Rebecca and Tara share their latest vacation highlights as well as their favorite reads over the past month.

Rebecca (@canadareadsamericanstyle):

• https://www.thehenryford.org/
• A Song for Wildcats: Stories by Caitlin Galway
• Stella's Carpet by Lucy E.M. Black
• Oxford Soju Club by Jinwoo Park
• A Psalm for the Wild-Built; A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers
• Drinking the Ocean by Saad Omar Khan
• The Fairy-Tale Detectives (The Sisters Grimm #1) by Michael Buckley
• Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton

Tara (@onabranchreads):

• https://therooms.ca/
• The Hunger We Pass Down by Jen SookfongLee
• The Yellow Wall-Paper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
• Pale Shadows; Paper Houses by Dominique Fortier; translated by Rhonda Mullins
• Sleepers and Ties by Gail Kirkpatrick
• Written on the Dark; The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay
• Tracking Giants: Big Trees, Tiny Triumphs, and Misadventures in the Forest by Amanda Lewis
• Hemo Sapiens by Emily A. Weedon

If you have any comments or suggestions that you would like to share with Rebecca and Tara, please email them at craspod2019@gmail.com

Rebecca is excited to speak with Chinese-Canadian author Su Chang. Su was born and raised in Shanghai and is the daughter of a former and reluctant Red Guard leader, which was the paramilitary arm of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution beginning in the 1960s. Today, they will be talking about her debut novel, The Immortal Woman, published by House of Anansi in March of this year. It has already garnered a lot of attention and praise from CBC, Indigo Books, and Amazon, to name a few high-powered sources.

Highlighted books:

• Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien
• Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
• Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
• Who's Irish? by Gish Jen
• Play by Jess Taylor
• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
• Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith
• Kilworthy Tanner by Jean Marc Ah-Sen
• A Song for Wildcats by Caitlin Galway
• The Book of Records by Madeleine Thien

https://www.instagram.com/suchangwrites/

https://www.suchangauthor.com/

https://houseofanansi.com/products/the-immortal-woman?_pos=3&_sid=2cb7b9933&_ss=r

If you have any comments or suggestions that you would like to share with Rebecca and Tara, please email them at craspod2019@gmail.com

Rebecca and Tara introduce a new feature, Sharing Our Shelves, that may appear again from time to time in which they each review the other's To Be Read shelf and pick their co-host's next book to read. Rebecca selected Tear by Erica McKeen for Tara and Tara selected Stella's Carpet by Lucy E.M. Black for Rebecca.

Rebecca (@canadareadsamericanstyle):

• A Psalm for the Wild-Built; A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers
• The Living Great Lakes by Jerry Dennis
• A Feast of Wolves by Wilson Coneybeare
• Stella's Carpet by Lucy E.M. Black

Tara (@onabranchreads):

• The Midnight Project by Christy Climenhage
• Tear by Erica McKeen

If you have comments or suggestions that you would like to share with Rebecca and Tara, please email them at craspod2019@gmail.com

Happy Reading!

Tara chats with author Harman Burns, a Saskatchewan-born trans woman, writer, filmmaker, and sound artist. Her work has been published in Rebelle Zine, Untethered Magazine, and Metatron Press, and her story “Among Strange Machines” was shortlisted for the Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction. Her debut novella, Yellow Barks Spider was published in 2024 by Radiant Press. She currently resides in Vancouver on the unceded, ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.

Books and authors mentioned:

• Little Fish; A Dream of a Woman by Casey Plett
• Johnny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead
• Kai Cheng Thom
• Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
• Zulaikha by Niloufar-Lily Soltani
• Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells by Helen Scales
• House of Chains (Malazan Book of the Fallen #4/10) by Steven Erikson

https://www.instagram.com/harman.burns/

https://radiantpress.ca/shop/p/yellowbarksspider

Rebecca and Tara are finally back after a six-week break with lots of great titles to share!

Rebecca (@canadareadsamericanstyle):

• One of Ours by Willa Cather
• Oxford Soju Club by Jinwoo Park
• King Leary by Paul Quarrington
• Pay Dirt by Sara Paretsky
• Looking for Smoke by K.A. Cobell
• Blue Horses by Mary Oliver
  • If I Wanted a Boat"
  • "Watering the Stones"
  • "Franz Marc's Blue Horses"
• "Garnett Kilberg Cohen and Cravings" podcast, February 13, 2024

Tara (@onabranchreads):

• https://riverbookshop.com/ in Amherstburg, Ontario
• The Immortal Woman by Su Chang
• The ANNEthology: A Collection of Kindred Spirits Inspired by the Canadian Icon, compiled by Judith Graves and edited by Robin Sutherland
• Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey
• Notes Towards Recovery by Louise Ells
• “Dr. Louise Ells and Lies I Told My Sister” podcast, February 1, 2025
• Our Green Heart: The Soul and Science of Forests by Diana Beresford-Kroeger
• The Weeping Degree: How Astrology Saved Me from Suicide by Kelly Watt
• No Credit River by Zoe Whittal
• Songs for the Brokenhearted by Ayelet Tsabari
• The Ghost Orchard by Helen Humphreys

Tara chats with author Joanne Jackson about Canadian Prairie authors.

Saskatchewan Hidden Gems:

--Beatrice and Virgil; The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel

--Life on the Refrigerator Door; Polly Diamond series by Alice Kuipers

--Going to Beautiful; Russell Quant Mysteries by Anthony Bidulka

--Snake in the Raspberry Patch by Joanne Jackson

--A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews

--Author Gail Bowen

https://www.joannejackson.ca/

https://www.instagram.com/joannejacksonauthor/

Rebecca is joined by friend of the podcast Zeralda to answer the Five Questions for Reader Repartee:

• How did you become a reader?
• What book do you wish you could read again for the first time?
• Which author, living or dead, would you like to meet in person and why?
• What fictional character would you like to meet and why?
• What are you currently reading?

Responses:

• The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice
• Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series by Louise Penny
• The Iliad by Homer
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• The Last Ranger by Peter Heller
• Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo
• My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass
• Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman by Patrick Hutchison

Rebecca and Tara again welcome host Ali Hassan for their annual wrap up of the CBC’s Canada Reads debates!

https://standupali.com/

https://standupali.com/my-book

https://www.instagram.com/standupali

Recommended books:

• American War; What Strange Paradise; One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
• A History of Burning by Janika Oza

THIS YEAR’S WINNER:

• A Two-Spirit Journey by Ma-Nee Chacaby and Mary Louisa Plummer; championed by Indigenous advocate Shayla Stonechild

THE RUNNERS-UP:

• Dandelion by Jamie Chai Yun Liew; championed by "Pastry Nerd" Saïd M’Dahoma
• Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper; championed by actor Michelle Morgan
• Jennie's Boy by Wayne Johnston; championed by author Linwood Barclay
• Watch Out for Her by Samantha M. Bailey; championed by Olympic Gold Medal swimmer Maggie Mac Neil

https://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads