Book battle begins as Canada Reads kicks off 2009 edition

Canada Reads, CBC's annual book battle, kicked off on Monday with this year's five celebrity champions defending their personal choices and taking careful aim at their competitors.

Right off the top, journalist and documentarian Avi Lewis bore some gentle ribbing from his fellow panelists and CBC Radio host Jian Ghomeshi about how he had covered the book he is defending Lawrence Hill's The Book of Negroes with "about a gazillion Post-It notes."

Not long afterward, however, Lewis shifted intopolite attack mode, setting his sights on singer-songwriter Sarah Slean's pick: Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards.

"There is a great Atlantic Canadian literary tradition, of which this book is a proud part," Lewis began. "It's a much-celebrated tradition, just not by me. This particular kind of novel has never engaged me."

One after another, the competitors also picked away at their rivals by naming the book that "least resonated" for them.

Vancouver novelist and literary critic Jen Sookfong Lee hailed the vivid characters in her choice Fruit by Brian Francis and turned her nose up at The Book of Negroes.

"It's a big topic book," she acknowledged, adding however that "[main character] Aminata, to me, is like a Forrest Gump character: she doesn't do anything bad, think anything bad and say anything bad. She's beautiful, she's smart, she's resourceful and she's always in the right moment at the right time. That, to me, felt forced and not quite what I wanted."

Actor Nicholas Campbell, who is defending Gil Adamson's The Outlander, praised competitor The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant as "beautiful."

However, he also called Michel Tremblay's celebrated Quebec tale (translated by Sheila Fischman)too complicated because of its myriad characters.

In defence of Tremblay's book, which she is championing this week, Montreal TV host Anne-Marie Withenshaw pointed out that while it does weave together the tale of 22 characters, she feels it does so successfully.

The debate continues on CBC Radio One every day this week, with the first elimination set to be revealed at the end of Tuesday's edition. A further title will be eliminated each day as the week progresses with the final book standing to be announced Friday.

The debates air online and on CBC Radio One at 11:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. (2 and 8 p.m. NT).

Recent Canada Reads winners include King Leary by Paul Quarrington, Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill and A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews.