CBC Canada Reads announces Top 40

As many of you are doubtless aware, the next CBC Canada Reads competition will be slightly different from past ones, in that the public is being asked to narrow the field of candidates by voting for the 40 essential Canadian novels of the decade. Polling has now closed, and the list of 40 nominees has been revealed. Check out the list below, or click here for the Canada Reads website.

• A Complicated Kindness, by Miriam Toews
• Bottle Rocket Hearts, by Zoe Whittall
• Clara Callan, by Richard B. Wright
• Come, Thou Tortoise, by Jessica Grant
• Conceit, by Mary Novik
• Crow Lake, by Mary Lawson
• Drive-by Saviours, by Chris Benjamin
• Elle, by Douglas Glover
• Essex County, by Jeff Lemire
• Far to Go, by Alison Pick
• February, by Lisa Moore
• Galore, by Michael Crummey
• Heave, by Christy Ann Conlin
• Inside, by Kenneth J. Harvey
• Late Nights on Air, by Elizabeth Hay
• Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
• Lullabies for Little Criminals, by Heather O’Neill
• Moody Food, by Ray Robertson
• Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood
• Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson
• Room, by Emma Donoghue
• Shelf Monkey, by Corey Redekop
• Skim, by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
• Sweetness in the Belly, by Camilla Gibb
• The Best Laid Plans, by Terry Fallis
• The Birth House, by Ami McKay
• The Bishop’s Man, by Linden MacIntyre
• The Bone Cage, by Angie Abdou
• The Book of Negroes, by Lawrence Hill
• The Day the Falls Stood Still, by Cathy Marie Buchanan
• The Fallen, by Stephen Finucan
• The Girls Who Saw Everything, by Sean Dixon
• The Last Crossing, by Guy Vanderhaeghe
• The Stone Carvers, by Jane Urquhart
• The Way the Crow Flies, by Ann-Marie MacDonald
• The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Atwood
• Three Day Road, by Joseph Boyden
• Through Black Spruce, by Joseph Boyden
• Twenty-Six, by Leo McKay Jr.
• Unless, by Carol Shields

A new twist on the Canada Reads spin-off trend

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the CBC must be feeling pretty good right now. Just in case you can’t get enough of the various spin-offs of the CBC’s Canada Reads competition – including the National Post’s Canada Also Reads and literary blog Pickle Me This’ Canada Reads Independently – the Keepin’ It Real Book Club has just announced their very own adaptation, called Civilians Read.

However, instead of offering yet another new booklist for readers to take on, Civilians Read uses the original CBC Canada Reads list, with lesser-known book lovers defending each title. The “civilian” panelists include:

• Erin Balser, senior editor for Books@Torontoist, defending Wayson Choy’s The Jade Peony
• Nic Boshart, digital projects co-ordinator for the Association of Canadian Publishers, defending Nicholas Dickner’s Nikolski
• Sarah Labrie, project co-ordinator for the Association of Canadian Publishers, defending Marina Endicott’s Good to a Fault
• Ashleigh Gardner, manager of digital development for Dundurn Press, defending Douglas Coupland’s Generation X
• Natalie St. Pierre, freelance editor and assistant to a literary agent, defending Ann-Marie Macdonald’s Fall On Your Knees

From the Keepin’ It Real Book Club:

We don’t have any training on the radio. We don’t have professional equipment. It’s going to be a little rough and tumble — it’ll likely lack finesse, basic courtesy, and a catchy theme song. But hopefully we’ll also say some smart things, spark some interesting discussion, and determine how weighty the panelist-X factor is.

All discussions will be hosted by Jen Knoch, associate editor at ECW Press and the main blogger at the KIRBC website. The Civilians Read panelists will release one podcast per day starting March 1, leading up to the official Canada Reads debate itself, which runs March 8-12.

The publishing industry – this week in quotes

“We are not going to be stripped of our heritage for the benefit of a big company, no matter how friendly, big or American it is. We are not going to be deprived of what generations and generations have produced in the French language just because we weren’t capable of funding our own digitisation project.” – Nikolas Sarkozy, on France vs. Google, in The London Telegraph

“Poets always react to one another’s work. One generator of great poetry is the response of one poet to a provocative poem by another. That’s how the conversation with the past and tradition occurs, but it’s also how the conversation with the present occurs.” – poet A.F. Moritz, on editing The Best Canadian Poetry (Tightrope Books) in the National Post

“Numerous books, which aren’t available electronically, end up pirated. Attempting to prevent piracy by not making a book electronically available won’t stop the book from showing up as a pirated material, but it will show a lack of willingness to meet the demands of a hungry audience.” – P. Bradley Robb, responding to Sherman Alexie’s appearance on the Colbert Report, on Fiction Matters

“Doug may not recall this, but I remember him strolling into our art department at St. Martin’s Press in New York, looking (aside from the preppy sweater) like any of the other young, jeans-clad designers there. He was quiet spoken and it was the most casual of exchanges, but seeing him added a slight electrical charge to the project: he was our age. One of us. Books quite like this – about, conceived and designed by twentysomethings – hadn’t come around very often. Let’s face it, ever. There was a moment of glee as I realized the possibilities. I could go to town with the design or deliberately underplay, knowing that the team would’”get’ whatever cultural references I toyed with.” – Book designer Judith Stagnitto Abbate on designing Generation X, from the CBC Canada Reads blog

Wayson Choy, Ann-Marie MacDonald among Canada Reads finalists

The five finalists for the 2010 CBC Canada Reads competition have been unveiled. Take a look:

• Marina Endicott, Good to a Fault (Freehand Press), defended by Simi Sara
• Nicolas Dickner, Lazer Lederhendler, trans., Nikolski (Random House Canada) defended by Michel Vezina
• Douglas Coupland, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (St. Martin’s Press/H.B. Fenn and Company), defended by Roland Pemberton
• Wayson Choy, The Jade Peony (Douglas & McIntyre), defended by Samantha Nutt
• Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fall on Your Knees (Random House Canada), defended by Perdita Felicien

The unstoppable Book of Negroes

At this point, you gotta wonder: has anyone in Canada not read Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes? Released by HarperCollins Canada more than two years ago, the book has grown from a solid word-of-mouth sleeper to an out-and-out sales juggernaut, and it doesn’t look to be slowing down anytime soon. Not only was it recently chosen as one of the 2009 CBC Canada Reads selections, but Ontario Library patrons have just picked it as the winner of the Evergreen Award for most popular book of 2008. Oh, and Trent University has selected it for its 2009 Trent Reads initiative, which encourages every student to read and discuss the book.