Canada Reads

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"Canada's Annual Title Fight" —From the opening credits

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. Since this only takes four days, the fifth day of the event's week is given to an interview with the winning book's writer.

At first, this was all in fun. However, people noticed that the nominated books had sales bumps in the months before the annual event (Volkswagen Blues, which usually sells around 200 copies a year, sold 7,500 copies when it was nominated in 2005), and each year's winning book got a larger sales bump just after the contest (Next Episode sold 18,500 copies in 2003) ... 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) and continued annually until 2021. As of 2024, only The Book of Negroes has won both the English and French contests.

The books for Canada Reads 2024 (with the theme "one book to carry us forward") are:

• Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune, championed by Mirian Njoh — voted off the bookshelf on Monday
• Denison Avenue by Christina Wong and Daniel Innes, championed by Naheed Nenshi — voted off the bookshelf on Tuesday
• Bad Cree by Jessica Johns, championed by Dallas Soonias — voted off the bookshelf on Wednesday
• Shut Up You're Pretty by Téa Mutonji, championed by Kudakwashe Rutendo — voted off the bookshelf on Thursday
• The Future by Catherine Leroux (translation by Susan Ouriou), championed by Heather O'Neill (whose book Lullabies for Little Criminals won Canada Reads in 2007) — the winner of Canada Reads 2024!

Capsule descriptions of the books, authors, and champions are available here. The 2024 debate took place on March 4-7.

Tropes used in Canada Reads include:

• Award Snub:
  • Margaret Atwood has been nominated six times (three in the English competition, three in the French competition), but has never won.
  • Collections of poetry or short stories tend to get voted off the bookshelf first - none have ever won.
  • "Genre" fiction – fantasy, science fiction, and superhero novels – aren't always voted off first (or second if there's poetry or a collection of short stories), but they didn't win until The Future won in 2024.
• Colbert Bump: If a book wins, watch it go out of stock at bookstores in Canada. Quickly.
• Product Placement: Played With, because playing this trope straight is frowned upon by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The books that are up for discussion and elimination are definitely products, but the publishers have no say in which books are chosen.
• Spoilers: Occasionally slip out, given the assumption that everybody who's watching or listening to the discussion has read all of the books.
• There Can Be Only One: As much as the defenders might like some or all of the books, only one book each year can be named the book that Canada reads.
• Voted Off the Island Bookshelf: One book is eliminated each day by a vote of all five of the books' defenders... but the books' champions remain to continue voting in future rounds.
• X Meets Y: Your friendly neighbourhood book club meets Survivor