
Welcome to the 4th Roundup for the Canadian Book Challenge #3.
Four months in... anyone finished yet?
As the dark cold winter comes upon us, I imagine we'll soon see a spike in the number of books read.
In the meantime, a few items to address:
1. The Canadian Blog Awards are coming up again:

You can nominate blogs up until Nov. 21. I mention this not to be nominated, but because I'm happy they've included LitBlogs this year. Last year some of you may remember that I had contacted the hosts and asked them to include a LitBlog category and then a bunch of us sent them a huge list of Canadian lit-bloggers to show that we did, in fact, exist. Looks like we made it happen, so now let's follow through with as many great nominations as we can!
2. Want to play some Canadian book trivia games? I've added a few to Sporcle that might interest you...
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Name the Margaret Atwood Novels-
Name the Robert Munsch books-
Name the Canada Reads contendersIf you feel like creating one of your own while you're there, feel free to leave a link in the comments below.
3. The Governor General Literary Awards nominations came out in October. For fiction: Deborah Willis (
Vanishing and Other Short Stories), Alice Munro (
Too Much Happiness), Michael Crummey (
Galore), Annabel Lyon (
The Golden Mean), and Kate Pullinger (
The Mistress of Nothing). Besides Munro and Crummey, the others are new to me, so I'm looking forward to checking them out.
As well, the other biggie, the Giller Prize, also announced the finalists this month: Kim Echlin (
The Disappeared), Annabel Lyon (
The Golden Mean), Linden MacIntyre (
The Bishop's Man), Colin McAdam (
Fall), and Anne Michaels (
Winter Vault). Again, with the exception of MacIntyre, I'm not familiar with these authors.
What do you feel about these two awards? Do you prefer one over the other? Much has been said about the fact that Margaret Atwood's
Year of the Flood didn't get this far. Not having read it, I can't say one way or the other if it's being overlooked unfairly. I do think that sometimes we're so eager to give new writers a chance that we don't look at which books are actually the better books. Still, as I said above, I am looking forward to reading some of the unfamiliar authors. So it works for that, but is that really what the awards are about? And how about the judges for the Giller? There are more non-Canadian judges on the panel than Canadians (American Russell Banks, Brit Victoria Glendinning, and Canadian Alistair Macleod.) I'm not opposed to having one non-Canadian in the bunch, nor would I be opposed to judges who have immigrated from the US or the UK, but a part of me feels insulted that the organizers went this route. Anyway, enough negativity, what are your predictions?
4. Finally, the results from last month's poll indicated that more people have visited Ontario than any other province, and fewer people have visited Newfoundland and Labrador out of all the provinces, and Nunavut was the least visited of all. No real surprises, I suppose. I mean Ontario is a nice place, it's almost in the middle, it's the biggest by population, and a hell of a lot cheaper for most people to visit than Newfoundland and especially Nunavut. But trust me, they're worth the effort and money!
Finally, since this is the round-up, don't forget to add any reviews of Canadian books you read in October in the comments below. Don't forget to:
1. Leave a link to the review posts themselves (not just to your blogs or wherever)- Remember you can drop the link code in if you know how, and if not just copy and paste the url address
2. Give me your Challenge grand total so far
On that note, good luck in November and I look forward to reading your reviews!!!