The fine folks at CBC announced the long list for the first nonfiction edition of Canada Reads. There are plenty of truly great books on that list (and I’m particularly proud that so many of them were published by our imprints) but there were two omissions from the list that I found rather glaring. Both are two-volume biographies of Canadian prime ministers, and both happen to be published by the Knopf Random Canada Publishing Group: John English’s two-part biography of Pierre Trudeau, and Richard Gwyn’s two-volume life of Sir John A. Macdonald.

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For the first time in the competition’s history, Canada Reads is eschewing fiction in order to highlight some of the masterful “True Stories” written by Canadians. Today, the CBC released the Canada Reads: True Stories Top 40, which will move on to the next round of votes.

Random House of Canada and McClelland & Stewart cannot thank you enough for successfully campaigning for 17 of our titles! Your nominations and praise are music to our ears, and to our authors’. Thank you, Canada!

Our Canada Reads: True Stories Top 40 Contenders

Click on a cover to learn more or read an excerpt

But, your work is not done yet! It’s time to help select the Top 10 True Stories. It’s similar to an award shortlist: Canada Reads defenders will select one of the Top 10 to champion on air in March. You can select up to 5 books in this poll – who are you voting through to the next round?

… that while working as an assistant brand manager for a pet food company, Kevin O’Leary had to eat cat food in front of a potential buyer during a pitch… and pretend to enjoy it?
—Cold Hard Truth: On Business, Money & Life by Kevin O’Leary

Excerpt from Cold Hard Truth:
“Listen, kid,” said the brand manager. “Do you have a strong stomach?”

I had survived Cambodian street soup. I had washed putrid ooze from the inside of a garbage truck. I told him I was the least queasy person he knew.

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When I was a little girl growing up in the West Indies we had a poorly stocked library - imagine how disappointing it was for an avid young reader! Life on the island was very slow so reading about other lives and places was a wonderful escape. Recently I was on a 6 week sabbatical and read several books including The Informationist by Taylor Stevens and Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese.

Cutting for Stone, about twin brothers growing up in Ethiopia, took me back to my childhood and reminded me why I love reading. It’s a wonderful story that kept me reading on the New York subway, Times Square and even in Central Park. The story was an emotional and riveting journey filled with a detailed history of Ethiopia. It is also a story about love and forgiveness. With a shocking ending that left me feeling a bit sad, this is an excellent read and is now the best book I read this year.

The Informationist, a debut novel by Taylor Stevens is a terrific thriller - fast-paced, gripping and edgy. I am a bit “girly” so I love reading thrillers with female action heroes. The next book featuring Vanessa Michael Munroe, The Innocent, will be released in December 2011.

CURRICULUM VITAE
Detective Erlendur Sveinsson
created by Arnaldur Indridason, in a series of award-winning mysteries set in Iceland, starting with Jar City/Tainted Blood

Home Base:
Rekyjavik, Iceland where he’s a detective with the city’s CID.

Sidekicks:
Sigurdur Oli, gruff, temperamental and impatient, and the more empathetic Elinborg, mother of three and a cookbook author in her spare time.

Personal Life:
In shambles. Divorced and the father of two adult but estranged children who he walked out on when they were very young. His ex-wife hates him. Periodically he tries to rebuild his relationship with his daughter Eva, a recovering drug addict. Occasionally sees Valgerdur, a biomedical scientist, but finds it difficult to open up about his feelings.

Favourite reading material:
Old Icelandic sagas and folklore and books about tragedies in extreme weather conditions.

Bad habits:
Smokes too much, sleeps too little, eats badly, broods a lot. Withdraws into himself and becomes very moody.

Work Habits:
Solves his cases with dedicated, old-fashioned police work, long hours and multiple interviews with suspects and witnesses. While doing so, he delves into political and social issues in Iceland such as xenophobia, drug and alcohol abuse and domestic violence.

Personal Demons:
He’s never forgiven himself for the disappearance of his younger brother in a snowstorm when they were both children. His brother’s body has never been found and Erlendur has had an obsession with missing persons cases ever since. He believes they are a particularly Icelandic crime due to a cultural indifference in a country where harsh weather and a high suicide rate are prominent characteristics.

Biggest mystery:
Where is he now? At the end of Hypothermia, Erlendur took some time off and went away to the Eastern fjords where his brother disappeared so many years ago, leaving his colleague Elinborg to solve the murder at the heart of Outrage. During that case, she gets a call from someone who has found Erlendur’s car, abandoned in a small town. There’s been no sign of him for weeks. Hopefully we’ll find out what has happened in future books. I’d like to know he was safe.

I have no shame in admitting I am a Michael Bublé Super Fan. Four albums and two concerts later I am still a smitten kitten. So you can only imagine my excitement when I found out we would be publishing his book! Onstage Offstage is an intimate portrait of this extraordinary singer, told in his own words and through the photographs of Dean Freeman. Bublé talks about his BC upbringing, his early nightclub days, the excitements and temptations of fame, and the sometimes gruelling demands of the road.

I’m really looking forward to the inside scoop this book is going to offer and I love that Michael did the writing himself! It goes on sale October 25, but if you want a sneak peek check out this trailer. And let us know in the comments, what’s your favourite Michael Bublé song?

Death in the City of Light by David King has to be one of the most frightening things I’ve ever read, made even more scary because it’s based on actual fact. Body parts and pieces start turning up all over Paris in various states of decomposition. The main suspect for the police ends up being a very prominent doctor. How can someone who is supposed to save lives be capable of murder?

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… that Germany’s “feed-in tariff” has created more than a quarter of a million jobs in just a decade and given rise to a $50-billion renewable energy business.
—The Leap: How to Survive and Thrive in the Sustainable Economy by Chris Turner

Excerpt from The Leap:
In 2000, after several years of sporadic, incremental change by half-measures and test runs, the German government passed a wholesale revision of its energy policy. It was a deceptively simple piece of legislation known as a “feed-in tariff,” which obliged grid operators (the companies that transmit electricity from power plants to customers) to buy power from renewable sources at rates far above the standard rate for electricity. Disguised as an effort to introduce a little green power to the German grid, the feed-in tariff has fundamentally changed the way the entire nation approaches the energy and climate crises and laid the foundations for the second industrial revolution.

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I’m so glad it’s October - I’ve been waiting to get my hands on Jeffrey Eugenides‘ new book, The Marriage Plot, ever since I fell in love with his last novel, Middlesex.

Middlesex was one of those books that had been on my ‘to read’ list for years. I knew it was good, I knew it had won awards and that I should read it, but it didn’t tempt me as much as the other books on my night stand. Reading the title, I expected a mannered book, set in Middlesex (the English county) about squires and maids, and in spite of growing up in the English countryside (or perhaps because if it), I felt weary of that world.

Lots of my friends recommended it, but somehow, I managed to remain in the dark as to what the book was actually about. Do you know? It’s not a spoiler to tell - you find out right at the very beginning. It’s about a wonderful person, who is normal in every way, except that s/he happens to be a hermaphrodite. It’s a book about Detroit at the end of the 20th century, the city’s growth, the riots, and the shell of a place it became. And it also takes you back on to the 1920s, when the protagonists’ family lives became complicated: an escape from persecution, the American Dream, the love of a brother and a sister…

In spite of its sometimes dark subject matter, Middlesex is one of the most fascinating, clever, interesting and joyful books I’ve read in a long time. It is a hugely life-affirming book which made me laugh more than once. After reading the first page, I resurfaced on the subway, about a week later, feeling exhilarated (I needed to tell EVERYONE how good this book was), but sad that it was over. I came late to the party, but I am now a die-hard Eugenides fan and am ready for more! His new novel, The Marriage Plot, just landed in stores this week.