Kathleen Molloy

As Canadians reading CanLit, it is a pleasure seeing ourselves on the page. Now, with the help of Project Bookmark Canada we can see the page on the street. Huh?

Project Bookmark Canada is crossing the country to place plaques with CanLit excerpts in specific geographic locations related to those works. Toronto’s inaugural plaque remembers a passage from Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion and the construction of the Bloor Street Viaduct.

From the Project Bookmark Canada website it isn’t clear which blurbs will be featured next or where. Shall we send the founder, Miranda Hill, a wish list?

I’ll compile your suggestions and send the Wish List to Hill care of Project Bookmark Canada. I’ll also give away a copy of Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion that I have ready to book cross.

Here’s how to do it:

1)      Suggest locations for a CanLit-plaques, provide titles and authors

2)      Post them as a comment here by May 30.

Some time ago I asked readers to tell a good lie. I had asked for a lie that a writer might use to push back a book deadline.

Heather from Ontario admitted that her search for a fancy hot chocolate for her child caused all sorts of real time delays. Moms will walk the earth for their kid.

I agreed to hunt down a book by any Canadian author that the best fib telling reader selected. Heather had read about Saskatchewan crime writers Sharon Butala and Anthony Bidulka on Louise Penny’s blog and is now eager to try her hand at crime – crime stories that is.

I’ve asked Chelsea Books to snatch up the first Butala or Bidulka that arrives in the store and to save it for me for Heather.

It’s CanLit bibliokarma with a dash of Saskatchewan crime.

On his blog, Hugh Mcguire asks “What if the Book Business collapses?”

 It would be a disaster for the armies of Canadian publicists. Mayhem for the distributors, printers, and book designers. What of the book sellers? What of the Canadian library system?

Would we have to recycle all of our old favourites?

Would we have to book cross already loved stories instead of churning out new fables with unbent covers?As an author, I should panic at the thought of the Canadian book industry imploding. Yet as a reader I find comfort in the idea. Weird. 

Somehow, and maybe this is me being naïve, … somehow I think we’d revert to the oral tradition.  I think we’d get back to storytelling.Reading has become a solitary pursuit (save for book cubs).  Yet when sharing a story you are never alone.

So … what if the book business collapses? What if no single novel is printed in Canada in 2009?

Jobs will be lost; this is certain and regrettable. You can bet that Harper won’t be bailing out the book business if that happens. Indie bookstores would close if they couldn’t keep old favorites in stock. Literary agents would migrate to the US.  Canadians wouldn’t get Rebecca Eckler’s next book in the hip mommy series “My Kid Lost her First Tooth and I can’t Find it!”

No new books.

But think of the stories we’d tell.

I have added the following Canadian authors to my book crossing list. I’m always happy to trade Canadians as I continue to launch Canadian authors into the wild, via www.bookcrossing.com