Buy Canadian

I have an immense amount of warm nostalgia for Stuart McClean and the Vinyl Café, both the written stories and the CBC radio versions.

I'm going to a book reading event for kids on Zamami, Okinawa this month. Do you guys have any comical, French, picture books that you recommend? I like Elise Gravel, but would love to find more authors.

I have also read books by Katherena Vermette (start with "The Break"). For more dystopian read, I love Waubgeshig Rice ("Moon of the Crusted Snow").

For murder mysteries, I would recommend Armand Gamache (set in Quebec) series by Louise Penny. I always get excited when a new Louise Penny's book arrives in my local library.

Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeline Thien was a great read. It was shortlisted for the Booker prize, won the Governor General's award and won the Giller prize that year.

I also can highly recommend Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese, which was a finalist for CBCs "Canada Reads".

Overall I'd highly recommend looking at the GG and Giller for authors, as well as CBCs "Canada Reads". For Canada Reads, we also have the shortlisted books for this year's edition already!

These are all obvious choices, but William Gibson, Margaret Atwood, Douglas Copeland and Cory Doctorow.

Libraries can bring books in for you, too. Just ask, they want to help. They want you to get a card even if you never use it because it helps their numbers and their funding. Hell, take out books just in case you feel like reading over the next month, no one cares if you never touch them. Plus, you can renew and reserve books online and download ebooks for free.

Last month my library did a "Blind date with a book" thing where they gift-wrapped books and wrote the first sentence on the outside. I got a fun book I would have never picked up otherwise.

Wanna support local? Using your library helps you and your community.

Robert J. Sawyer! He's a sci-fi author and many of his books are based in Canadian cities.

I really liked FlashForward and The Neanderthal trilogy.

Peter Watts. Dude is a Canadian sci-fi master. His stuff is not optimistic. But it's compelling.

As far as I can tell, all of his books (including Blindsight) are available for free on his website.

Margaret Atwood is the first that comes to mind... I've enjoyed all that I've read by her!

Life of Pi by Yann Martel is another popular one.

I'm a sucker for Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery too.

I had to look up top Canadian Authors to see what/who I've read, and I discovered one of my favorite recent YA fantasy authors lives in BC... Rachel Heartman (although she was born in the US so I don't know if that counts, lol).

I remember in secondary school, we had to do independent reading units. There were pages and pages containing lists of novels we could choose from, exclusively from Canadian authors. Wish I still had access to this.

This is the author I picked: Cary Fagan.

Margaret Atwood is also infamous for the The Handmaid's Tale.

Michael Ondaatje comes to mind, and In the Skin of a Lion is an excellent Canadian story.

I would also like to know a good Canadian audible alternative

I haven't read them yet but on my wishlist atm are:

Steven Erikson - Malazan book of the fallen

Nicholas Eames - Kings of the Wyld

Monica Hughes had some good books, and at least a few were set in Canada. I'm too lazy to google, but I bet she's a Canuck. Gordon Korman. (YA books. Reaching into my childhood.)

I recently learned about this black-owned bookstore in Toronto, and their website has a filter for Canadian authors:
https://adifferentbooklist.com/browse/filter/b/canada/v/popularity