Congratulations to Joseph Boyden, the Canada Reads 2014 Winner for The Orenda!
Canada Reads is an annual competition where 5 personalities defend their favorite book. The debates are broadcast on CBC, and panelists eliminate one book at a time until only one is left. The remaining title is proclaimed the best book of that particular year. The award was initially created in an effort to boost sales of Canadian titles. The first Canada Reads was awarded in 2002 to Michael Ondaatje for In the Skin of a Lion.
Cécile Sune was born in Lyon, France, and her obsession with books started when she was 14. Her grandparents had lent her Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, and she spent part of the summer indoors reading. Needless to say, her tan didn't really improve that year! It was also around that time that Cécile fell in love with the English language. Several years later, in 1999, Cécile moved to Toronto, Canada, with her cat and 5 suitcases. Her love of reading greatly increased when she discovered that English books were much cheaper than French novels. In 2013, she decided to start a blog to share her passion. Cécile now lives in Ottawa, Canada, with her husband and their daughter, and works as a freelance translator (CS Revision).
Last week, the Nobel Prize website released a video of an interview with Alice Munro, winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature. Being 82 years old, she was too frail to make the trip to Stockholm to accept the prize, but this video was a great way to learn more about this amazing Canadian writer. For those of you who are not familiar with her work, Alice Munro writes…
In the first book in the Divergent Trilogy, Beatrice lives in a future Chicago where people are divided into 5 factions representing the main characteristic of each person: Abnegation (selflessness), Amity (love), Candor (honesty), Dauntless (courage) and Erudite (knowledge). Beatrice has spent her childhood in Abnegation with her family. At the beginning of the book, she has just turned 16, and she must choose which faction she will belong to…
The books I have gone through lately have dealt with serious stuff, so I needed something lighter to read for the holidays. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy by Helen Fielding came out a few months ago, and I thought it would be a good time to go through the whole series again. For those of you who have been hiding under a rock for the last 20 years and haven’t…
