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Canada Reads, no thanks to the CBC

By Regan Taylor

 

I have to confess: Iam a fan of CBC Radio. I grew up
listening to it at home. Rainy afternoons automatically
make think of DiscDrive with Jurgen Gothe playing
on the kitchen radio as my mother made dinner. I once
wrote an ode to the vocal styling of Peter Gzowski, and,
embarrassed as I am to admit this, I even got emotional
when they changed the theme song to As it Happens.
And though I may be attached to our fusty old public
broadcast service for nostalgic reasons, I happen to
think they still get enough things right (like Jonathan
Goldstein’s miraculous Wiretap, for instance) not to
be entirely irrelevant, and I’ll always switch the dial to
their frequency first, given the choice. But sometimes
they do things that just make me cringe.

One of those things is their annual book-club-
disguised-as-a-reality-show, Canada Reads (www.
cbc.ca/canadareads). Now in its seventh edition, the
program attempts to stimulate an interest in Canadian
literature by having five somewhat famous Canadians
each choose a book of fiction (or, occasionally, short
fiction or poetry) and stump for their chosen works on

the air every day for a week. The books are voted off
one by one by these five sort-of famous people until
one—usually the most mediocre—remains. The idea
is that the entire country will then read the chosen
book together and participate in on-line forums and
local discussion groups, thus promoting literacy and
a renewed love for our oh-so-wonderful homegrown
writers. The concept, though kind of adorably naive
and well-intentioned, is a total joke.

For starters, the notion that
one book, chosen on the whim of five
not-quite-celebrities with questionable
reading tastes and abilities themselves,
will please all of Canada, all 33 million of
us, old and young alike, is so bizarre and
wrongheaded. I’m not sure who came up
with the idea—probably some higher-up in
the Corporation who’s long since moved
on or been axed—but the premise is even
goofier than Oprah’s Book Club. It’s just like the CBC
to bossily assume it knows what’s best for us, and then
ask us to be entertained by their recommendations.

This year’s panel is made up of Dave Bidini,
formerly of the band The Rheostatics, himself an
author of several books on sports and music; Giller
Prize-nominated author Lisa Moore; astronaut Steve
MacLean; star of the CBC’s own Little Mosque on the
Prairie, Zaib Shaikh; and one-named Toronto hip-hop
poet Jemeni. Together, these people will choose a book
to prescribe to the general public, and they’!l do so by
bickering inanely on the radio.

But I’m just not sure why we should trust
the tastes of any of these people—what do they know
about books and reading that we don’t? Why should
their opinions matter to the average Canadian radio
listener? Even Lisa Moore, who is an excellent writer,
is shrill and repetitive on the half-hour segments every
morning. Furthermore, for someone in the best position
to argue the merits of a work of fiction, she’s entirely
unconvincing: the book she championed (Mavis

Gallant’s From the Fifteenth District) was the first to
be cut. Leave it to an indie rocker, a spaceman, and a
sitcom actor to willfully nix the only author who’s well
established outside of this country.

Sadly, the CBC will always endorse,
intentionally or not, only the most “Canadian” of
cultural products. It’s an attitude that never serves us
well, merely reinforcing the provincial stereotype that

still clings to our arts scene.

The format of the show isn’t

“What do they particularly engaging, either. Host Jian
know about
books and
reading that
we don’t?”

Ghomeshi, whose smarmy voice seems to
be all over Radio One these days, can never
quite control his studio guests; the panelists
are constantly whining and talking over
one another, and have rarely prepared their
statements to be cohesive or clear. Jemeni
(has anyone even heard of this woman? and
what exactly is a hip-hop poet?) can only
speak to whether she has “fallen in love with” one book
more than another. Shaikh, though well-spoken, doesn’t
seem to know why he has chosen Findley’s book.
The most eloquent and rational of the entire bunch,
surprisingly, is astronaut Steve MacLean, whose only
shortcoming is his insistence that a book should be of
cultural and social importance to be a winner.

While the show may promote sales of the
competing books (Bidini’s pick, King Leary, was out of
print and his choice prompted the publisher to reprint
it, which is only a good thing), overall, it’s a trite and
irritating process. There’s no way the concept can be
altered to be more relevant, but they could at least pick
slightly more exciting panelists. What if they asked,
say, Don Cherry, Ellen Page, Don McKellar, Nardwuar
the Human Serviette, and Rick Mercer to defend their
favourite books? Would you tune in? Would you read
the winning book? It’s pointless to wonder—there’s
probably some CBC regulation against having that
much awesomeness in any given half-hour.

 

PN

RUE

   

  
    

A

Not Wanted

A run-down of the books up

va

     

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i
I

King Leary by Paul

for Canada Reads 2008:

 

  

 

n the Voyage From the Fifteenth Icefields by Thomas Brown Girl in the Ring by
by Timothy Findley District by Mavis Gallant Quarrington (1987), Wharton (1995), defended Nalo Hopkinson (1998),
(1984), defended by Zaib (1979), defended by Lisa defended by Dave Bidini by Steve MacLean defended by Jemeni

Shaikh

It’s a surprise that Findley has
never turned up on the Canada
Reads contestant list prior

to this, as he’s an old CanLit
standby and a CBC favourite.
This retelling of the Noah’s
Ark myth puts a feminist slant
on the Bible tale, makes Noah
out to be a controlling jerk, and

portrays the Old Testament God

as incapacitated by depression.

Moore

Gallant’s probably the best
known of these writers, and
certainly has the greatest
international reputation. She
has lived in Paris since the
1950s and primarily writes
about Europe, though she’s
also known for her stories
set in 1940s Montreal. This
collection of short stories
explores post-WWII Europe,
with characters struggling to
put their lives back together in
the aftermath of war.

A humourous take on the

life of an aging hockey star,
Percival Leary, who reminisces
as he heads to Toronto to be

in a ginger ale commercial.
Quarrington’s one of our only
great satirists and a genuinely
funny writer. This novel’s likely
got the most laughs of any

on the list, and is, of course,
extremely Canadian— it’s

about hockey. Amusingly,
Quarrington launched a “Not
the First Book Off’ campaign,
and his band plays a song called
“Please Don't Make Me Leave
Before Everyone Else.”

For most, Wharton’s the least
recognizable name on this list,
and the book sounds like a bit
of a drag, but wins points for
social/ecological relevance.
It’s a historical novel, set in
the late 1890s in the glaciers
of northern Alberta. Using an
unconventional format— diary
entries, news clippings, letters,
and poems interspersed with
regular prose—it describes
what happens when one man
becomes convinced he’s seen
an angel in the glaciers.

This is the most unusual pick
of the lot, not just because it’s
not about a bunch of white
people and doesn’t feature

any snow or ice or winter
sports. Taking its name from a
Jamaican children’s playground
rhyme, the fantastical Brown
Girl combines speculative
fiction and Caribbean folklore
and pits several generations of
women against the zombies
and criminals that overrun a
future (and, frankly, way more
exciting) version of Toronto.

 

 

 

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