Canada Reads American Style

Interview - Gina Leola Woolsey and Fifteen Thousand Pieces

Tara interviews Gina Leola Woolsey, author of Fifteen Thousand Pieces: A Medical Examiner's Journey Through Disaster, a nonfiction account of Dr. John Butt who was Chief Medical Examiner at the time of the Swissair plane crash off the coast of Nova Scotia in 1998. 

Gina left her corporate career mid-life to pursue an education in creative writing, earning a BFA from the University of British Columbia and a MFA from the University of King's College.  She splits her time between small-town Alberta, downtown Montreal, and her hometown of Vancouver.  Gina won the 2010-2011 CBC Nonfiction Prize for My Best Friend, a decades-panning tale that offers a glimpse into her relationship with her troubled brother, from the innocence of their difficult childhood to his adult addictions.   

Website: https://www.ginaleolawoolsey.com/

Instagram: @ginaleola

Gina's Recommended Reading List & Current Reads:

• Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
• Red Earth and Pouring Rain by Vikram Chandra
• The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
• Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey by Chuck Palahniuk
• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
• The Famished Road by Ben Okri
• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
• The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
• Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
• The Language of Butterflies: How Thieves, Hoarders, Scientists, and Other Obsessives Unlocked the Secrets of the World's Favorite Insect by Wendy Williams
• The Family Code by Wayne Ng
• Short Stories for a Long Winter by Yasmin Ahmed
• Vignettes by Josip Novakovich 

 

Book Chat #14

Rebecca and Tara chat about what they are reading and what they've recently read! 

(Side note: Rebecca said "palatable" but meant "palpable".  Ha!)

Rebecca (@canadareadsamericanstyle):

• Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
• In Search of April Raintree by Beatrice Mosionier
• The Future by Catherine Leroux; translated by Susan Ouriou
• Denison Avenue by Christina Wong and Daniel Innes
• Dearborn by Ghassan Zeineddine

Tara (@onabranchreads):

• Leaving Earth by Helen Humphreys
• Imagining Imagining: Essays on Language, Identity and Infinity by Gary Barwin
• The Winter Knight by Jes Battis
• Starling House by Alix E. Harrow

 

2024 CBC’s Canada Reads Short List

Rebecca and Tara are thrilled to discuss the CBC's Canada Reads Short List!

• Bad Cree by Jessica Johns
• Denison Avenue by Christina Wong & Daniel Innes
• Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune
• Shut Up You're Pretty by Téa Mutonji
• The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou

Rebecca: @canadareadsamericanstyle

Tara: @onabranchreads

2024 Goals

Happy New Year!  Rebecca and Tara review their 2023 reading goals and set new challenges for 2024!

Rebecca (@canadareadsamericanstyle):

• Finding Edward by Sheila Murray
• The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (All-New Third Edition)
• Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America by Matika Wilbur
• 2024 Inclusive Picture Book Read Along Challenge by @readingwithredandthemagpie
• Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
•  
  Rebecca - Daphne duMaurier
•  
  Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
•  
  The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith
•  
  The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
•  
  The Member of the Wedding - Carson McCullers
•  
  Unless - Carol Shields
•  
  Picnic at Hanging Rock - Joan Lindsay
•  
  Testament of Youth - Vera Brittain
•  
  My Antonia - Willa Cather
•  
  North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
• The Street by Ann Petry

Tara (@onabranchreads):

• The Frozen Thames; And a Dog Called Fig: Solitude, Connection, the Writing Life; Nocturne: On the Life and Death of My Brother by Helen Humphreys

 

2023 Wrap Up

Rebecca and Tara wrap up their 2023 reading year!  They also encourage you to follow @river_street_writes on Instagram if you're interested in CanLit, Canadian authors, and small Canadian presses.

Rebecca (@canadareadsamericanstyle):

• Denison Avenue by Christina Wong; illustrated by Daniel Innes
• Dearborn by Ghassan Zeineddine
• Skid Dogs by Emelia Symington-Fedy
• Cravings by Garnett Kilberg Cohen
• Where the Falcon Flies by Adam Shoalts
• Richard Wagamese
• Greenwood by Michael Christie
• Ted Kennedy: A Life by John A. Farrell

Tara (@onabranchreads):

• Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein
• Peril in Pink by Sydney Leigh
• The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear by Kate Moore
• Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades
• The Trees by Percival Everett
• The Echo Man; The Twenty by Sam Holland
• Message in a Bottle: Ocean Dispatches from a Seabird Biologist by Holly Hogan
• Fayne by Ann-Marie MacDonald
• Care Of: Letters, Connection and Cures by Ivan Coyote
• A History of Burning by Janika Oza
• The Boulevard by Jerrod Edson
• The Cure for Drowning by Loghan Paylor

 

2024 CBC’s Canada Reads Long List

Rebecca and Tara are excited to discuss the 2024 Canada Reads Long List (before the New Year!) and predict the Short List contenders!  Let the holiday book shopping begin!

https://www.cbc.ca/books/the-canada-reads-2024-longlist-is-here-1.7056323

Rebecca: @canadareadsamericanstyle

Tara: @onabranchreads

 

Book Chat #13

Rebecca and Tara are back with another book chat after a busy fall season!

Rebecca (@canadareadsamericanstyle):

• In Search of April Raintree (40th Anniversary Edition) by Beatrice Mosionier
• Garden Inventories: Reflections on Land, Place and Belonging by Mariam Pirbhai
• Cravings by Garnett Kilberg Cohen
• Keeper'n Me; Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamese
• March (Book One, Book Two, Book Three) by John Lewis
• A Promised Land by Barack Obama

Tara (@onabranchreads):

• I Take My Coffee Black: Reflections on Tupac, Musical Theater, Faith, and Being Black in America by Tyler Merritt
• The Holiday Match by Tori Samuels
• Homing: The Whole Story; Fallsy Downsies by Stephanie Domet
• https://invisiblepublishing.com/
• If You Lie Down in a Field, She Will Find You There by Colleen Brown
• The Adversary by Michael Crummey
• Fifteen Thousand Piece: A Medical Examiner's Journey Through Disaster by Gina Leola Woolsey
• A Gathering of Shadows (Shades of Magic #2) by V.E. Schwab

Interview - Adam Shoalts and Where the Falcon Flies

Rebecca is excited to have professional explorer and best-selling author Adam Shoalts as a return guest on the podcast.

Adam is a geographer and historian and holds a Ph.D. from McMaster University.  He has participated in numerous archaeological digs and undertakes solo expeditions in the most remote wilderness areas. He is the Westaway Explorer-in-Residence of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

In this episode, Adam will discuss his fifth and latest book, Where the Falcon Flies: A 3,400 Kilometre Odyssey from My Doorstep to the Arctic (2023).

 

Adam's first four books:

• Alone Against the North: An Expedition into the Unknown (2015)
• A History of Canada in Ten Maps: Epic Stories of Charting a Mysterious Land (2017)
• Beyond the Trees: A Journey Alone Across Canada's Arctic (2019)
• The Whisper on the Night Wind: The True History of a Wilderness Legend (2021)

https://adamshoalts.com/

Instagram: @adam_shoalts

https://rcgs.org/speakers/

 

Interview - Lee Thompson, author, editor, publisher

Since the podcast began, Rebecca has wanted to interview an editor to better understand their role in working with authors.  On today's episode, she chats with author, editor, and publisher Lee D. Thompson.

Lee was born and raised in Moncton, New Brunswick and has had fiction published in five anthologies and in more than a dozen literary journals across Canada and the US. His most recent novel, Apastoral: A Mistopia, was published last year and won the fiction prize at the 2022 New Brunswick Book Awards.

When not writing, Lee is a busy editor and book designer and is the publisher and founder of Galleon Books, a small literary publishing house  

https://leedthompson.blog/

X: @lee_thomp

 

 

Interview - Jeremy John and Robert’s Hill / Christmas Books

Rebecca and Tara combine two great Christmas-related subjects. 

First, an interview with Canadian author and storyteller extraordinaire Jeremy John (@jjjeremyjohn)!

• Robert’s Hill (Or the Time I Pooped My Snowsuit) and Other Christmas Stories
• The Strange Grave of Mikey Dunbar: and Other Stories to Make You Poop Your Pants
• The Death Swing at Falcon Lake: and S'more Summer Stories to Make You Poop Your Pants (available May 2024)

Second, Tara (@onabranchreads) shares her recommended Christmas or winter books for the upcoming season!

• Three Holidays and a Wedding by Uzma Jalaluddin and Marissa Stapley
• The Holiday Match by Tori Samuels
• The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding by Agatha Christie
• The Christmas Murder Game by Alexandra Benedict
• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
• Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher
• The Christmas Bookshop by Jenny Colgan
• All I Want for Christmas; The Holiday Swap by Maggie Knox
• Letters from Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien
• A Holly Jolly Diwali by Sonya Lalli

 

Non-Fiction November!

Rebecca and Tara celebrate Non-Fiction November by sharing some of their highly anticipated non-fiction reads!

Rebecca (@canadareadsamericanstyle):

• A Promised Land by Barack Obama
• Skid Dogs by Emelia Symington-Fedy
• Misfit: Growing Up Awkward in the '80s by Gary Gulman
• Driving the Green Book: A Road Trip Through the Living History of Black Resistance by Alvin Hall 
• Green Book (film) starring Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali
• The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and and Extraordinary Reckoning by Ben Raines
• South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry
• National Underground Railroad Freedom Center https://freedomcenter.org/

Tara (@onabranchreads):

• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
• The Wake: The Deadly Legacy of a Newfoundland Tsunami by Linden MacIntyre
• Invisible Boy: A Memoir of Self-Discovery by Harrison Mooney
• What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World's Most Enigmatic BIrds by Jennifer Ackerman
• Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley
• Transister: Raising Twins in a Gender-Bending World by Kate Brookes
• Fifteen Thousand Pieces by Gina Leola Woolsey

Canada Reads American Style is now an affiliate of Bookshop.org, where your purchases support local independent bookstores.  Our curated shop includes books discussed on the podcast.  When you purchase a book through our virtual bookshop, a portion of the sales benefits a local bookstore, as well as the podcast, which helps offset the costs of the show. 

Interview - Jerrod Edson and The Boulevard

Tara is excited to welcome Jerrod Edson to discuss his latest book, The Boulevard. 

Jerrod was born in St. John, New Brunswick and raised in the  Kennebecasis Valley of southern New Brunswick.  He graduated from Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, with a BA in English lit and history, studied journalism at Sheridan College, Oakville, ON, and received his teaching degree in 2007 from York University, Toronto, ON.

Jerrod received the David Adams Richards Prize for Fiction for his book The Moon is Real (2016) and his novel The Goon (2010) was shortlisted for the ReLit Award.  His sixth novel The Boulevard was published by Galleon Publishing in May 2023.

Paintings mentioned in The Boulevard are listed in order on Jerrod's blog: https://jerrodedson.blogspot.com/2022/03/some-paintings-mentioned-in-boulevard.html

Jerrod is currently reading: Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella and The Town That Forgot How to Breathe by Kenneth J. Harvey.

Instagram: @jerrodedson99

 

Podcasters and YouTubers We Follow

Rebecca and Tara share their favorite podcasts and YouTube content creators.

Rebecca (@canadareadsamericanstyle):

• Currently reading: The Boulevard by Jerrod Edson
• NPR's Book of the Day (pod) 
• NYT-The Book Review (pod)
• What're You Reading w/Kyle Johnson (pod)
• Book Cougars (YT)
• Bookworm Adventure Girl (YT)
• ThePoptimist (YT)

Tara (@onabranchreads):

• Currently reading: The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• The Next Chapter (CBC pod)
• What Should I Read Next? (pod)
• The Currently Reading Podcast (pod)
• Book Cougars Podcast (pod)
• Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe (pod)
• Levar Burton Reads (pod)
• My Dad Wrote a Porno (pod)

 

Book Chat #12

Rebecca and Tara discuss their latest reads in Book Chat #12.

Rebecca (@canadareadsamericanstyle):

• https://canine.org/
• A Promised Land by Barack Obama
• Sorrow's Knot by Erin Bow
• A Quality of Light by Richard Wagamese
• Aesop's Fables
• Where the Falcon Flies by Adam Shoalts
• Shelterbelts by Jonathan Dyck (WFPBC is Nov. 1, 2023 at 7:00pm CT)
• To sign up for the Winnipeg Free Press Book Club https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/book-club

Tara (@onabranchreads):

• The Wake: The Deadly Legacy of a Newfoundland Tsunami by Linden MacIntyre
• Birnum Wood by Eleanor Catton
• Superfan: How Pop Culture Broke My Heart by Jen Sookfong Lee
• Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle

 

Canada Reads American Style is now an affiliate of Bookshop.org, where your purchases support local independent bookstores.  Our curated shop includes books discussed on the podcast.  When you purchase a book through our virtual bookshop, a portion of the sales benefits a local bookstore, as well as the podcast, which helps offset the costs of the show. 

Scotiabank Giller Prize Wrap Up

Tara wraps up her latest Scotiabank Giller Prize reading goal.

Rebecca (@canadareadsamericanstyle): 

• Where the Falcon Flies by Adam Shoalts

Tara (@onabranchreads):

• How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur
• Stray Dogs: Stories by Rawi Hage
• Pure Color by Sheila Heti
• In the City of Pigs by André Forget 
• Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu
• The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr
• Hotline by Dimitri Nasrallah
• Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson
• We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies by Tsering Yangzom Lama
• Avenue of Champions by Conor Kerr
• All the Quiet Places by Brian Thomas Isaac
• If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga
• Lucien and Olivia by André Narbonne
• A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt
• What We Both Know by Fawn Parker

 

Canada Reads American Style is now an affiliate of Bookshop.org, where your purchases support local independent bookstores.  Our curated shop includes books discussed on the podcast.  When you purchase a book through our virtual bookshop, a portion of the sales benefits a local bookstore, as well as the podcast, which helps offset the costs of the show.