CBC Canada Reads 2023 Shortlist: Down to Five

Hey, y’all! I’m a bit behind this year in sharing the CBC Canada Reads 2023 Shortlist, as it was announced at the end of January. To make matters worse, the winner will be announced on March 30, which is less than a week away. But all that matters is that I am sharing the CBC Canada Reads 2023 Shortlist. For anyone interested in the longlist, you can find that here.

What is CBC Canada Reads?

CBC Canada Reads a battle of the books. Five books are paired with five panelists. Each panelist then argues why their book is the best out of the five. It sounds like a regular book award competition, right? The most significant difference is that these panelists aren’t generally involved in publishing. They may have written and published books, but it’s not part of their day-to-day lives. Generally, the panelists are readers who just so happen to be known around the country. Athletes, actors, activists, entrepreneurs, and even an astronaut have been panelists.

Since 2001, CBC Canada Reads has introduced many books to a broader audience. And all of the winners have gone on to become bestsellers. Recently, all of the books that have been on the shortlist have also become bestsellers. The first winner, In the Skin of a Lion, sold over 70,000 copies after the show.

Now let’s take a look at the CBC Canada Reads 2023 Shortlist!

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton

Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark A Vagrant fame, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, specifically Mabou, a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddles, and Gaelic folk songs. After university, Beaton heads out west to take advantage of Alberta’s oil rush, part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can’t find it in the homeland they love so much. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, what the journey will actually cost Beaton will be far more than she anticipates.

Arriving in Fort McMurray, Beaton finds work in the lucrative camps owned and operated by the world’s largest oil companies. Being one of the few women among thousands of men, the culture shock is palpable. It does not hit home until she moves to a spartan, isolated worksite for higher pay. She encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands, where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet never discussed. Her wounds may never heal.

Greenwood by Michael Christie

It’s 2034, and Jake Greenwood is a storyteller and a liar, an overqualified tour guide babysitting ultra-rich vacationers in one of the world’s last remaining forests.

It’s 2008, and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter fallen from a ladder and sprawled on his broken back, calling out from the concrete floor of an empty mansion.

It’s 1974, and Willow Greenwood is out of jail, free after being locked up for one of her endless series environmental protests: attempts at atonement for the sins of her father’s once vast and violent timber empire.

It’s 1934, and Everett Greenwood is alone, as usual, in his maple syrup camp squat when he hears the cries of an abandoned infant and gets tangled up in the web of a crime that will cling to his family for decades.

And throughout, there are trees: thrumming a steady, silent pulse beneath Christie’s effortless sentences and working as a guiding metaphor for withering, weathering, and survival.

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

After receiving a frantic letter from her newlywed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.

Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemí’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.

Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper, she unearths stories of violence and madness.

And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.

Hotline by Dimitri Nasrallah

It’s 1986, and Muna Heddad is in a bind. She and her son have moved to Montreal, leaving behind a civil war filled with bad memories in Lebanon. Muna had plans to find work as a French teacher, but no one in Quebec trusts her to teach the language. She needs to start making money and fast. The only work Muna can find is at a weight-loss center as a hotline operator.

All day, she takes calls from people responding to ads seen in magazines or on TV. On the phone, she’s Muna, and she’s good at listening. These strangers all have so much to say once someone shows interest in their lives–marriages gone bad, parents dying, isolation, personal inadequacies. Even as her daily life in Canada is filled with invisible barriers at every turn, at the office, Muna is privy to her clients’ deepest secrets.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor’s early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor’s first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet.

That is the CBC Canada Reads 2023 Shortlist. The debates will start on March 27, with the winner announced on March 30.

I haven’t read any of the nominees, but I heard of several. Have you read any of the CBC Canada Reads 2023 nominees? Which one do you hope will be the winner?

Looking for some more books to read? Check out my other bookish lists, book reviews, and monthly reading wrap-ups.