CanadianContent discussion

A place to chat about books in the New Year

Does anyone pick out their first read of 2025 ahead of time and save it to start the year off strong??
Very interested in what’s on your 2025 TBR lists.

Not me... still focused on reads for the rest of this year. Started Barometer Rising yesterday and the 5 days of the book match the exact time of year! this is a secret sender book so I am excited to read it over the 5 days, a chapter a day.

I have decided to go down the path of Brando Sando into 2025 - so I plan to read all 27 books in the Cosmere Series - First up is book 1 in the Mistborn ERA 1 Trilogy - Mistborn: The Final Empire - I am doing a combo - book and audio (he has the same narrators for all his books - they actually are a married couple).

I am reading The Dry for my BDA book club. Doing immersion with this one as well - book and audio

Also up for 2025 is Remarkably Bright Creatures - it comes highly recommended by a friend so will be doing immersion of book and audio

Several of my fav authors have books out in 2025 - so these are all on my TBR
- Dream Count;
- The Capital of Dreams; (Canadian Author)
- Sucker Punch: Essays (Canadian Author)

I’m hoping to start the new year on a better foot. I spend too much time on social media(!) and way too little time reading.

I read most of the Giller long list for the past year and I disliked almost all of them,although I did like the winner,even though most of it made no sense to me. The short list included either books I didn’t like or books I didn’t want to still read and along with the Giller controversies this past year-I just felt completely burnt-out from reading Can,it. The ggs were even worse-there wasn’t one book that appealed to me.
I don’t know what to make about these book prizes except they seem to be run by committees that have different interests than me.

Here’s to a new year of great reading and a Happy new year everyone. I wish all of you the best in great health and happiness.

Alan wrote: "I read most of the Giller long list for the past year and I disliked almost all of them,..."

This is why I rarely read books on literary award lists anymore. My reading tastes have shifted over the years; I rarely enjoy the darkness of literary novels anymore even though I big my teeth on them (plus hard core scifi, classics and Victoria. Holt), including Canadian literature because my mother included literary fiction in her reading, including Canadian authors (plenty of women in there, although I don't remember seeing Ethel Wilson.)

Happy New Year to you, Alan and to everyone!

I too am not as taken with the Giller's but still love to follow Canada Reads, I am sure hoping it is in person this year!!

So far this year, I am not reading anything Canadian but finished: All the Colours of the Dark which I enjoyed and did not figure out until the end.

For book club we are reading a book by Madeline Martin so I am reading The Booklover's Library in paper and my bedtime book on my kobo is The Keeper of Hidden Books

I have never read anything by Madeline Martin so look forward to your review, Susan.

My first book this year is a reread of A Good Man by Guy Vanderhaeghe, such a brilliant Canadian author and not very well known, I think because he is a private person (and lives in Saskatoon).

Happy new year, everyone!

@Elinor - her books all have a WW2 and a bookish theme. they are easy reads but harsh reminders of the horrors of the war. I am finishing up the Keeper of Hidden books and taking a break from WW2 historical fiction.

I have never read Vanderhaeghe but think I have a couple of his books on my shelf.

This morning, I was reading my daily passage of Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts and the author suggested making your to-read pile like a river not a bucket... like a stream that flows by and suggesting to pic a few choice items. thoughts on this?

so many great books and I feel like I do this as I see new content and jump on it rather that some of the books that line my shelves and have not been read. I used to always finish a book I started but have changed that too.... thoughts?

Fortunately the only books I buy are e-books and I pretty much only by ones that don’t cost very much,or I use Libby a lot. I’m trying to read as much as I can of what is on my shelves.

Two things brought to mind the horror of owning too many books. Both my parents passed away a few years ago and I’m emptying their home. They didn’t have a lot of books-my father was a life-longer believer of the public library-but they have so much stuff that will have to go in the garbage.

And a very large Value Village opened up down the street from me. They have a very large collection of books and it just reminds me that we are not here forever and if we don’t take care of it someone else is going to have to get rid of our stuff.

CBC radio did a very interesting report on this. If we think the younger generation wants to inherit our stuff think again. Many younger people have to live in much smaller accommodations than we do and just because we treasure something it doesn’t mean future generations will feel the same way.

I’m hoping not to depart soon-but I look at my vast shelves that way. Whomever comes after me is going to throw out all of these books so I’ve got to start clearing as much as I can now.

Now when I scroll through my Kobo,I am amazed at the lifetime of books I have to read there.

@Alan - I am trying to buy less books too and just buy ones that I get signed by authors although I worry my kids will sell them in a garage sale one day!!

I love libby!! it is so great to click on books on my phone and read them on my kobo!

I was very disappointed in all of the inaccuracies about the Sunshine Coast in The Suspect by L.R. Wright. I read it after watching the series loosely based on it that aired in both the States and Canada. The TV series even worse because Fox was a part of it so the lived the entire Canadian area and put it into Washington State. This led to a few changes that made it very wrong (such as a Gibsons police officer, not in the RCMP) having the ability to investigate a death in Wilson's Creek which is not part of that town, etc.) I'm guessing they did that for a variety of reasons, and one of the opening shots of the first episode has Molly's Reach, the former liquor store used as the set for a restaurant in The Beachcombers.

I put a but of a rant in my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

It's a pity, because it won the Edgar Award for best novel the year it was published.

From now on I won't read books set where I grew up unless they are written by someone from there and vetted by my sister who still lives up there.

I really want to love ebooks. They're less wasteful, the lack of print overhead is better for authors (particularly independent authors), and there is just such a long list of reasons. Unfortunately, I work at a computer and I am reading, reading, reading all day on a screen so when I pick up an ebook it feels like I'm in work mode. Audiobooks have been a godsend, though. Spotify's free fifteen hours thing has been amazing, and Librivox has some really good public domain ones (I'm listening through Jane Eyre right now, and the narrator has the loveliest voice).

I'm currently working on the A Darker Shade of Magic series by V.E. Schwab - I should have taken the hint with "darker". It's really interesting, but that's probably going to be my reading for the foreseeable future since the series is apparently a lot longer than I was led to believe. For work, I finished rereading Landing Native Fisheries: Indian Reserves and Fishing Rights in British Columbia, 1849-1925 and Tangled Webs of History: Indians and the Law in Canada's Pacific Coast Fisheries and am hoping to find a good book on Indigenous cartographies. Lately, it seems like all of my Canadian content is coming from work!

I've read two Canadian titles so far this month. Householders is a collection of short stories that I really enjoyed. About 4 stories in this book are connected, but the rest are free-standing. It was a nice mix. We Could Be Rats is the third novel by Emily Austin. It's a novel about mental health, sisterhood, growing up in a dysfunctional family, and living in a small town. I enjoyed it.

Julia wrote: "I really want to love ebooks. They're less wasteful, the lack of print overhead is better for authors (particularly independent authors), and there is just such a long list of reasons. Unfortunatel..."

Julia- I agree with loving paper versus digital and audio being a good alternative, how did I not know about the free 15 hours on Spotify! I need to figure this out! Thanks for the tips!

Wanda wrote: "Julia wrote: "I really want to love ebooks. They're less wasteful, the lack of print overhead is better for authors (particularly independent authors), and there is just such a long list of reasons..."

Wanda - If you have a paid account, if you go into audiobooks, if there's a green "included in premium" under the audiobook it's available for the free fifteen hours. I think this only came out in either October or November.

Starting my year off with a few different reads. The Justice of Kings is my right before bed read, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North and Memory's Legion are in progress as well, and for Canadian content, I have All I Ask as my current on the go book on my phone.

That one is interesting. It's low rated (another reading challenge I'm doing has a prompt to read something with a GR rating under 3 stars) but was also shortlisted for the Giller, and I can kind of see both perspectives. The narrator is vapid, whiny and so passive, and yet so far at least (about a quarter of the way in) it's oddly compelling. We'll see if I feel that way all the way through or I lose interest.

I'm reading On Isabella Street by Genevieve Graham, about a Canadian nurse in Vietnam. It's very good!

To get organized for the new year, I tidied up my computer and created an exhaustive list of recommended books on my website, if anyone is interested:
www.elinorflorence.com/blog/reading-r...

I'm rereading The Woefield Poultry Collective which in the States has the title Home to Woefield

@Elinor - thanks for sharing that comprehensive blog post!! I enjoyed it. I am interested in the newest Graham novel and curious as to the tale it tells after reading The Women last year.

I just read a Canadian local history/biography, The Cougar Lady: Legendary Trapper of Sechelt Inlet by Rosella M. Leslie

❀ Susan wrote: "@Elinor - thanks for sharing that comprehensive blog post!! I enjoyed it. I am interested in the newest Graham novel and curious as to the tale it tells after reading The Women las..."

I think it must have been coincidence that their themes are so similar, and it will be interesting to see whether the success of The Women helps or hurts sales of the Canadian book.

I just have the end notes of Nick Mount’s wonderful history of Canlit in the sixties and seventies-Arrival. I can’t imagine there is anyone else who has read as much Canlit. as has Nick Mount. His take on Quebec and Newfoundland and the growth of female authors and even the history of the word Canlit is fascinating. He is also a very funny writer.

Just tried to find a copy of On Isabella Street
but it won’t be released until the end of April. I put a notify on it in Libby.