Canada Reads 2012: True Stories Top 10
Annotation:In this touching and candid memoir, Globe and Mail columnist Ian Brown writes about life with his severely disabled son Walker, who was born with an extremely rare genetic mutation. At eight, Walker is functionally autistic, unable to speak or swallow (he is fed through a feeding tube) and has a propensity for self-harm.
Annotation:At 18, Ryan Knighton was told he was going blind. Sound depressing? Well, yes. But fortunately Ryan Knighton has a sharp sense of humour, and he makes Cockeyed a hilarious and touching coming-of-age story.
Annotation:This 1983 insider's look at Canada's favourite sport is still held up as one of the defining books about hockey. Ken Dryden, a former goalie, chronicles his 1979 season with the Montreal Canadiens in this Canadian classic.
Annotation:Chester Brown's 2004 comic biography of Louis Riel, the crusader for Métis rights and leader of the Red River Rebellion, isn't comic in the humorous sense (although it has its moments), but in its format: Chester Brown is a comic-book artist who has turned his inimitable style to a compelling moment in Canadian history. Not a graphic novel so much as a graphic history book, and one that transforms history into legend.
Annotation:Former Rheostatics guitarist Dave Bidini made his transition to the writing world when this book, his first, was published in 1998. It's an account of the life of a touring Canadian musician. Bidini kept a diary while on tour with The Tragically Hip in 1996 (the Rheostatics were their opening act), and On a Cold Road is a mix of Bidini's own touring experiences and anecdotes from other Canadian musicians.
Annotation:The international peace talks following the First World War, when American president Woodrow Wilson, British prime minister David Lloyd George and French premier Georges Clemenceau met in Paris for six months. Margaret MacMillan's chronicle of these tense days is "a blueprint of the political and social upheavals bedeviling the planet now," according to the New York Times.
Annotation:As a teenager, Marina Nemat was arrested and spent two years in a political prison in Iran after the Islamic revolution. This book is her memoir of those horrifying years in jail, where she was tortured and almost executed.
Annotation:In 1993, Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire went to Rwanda on what he thought would be a straightforward peacekeeping mission. He returned home a year later, shattered by his team's failure to stop the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans. His book is an account of the events that turned him from a confident military leader into a man plagued by uncertainty after witnessing the worst of humanity.
Annotation:Carmen Aguirre's life was more eventful before she hit puberty than most people's lives ever get. Her family fled to Vancouver from Pinochet's regime in Chile when she was five, and only six years later, her mother moved Aguirre and her sister back to South America to join the resistance.
Annotation:A man-eating tiger is on the prowl in Russia. John Vaillant's nature thriller has the myth and mystery of a spooky fairy tale, but this account of a Siberian tiger terrorizing the residents of a remote Russian village is no fiction. Primorye (also known as the Maritime Territory) is a sparsely populated region of Russia that borders on China, and a locale where illegal tiger poaching and trading is a common source of income.
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CBC held a public campaign to find out which memoirs, biographies and literary non-fiction titles Canadians want to see on Canada Reads 2012: True Stories. Canadians took up this challenge and nominated books for the Canada Reads: True Stories Top 40. Then further votes happened, resulting in this Top 10
Top 10 List