February 26, 2007 at 6:01 am · Filed under Canada Reads, Short Stories
I’m not a big fan of short story collections but in researching reviews on this one, as one of the books being defended in the Canada Reads competition, I have to say this one has caught my curiousity enough I may have a look at it. The only book written to date by author David Bezmozgis, this book won the 2004 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize and was finalist in the Governor General’s Award for Fiction.
The book is seven loosely linked short stories narrated by Mark Berman who starts out as the six year old son of Roman Berman a former Soviet athletic trainer who immigrates to Canada in the early 80’s. Roman aspires to become a message therapist in Canada. The family are Soviet Latvian Jews which parallels Bezmozgis background. Although some have taken his writing to be auto-biographical Bezmozgis told Barbara Carey in an interview he has a very poor memory and that he thought what did happen to him could have been shaped into much of story.
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February 25, 2007 at 9:47 am · Filed under Canada Reads
For the last five years CBC Radio Canada has produced Canada Reads. The program is sort of a survivor type program with five prominent Canadians chosen to select a Canadian book to defend as worthy of being read by all Canadians. The books are debated over the course of five days with one book eliminated each day until only one is left standing. The debates start today on CBC Radio One at 11am and 7pm or you’ll be able to download them later as an MP3 to listen to.
This year’s panelists are the finalists from the last five years. If you’d like to explore the past years you can visit here. The panelists and the books for this year are: Read the rest of this entry »
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