CanadianContent discussion

Good morning readers!!

Time is flying!! We are towards the end of January already so BINGO 2022 and secret sender have been launched. Check out these threads if you want to join BIngo or consider joining secret sender next year… both are a lot of fun and will add to your TBR piles!

As we lead into a weekend, what are you reading? What is next?

Are there any new books that you are looking forward, which will be published in 2022?

Happy Friday!

The only book I finished this week is Lives of Girls and Women. At least I can use it for bingo!

Waking up to more snow and cold here makes me want to stay indoors and read. I have the day off work so might just do this! I'm close to the end of The Book Of Negroes. It's been a journey, a most engaging book. Humbling. I'm really enjoying Driven by Marcello Di Cintio on audio. Each chapter shares the life experience of a Canadian cab driver and they are fascinating with strong themes of resilience, hard work ethic, advocacy. I recommend this non fiction book which is long listed for Canada Reads. Wishing everyone a restful weekend.

Happy Friday! From our library I just received The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times. Excited for this as it’s been talked about on these threads.
I purchased To Paradise. I am only just beginning and it’s massive, so I will likely be reading this for a long while. I have requested some of the Canada Reads from the library as well.

Happy Friday!

This week I read The Lost Daughter. This was my first read by Ferrante and it wasn't quite what I had expected but I will read more from her. It was an interesting novel and I watched the movie adaptation on Netflix last night, which was also...interesting.

I also read The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, a biography of a young man in Wyoming. I absolutely loved it and have now forced it on my husband. :-)

I'm currently reading Noor and The Windsor Knot. I haven't started any Canada Reads selections yet, but maybe will this weekend.

This week I finished A Long Petal of the Sea for my book club. It was just ok for me.
Currently reading The Paris Library and listening to A House in the Sky

@May, I may be one of few people who truly despised A House in the Sky... I'll be interested in what you think of it. We had read this for book club several years ago and I chose the audio version.

@Susan, that biography sounds like a good one!

@Allison I have never read anything by Alice Munro, I feel that I should.

@Tina, To Paradise sounds dense. Enjoy Jane Goodall's positivity!

@Susan G, I hope you have some downtime to read this weekend!

I'm hoping to finish The Poppy Wife: A Novel of the Great War this week. I've been a bit grumpy so I might foray into some comfort reads instead of starting anything else that I haven't read before this week, but that is to be decided!

Non-fiction this week, I started All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation a few days ago, and it's some nice light social history written by a journalist rather than a historian, which makes for a very readable popular history.

I haven't posted here in a very long time (being an infectious diseases social worker in a hospital during a pandemic is all kinds of busy), but I still read and enjoy the threads as I add to my TBR pile. I just finished For Today I Am a Boy, and now finally reading Scarborough which I've been wanting to read for some time. Happy reading everyone!

Wanda wrote: "@May, I may be one of few people who truly despised A House in the Sky... I'll be interested in what you think of it. We had read this for book club several years ago and I chose the audio version...."

@Wanda, I am listening to the audiobook, and about half way through. I kept thinking she was so naive and stupid to think she could travel to all these war-torn countries, with no backups. I felt bad about what ultimately happened to her though, but I also felt sorry for Nigel, who got sucked into this for no apparent reason.

I am reading Larry's Party which I have owned for a very long time. It is also the first time I have read anything by Carol Shields, which is shameful considering she is a hometown Winnipeg author.

Nothing Canadian at the moment. Tonight I'm going to restart and finally finish a book I have had since c. 2007 or 2008, The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome thanks to a reading game (I have the next one and have had it from when it first came out, but who knows when I'll read it!) I am also going to start Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything and something fiction.

Hi all, I am hibernating this weekend, as the snow falls, so enjoying some reading time!!

I finished Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything which had 3 newly translated lectures by Victor Frankl. I wanted to gain more insight and appreciate it but it was no match for his Man's Search for Meaning.

today I finished The Strangers. I love the cover with the bark background and beading! it took me a bit of time to keep the characters straight but with the help of the family tree, I was drawn into this multi-generational story (perfect for Bingo)!!

I am not sure what is next...

@May - I have had that book on my shelf for a long time but can't bring myself to read it... I feel like the choices of the author will just make me cranky!

@Wanda - stay warm!

@Heather(Gibby) - I read Larry's Party this summer and really enjoyed it... not sure why I have not read more of her work (except for Unless)

This week I am still reading “Anne of Green Gables” in my spare time. I asked how ‘Canadian’ that it is. Well. A bizarre idea suddenly came to my mind. Anne Shirley is an orphan. Can one say that Canada is also an orphan? Canada is cut off from the English and the French, but adopted by the American! Right. I know this bizarre. In addition, I took up once again Charles Taylor’s “Philosophical Essays”. I don’t know. He is almost the ONLY famous philosopher that Canada has ever ‘produced’, but not many Canadians care about him.

Yanlaptak wrote: "This week I am still reading “Anne of Green Gables” in my spare time. I asked how ‘Canadian’ that it is. Well. A bizarre idea suddenly came to my mind. Anne Shirley is an orphan. Can one say that C..."

Well, your idea is "bizarre" :), since Canada is not an orphan but still part of the Commonweath of Nations and very much eschews being called American or considered just like the USA :). The story is very Canadian and always has been. I have a philosophical bent, but am terrible at arguing since I am a whole to parts thinker, but suffice it to say that unlike my former teacher. I thought his premise in that book weak (but that doesn't mean his argument was--but premise is key as well.)

I have read one book by Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity on the recommendation of a high school teacher of mine when we reconnected about 20 years ago (by then he was a professor at the university I went to later.) I can see why not many Canadians care about him.

In my experience, writers who do well internationally are not always the most "Canadian" in their writing--a prime example of this is Margaret Atwood who, in my opinion, is not only not the most Canadian, but who had brilliant contemporaries who aren't nearly as well known internationally that wrote, IMO, in a far more true Canadian voice, etc, of their eras. It irks me to hear her called such a great writer when there are writers as good or better than her but who are too Canadian to be as well received in the US and abroad.

Of course, this is my opinion and that shared by some, but not all. Also, as my dad says, Margaret Atwood is an author love or hate (not always.)

I bit my literary teeth on writers of my grandmother's and mother's generation, and among the women far preferred Gabrielle Roy--born in 1909, so predated Atwood by 30 years and Margaret Laurence who was also born before Atwood, but in the 1920s.

Thanks Karin for your kind reply. I am deeply grateful.

As I have confessed, I do not know Canada and I wish to understand true Canada more. Thank you for your advice. I shall find time to read them.

By the way, why do you say you are not surprise that Charles Taylor is not well received in Canada? Can you tell more?

Yanlaptak wrote: "Thanks Karin for your kind reply. I am deeply grateful.

As I have confessed, I do not know Canada and I wish to understand true Canada more. Thank you for your advice. I shall find time to read t..."

Canada isn't a melting pot or a country with one cohesive identity in many ways--during the 1967 centennial they bragged about being a mosaic. I can't find any videos or old t-shirts, but here is the 1967 Centennial Logo and the 150 years one afterward--to show the diversity. On the one hand, there are many things that are very Canadian, but on the other hand, there is a lot of diversity of believes and that's been lauded a long time :)

I can't imagine that, based on only one book of Taylor's that I read with a very weak premise, etc, that he'd be widely well received--if there are any widely well-received Canadian philosophers, I'd love to hear about them. My family doesn't generally read philosophy (just me, for the most part, and not that often because I invariably argue with them in my mind even if I think they have something important about what they say ;) ).

With the spread of social media, young Canadians are losing more of their local and regional identities as they incorporate more and more Americanisms, etc than ever before. It's easier to see for those of us who were adults prior by 1998 and the advent of the world wide web.