Canada Reads 2011 - Day One, Round One

I'm just going to assume, for the purposes of this post, that everyone reading it already knows about Canada Reads, that everyone knows it's the 10th anniversary of this annual Survivor crossed with American Idol contest, and that the format has changed slightly this year, with far more reader/general public involvement via social media, and that the task this year was to select the 'must-read novel of the first decade of the new millennium.'

This year's nominees are:

Terry Fallis' The Best Laid Plans, defended by Ali Velshi

Ami McKay's The Birth House, defended by Debbie Travis

Angie Abdou's The Bone Cage, defended by Georges Laraque

Jeff Lemire's Essex County, defended by Sara Quin

Carol Shields' Unless, defended by Lorne Cardinal

Here's my synopsis of what happened during the first round – when the defenders got to vote to eliminate one of the five books nominated.

Velshi mounted a spirited one-minute pitch for The Best Laid Plans, talking very quickly while mentioning the fact that it's a 'fast-moving political satire set in the Ottawa area' and as such, was an important book for all Canadians to read (since politics affects all of us, whether we vote or not). His pitch was serious but also humourous, and he got a big laugh when he said 'if you choose another book, it's like choosing the radish as a national vegetable.' Touching briefly on voter apathy (on the rise in inverse proportion to voters' ages), he described the novel as 'not only a call to action' but something that 'can actually work' to combat voter apathy.

Debbie Travis was no less eloquent in her advocacy of The Birth House, and she scored some real points for taking the novel out of its 'historical' context and placing it in a broader human and contemporary setting. 'It's about what really shapes society,' she said, set at a time when modern medicine, the emancipation of women, and the first of our two 'world' wars were all factors in Canadian society. Cleverly pre-empting potential attacks on The Birth House as a 'likely to appeal to women only' novel, she said it was about men's role in society and that it represents an examination of 'the best of tradition, the best of the future.' She nicely wrapped up her pitch by saying it's a particularly appropriate novel to read at a time when we're struggling to cope with the fact that any 'new technology changes us' as a society.

Georges Laraque came out swinging in the nicest possible way when he talked about The Bone Cage. It's a novel for 'kids, teens, adults, men and women' he said. (The only people left out were pre- and elementary schoolers and the multi-gendered.) Without alluding to the fact that Canada had recently hosted the winter Olympics, he focused on the book's universal themes and appeal. While it's a novel that does explain why Olympic athletes are so driven, he said, it's a really about the very human struggle to 'beat the odds.' 'Life is a battle – this is what this book is all about.'

Knowing that she was defending the contest's one graphic novel, Sara Quin made a fatal strategic error by choosing to tackle the subject of graphic novels head on, instead of talking about the book she was actually supposed to be promoting/defending. While she did mention that she'd chosen the book because of its 'haunting connection between characters' and said that the illustrations made you 'feel like you're in the book,' she also spent far too much of her initial one minute talking about how Essex County 'transcends the genre' of the graphic novel.

Last up was Lorne Cardinal, whose pitch for Carol Shields' Unless began with a mention of her Pulitzer Prize (which an earlier Shields' novel, The Stone Diaries, had won, but never mind). Cardinal focused on the universality of the book's theme – loss – and described it as 'a symphony for the eyes,' a novel that 'transcends words' through the multi-dimensionality of its characters. He implied the novel was a haunting work of fiction that lingers 'in our minds.'

At the end of this round, Jian Ghomeshi summed up the five novels' appeal, saying that going into day one of the Canada Reads live event, The Birth House and Unless had been categorized as novels primarily appealing to women, The Best Laid Plans as interesting to political junkies only, and Essex County to indie hipsters.

Laraque's response to this statement was to say, 'we want people to read more ... if we pick the wrong book, they'll never read again.' He then took a shot at The Birth House, saying most of the men in the book were 'pigs, rapists and warriors' (who wants to read about that?). Velshi attacked Essex County, saying it was like the iPad of books – to which Sara Quin hastily responded, 'we need young people to start reading books' and 'the iPad saved Apple.' Lorne Cardinal was more of an equal-opportunity attacker, saying that The Best Laid Plans 'could turn people off voting and reading' and describing Essex County as a book that represented 'the gateway to reading' rather than reading itself. Unless, he said, is a book that 'gets people thinking about things rather than things.' Oddly this actually made sense – what he was trying to say was that Unless gets people thinking about life and issues rather than material goods. Laraque returned to the attack on Essex County, asking whether it could be considered 'the essential novel' of the last decade. Quin said something, but Laraque trounced her soundly by saying, 'you say it's a novel, but Jeff calls it a cartoon.' Even though I'd already gathered from tweets that Essex County was going to be the first book eliminated, for me it was at this point in the program that I knew it was going down – and why. Poor offense on Quin's part and an even poorer defense? I knew Essex Country was history.

Ghomeshi then asked the panelists, 'Aside from the characters in your own book, which character resonated the most for you?'

For Velshi it was The Birth House's Dora, a character who embodied the contrast between 'modernity and tradition' and who had 'one foot in the old world, one foot in the new world.' Lorne Cardinal chose Jimmy LeBeuf from Essex County, a character whose 'best moment' – his one game in the NHL before a career-ending slam into the boards - had shaped and transformed the rest of his life. Oddly, at this point, Sara Quin piped up to deny there was a character named Jimmy in Essex County, and talked briefly about two other characters, Lou and Vince, before remembering Jimmy. Georges Laraque chose Angus from The Best Laid Plans, saying 'he has kind of my personality' – described by one reviewer as 'witty and charming.' Sara Quin picked Reta Winters from Unless, because she was a writer and a mother, and because she was moved to tears by the grief and longing in the book's passages that described Reta's missing her daughter. Debbie Travis chose Digger from The Bone Cage, saying 'it's a book about striving...and failure.' She said that as someone who wasn't a sports fan, she hadn't expected to like The Bone Cage, but that she was fascinated by Digger the wrestler. Knowing that failure 'is crippling in the end,' she was 'interested in the journey people take to be the best they can be.'

Ghomeshi then said that the least popular novel to date from the voting public was Unless, but that 'the nation awaits' the first panelist vote. And here are the results:

Georges Laraque
Voted to eliminate Essex County

Sara Quin
Voted to eliminate The Bone Cage

Debbie Travis
Voted to eliminate Essex County on the grounds that it did not meet the 'essential' reading criteria.

Lorne Cardinal
Voted to eliminate Essex County on the grounds that it isn't actually a novel, but is, rather, a collection of short stories.

Ali Velshi
Voted to eliminate Essex County.

At this point Sara Quin went on a bit of a subdued rant, saying the other panelists 'represent a demographic that isn't going to read this book' and that Essex County 'will capture a younger viewership' [sic] while the other novels represented choices that were 'more traditional and safe.' Which was a little odd and not terribly gracious.

Tomorrow: round two of Canada Reads.

For all the information you could want about Canada Reads, here's the official page. And if you don't mind hearing the news before you've had a chance to listen to the show yourself, follow the #CanadaReads hashtag on Twitter.

Update: See this review of Essex County if you want to get some sense of what the book's actually about - something that none of the Canada Reads panellists managed to convey during the three days of debates. Spelling of characters' names have been silently corrected in this post after reading the review. (February 9, 2011)

Here's the Canada Reads Day Two roundup. And here's the roundup for the third and final day.