February 8, 2010
Canada Reads 2010: Independently UPDATE 4
I’m almost through Wild Geese, and though I’ve enjoyed it, it probably won’t knock the other two I’ve read out of the top two spots. A review will be posted in a day or two. Julie Forrest posts her review of Hair Hat: “[W]hen it comes to Alice Munro-esque stories about ordinary people, I’m hard to impress. Hair Hat impresses”. Buried in Print republishes an old Hair Hat review. Steven Beattie does too, though his is less complimentary (and I would suggest a reread and cessation of dirty tricks). WriterGuy on Moody Food: he was put off by the prose at times, but found the narrative compelling. My friend Bronwyn has reported that Century is her favourite book of the bunch. My husband Stuart liked Moody Food so much that he emailed Ray Robertson to tell him. In a recent conversation, writer Amy Jones reported she’d just started Ray Smith’s Century and that she also was impressed. American Librarians’ blog Librations is jealous of Canada Reads and the copies it has inspired (which is us and the National Post‘s). And I was fascinated by Charlotte Ashley’s post which used more of her “uncontrolled bookselling research” to assess the New Canadian Library‘s rebranding: in two years, outside the context of university course lists, her bookstore has only ever sold two NCL titles and one of those was to Charlotte Ashley for our project’s Wild Geese.
