Trying Something New - Canada Reads 2016

So, I usually limit these kinds of posts to the awards season. Where I talk about nominees and winners and the like. However, every year (at least for the past couple of years), I have followed Canada Reads. (It helped that last year, I was working at a bookstore that featured displays!) I kind of want to do some blog posts. And possibly READ all of the books! Canada Reads is one of my favourite ideas; it gets people reading and discussing. It's like a country wide book club, and often, the panelists are fascinating!

So here are the long listed books! We'll know tomorrow who the finalists are, as well as the panelists defending them. The show will be hosted by Wab Kinew again; I didn't mind him as a host last year, and he was a good replacement for the former host.

This year is all about transformation and second chances, stories of migrants/immigrants. Most of these books were already on my to-read list, and I'm hoping to read all fifteen long listed books. I might have to change that goal to just the five before Canada Reads actually starts, but still. I absolutely adored When Everything Feels Like the Movies by Raziel Reid from last year (I still wish it had won, and still contend that people were afraid of it), and it was nice to be able to watch Elaine Lui (aka Lainey Gossip) defend it so passionately. I'm hoping this year will be just as engaging! (There is a graphic novel on the list, which is really, really cool.)

And now, the long list. I've got one down, only fourteen to go! (I've read Station Eleven.)

All the Broken Things by Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
Birdie by Tracey Lindberg
Bone and Bread by Saleema Nawaz
Buying on Time by Antanas Sileika
Landing Gear by Kate Pullinger
Minister Without Portfolio by Michael Winter
Niko by Dimitri Nasrallah
Sitting Practice by Caroline Adderson
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Swamp Angel by Ethel Wilson
Sweetland by Michael Crummey
The Amazing Absorbing Boy by Rabindranath Maharaj
The Hero's Walk by Anita Rau Badami
The Illegal by Lawrence Hill
The Outside Circle by Patti LaBoucane-Benson & Kelly Mellings