Ziya Tong, defending Max Eisen’s By Chance Alone, beat out Chuck Comeau defending Homes, to win this year’s Canada Reads! Both of these books are amazing in their own right and both stories deserved to win but I am thrilled with this decision. I was really impressed with the debates this year too especially from Ziya as it was her great debating that cinched the win between these two amazing stories.
Homes has nothing to be ashamed of and the authors of the book should be immensely proud of their accomplishments in getting this far and in sharing such a brave and amazing story. If you don’t know the backstory on Homes, you have got to read-up on it.
The debates generally went how I thought they would with the voting, though I was surprised that The Woo-Woo was voted off in the first round as I expected it to at least make it to the second. I thought that Susanne would be voted off first. Nothing against Susanne as it was the most beautifully written out of all the books this year but it didn’t match the theme as well as the others. The Woo Woo was a personal favourite of mine but so was By Chance Alone and it was very tough for me to rank them beside each other. I actually really enjoyed all the books this year nearly equally, with my least favourite being Brother. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy Brother, it just didn’t stack-up as well compared to the other four.
It was a good Canada Reads year, with book selection and debates, and I hope to see more quality like this again next year!
The Pluviophile Writer 