Canadian classics

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Hello book lovers.

I'm desperately looking for Canadian classics: novels, poems, anything.
You know those books you have to read in school and don't like them because you have to read them in class.
So is there a Canadian Shakespeare out there?

I really appreciate your effort.

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I am fond of Timothy Findley, Barbara Gowdy and Susan Swan.

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Margaret Atwood - I am mad for The Edible Woman, and some of her later work.

Anything by Alice Munro and Carol Shields. Actually, anything by Carol Shields is paradise for me.

Mordecai's children's books are grand.

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I was gonna say Alice Munro. Lovely trio of stories in current New Yorker.

There's always "Anne of Green Gables"... (Was Montgomery Canadian, though?)

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Although born in New York, Crad Kilodney is an honorary Canadian to me, and many fans:

http://www.cradkilodney.net/

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Thanks a lot guys.
Acutally I was looking for a present for my old daddy's birthday.
I went through some of the books and authors you suggested at amazon, but then I decided to get him a book about Canadian literature so he can decide on his own which books to buy or which authors to get when we're staying in Canada in the near future.
But anyhow, thanks a lot for your suggestion. I surely will pass them on and have a look myself.

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Tell us more about the types of books you and 'old daddy' like, hamster. It might help us give you some suggestions for future reading.

I know that if anyone's thinking of coming to Toronto, I recommend that they read Michael Ondaatje's work.

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Quote:

Publisher Comments:
With this dazzling predecessor to his Booker Prize-winning THE ENGLISH PATIENT, Michael Ondaatje gives us a novel that bristles with intelligence and shimmers with romance as it tests the boundary between history and myth. Patrick Lewis arrives in Toronto in the 1920s as an immigrant from Canada's backwoods. In this throbbing, polyglot city he earns his living searching for a vanished millionaire and tunneling beneath Lake Ontario. He falls in love with two actresses. In the course of his adventures, Patrick's life intersects with those of characters who reappear in THE ENGLISH PATIENT, including the orphaned girl Hana and the charmed thief Caravaggio. And out of these branching, doubling stories, Ondaatje creates a dreamlike and surreal world. IN THE SKIN OF A LION is a work of unalloyed enchantment, beautifully written and prodigiously imagined.*

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Well unfortunately we're not going to stay in the big City.
We're just going to have a short stop in Montréal and then going to head on to Winnipeg.

My good ol daddy is a literature "scholar" of the old days. He's into the historical literature, like Goethe, Shakespear, etc.
So he enjoys getting to know about the backgrounds of eras and authors and being able to link one writer to another and scientific stuff like that.

I myself am more into modern thrillers and mystery books. I'm currently reading The Da Vinci Code, but I also enjoy Stephen King and John Grisham. I guess my taste can be called "mainstream".
Cav suggested Timothy Findley and I think that guy goes in the direction of my taste - from what I saw on amazon.

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Wow! that's quite an expedition, hamster.

Carol Shields is probably one of the most important Prairie authors of the past couple of decades. Her work is much appreciated by men and women. Her The Stone Diaries is probably one book that would be of interest. I'll mull a bit on my way home. There is some interesting work available involving the diaries of the early settlers - mostly women for some reason.

Some great Canajun sci-fi is out there - Spider Robinson still being number 1 in my heart.

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In the skin of the lion is definitely a book for someone who's interested in Canada's real and literary history.

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ohhhhhhhhhhh, and can't forget Robertson Davies. His books about my hometown - The Deptford Trilogy - is an extraordinary series of books.

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Robertson Davies is the man. I drank "The Deptford Trilogy" He is the perfect place to start.

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My favourite Findley novels were Last Of The Crazy People, and The Wars.

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Keep looking, but you'll find none. Davies' works approximates classics.

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Two relatively recent books by Canadians that (IMHO) outshine anything by Findley or Shields (it's my opinion, ok? Razz

) are:

No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel

But I'll agree that one should not overlook Davies.

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jnhofzinser wrote:

Two relatively recent books by Canadians that (IMHO) outshine anything by Findley or Shields (it's my opinion, ok? ) are:

No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel

But I'll agree that one should not overlook Davies.

"The Life of Pi" is excellent, but destined to become a classic?

This is not, at all, to say that Canada is incapable of producing a classic, just that it hasn't thus far - and, admittedly, it is only my opinion that it has not already done so.

Classics within the whole of Canadian literature, is something different than classics within the whole of literature.

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Finn d'Abuzz wrote:

[Canada] has not already [produced a classic]

I agree entirely.

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As for Davies, i prefer the Salterton Trilogy.

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The only book I've read that was set in historical Canada was Jeanne, Fille du Roy. I'm really not sure if it was translated in english but I found it to be quite good.

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Canadian classics

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