Ibis3’s Comments (group member since Sep 06, 2010)

Ibis3’s comments from the CanLit Challenge group.

Good to have all of you new members in the group! Hope you find a bunch of new books to add to Mt.TBR. Looking forward to sharing some great discussions.

Just a thread to chat about stuff. Anything's on topic here. Politics, quilting, amateur astronomy, or Kessel's shot from the point, whatever's on your mind...

Patricia wrote: "Okay Patricia - Start with The Stone Diaries (1993 - Pulitzer Prize), then Larry's Party and Unless. She also has numerous short stories.
Enjoy!"

I've always intended to add Carol Shields to the CanLit Challenge list, and after seeing your recommendation I did just that. Those three books (The Stone Diaries, Larry's Party, and Unless) are now official CanLit Challenge books.

I'm finally starting on this one. I had an ILL come in that I had to read first. Anyone else reading this or planning to read in the near future?

This really is a book a person must read more than once to really get. Ostensibly, it's a spy story but really it's an allegory about the uneasy ambivalence Quebec feels toward separatism, especially in the mid- to late-sixties, when revolution was in the air, not only in Quebec, but in Cuba and Central & South America. Next Episode has shades of Vladimir Nabokov, James Joyce, and Italo Calvino. Hubert Aquin

I'm still working on this, but it's really tough going for me. I'm not so bad with the stories in which the animals suffer or meet a bad end due to "natural" causes (though I'm still sad), but I really have a problem with human cruelty and disrespect for other animals. Under other circumstances, I'd likely have stopped reading during the story of Lobo and abandoned the book, but since it's a CanLit Challenge book I decided I had to finish it. I've got two and a half stories left to go.

When I'm done, I'll post again and write more about the specific stories (with spoilers). I found your review with its discussion of your childhood memories very interesting. We'll have to have a discussion about anthropomorphism and Disney when I'm done.

I've decided to put up this new post to describe this group a little bit for newcomers (the former thread titled "Welcome aboard" has been renamed to "Book recommendations #1).

I’m an avid reader of the classics. However, I had never really been exposed to the literary tradition of my own country, Canada. After making a post in the Book Talk Forum on BookCrossing.com a few years ago asking for suggestions on what to read to make up for this pathetic lack, I began to investigate and stumbled across McClelland & Stewart’s imprint called the New Canadian Library. It included many of the books those lovely BookCrossers had suggested, so I thought it would be a great place to begin. It’s missing a number of notable authors (e.g. Robertson Davies, Timothy Findley) and a few notable books that even I had heard of (e.g. it only includes four books by Margaret Atwood), so I thought I’d add those books when I came across them and once I’m done the NCL books, I’ll go looking for more additions. I now have several reference books about Canadian literature and there are also NCL books that are no longer part of the collection, not to mention Giller Prize lists and GG nominees and winners, so my Challenge won’t likely be ending any time soon.

My hope was that other people would be interested in the books I would pick and it might turn into a bit of an ongoing Readalong/bookclub. People who were interested in the "currently reading" book might read it at the same time as I do and then contribute to the discussion.

I also would like to encourage any of you who have read or wish to read former picks to post in the appropriate threads. I don't see this as a "book of the month" type thing as much as an ongoing discussion of an ever-growing collection of the books within the Canadian canon. For this reason, I'm in the process of adding all of the previous selections to the bookshelf and the discussion forum of the group.

If your post contains spoilers, please mark it clearly.

I don't have time to put in all the nominated books or set up any polls right now (maybe this weekend?), but for now, here's a thread for discussion of the GG nominees.

Hi Regine. There will definitely be some Tiff and some Mistry coming up in the Challenge eventually.

Regine wrote: "I loved Anne of Green Gables when I was a Child. I've also read Anne of Avonlea, and Anne of the Island. Good stuff!

My favourite Canlit boooks right now:

[book:Not Wanted On The Voyage|1101..."

Not Wanted on the Voyage was brilliant! It was my CanLit Challenge book #27. I haven't put the discussion thread for it up yet, but I hope you'll tell us more about your thoughts when I do get to it. Same goes for Anne of Green Gables (#32).

Looking forward to hearing your comments. I've since read Antoinette De Mirecourt (CanLit Challenge book #36) which takes place at about the same time, but written in 1864. The natural and societal descriptions are similar, allowing for the difference in age of the respective heroines and culture (English vs. French).

I was looking forward to reading this first of North American novels, and for the most part I wasn’t disappointed. The epistolary format gave Frances Brooke an ideal opportunity to describe the landscape of the Canadian wilderness and the cultural environment even at that very early period. I was excited at the thought of having a window into that oh-so-close-to-conquest Quebec–would there be a sense of loss? a diminishment of the people? an animosity toward the English? How would the English women feel about living within these militarised outposts of civilisation surrounded by wilderness? What views did the ordinary European visitor or settler have about the native population? Did they see themselves as trespassers or missionaries? Or was there just so much space that the native people were largely ignored? Fascinating questions, and The History of Emily Montague provides plenty of answers–some surprising, some not.
It bogged down a bit about three-quarters of the way through–I was impatient to see the main plot resolved, but wasn’t expecting the little twist at the end.

I thought I'd just read a bit before bed. Ended up staying awake until I finished. A very difficult book to put down--luckily it's not that long. Which is not surprising considering that Alistair MacLeod is a master of the short story.

I loved the way he interwove the strands of the past--the Highlanders in Scotland and at the Plains of Abraham--with the present. In that respect I think it mirrors the experience of many of us whose families immigrated here in the 17th and 18th centuries.

For more of my thoughts on this book, check out my blog post on Reader of the Stack.

This book by Robertson Davies is the second of The Cornish Trilogy, and the only one that's about Francis Cornish himself. I've read this one twice already and I think it's my favourite Davies novel that I've read so far (as of October 2010).

What's Bred in the Bone is like having hot cocoa with your grandfather on a long winter's night while he tells you how things used to be. It's very straight forward with hints of humour and little philosophical digressions. For more of my thoughts, take a look at my blog post on Reader of the Stack. I also have links there to some of the artworks discussed in the novel--if you come across others let me know; they were a bit more difficult to find back in 2006.

Hi Cheryl. Welcome and thanks for your response on the Feedback group. I just went and added a couple more tags. I'm sure you'll learn lots from us Canucks and our lit. There's some overlap, but we really do have a distinct culture (& many unique subcultures) to tempt you with.

This thread is open to talk about Canada Reads itself, books for the list, eventually the selected titles and the 2011 broadcast.

It's starting up again for the 2011 broadcast with a request for suggestions for a list panelists will choose their books from. http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads/2...

As for myself, I'm afraid I've been disappointed with the direction of Canada Reads since the departure of Bill Richardson (not sure if that's coincidence or not), and didn't participate last year at all.

Hi Dee, hi Shan! Nice to see some new members. I envision our discussion threads to be rather informal with respect to time. Feel free to join in with discussion on any open thread (I'm still adding the pre-Goodreads titles to the shelf) and any new selections that appeal to you (and/or your reading schedule). No pressure. :)

Just opening this thread if anyone is reading any of the Giller nominees and wants to discuss 'em. (Or, chatter about the winner after it's announced in November.)

I agree with those who say MacLeod’s short stories are among the best ever written in English. Beautiful, lyrical, poignant. His talent with language is phenomenal. I could read these short stories over and over again. Each one is like a miniature novel or even a miniature epic. Reading MacLeod’s stories have a similar impression as reading something aloud in Latin. Even if the content or subject matter is mundane, ordinary, everyday, somehow it sounds weighty, poetic, sacred.

I’m constantly amazed at how much MacLeod manages to ‘stuff’ into a story. It’s really no wonder that it takes him so long to write them. Each one is truly a little masterpiece.

This was a great book--one of those that everyone should read. I see no reason why MacLeod can't be as well known and as well respected a short story writer (though having an entirely unique style) as Ernest Hemingway or Katherine Mansfield.

If you want to read my thoughts on the individual stories, check out my blog post on Reader of the Stack.

I think this is, technically, the most recent book of the Challenge so far (as of October, 2010), but that's slightly misleading as this book includes all the stories from Alistair MacLeod's two other collections: The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (1976) and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories (1986). For this reason, I won’t be including either of those as separate books in the CanLit Challenge (though have added both to the group bookshelf).