Suggestions for great Canadian reads this season
If you plan to give books to your loved ones this year, Dana Gee offers a quick list of acclaimed 2017 titles by Canadian writers to help narrow down your search.
Beautiful Scars: Steeltown Secrets, Mohawk Skywalkers and the Road Home Tom Wilson Doubleday Canada
When he was a little kid, singersongwriter Tom Wilson of Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, Lee Harvey Osmond and Junkhouse always wondered why his parents, Bunny and George, were so much older than the other kids’ folks.
Finally his true lineage was confirmed when at age 53 someone let it slip that he was adopted. His cousin, it turns out, was his mother.
While it is his story, Wilson also delivers a wonderful colourful chronicle of Hamilton in the 1960s and ’70s and the interesting characters who inhabited his part of Steeltown.
A Newfoundlander in Canada: Always Going Somewhere, Always Coming Home Alan Doyle Doubleday Canada
Years ago, a guy running a Toronto club told Alan Doyle that when a band from Edmonton plays, not every Alberta transplant comes out to the show.
But bring in b’ys from Newfoundland, and the audience is packed with people from the Rock and they are ready to roll.
This book is a travelogue of sorts of a young musician and his Great Big Sea mates going away for the first time. The story is a fun step-by-step trip from tightly packed tiny taverns to concerts for thousands and all the bumpy road gigs in between.
The Ghost Orchard Helen Humphreys Harper Collins
The wonderful novelist Helen Humphreys turns her focus to the history of the apple. Yes, the apple. Now seriously, how much do you know about the fruit you have probably consumed the most?
For starters, forget about Johnny Appleseed. Humphreys has another character who deserves the credit for bringing the iconic fruit our way.
The stories are as juicy as a perfect red delicious and as varied as the apple section in your local green grocers.
Her book is a bountiful offering of personal, historical and very emotional storytelling.
Take a bite of this one.
Lace Up Jean-Marie Leduc with Sean Graham and Julie Léger Heritage House Publishing
OK, this for sure is an obvious and giant nod to our Canadian heritage.
But come on, there had to be one book involving ice on this list. So here it is, a history of the skate.
Focused on world-renowned skate expert Jean-Marie Leduc’s collection of 350 pairs of skates, the book is packed with illustrations and archival photos.
It takes the reader on the developmental journey of the ice skate and its profound place in our Canadian history and psyche.
Bellevue Square Michael Redhill Doubleday Canada
If you are looking for a new novel to crack open, why not start at the top with the 2017 winner of the Giller Prize Michael Redhill’s Bellevue Square?
A very busy novel, Bellevue Square is about a woman who questions her sanity and is afraid for her life after she learns she has a doppelgänger nearby.
Described often as a dark, comic thriller, Bellevue Square is packed full of themes keeping the reader a little off balance but always entertained.
First Snow, Last Light Wayne Johnston Knopf Canada
A teen boy comes home from school in 1936 and discovers his parents are gone without a trace. Life goes on, but all the while the parents never leave his thoughts.
What happened? Murder? Suicide? Did they just run off?
Talk of loss is never far from Ned as his father’s family, which he has now joined, has another disappearance of sorts that has left them all shattered and weary.
The novel is packed with large characters facing large events in their lives. It also marks the return of Sheilagh Fielding, whom fans of Wayne Johnston’s will remember from his hit title The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.
#Notyourprincess Lisa Charleyboy, Mary Beth Leatherdale Annick Press
For the people behind the highly acclaimed Dreaming In Indian anthology comes a young adult non-fiction title that is so right for the times. The edited collection of poems, essays, interviews and art steps up and, in some cases, shouts down issues of abuse and stereotypes, and shouts out demands and ideas for change. These are the voices of Indigenous North American women and girls who deserve to be heard and to get their message of power and change out to the world. And with that message, you can only hope that youth are further educated and inspired to continue the push for change.
Restart Gordon Korman Scholastic Press
Gordon Korman has sold close to 30 million books over his threedecade- long career writing children’s and young adult fiction. In this his latest book, a young boy takes a spill off a roof and loses his memory. Once he returns to school, he notices that other kids are weird around him. It’s as if they are all afraid of him.
As his memory comes back, he discovers that he was actually kind of jerk. This epiphany leads him to the realization that in order to brighten his future, he needs to face his dark past.