Captivity,

by Gyrgy Spir
Randy Boyagoda, Toronto: The book came out about 12 years ago in
Hungary but it's only more recently been translated into English. I've
seen this book many times in bookstores but it was only on the cusp of
winter that I decided I wanted to read an 860-page historical novel set in
first century Jerusalem. It's about a young Jewish man and his series of
adventures and misadventures.
He winds up in a jail cell with some Jewish guy named Jesus. He meets
Pontius (Pilate) and he hangs out with Herod. I mean it's a really deep
historical novel but that's actually why I found it so interesting; it has
nothing to do with let's say contemporary Toronto or the South Asian
experience. You know the very fact that it is such a dramatic departure from most anything and
everything that I might be reading about or engaging, with drew me in.

Never Look a Polar Bear in the Eye, by Zac Unger

Roger Armstrong, Calgary: It's a riveting book, and it is a true story.
It's written by Zac Unger and Zac is actually a firefighter in Oakland,
California. But the family are well his wife is Canadian but they
decided to spend a family holiday in Churchill, Manitoba in search of
polar bears. And this is the story that goes into that adventure. It
involves climate change scientists, deniers, believers. It has its light
moments and it has its enlightening moments.
One of the comments from the book that stayed with me is from a
housewife in Churchill, Manitoba. She said, "I like to go out for a walk
but it's a little awkward to push the baby-stroller and carry the shotgun at
the same time."

All
The Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr
Lois Gagnon, Alexandria, Ont.: O
ne of the most uplifting books I have
ever read. It was given to me by my sister and it sat on my bedside table
for a couple of months I suppose before I got into it. When I had, I simply
could not put it down. It follows a young blind girl through Paris and
down to Saint-Malo during World War II.
It's so honest, it was simply wonderful. It took the author 10 years to
write this book and it's superbly crafted. I've been reading all my life, and
I'm quite elderly now and it really takes an exceptional book to move me
the way this one did.

Visiting Fellow, by Dave Williamson

Audrey Waytiuk, East Selkirk, Man.: It's a very light read and it draws
you forward. The main character has just gone through a divorce and
he's found another girlfriend that he's dating and he takes her on his
fellowship to Australia in Tasmania.
There's a lot of character development and I think it's a lovely book. I
enjoyed it. And I have to give a little bit of background about this
because I'm in a fan club for the author, David Williamson, and that club
consists of only two other people. He's published quite a few books and
when a new one comes out I send one to each of the members and then
we talk on the phone about it.

Stripped to the Bone: Portraits of Syrian Women, by Ghada Alatrash

Antoinette Tomasich, Calgary: It's an exploration of Syria through its
women. There are seven stories in this collection about different women
who are totally unique. The author doesn't shy away from confronting
the atrocities against women in her home country.
But it's not all about the atrocities; it's about friendship, family and love.
And what I found displayed so beautifully is the love of homeland that
you carry with you no matter where you are no matter how much has
changed. And really, deep down, we are all people and we all want the
best for ourselves and the ones we love.

This is what she portrayed in this book and I found all the stories
touched me. But the last one absolutely brought me to tears. So it's a book I highly recommend.

Barkskins, by Annie Proulx

Marjorie Ross, North Hatley, Que.: It starts off in the late 1600s and it
describes two individuals coming from France to New France into the
new world. It gives an excellent picture and it goes right up till present
day 2010 or so. But it touches a lot on the whole lumber industry and
how we've been diluting our forests since way back then. And also the
treatment of the Indigenous people by way of colonialism at its worst. So
I think it's sort of timely now with the conversation around Indigenous
people and their treatment and also because of our core environmental
issues.

Indian Horse, by Richard Wagamese

Marjorie Ross, North Hatley, Que.: It was basically a very short novel
about a young boy coming from residential school and becoming a good
hockey player. I'm a hockey player and I taught in the Northwest
Territories for many years so I could relate to it. It doesn't give you too
many of the gory details which is sort of nice, but how this young fellow
ended up playing for the Toronto Marlies which is the farm team for
the Maple Leafs and gives an excellent description of how he was
taken from his home and then became a good hockey player.

In Another Country: Selected Stories, by David Constantine

Randy Boyagoda, Toronto: It's a remarkable collection of short stories
and what's remarkable about them is the internal diversity of the stories
the range is amazing. In 200 pages you can go through 10 different
stories and enter 10 radically different worlds.
The title story is about a married couple, late in life and then a discovery.
There's a revelation about the husband a past lover of the husband's.
I don't want to give more away than that because it is so worth
discovering on your own how this doesn't break a marriage apart.

A Man Called Ove, by Frederik Backman

Binta Colley, Marshfield, Vermont: The book takes place in
contemporary Sweden and it opens with this man -- the neighbourhood
curmudgeon. He's the man in your neighbourhood who, when you cross
his yard, will come out of the door, wave his hand and tell you, "Get off
my grass!" He doesn't like animals; he doesn't like his neighbours and all
he wants to do is commit suicide and join his wife. But in the process of
doing these things he keeps getting interrupted by a neighbour who
needs to borrow a ladder... a neighbour whom he ends up saving.
And he basically tries to shut himself out of the world but every time he
goes out the door it's because he's doing something good. And it's a
wonderful book because it's a book that makes you laugh, it makes you
cry and it makes you recognize the people that you grow up with in a community. And what
happens when you actually do the right thing all of the time. So in the end he becomes a
neighbourhood hero as he is dying.

The Road is How, by Trevor Herriot

Kurt Armstrong, Winnipeg: Herriot tumbles off a ladder in middle age
and it triggers this crisis for him, and he decides "I need to go on a
pilgrimage." But he can't afford a plane ticket to Spain or to Chile or
something like that. So he just goes out the front door of his house in
Regina and heads east, walking out through the grass and the sloughs
and things. And so T
he Road is How is this poetic, meditative read about
the wilderness, masculinity, love and marriage. He reflects on what it is
to be a middle aged man in this life.

Like a Queen, by Constance Hall

Jessica McLaughlin, Port McNeil, B.C.: The book starts with
something that made me so happy. It says, "One day I was drinking a
soy chai and watching two women chatting and enjoying a coffee while
simultaneously rocking babies and wrestling toddlers. They looked so
beautiful, so wise, so strong, that I nearly cried."
She had this revelation in her life that all of a sudden the mom in
Walmart with a screaming baby looked majestic to her and the mom
struggling with her child in a stroller looked regal. And as I was reading
this book and it's called L
ike A Queen all she's doing is affirming
you as a woman and and telling you to affirm other women. It's this
positive, uplifting, amazing, hysterical story.

People of the Wolf, by Kathleen O'Neil Gear & Michael Gear

Deborah Wagner, Gatineau, Que.: Rather than recommend just one
title, I want to recommend the husband and wife writing team, Kathleen
O'Neil Gear and Michael Gear. They're both archeologists and they write
historical fiction regarding the first humans in North America.
The books are really well written; when I read them I'm learning
something and I'm entertained. It's like a movie and I can't wait to get
back to it my life interrupts it like commercials. What inspires me about
the books is the amount of research that goes into them. I like looking at
the bibliography because that can take you on a whole other trail.

Genius in the Shadows, by William Lanouette with Bela Silard

Robert J Sawyer, Scarborough, Ont.: Szilard was the guy who went to
Albert Einstein and said, "We're on the verge of splitting the atom and
releasing enormous amounts of energy that could be used for a bomb. I
think somebody has got to warn Franklin Delano Roosevelt that our
enemies during World War Two are working on this.
So Szilard was there at the lab when Enrico Fermi made it happen. He
said, "This is going to be a dark mark on human history." And he spent
his whole life trying to prevent the bomb being dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. What a tragic figure; what a monumental Promethean
figure to read about and a quirky eccentric funny insightful guy.

Time Reborn, by Lee Smolin

Robert J Sawyer, Scarborough, Ont.: Smolin has come to think that in
modern physics we tend to dismiss the notion of time. He has a book out
called T
ime Reborn, a nonfiction book in which he argues that the only
thing we can be sure actually exists is time the march and
progression of events from the distant past through a moment that we
psychologically label 'the present' and into a changeable future.

Dork Diaries, by Rachel Rene Russell

Maya Zandstra, Toronto: The series of books are about a girl named
Nikki and she's in middle school. She has to face her enemy, whose
name is MacKenzie MacKenzie. And I think it's really relatable because
I'm around that age as well.
I think that because at school all the time I read more serious books and
stuff, so over the holiday break I wanted to read something that was
more funny.

Mmoire d'Inuksuk, by Durdre Banville-Cormier

Kate Showers, Bolten-Est, Que.: This book jumped off the shelf at me
in the library and because I'm at beginner level of French, I was reading
with a dictionary in one hand and the book in the other.
The story is a straightforward tale of a juvenile delinquent who goes to
prison and has some sort of transformation. But the telling of it is just so
gripping, even with a dictionary, that at one point I was gasping out loud.
And for learning French it was a really positive way to work on my
language.

The Elephants in my Backyard, by Rajiv Surendra

Sundra Brownlee, Halifax: The book I'm recommending is a memoir,
The Elephants in My Backyard by Rajiv Surendra. I was touched by it
and by the author who is a young man, born and brought up in Toronto.
His parents were Tamil immigrants from Sri Lanka. They lived just next
door to the Toronto Zoo. As a little boy, he could hear lions roaring at
night, elephants and so on.
As an actor on Mean Girls, a cameraman insisted he read Yann Martel's
Life of Pi. Surendra loved the book and he felt very keenly like Pi. He
contacted the author and it turns out there was eventually going to be a
movie made from the book. It took six years for it all to happen, and
during that time this young man prepared himself for the role. He made
friends with the zookeepers and went into a tiger's cage. He took five years to learn to swim at
the University of Toronto. He went to India and enrolled in a boys school. Eventually, however
he never got the part.
It took him a year to grieve but afterwards he went through this huge, like total reincarnation and
surge of creativity. And now he's a young artist and actor in New York. I'm touched by this book
as a person. And anyway I love it. So I decided to tell you about it.

The Frozen Thames, by Helen Humphreys

Alice Gradauer, Lloydminster, Sask.: It's a very small book in more
ways than one: it's only about four or five inches square or something
like that and very thin. But it's a mixture of historical fact and about 40
little vignettes all related to times when the Thames froze over. It covers
a time span ... from 1142 until 1895.

The Shipping News, by Annie Proulx

Duncan Bray, Squamish, B.C.: A
bout nine years ago, I was living in
the U.K. and I was thinking about getting ready to come over to Canada.
I was actually listening to one of the local radio stations from Toronto on
the Internet and there was talk of the movie of the Shipping News. It sold
me on the idea. I felt that I had to get the book before I could watch the
film and learn a bit more about where I wanted to be.
The book solidified that major decision to come to the other side of the
world.

The Group, by Mary McCarthy

Randy Boyagoda, Toronto: I t's this wicked satire about a group of
young women who graduate from Vassar College around 1931 and
enter into what they think will be remarkable lives as modern women,
totally unlike their mothers in elite New York circles.
It's a kind of wicked and in many ways sad and moving revelation of
what happens to them as they try to live out their dreams as young,
ambitious Progressives and it really comes crashing down.
The book is best known these days as the inspiration for Candace
Bushnell's S
ex and the City and Lena Dunham's G
irls the HBO series.
But this is the original, very funny, very smart, episodic novel.

Come On With the Punt, by Paul Dean

Douglas Dunbar, Magog, Que.: It's a delightful and short read, which
has a lot of humour built into it. The story follows this particular man
named Melvin who is a curiosity in high school for four years and it
centres on the resettlement program that took place in Placentia Bay.

Wolf in White Van, by John Darnielle

Andrew McCutcheon, Pincher Creek, Alta.: John Darnielle was
originally a poet and a musician and he released this first novel, I believe
in 2015 and it's absolutely incredible. It's the the book I always tell
people to read whenever they ask me for a recommendation.
It's filled with this melancholic story of a man who was in an accident as
a teenager, in which he becomes disfigured. After this incident he sort of
retreats into a fantasy world and he turns the fantasy world into a game.
And the book is told through these two timelines. One is he is an adult
and this game resulted in an unfortunate incident with two teenagers,
where one died and one was also very badly injured. The second
timeline is of him as a teenager leading up to this this terrible incident that disfigured him
terribly.
It's really about the idea of a fantasy and escapism and the dangers that come along with that.
The prose is absolutely incredible. And John Darnielle is an amazing storyteller.

The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh

Randy Boyagoda, Toronto: I actually bought The Complete Works of
Evelyn Waugh over Christmas. Waugh is a supreme satirist whom you
can always turn to for a quick, fast, funny,sharp laugh. We live in edgy
times where sharp humour seems to me to be something we seek more
than the kind, the soft and gentle. And that's what satire provides.