[ 
Mood: Sick ]
[ Currently: About to place a scholstic order. ]
Given the BBC List(s) that has (have) been bouncing around Facebook recently, I thought I needed to turn to a more Can-Con list. Below are the top forty novels of the last ten years as voted on by CBC listeners in the lead up to the 10th Anniversary of Canada Reads. I asked myself, how many of these have I read. Sum total = one. Am I a bad Canadian because I have only read one of these? I don’t think so, but I do think that I am poorer in my knowledge and understanding of Canada.
(To be fair to me, I started reading Book of Negroes, but stopped as I had just had my son and with the main character about to take a transatlantic voyage in a room full of pregnant slaves, I knew what was coming, and I knew I needed to walk away.)
So here we go: Bold if I read it. Italicized if I started it, but didn’t finish it.
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 do
Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden
Twenty-Six by Leo McKay Jr.
Unless by Carol Shields