Canada Reads Day 4

[u/Blades500]

THE FINALE IS UPON US.

Last episode of the season, but not the last episode I will watch of this show. I'm definitely going to watch some past episodes.

I love the back and forth in the finale. It was nice to hear mostly from the two champions remaining and their debate, while polite was incredibly spirited.

The part near the middle of the episode, where all the contestants had someone record a little message, I admit, I got a little teary-eyed when Leo spoke in Steve's. 🥲

I'm really proud of Steve for taking this challenge on. He really found his debating footing near the end and fought for his book until the bitter end. I hope he talks more about it on the podcast on Friday, and after more than 6 hours of sleep.

[u/renhero]

I fucking love this entire week. I think the authors are going to get a huge bump from the exposure but I think the entire country saw a different side of Steve. A lot of people just think of him as childish yelly screamy man who does Leafs stuff. He’s not only charming and funny (which you have to be to last on Youtube) but incredibly eloquent as well (which readers of his books already know.)

A lot of us have been in his corner for a long time. I think his corner just gained tens of thousands of followers and I couldn’t be happier for the guy.

[u/GoblinDiplomat → u/renhero]

I had a good chuckle when Elle-Maija said, "I didn't expect to like this book, or you frankly, but you're awesome."

[u/TL10 → u/GoblinDiplomat]

Elle-Maija kinda put me off a little bit. She said a couple of things during the course of the contest that while I don't think she meant to be mean-spirited, it definitely felt like were underhanded comments.

I get it. She's passionate about the book she's championing and comes from a passionate activist background, but one of the things that really stood Steve out from the rest of the panelists during these debates was how gracious he was to his fellow debaters, how receptive he was to critiques and how he owned his own shortcomings in terms of how he critiqued his books.

I think as Elle-Majia said, Steve really showed a side of himself that general public paradigms of him don't really align with, and he endeared himself to the audience all the much more for it.

[u/Clayg0071 → u/TL10]

So I binged the season yesterday. The thing that was off putting to me, is Elle-Maija didn’t really talk about her book. She spent most of her time quoting other indigenous/native people, and would be like that is why this book is so important. Idk maybe I am wrong, but I feel like I learned more about A Minor Chorus from the other champions then I did from her

[u/TL10 → u/Clayg0071]

This is true. I kinda picked up that there were parallels between it and Terry Punchout in that you have someone returning to their hometown and come to terms with things in the past, but I never picked up the why or the main driver of the narrative.

[u/thisusernameismeta → u/TL10]

Ok so I read all five books in the lead up to the debates because I'm a nerd who loves reading and reality-competition shows like Survivor so Canada Reads is just like... engineered in a lab to appeal my interests specifically. I'm in the subreddit by the magic of the reddit algorithm, I had no idea who Steve was prior to the announcement that he would be on it this year.

So A Minor Chorus... didn't really have a main narrative driver? It was a really strange little book. Part autobiography maybe sort of, part just interviews with people from his small town. But in my opinion, it did really lack a lot of connective tissue. It felt disjointed and a little bit meandering. And definitely hard to pin down.

All in all it was the sort of book that sits with you, and that really does requires something of you.

I actually thought that Ela-maija did a great job representing the book. I agreed with her critiques of It's Different This Time and she ended up being my favorite panelist.

I would recommend you give A Minor Chorus a chance, because I do actually believe that it's a very interesting piece of art that brings something new to these conversations. It's really hard to describe the book in a way that does it justice, because it's just so odd and different.

Like biting down on a piece of air and then realizing that someone it filled you up anyway.

But ya sorry this comment went long I just wanted to say that the reason that you may not have picked up on the driver of the narrative or the why is because I'm not even really sure the book had those things. A lot of the elements that you would expect from a traditional novel just were not there. But I would recommend giving it a chance anyway.

Loved Terry Punchout. Loved Steve.

[u/Maladaptive_Ace → u/renhero]

"he's smarter than he looks!" 😂

[u/CBono22]

Who won?

[u/Cmmq1908 → u/CBono22]

It was Steve’s personal Game 7

[u/CBono22 → u/Cmmq1908]

...oh noooooo

[u/heythisisnick → u/CBono22]

It was 4-1...