February 7, 2011

Canada Reads Independently 2011: Update 2

Canada Reads began today on CBC Radio, though I was sans a night’s sleep and attending various walk-in clinics and emergency rooms all day instead, so I missed it. (My child has been diagnosed with a cold. We are slowly coming to terms with having such a tragedy invade our lives). But Charlotte Ashley, who comes through as my Canada Reads Hero for the third year in a row, has summed up the show in Charlotte Ashley-ish fashion. I look forward to reading what she has in store for us tomorrow!

In less contagious household news, my husband is devouring Thomas King’s Truth and Bright Water. “I love it,” is his direct quote, but we’re both a bit brain-dead, so I can’t get much more out of him than that. He notes the authenticity of Tecumseh’s perspective, of its limitations (that he is so young) and how King doesn’t manipulate that perspective to his own ends. The story is very true to his voice.

The Canada Reads Indies hero of the day is she of Buried in Print, who has read the entire lineup (as well as that of Canada Reads). Of Still Life With June (which I’m reading next), she writes, “I know it’s barely February, but I’m fairly sure [it] will be on my list of favourite reads for 2011.” She says Truth and Bright Water reads like magic: “It’s nasty: pitted, stripped, open wound, scabbed, blistered, split. But it’s curled up in twists like pigs’ tails. It’s dynamic, it’s alive.” She reads Home Truths and discovers that “[Gallant’s] preoccupations as a writer are my preoccupations as a reader: it’s a perfect match.” And finally, of Be Good, she writes, “It’s strangely addictive, the sort of prose that immediately provokes either immersion or revulsion.” Which is certainly championship reading– thank you for reading with me…