Reads, in which a panel of celebrity guests gather on the radio to pretend they’ve read the other celebrities’ championed books as well as their own, is celebrating it’s 10th year by compiling a list of 40 essential Canadian novels of the last decade, from which this year’s selections will be drawn. Why only novels? Why not “books”? Or “fiction”? Or “fiction and poetry”? If you read the selection below, they indeed to seem to have conflated the word “novels” with the word “books”. Have the books of short stories and poems from the last decade been non-essential? Or are they just not “books”? This list will be compiled by public suggestion (which is so open to rigging from publicity departments it’s not even funny), so unless you have a specific novel in mind that you actually want to vote for, I’m asking you to use your vote to suggest a book of poetry or short fiction. Sure, it’s a throw-away, but like a write-in candidate or a purposely spoiled ballot, it sends a message. Hopefully they’ll notice.
But Canada Reads has also brought unexpected others — like the almost-forgotten classic Rockbound, the nearly out-of-print comedy King Leary by Paul Quarrington and the small press publication Fruit by Brian Francis — to the forefront of the Canadian literary landscape. Canada Reads is a battlefield, a mystery, a comedy and a tragedy, but, most of all (and most important), it’s a celebration. And who doesn’t like a good party?
So, this year, in honour of the many milestones Canada Reads and Canadian literature have celebrated in the past 10 years, we’re mixing it up. As Jian Ghomeshi announced on Q this morning, instead of giving the panelists free reign to choose whatever books they like, we’re going to give them a few parameters: it has to have been published in the past 10 years, and it has to be selected from a list: the top 40 essential Canadian novels of the past decade.
Hmm, a list you ask? How will this list be populated? Who gets to determine which books are “essential?” This is where you come in! Throughout the month of October, we’ll be soliciting people’s choices for the “essential Canadian novel of the past decade.” Again, it has to be a Canadian novel published after January 1, 2000, in English or translated into English. All books are game, even if they were already on Canada Reads!
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October 6th, 2010 at 10:11 am
Really what we should be doing is block voting. Is there a volume of Cdn poetry that, while we might not all adore it, we’d be willing to agree on as a sort of temporary ambassador? Or is this like getting termites to stand in line?
October 6th, 2010 at 10:13 am
Yeah, something short and accessible, and funny and deep. Something “aphoristic”, if there’s anything like that out there right now…
October 6th, 2010 at 10:30 am
Good idea, George, but mine is better: what if we found something that welds a traditional, accessible form (say, the sonnet?) to something new and innovative which reduces the possibly intimidating sheen of formalism (oh, I don’t know… maybe thought-rhymes?).
But aphorisms would do too.
October 6th, 2010 at 10:35 am
I like the way you people think.
October 6th, 2010 at 10:36 am
A shame only Canadians can vote.
October 6th, 2010 at 10:52 am
Ahem, what about nonfiction?
October 6th, 2010 at 11:00 am
Sorry, what is that, exactly? :)
October 6th, 2010 at 11:40 am
I wrote in for “Inventory”. As consensus is such an impossibility, might as well vouch for your favourite.
Glimpse, of course, being my second favourite.
October 6th, 2010 at 11:43 am
You’re dead to me, Mooney.
October 6th, 2010 at 11:44 am
For the record, that was the one I was thinking of doing too.
October 6th, 2010 at 11:54 am
Let’s all do it. It doesn’t have to be your “favourite book”, but if you like it, you should suggest it. I don’t want us to split all the votes, and then have the CBC elect Rob Ford mayor of Bookronto.
re: Being dead: Understood.
October 6th, 2010 at 11:59 am
Is the whole vote-in thing itself not a bigger problem? Seriously. If this was open to poetry and short fiction from the get go, you can guarantee that not a single volume of poetry, nor a short story collection by anyone not named Alice Munro, would make the cut.
The top 40 books by any vote-in process will be things everyone has already read. It’s going to make last year’s Canada Reads look positively underground.
October 6th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
I wrote in yesterday. Jeanette Lynes. New Blue Distance. Yes, I published it, but I think she’s a poet that more people should read. And she can be wickedly funny.
October 6th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Why must everything be so all-inclusive?
October 6th, 2010 at 8:02 pm
Short fiction: Blackouts by Craig Boyko.
Write that down.
October 7th, 2010 at 11:06 am
Inventory, it is. Great idea.