Recommended Reading

When we asked 49th Shelf fans on Twitter what Canadian books they're reading right now, the response was fast and furious. And eclectic. And inspiring. Yay for Canadian writers—and readers!

Contemporary CanLit Short Stories

The winners will be announced at the Arthur Ellis Awards gala dinner on Thursday, May 30, at the Arts & Letters Club in downtown Toronto. For more info, see http://www.crimewriterscanada.com/awards/arthur-ellis-awards/current-contest/shortlists

If you haven't read CanLit, you're missing out on some of the greatest fiction on the planet.

New Zealander-Canadian Alice Petersen was the 2009 winner of the David Adams Richards Award, offered by the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick. Her stories, published in Geist, The Fiddlehead, Room, and Takahe, have variously been shortlisted for the Journey Prize, the Writers’ Union of Canada competition, the CBC Literary awards, and the Metcalf Rooke Award. Petersen lives in Montreal with her husband and two daughters. All the Voices Cry is her first collection.

In recognition of Mental Illness Awareness Week, which began Sunday, Sept. 30, we've put together a list of Canadian books that bring awareness to the various issues - from initial diagnosis and treatment options to the way it is handled by the health care system - and aim to break down the stigma that continues to surround mental illness. These works, most of them memoirs, offer keen insight into the lives of those suffering from mental illness as well as the lives of those around them. We have also included several novels - including a couple for young adults - to highlight how mental illness is dealt with in literature as another way to bring awareness to one of the most devastating of human tribulations.

Suppose you find yourself standing in a Calgary bar, perhaps Ranchman’s, mouthing off about your beloved Vancouver Canucks who’ve just eliminated the Flames in the playoffs (unlikely as that might be) and you’ve been shouting to be heard – the music is loud after all. A large southern Albertan ranchman hears you. He’s wearing a big white hat that shadows his eyes. His belt buckle winks in the light and you notice it’s a shiny Calgary Flames logo. You exchange a few words, but he’s not interested in talking. Instead, all hell breaks loose. Beer bottles smash on tabletops, you and the cowboy slug each other, the unmistakable stench of man-sweat and confusion floods the room. As the deafening cheers from onlookers – now the women are in on the fighting – spur on the cowboy, you consider dropping down under a table and curling in the fetal position. At this point, it’s about having the right guys to watch your back. In no particular order, these writers and their books might just help you walk away from that bar and live to fight another day. ***John Vigna’s debut collection, BULL HEAD (Arsenal Pulp Press), has been published to critical acclaim this Fall. He is the recipient of the Dave Greber Award for Freelance Writers, winner of the sub-Terrain Lush Triumphant fiction contest and finalist for a Western Magazine Award, the Event creative non-fiction contest, and the CBC literary non-fiction contest. John’s work has appeared in numerous newspapers, magazines and anthologies including Cabin Fever: The Best New Canadian Non-Fiction, The Dalhousie Review, Grain, Event, sub-Terrain, The Antigonish Review, and Exact Fare 2: Stories of Public Transportation. He lives in Vancouver with his wife, the author Nancy Lee.

There are countless of us, expat Canadians who have moved away to other nations to live out new chapters in their lives, but who still need a good Canadian fix from time to time. Sometimes it’s the subtle things— a reference to the currency, the RCMP, a description of a familiar town or a public figure—that will fill the void. I can tell you that after nearly 14 years in New York, nothing feels as good as a down-home story. The following are all good books that stand on their own, and required reading for anyone who has ever felt the pull of home. ** JILL SOOLEY grew up in Mount Pearl, NL. She enjoyed a successful career in public relations first with the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, and later, at a boutique PR firm in midtown Manhattan. Jill’s first novel, The Widows of Paradise Bay, was published by Breakwater Books in 2010 and has been translated into German and Italian. She currently lives and writes in Long Island, NY, with her husband and children. Her latest novel is Baggage.

In AA they say that the definition of an alcoholic is an egomaniac with an insecurity complex and, from my observation, that’s an accurate description. It’s also what makes alcoholics such compelling characters to write about. Growing up in my family, it seemed you couldn’t throw a slice of cold pizza without hitting a drunk and they’ve been staggering through my stories ever since. Here, in no particular order, are a few writers who have a way with the drunken mind. **Billie Livingston is a fiction writer and poet who lives in Vancouver, B.C. Born in Hamilton, Ontario, she grew up in Toronto and Vancouver, and has since lived in Tokyo, Hamburg, Munich and London, England. Her first employment was filling the dairy coolers in a Mac’s Milk. She went on to work varying lengths of time as a file clerk, receptionist, cocktail waitress, model, actor, chocolate sampler and booth host at a plumber’s convention. Her first novel, Going Down Swinging was received as a brilliant debut. Billie’s second novel, Cease to Blush, which drew on a few experiences from her career as a model and actor, was a Globe & Mail Best Book. Her short story collection, Greedy Little Eyes was also a Globe & Mail Best Book and was the winner of the Danuta Gleed Award as well the CBC's inaugural Bookie Prize for short fiction.

Loren Edizel was born in Izmir, Turkey and has lived in Canada most of her life. One of her novels, The Ghosts of Smyrna, was published in Turkey in 2008 by Senocak Yayinlari (trans. Roza Hakmen) and a short story "The Conch" appeared (November 2009) in Turkish translation as part of an anthology entitledIzmir in Women's Stories. "The Imam’s Daughter" was published in Montreal Serai.She has recently completed a collection of short stories under the title “the confession”. She currently lives in Toronto. **"The theme for my title list may seem pedestrian. It is. I don’t own a car; so I walk, take the bus and the subway to get to work and back, every day. It takes me between twenty and forty minutes each way. And during this commute, I read books. Sometimes the read is so engrossing, that I end up missing my stops or head north instead of south. The books on this list are all guilty of causing me such occasional mishaps. The voices in them are strong and uncompromising and have stayed with me long after the read. I hope you will find inspiration and pleasure in reading them as I have."

A list by the author of Above All Things.

It’s not only because I’m a teacher of adolescents and an author of a coming-of-age novel that I am drawn to books with kid narrators. Young people and children have a way of seeing the world that adults are missing. Our days are short, mundane, expected, frazzled, whereas children experience things for the first time much more often than we do. They are surprised, shocked, amazed, scared, bewildered, overwhelmed, and stumped infinitely more often than we are. All of this newness produces wonderfully weird and often outrageous commentary on everything from the ordinary to the extraordinary that life throws their way. Who better to learn from about the world anew than someone who is old enough to know that that over there is a bad guy, but also notice that the bad guy is vulnerable and lost himself. Aga Maksimowska’s short stories and creative non-fiction pieces have appeared in print and online in Australia and Canada, most notably in Kurungabaa, Soliloquies Anthology, The National Post and The Globe and Mail. Her debut novel, Giant, a story of an odd girl’s coming-of-age during the fall of Communism in Poland, was released by Pedlar Press in May. She teaches English and Creative Writing at a Toronto high school.

Zoe Whittall is the author of two literary novels - the Lambda award-winning Holding Still For As Long As Possible and Bottle Rocket Hearts. She has published one short novel for adults with low literacy skills called The Middle Ground (Orca Books, 2010.) She won the Writers' Trust of Canada's Dayne Ogilvie Award in 2008. Her poetry books include The Best Ten Minutes of Your Life,The Emily Valentine Poems and Precordial Thump. She edited the anthology Geeks, Misfits & Outlaws in 2003. She lives in Toronto. http://zoewhittall.blogspot.com/

Of course, there are MANY more wonderful English Quebec books... Elise Moser's novel Because I Have Loved and Hidden It was published by Cormorant Books. She is currently president of the Quebec Writers' Federation, lives in Montreal, and reads a lot of English Quebec fiction.

Janet Somerville has been teaching Grades 11 and 12 boys a primarily CanLit curriculum for 15 years. Her students tweet about literature, popular culture and current events from September-June through @TeenBoyLitCrit.

I started to cry, sitting in a third year English class, listening to Smaro Kambourelli introduce the central BC setting of Sheila Watson’s The Double Hook. I tried to hide it, but I hadn’t known I was missing my own landscapes in Canadian literature so badly. It was that day, that class, and that incredible academic who introduced me to the canon I wanted to write toward, but it was further reading into these books that convinced me that the best books are ones that require work, that engage the imagination and don’t fill in all the blanks. These are the books that make me want to write into and from the west. *** Gillian Wigmore grew up in Vanderhoof, BC, and graduated from the University of Victoria in 1999. She has been published in Geist, CV2, filling station, and the Inner Harbour Review, among others. Wigmore won the 2008 ReLit Award for her work Soft Geography and was also shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay BC Book Prize. She lives in north central BC with her husband and two children. Her latest book is Dirt of Ages.

When you say “sense of place” and “CanLit” in the same breath, everyone scurries over to Mordecai Richler and Montreal’s St. Urbain Street, or to the Bloor St. viaduct in Toronto that cuts through In the Skin of a Lion. I bow down before both (and my initials mean I get to rub up against Ondaatje on the shelves), but they aren’t the ones that moved me most. I love a book where setting anchors the story with atmosphere and meaning, sometimes becoming character itself, or lending the characters their motivations. But a personal connection to setting is something special between the reader and the writer: “The author knows the place I live better than I do” or “Now that place is changed to me forever.” I appreciate many great novels where the setting isn’t even known, but these aren’t those; these are some books that, if the location changed, the story would be utterly different—to me, anyway.

Bob Armstrong is a novelist, playwright, book reviewer and freelance writer who lives with his wife and son in Winnipeg. His 2011 comic novel Dadolescence grew out of a Fringe Festival hit about a stay-at-home father and his son, which he performed with his then-twelve-year-old son Sam in 2007. This spring he has written a series on parenting dilemmas for CBC Radio’s Content Factory. He’s currently working on a play about Louis Riel and the United States and a comic novel about sibling rivalry and the prairie ecosystem.

Short Canadian eBook singles in ePub format for download on a wide array of digital devices.