Canada Reads

""Canada's Annual Title Fight""

Canada Reads is an annual event on CBC Radio. Part book club, part reality show, the series selects five books each year and has different famous Canadians defend them in a week of debates. Each day, one book is voted off the list, until only one book remains on the final day of the event.

At first, this was all in fun... but then people noticed that the nominated books had sales bumps in the month before the annual event, and each year's winning book got a larger sales bump just after the contest ... so this friendly little book club has become Serious Business in Canada. In some cases (such as King Leary), an out-of-print book is reprinted after being nominated for Canada Reads because the publisher suddenly has guaranteed sales for it.

A French version, Le combat des livres, ran from 2004 to 2014. It was revived in 2018 as Le combat national des livres, with Katherena Vermette's Ligne brisée winning the competition.

The 2019 match is being held on March 25-28. The contenders are:


 * Chuck Comeau defending Homes by Abu Bakr al Rabeeah with Winnie Yeung
 * Lisa Ray defending Brother by David Chariandy
 * Ziya Tong defending By Chance Alone by Max Eisen
 * Yanic Truesdale defending Suzanne by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, translated by Rhonda Mullins
 * Joe Zee defending The Woo-Woo by Lindsay Wong - voted off on Monday