
Wow. After I first read
Three Day Road I was convinced that it would win Canada Reads. It's not that it was my favourite (that would be
Rooms For Rent), it's just that it seemed like a perfect fit for
Canada Reads. Guess you can't make assumptions about one panel based on previous ones.
And how about that Nelofer? Ouch. I've ragged on her a lot in my last few posts but even I felt sorry for her today. All that animosity. Then again, she brought a lot of it on herself. I would like to advocate a little for
Three Day Road though, since she did such an awful job of it. It's a great book. Forget that you might learn something- just read it for the enjoyment of a good book. Forget about stereotypes and the fact that war is ugly (really?), it's a good book. It's fast paced, full of interesting characters, and entertains (possibly while even making you think).
We're down to
Rooms For Rent and
A Complicated Kindness. Was strategic voting in play as Thompson suggested? Hmmm. I would have thought so but after listening to the panelists bicker, I'm not so sure. Like Musgrave said it's impressive that a book of poetry made it this far anyways. And while Canada Reads fans certainly don't make up a large fraction of the Canadian population, I've heard it said before that mere exposure of the book on the program DOES greatly increase it's sales. If it didn't, do you think places like
Amazon would have entire sections devoted to it?
Scott Thompson, while he's not in support of the book I'd like to win, has probably been the best panelist they've ever had on the show. He's been witty and has raised some interesting points throughout the show. Today he even raised some good questions about poetry. For instance, after Susan Musgrave read from the Al Purdy poem "A Handful of Earth" Scott asked what made it a poem, not just a good sentence with different punctuation and different placement on the page. While I think he answered his own question to some extent- it's more of the dialogue that I want from Canada Reads. Likewise, I think I agree with him when he says a poem has no business being longer than a page (and I LOVE poetry). In defence of poetry today, Musgrave said that a good poem, or even a line from a poem, can change your life and/or your way of thinking. I agree, but I think her assessment of it is too grandiose. Good poetry, like good fiction,
can change your life. But I think it's more subtle and slow than that. It's more like continental shifting than a violent earthquake, basically reshaping who we are over time. Anyone looking for the one poem, or one book, or whatever that's going to change the way they see the world, or change their life in some profound way, just as easily could look to a cult, get-rich-quick scheme or fad diet for a "solution" to their life's woes.
That brings me to
A Complicated Kindness. Maybe I should read this book again. I enjoyed it the first time around but listening to the importance people seem to want to put on it, I feel like I've missed something. Like today when Samson and others were talking about the way it spoke of oppressive societies, I thought they were exaggerating Toews emphasis on that aspect of the Mennonite culture. To me the setting felt more incidental than that. The whole book feels incidental to me. But again, it is a good book. Just probably not as good as some people would suggest. While the setting might be unique, the story itself isn't.
Predictions?
Susan Musgrave:
A Complicated Kindness
Scott Thompson:
Rooms For Rent
John Samson:
Rooms For Rent (despite his love for poetry, I doubt he'll pull a
Justin Trudeau on us)
Maureen McTeer:
A Complicated Kindness
Nelofer Pazira:
A Complicated Kindness
If things fall this way, I'll be one happy camper. Nelofer is the wild card tomorrow- having voted against both of these books before, but maybe
Bill Richardson's appeal to book sales will sway her more against
A Complicated Kindness. McTeer could fall the other way too. In the first episode she spoke of her love of poetry, but today she said she was beginning to value humour more. For some reason, people are neglecting to talk about the comedy in
Rooms For Rent. I challenge anyone to read Purdy's "The Drunk Tank" and tell me it's not funny.
(On a side note, they printed one of my
letters to Canada Reads today. Usually people misspell "Mutford". The CBC on the other hand, misspelled "John" as "Jim"- thinking of Grania's hubby, I wonder?)