An interesting article here at CBC.ca Words at Large by Claire Cameron suggesting the top 10 books for a road trip across Canada with titles listed that evoke a “sense of place” for each province.

The book suggested for Manitoba, a good book in my opinion, was The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence. My favourite book by the former Neepawa writer is The Diviners.

Claire also challenges readers to name as many authors as they can from our fair province. Here’s my list:

Margaret Buffie, from Who is Frances Rain? fame, has an enjoyable new book called Out of Focus, recently nominated for the 2007 McNally Robinson Book for Young People Award.

Anita Daher recently published teen novel Spider’s Song and Racing for Diamonds, both good novels I have added to my library shelves.

Catherine Hunter has a new mystery thriller about fake psychics set in Winnipeg called Queen of Diamonds.

Armin Wiebe is perhaps best known for his Manitoba-based books about Yasch Siemens, Yeeat Shpanst and Gutenthal. Armin’s latest novel, Tatsea, won the 2004 McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award. Tatsea, popular with readers of all ages, is an adventure-love story set in Canada’s sub-arctic. I purchased the book for my library last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. My copy came complete with book-club ready questions.

Jake Macdonald is a writer who I admire for his magazine, novel and short story writing skills. I love his book of short stories, The Bridge Out of Town and his novel Indian River.

Carol Matas is known for her novels about children’s experiences during World War II, including Jesper, Lisa, and Daniel’s Story which are very popular with my students. Her newest contemporary novel, a murder mystery called Past Crimes is also a hit with teens.

The late Carol Shields is perhaps best known for her novel The Stone Diaries, winner of the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, about senior Daisy Goodwell attempting to write her autobiography. Shield’s final novel, Unless was published in 2002. My favourite is Larry’s Party.

Miriam Toews won the 2005 Governor General’s Award for Fiction for her coming of age novel, A Complicated Kindness. She also wrote the novels Summer of My Amazing Luck, and, A Boy of Good Breeding, as well as a book about her depression-suffering father called, Swing Low: A Life.

 Diane Wieler has written a number of books popular with teen readers in my library including: Drive; Ran Van: Defender; Ran Van: A Worthy Opponent; Ran Van: Magic Nation; and, Bad Boy.

Eva Wiseman is a young adult fiction writer born in Hungary and currently living in Winnipeg. Her award winning books include My Canary Yellow Star. Look for a review of her newest novel Kanada in a previous post.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 16th, 2007 at 6:03 pm and is filed under Manitoba writers, Reading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.