Amy Kay
Hooked on Books
Canada Reads is an annual ‘battle of the books’ competition organized and broadcast by Canada’s public broadcaster, the CBC. The goal of the program is to get people listening, watching and of course, reading. Five titles are selected for the ‘literary Survivor’ style show, and each book is championed by a celebrity panelist. The debates take place from March 4 – 7. The panelists vote to eliminate one title each day, until a single title is chosen as the book the whole country should read. This year’s theme is ‘One Book to Carry Us Forward’. This collection of five books is about finding the resilience and hope needed to carry on and keep moving forward.
Bad Cree by Jessica Johns
In this haunting debut, Mackenzie is a young Cree millennial living in Vancouver. After the deaths of her sister and grandmother, she begins having visions of her sister, whom she believes is trying to tell her something. When crows start to follow her, Mackenzie heads home to Alberta to seek the help of her family, and together, they try to uncover what is haunting Mackenzie before something irrevocable happens to anyone else around her.
Denison Avenue by Christina Wong & Daniel Innes
A truly unforgettable combination of ink artwork and fiction, this moving story follows the elderly Wong Cho Sum, who, living in Toronto’s gentrifying Chinatown–Kensington Market, begins to collect bottles and cans after the sudden loss of her husband as a way to fill her days and keep grief and loneliness at bay. In her long walks around the city, Cho Sum meets new friends, confronts classism and racism, and learns how to build a life as a widow in a neighborhood that is being destroyed and rebuilt, leaving elders like her behind.
Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune
Fern Brookbanks has wasted far too much of her adult life thinking about Will Baxter. She spent just 24 hours in her early twenties with the idealistic artist, a chance encounter that spiraled into a daylong adventure in the city. Both were in relationships, but their connection was undeniable: they shared every secret, every dream, and made a pact to meet one year later. Fern showed up single. Will didn’t show up until 10 years later. Why is he here after all this time and more importantly, can she trust him to stay?
Shut Up You’re Pretty by Téa Mutonji
In this disarming debut story collection, a woman contemplates her Congolese traditions during a family wedding, a teenage girl looks for happiness inside a pack of cigarettes, a mother reconnects with her daughter through their shared interest in fish, and a young woman decides on shaving her head in the waiting room of an abortion clinic. These punchy, sharply observed stories blur the lines between longing and choosing, exploring the narrator’s experience as an involuntary one. Tinged with pathos and humour, they interrogate the moments in which femininity, womanness, and identity are not only questioned but also imposed.
The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou
Set in an alternate history of Detroit where the French never surrendered the city to the U.S, this is a richly imagined story of community and a plea for persistence in the face of our uncertain future. Looking for answers, and her missing granddaughters, Gloria moves into the house where her daughter was murdered. She finds herself surrounded by poverty, pollution, violence – as well as the resilience of the residents, in whose stubborn generosity and carefully tended gardens she finds hope. When a strange intuition sends her into the woods, where the city’s orphaned and abandoned children are rumored to have created their own society, she can’t imagine the strength she will find.
All of these titles can be reserved at your local branch of Lennox and Addington Libraries or online at www.countylibrary.ca.