Toronto Book Awards (and more Toronto books)
Big news for Toronto book-lovers: the Toronto Book Awards shortlist was announced today!
Here it is:
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Men of Action
by Howard Akler, published by Coach House Books
Kay's Lucky Coin Variety
by Ann Y. K. Choi, published by Simon & Schuster Canada
The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto's First Immigrant Neighbourhood
edited by John Lorinc, Michael McClelland, Ellen Scheinberg and Tatum Taylor, published by Coach House Books
On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light
by Cordelia Strube, published by ECW Press
Heyday
by Marnie Woodrow, published by Tightrope Books
While we won't know who the winner is until October 11, the shortlist announcement is cause for celebration; and by celebration, of course, I mean reading books about Toronto.
To get you started, here's a curated list of 292 eBooks and eAudiobooks with Toronto connections. And if you want to get specific about it, here's a pretty cool map of Toronto-based novels, so you can read about fictional goings-on in your own neighbourhood. (Who knew there were so many books set within spitting distance of North York Central Library?)
If you want to really delve into the awards' history, here's a list of past nominees dating back to 1974; and below are some of my own personal favourites.
What's your favourite Toronto book? Let us know in the comments!
Station Eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel
Toronto Book Award winner, 2015
If you haven't gotten around to reading last year's Toronto Book Award (and Arthur C. Clarke Award) winner yet, please do so immediately. This intricately constructed story about a band of Shakespearean actors who rove along the shores of Lake Ontario after the world's population is decimated by plague is every bit as bleak and lovely as you might hope. Is Mandel our next Atwood? You heard it here, folks.
Fifteen Dogs
by Andre Alexis
Toronto Book Award nominee, 2015
Holy Nelly was last year a good one for Toronto fiction. This fleet, clever thought experiment begins with Hermes and Appollo drinking at the Wheat Sheaf tavern, and debating whether human intelligence is a blessing or a curse. Would dogs, for example, be happier if they could think? Or not? Fifteen High Park dogs find out. *Sigh*. Alexis justly won both the Giller and the Rogers Trust Writers' Prize for this.
Consolation
by Michael Redhill
Toronto Book Award winner, 2007
This multilayered novel of Toronto past and present manages to combine a civic-minded interest in historical preservation with utter heartbreak.
The Blind Assassin
by Margaret Atwood
Toronto Book Award winner, 2001
Remember that time Margaret Atwood wrote a masterful mashup of all the pulp genres (gothic romance, suspense, science fiction) that managed somehow to be at once giddy, devastating and a literary tour de force? It won all kinds of awards, including the Booker. Fifteen years on, it's worth another look.
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