Some Picks from Volunteers for Canada Reads 2015

For CBC’s public call-out for Canada Reads 2015, the titles featured at our popular Readers Choice event at Wordfest last October seemed an ideal starting point for choosing a great title to recommend. The deadline for the public call-out is Nov. 30 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

At the Readers Choice event on October 16, 2014, authors Kim Fu, Mark Lavorato, Iman Verjee and Padma Viswanathan presented books that all received rave reviews from the Festival's dedicated team of volunteer readers.

In For Today I Am a Boy by Kim Fu, Peter is the exalted only son in a family of daughters, the one who will finally fulfill his father’s dreams of Western masculinity. But Peter has different dreams: he knows that he is a girl.

Serafim and Claire by Mark Lavorato is set in the vividely imagined streets of 1920s Montreal and a moving, compulsively readable story of two dreamers whose worlds become forever connected.

In Between Dreams by Iman Verjee follows Frances who is sent away to a boarding school full of teenage rivalry, secret rendezvous and budding friendships. And it’s here – alone for the first time – that Frances is forced to confront the true nature of her life.

The Ever After of Ashwin Rao by Padma Viswanathan is a stunning new work set among families of those who lost loved ones in the 1985 Air India bombing, registering the unexpected reverberations of this tragedy in the lives of its survivors.

Wordfest’s Volunteer Reader Program runs annually from January to June. Volunteer reviewers help Wordfest assess the dozens of books and manuscripts considered each year for inclusion in the Festival program.

Canada Reads is CBC's annual battle of the books and this year they are looking for a book that breaks barriers. Anyone can submit book suggestions to the CBC by email or by using the #canadareads tag via Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Check out all the suggestions here. The deadline for the public call-out is Nov. 30 at 11:59 p.m. ET.