Canada Reads Non-fiction (or so she claims at dinner parties)

I didn’t participate much in CR last year, I think the book selection didn’t interest me that much. This year they’re doing all non-fic (i.e., true stories), which I think will really turn some people off, but which I also think is a great idea. They did the thing where they give people time to vote from 40 books and narrow that down to 10 and then they let the judges pick from those 10. I’ve already forgotten mostly what I voted for, but one of them was Wayne Johnston’s Baltimore’s Mansion, which didn’t make the Top 10. In fact, only one book I voted for made it in the Top 10, which tells you something about what a bad Canadian I am.  

The Top 5 (and their defenders) are:

The Game by Ken Dryden (Alan Thicke)

On a Cold Road by Dave Bidini (Stacey McKenzie) 

Prisoner of Tehran by Marina Nemat (Arlene Dickinson)

Something Fierce by Carmen Aguirre (Shad)

The Tiger by John Vaillant (Anne-France Goldwater) 

The Top 5 I predicted after days of careful thought were: Cockeyed by Ryan Knighton, The Game, Prisoner of Tehran, The Tiger, and Shake Hands with the Devil by Roméo Dallaire. 3 out of 5, I'm not such a bad Canadian after all. The others that didn't make the cut:  The Boy in the Moon by Ian Brown, Louis Riel by Chester Brown, and Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan.