top5s online

Each academic year, the university I work at chooses a "book of the year", a work of contemporary Canadian fiction. All (ok, some) students, faculty and staff read it for class assignments or funnies - and then the author visits and takes part in events, readings, contests and interviews etc. It's usually quite a good event and I've always enjoyed seeing and hearing the author talk about their book. I've been around for the past 4 Books of the Year: Indian Horse , The Golden Mean, The Bone Cage, and The Cat's Table. I've also read a number of past Books of the Year before I became employed at the university: The Cellist of Sarajevo, Life of Pi, and Icefields, though there are many more I haven't read as the Book of the Year has been running since 1998. After the profound experience that was my read of Indian Horse , I decided to read a couple vintage books of the year. So far, that was a mediocre decision. Book of the Year 2001 Chorus of Mushrooms By H...

February's genre for book club became banned books, a nod to Freedom to Read Week at the end of the month. I actually don't remember how I picked my book. Was it a book clubber suggestion? From Facebook? Twitter? Goodreads? I think likely a randomly googled banned book list. It just felt right to follow up reading Indian Horse with another novel about life as a Native American. And really, when was the last time I read a YA novel? February 2014: Banned Books The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian By Sherman Alexie 2009 288 pages Junior is a young cartoonist from the Spokane Indian Reservation. A bright, awkward, yet talented basketball player, he makes the monumental decision to leave the reservation to go to a nearby "white" high school. Add to all the usual teenage angst subjects the hardships of growing up on a reservation, and you've got Alexie's heartbreaking yet humourous journey through high school. The novel is semi-autobiographical, and feel...