Feisty lit battle Canada Reads kicks off
Feb 22, 2005
CBC Arts
TORONTO - Canada Reads, the CBC's annual battle of the books, is preparing for another round of feisty debate about Canadian writing.
RELATED: Canada Reads
The literary melee, which started yesterday on CBC Radio One and CBC Newsworld spans five days. Each day's debate will end in a vote to kick one book out of contention, until a single title remains next Friday.
Watch Canada Reads: Preview Special - (Runs 4:02) Five celebrity advocates will each champion a Canadian book: Olympic fencer Sherraine MacKay defends Mairuth Sarsfield's No Crystal Stair.
Toronto city councillor Olivia Chow defends Margaret Atwood's Oryx & Crake.
Author Donna Morrissey defends Rockbound by Frank Parker Day.
Singer Molly Johnson (replacing singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright) defends Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers.
Author and former National Librarian Roch Carrier defends Volkswagen Blues by Jacques Poulin, translated by Sheila Fischman.
"Beautiful Losers is a challenging book. I threw that book down in disgust at 1:30 in the morning on a first read-through. ... I hated the book," Johnson recently told Blue Rodeo's Jim Cuddy, who successfully defended last year's Canada Reads winner, The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe.
"But are you going into this not liking your book?" Cuddy asked.
"I'm going into this knowing that change can be challenging. And this book effected change in the way Canadians write and the way Canadians read. This was, as Margaret Atwood said, groundbreaking," Johnson replied.
The exchange was part of a Canada Reads preview special aired on Newsworld this past weekend. The program shows some of the behind-the-scenes happenings surrounding the annual broadcast, including some of the famed sparks that fly between panellists.
"If it becomes really, really tense I have my gavel and a tranquilizer gun," Canada Reads host Bill Richardson jokes to the five advocates in the special.
IN DEPTH:
A how-to manual for future Canada Reads panellists
The Canada Reads: The debates will be seen and heard twice daily: at 12:30 p.m. ET and 7:30 p.m. ET on
Newsworld and 11:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. on
CBC Radio One.
Cheers,
Geordie
www.sherrainemackay.com 
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