Spadina Streetcar, coffee cup leaning lazily on her thigh.

Black woman, mid 20s, hair pulled back into a curly ponytail, tired eyes masked by wide-rimmed glasses, wearing short grey jacket and tight blue jeans, cuffs tucked into lined winter boots.

From the Fifteenth District, Mavis Gallant (McClelland & Stewart)

Page 117:

Mr. Cranefield explained, kindly, that up at Rivabella they had made a patron saint out of a mixture of St. Damian, who was an intellectual, and St. Michael, who was not, and probably a local pagan deity as well. St. Michael accounted for the sword, the pagan for the fire. Reliable witnesses had seen the result, though none of these witnesses were British. “We aren’t awfully good at seeing saints,” he said. “Though we do have an eye for ghosts.”

She stands at the photocopier, finger hovering, matching size and type, her head cocked toward the company kitchenette. Friendly banter turns to heated debate. Everyone likes to back a winner. She’s read them all and has her opinions. Perhaps she’ll share them. For now, she shuts her eyes hard, stretches her face, her glasses falling offside her tiny nose, and contemplates another cup of coffee. Size and type, she concentrates. Size and type.

Canada Reads 2008

Timothy’s, Church Street, laptop buzzing.

East Indian woman, early 30s, with long, black hair, wearing long, black skirt and thick-soled boots, velvet coat bunched on the seat beside her, gaze darting back and forth from the page to the slight man at the counter.

Brown Girl in the Ring, Nalo Hopkinson (Aspect)

Page 174:

Baby’s little fist opened and closed against her skin. He looked deeply into her eyes as thought he were trying to communicate something. He seemed reluctant to take her breast. He’d suck a little, then spit out the nipple and whimper, staring up at her. She was probably taking him to his death. “Child, I sorry,” she whispered to him. He fussed and kicked. “She gone, doux-doux, “she said to him. She’d never used that endearment with him before. But now he was the only one of her family left, unless she counted the disembodied woman who was bound by Rudy’s obeah to kill her. “Mami gone.”

He comes in the same time of day as she does, reading in the back corner for hours. Making his way through a personal library of Russian fiction, he occasionally stands, walking through the coffee shop on the balls of his feet, hands shoved into the high pockets of his flooded khakis. Bottom lip stuck out, he doesn’t sit until he’s reached a conclusion, a finished thought punctuated by a salute to no one in particular as he lands heavy in his chair, deeply satisfied. His short curls are matted from his winter hat, and his teeth protrude a little, but she’s certain that in her comic book world he will be the hero, and get all the girls.

Canada Reads 2008

Bloor Line, last day before a long weekend.

Caucasian woman, 50s, with blond, soft perm, wearing long beige overcoat and knitted scarf, book in lap, pages levitating.

Not Wanted on the Voyage, Timothy Findley (Penguin)

Page 54:

Mottyl caught only one further glimpse of the cormorant as she paused to get round a particularly fat hedgehog who had fallen asleep in her path–and the glimpse revealed the cormorant spreading its wings as if to dry them after a dive in a river. Then the sight of it was lost–forever, as it turned out–beyond the closing fronds of fern and bagwood.

The bathroom has been cleaned, the carpets vacuumed. An early morning round to empty the trash cans is all that will be needed, then she can set to the task of the snacks–Cherry Crunch Coffee Cake and Almond Drops. Her ladies will like that. She’s pulled the china teapot from storage, yellow and green flowers, the inside walls stained from monthly visits, the tradition of her mother’s book club living on in spots of Red Rose.

Canada Reads 2008

Indigo, John and Richmond, leaning in the book stacks.

Caucasian male, early 30s, with wavy, brown hair and dark beard, wearing plaid green jacket, black jeans with stitched back pocket, carrying an old leather bag.

Icefields, Thomas Warton (NeWest Press)

Page 180:

He digs absently with the toe of his boot. There is a faint blue shadow in the hollow where the spilled liquid fell. He crouches, brushes away the snow crust with his gloved hands, digging a hole into the powdery layers beneath. Further down the snow solidifies again. Sexsmith stabs his alpenstock into the hole, strikes a hard surface. Rock, he thinks, and scrapes at it, glimpses a faint reflected gleam.

On the other end of the long drive, while three will shovel a throughway, one will have to make the pathless haul to the front door to turn on the power. They spend the last thirty minutes trying to find a radio signal, listening out for commercials, playing a bastardized version of Rock, Paper, Scissors they made up in high school, twenty years earlier. A pizza jingle beats a car ad, a car ad beats a realtor, and anyone selling hot tubs or saunas beats them all. Inside the cottage, he strips to his shorts and jogs in front of the space heater, an open bottle of red breathing on the counter beside frost-bitten ice trays.

Canada Reads 2008

Starbucks, Saturday, crack of dawn.

Caucasian male, late 30s, with short black hair and goatee, wearing blue bomber jacket, unzipped, hat in his lap, sitting near the window across from a stranger surfing wireless.

King Leary, Paul Quarrington (Anchor)

Page 133:

Lonny Chandrian appears and hands me a puck. The feel of a hockey puck has changed over the years, but I’d be hard-pressed to tell you exactly how. In front of me Killebrew and the Maple Leaves’ mook assume the traditional half crouch and poise their sticks above the ice. I hold out the puck and let it tumble. Killebrew bats it in the air, bouncing it upwards, and then he catches the rubber on the blade of his stick. It’s a fairly keen stunt.

His morning coffee interrupted by peeling squeals, neighbourhood kids too far down the ice, going against all the rules of all the parents. Would serve them right, he’d thought, scratching behind his ear while the bread browned in the toaster. The clock chimed, the Black-Capped Chickadee ringing 10:00 am. The squeals reached near mania. He slammed his palm against the counter and lunged toward the door. On the back porch, he scanned the lake, pulling his robe tight to his body one moment, off in the next. One boy in, two on the edges.

Canada Reads 2008