Canada's Greatest Books

My darling wife made my day by forwarding the best link today: Canada's 100 Greatest Books. The website is asking for submissions from Canadians to give their opinion about the best Canadian books: 
"For the next six months, we will be polling thousands of book lovers from coast-to-coast-to-coast, collecting votes and then critiquing the top 100 fiction and non-fiction works from our vast literary landscape."
It is a great project! I already submitted my top ten:

1. Barney's Version - Morecai Richler
2. The Diviners - Margaret Laurence
3. A Complicated Kindness - Miriam Toews
4. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
5. Through Black Spruce - Joseph Boyden
6. The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
7. The Wars - Timothy Findley
8. Life Of Pi - Yann Martel
9. Who Has Seen The Wind - W.O. Mitchell
10. Alligator - Lisa Moore

I have some sentimental favourites, like Oryx & Crake or Dance Me Outside, but I think this list is pretty solid - represents traditional and modern, male and female, and a cross-section of Canadian culture. The only thing missing is a B.C. author; my #11 would be The Jade Peony by Wayson Choy.

Anyhoo, I am pumped about the project, and so I sent my list off to canadas100greatestbooks@gmail.com and within five minutes I got a response!

hey gary - thanks for this - great picks and greatly appreciated!

love the lisa moore title.

stay close!

stephen

These guys are awesome. So submit a list of your favourite Canadian books - they need not be novels - and give this project a boost!

Margaret Atwood wins $1M Prize

Margaret Atwood has been named one of this year's recipients of the Dan David Prize, an annual award that "recognizes and encourages innovative and interdisciplinary research that cuts across traditional boundaries and paradigms. It aims to foster universal values of excellence, creativity, justice, democracy and progress and to promote the scientific, technological and humanistic achievements that advance and improve our world." And yes, it is worth 1 million dollars. I am not surprised that she had won this award, but I am surprised at the reason why: "Her work enabled, for the first time, the emergence of a defined Canadian identity, while exploring both national and transnational issues, such as colonization, feminism, structures of political power and oppression, and the violation and exploitation of nature." I can't disagree with this synopsis of her career, but I am shocked that another country has recognized the fact that defining "Canadian identity" is a whole lot of work and has only just happened in our lifetime. We all know it's true - look at the Nobel Prize winners for literature, for example. Not a single Canadian. While the Man Booker and Orange Prizes have recognized Canadians a little more frequently, we are still relatively unknown on the world literature stage. So, for Ms. Atwood to be honoured for her work in conveying messages of feminism, ecology, and "political power and oppression," is perfectly understandable. But to be also honoured for her role in constructing a Canadian identity through literature, that is a welcome surprise.