The books that Canada Reads author Megan Gail Coles loved reading
As a child, Megan Gail Coles grew up in a "really isolated part of Newfoundland" — Savage Cove on the Great Northern Peninsula — that didn't have a library or a bookstore nearby.
But that didn't stop the Canada Reads author from developing a love of literature.
"Some of the books that were influential in my childhood and adolescence weren't necessarily books that would be considered parts of the Canadian canon, but more what was available to me," she told CBC Books.
For Canada Reads 2020, YouTube star Alayna Fender is defending Coles's debut novel Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club.
Canada Reads 2020 will take place July 20-23.
The novel centres on a cast of flawed characters who are implicated in each other's hopes, dreams and pains. Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club was also on the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist.
Here are the books and authors that Coles loved reading.
Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, The Baby-Sitters Club, The Hardy Boys
"My cousins and I read a lot of Nancy Drew, The Baby-Sitter Club and The Hardy Boys series of books.
"My childhood, and I guess my adolescence as well, was about consuming as many different kinds of books as I could get my hands on. This is how I read for that period of my life."
The Brontë sisters
"After I moved to 'town' — that's what we call St. John's — I had a much greater access to literature because I was at university doing an English literature degree. So I spent a lot of time with the Brontës.
Wuthering Heights was influential in that it taught me all the wrong ways to be loved as a young person.- Megan Gail Coles
"Wuthering Heights was influential in that it taught me all the wrong ways to be loved as a young person. I read Jane Eyre and all those texts that are part of our shared literary heritage."
Stephen King, Kurt Vonnegut, Haruki Murakami
"Stephen King paperbacks were quite popular in the local pharmacy, which is where we would buy books. I would go on, later in life, to discover the works of Kurt Vonnegut and Haruki Murakami.
"I read almost everything that I could get my hands on."
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
"A book that I return to rather regularly — and one that is a huge part of the Canadian literary canon — is A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. Every single time I read it, which is, on average, every two years, it's an epic.
I read almost everything that I could get my hands on.- Megan Gail Coles
"It has multiple narrators and has quite a scope when it comes to colonization and poverty, and how people form relationships with each other. I find something new in that book every single time I engage with it."
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
"I've read everything, from plays and poetry to nonfiction. This is another book that I revisit regularly."
Megan Gail Coles's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
The Canada Reads 2020 contenders
- Alayna Fender defending Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club by Megan Gail Coles
- Akil Augustine defending Radicalized by Cory Doctorow
- Amanda Brugel defending We Have Always Been Here by Samra Habib
- Kaniehtiio Horn defending Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson
- George Canyon defending From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle
