The Captive Reader

Happy Canada Day all, be you Canadian or not!  In addition to endless parties and barbeques across the nation, today also brings with it the end of the Canadian Book Challenge 4 and, miraculously, a recap post from me.  I have been awful with challenges since I started blogging.  I love the initial post, particularly the creation of a needlessly detailed reading list, but it never really occurs to me to recap everything once they’re over, to show off my accomplishment.  However, since I loved so many of the 13 books I reviewed for this challenge over the last year (only one of which was on my original reading list, incidentally), I definitely wanted a chance to bring them your attention once more!

Here’s the list, with (occasionally relevant) snippets from the original reviews.  I’ve also noted which ones I’d particularly recommend to other readers:

Why We Act Like Canadians by Pierre Berton
(highly recommended)
“I can do no more to praise this than to report, truthfully, that it is the most perfect book I have ever read about the Canadian identity.  But one would hardly expect less from Berton, the undisputed authority on the history and legacy of the people who have made Canada what it is.” One of my Top 10 Books of 2010.   

Great Expectations: Twenty-Four True Stories About Childbirth edited by Dede Crane and Lisa Moore
“I would absolutely not recommend reading this while pregnant but I’m now thinking the best time to read it may be once your child-bearing years are past and, ideally, once you’ve had children of your own and can scoff at the descriptions of pain.  My mother’s reaction when I mentioned the book to her was “why on earth would you do something like that to yourself?”  She knows what she’s about, my mother (though, memorably, she is also the woman who considers a bikini wax far more painful than childbirth).”

Women of the Raj by Margaret MacMillan
(highly recommended)
“This was one of those books that I didn’t want to put down but which, at the same time, I didn’t ever want to finish.  My father, who was rather bored at the time I was reading this and was therefore a perfect victim for long, rambling conversations, was treated to daily recaps of what I had learned, down to the smallest detail and together we mused over the inconvenience of cobras dwelling in ones ceilings.  When you have a book you’re so excited about it’s wonderful to be able to gush about it to someone.”  One of my Top 10 Books of 2010.   

The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis
“Is there anything more frustrating than reading a good book that, with a judicious editor, could have been great?”

Player One by Douglas Coupland
“Given that this was written for the Massey Lectures, the entire point of which is the discussion of ideas, I say that it was a success as even now, weeks after finishing the book, I’m still pondering some of the questions it raised.”

Locavore by Sarah Elton
(highly recommended)
“Elton’s journalist approach to her topic, her graceful and engaging weaving of interviews and statistics, both educates and entertains.”

The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel
(highly recommended)
“Everything flows so well that it’s like one wonderful long conversation with a favourite learned friend, a master storyteller who holds you rapt for the duration of his tale which, long or short, always seems to have passed too quickly.”

Moving Pictures by Kathryn & Stuart Immonen
“…the art provides the only real energy in the book and it is strangely at odds with the dry, vague text of the novel.  More than anything, the scenes from the book felt like vignettes from a larger tale, as though the real storytelling was taking place somewhere else.  You could piece together the story from what was there but you couldn’t help but feel that there was a richer, more satisfying narrative behind this work, something you were being denied access to.”

The Russian Album by Michael Ignatieff
“…a thoughtful, intimate book, absolutely worthy of all the praise that has been heaped upon it since it was first published in 1987.”

The Vinyl Cafe Notebooks by Stuart McLean
(highly recommended)
“Warm and thoughtful, McLean is just as engaging in print as he is on air and, as always, his encouraging but never cloying glass-half-full view of the world is the perfect antidote to the prevailing cynicism we are surrounded by.”

Far to Go by Alison Pick
“This really should be a book that I have strong feelings about – it was, after all, a book I was quite excited to read, so much so that I requested a copy from the publisher; when have I ever been able to refuse a book about Czechoslovakia, never mind one set in the exciting years of 1938 and 1939 and written by a Canadian?  And yet even as I was reading it, I felt strangely disconnected from it.  It was neither glaringly bad nor especially good.”

Stephanie by Joan Austen-Leigh
“What I loved most about Stephanie is that it is a local novel, set on theIsland.  It captures Victoria’s spirit as a colonial outpost, a place renowned for being more English than England, full of families who still send their sons and daughters to boarding school and university back ‘home’.  This spirit persisted long past the 1930s and I’m not entirely convinced that the Empress Hotel doesn’t still have some old relics seated behind palms, accessorized with topees and few gin and tonics, convinced that the sun still hasn’t set on the Empire.”

The Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery
“Rereading this definitely gave me a greater appreciation for it, particularly now that I’m of an age where I can identify with Valancy’s situation at the beginning of the novel, but it certainly has not become one of my true favourites.  Worth recommending, without a doubt, but not about to join in my annual rereading cycle of some of Montgomery’s other works.”

Final Thoughts
I’m quite pleased by what a variety I was able, unintentionally, to come up with over the year and the balance between fiction (7) and non-fiction (6) titles.  I even got a graphic novel in there and two young adult novels!  And, thanks to Sarah Elton and Stuart McLean’s cross-country travels, almost the entire nation was covered (I’m afraid the territories, as usual, were rather neglected).  I’ve already signed up for the Canadian Book Challenge 5 and, with a number of Canadian titles already sitting in my library pile, I’m excited to begin reading.  This year, I’m hoping to do a better job representing the different geographic regions in my reading choices and, perhaps more importantly, to be more diligent about reviewing the titles I do read!  There were about twenty books I read over the last year that could have counted towards the challenge but which I never got around to writing up despite having enjoyed them, which made me feel both lazy and like a bad Canadian, failing to do my patriotic PR duty. 

I’m planning to use part of this lovely long weekend to pull together a bit of a reading list with some new ideas for what to try.  What could be a more delightful pastime that compiling a book list?  I may not always follow them but I do love making them!  If you have any suggestions of books by Canadians, about Canadians, or set in Canada, I’d love to hear them!