Canada Reads Inspired

Rebecca and Tara go down rabbit holes that include a 50,000 couplet epic poem, graveyards, and a blood-sucking lamprey that is found in all five Great Lakes.

Don't forget to join the Canada Reads Inspired Summer Reading Bingo Challenge beginning June 5, 2026.  Check out their YouTube live (6/5/26 at 10 am EDT) for more details:

https://www.youtube.com/@canadareadsinspired

Rebecca (@canadareadsinspired):

https://www.kingorama.com/

https://www.glfc.org/sea-lamprey.php

Tara (@onabranchreads):

https://nikidesaintphalle.org/nikis-sculptures-le-cimetiere-de-montparnasse/

https://ilgiardinodeitarocchi.it/en/about/materials-crew/

https://www.rottnestisland.com/learn/history/aboriginal-history

If you have any comments or suggestions that you would like to share with Rebecca and Tara or you are interested in joining their monthly virtual book talk, please email them at [email protected]

Rebecca and Tara are back with their (mostly) monthly book chat in which they share their favorite recent reads.  Rebecca provides a teaser for their next Rabbit Holes podcast and Tara shares her love for author Jenny Lawson and her taxidermy menagerie.

Rebecca:

Tara:

Check out Rebecca and Tara on Instagram:

@canadareadsinspired

@onabranchreads

If you have any comments or suggestions that you would like to share with Rebecca and Tara or you are interested in joining their monthly virtual book talk, please email them at [email protected]

Rebecca welcomes Dr. Nora Gold to the podcast to discuss her latest work, Doubles, a novella published by Guernica Editions in May 2026, as well as the importance and relevance of novellas in the literary canon.

https://guernicaeditions.com/en-us/products/doubles

"Doubles takes place in 1968 in an institution for troubled youth, and is told from the perspective of a brilliant, spunky, 12-year-old girl who is obsessed with math. Engagingly written and often funny, this novella explores how a sensitive young teenager changes over a six-month period from a polite, quiet “good girl” into a delinquent. Although set in the past, Doubles has direct relevance to today, with our recently heightened awareness of the harsh reality in some of our residential institutions during that era (including for Indigenous children, but not only)."

Recommended:

https://bookshop.org/lists/stunning-novellas

Embers by Sándor Márai; Carol Brown Janeway (translator)

https://www.noragold.com/

https://www.noragold.com/portfolio/jewish-fiction-com/

https://www.instagram.com/noragold1818/

Tara sits down for a chat with Canadian author Alison Gadsby, a first-generation Canadian living in Tkaronto, about her debut collection of short stories, Breathing Is How Some People Stay Alive, published by Guernica Editions in spring 2026.

https://guernicaeditions.com/en-us/products/breathing-is-how-some-people-stay-alive

"Breathing Is How Some People Stay Alive blurs the lines between horror, catastrophic speculative fiction, and psychological realism in a collection that might best be described as weird fiction. These connected stories offer dark reconstructions of lives brimming with desperate loneliness. They allow us to bear witness to the life-altering love of sisters, brothers, mothers… the life-altering love that buoys them as they struggle to stay afloat in the wake of childhoods they merely survived."

https://alisongadsby.ca/home/

https://junctionreads.ca

Books and Authors mentioned:

"Poet pals" going on tour with Alison:

Rebecca and Tara cover CBC's 2026 Canada Reads DAY THREE debate. Less surprises perhaps, but more great content!

Join them live on Thursday, 4/16/26 @ 11:30am EDT on their YouTube Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@canadareadsamericanstyle/streams

Their good friend Jolene, from Bookworm Adventure Girl, will be joining them to discuss the final day of this year's competition in which the ONE BOOK that all of Canada should read will be announced!

https://www.youtube.com/@BookwormAdventureGirl

Then join Rebecca and Tara live on YouTube on Friday, April 17 @ 9:45am EDT with their special guest, Canada Reads Host, Ali Hassan!

https://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads/meet-the-canada-reads-2026-contenders-9.7040200 :

Rebecca is back from vacation and she and Tara discuss CBC's 2026 Canada Reads DAY TWO debate.  Listen to Tara's DAY ONE wrap up on her Instagram live: @onabranchreads.

https://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads/meet-the-canada-reads-2026-contenders-9.7040200 :

Tara welcomes back Canadian author Finnian Burnett to discuss their latest novella-in-flash, Redshirts Sometimes Survive.

https://offtopicpublishing.com/product/redshirts-sometimes-survive-by-finnian-burnett/?srsltid=AfmBOoqqrDjkjomUw5LV1p4n7BFWy7-l2RrTh5Ty2L2VoSYamvlByFX8

"A neglected boy clings to an action figure like a lifeline. A trans man meets his childhood hero. An introvert finally finds her voice at a protest. Queer fans, lonely children, awkward convention-goers, and disillusioned adults seek out their favourite starships and captains for solace and strength. In these interconnected flash stories, the outcasts, the rebels, the bullied, and the weird find themselves, one other, and a place to call home.

Books discussed:

https://www.instagram.com/finnianburnett/

https://finnburnett.com/

Rebecca and Tara discuss their impressions of the 2026 CBC's Canada Reads books and defenders for this year's debate. Don't forget to check out Rebecca's interview with author Tyler Hellard and Searching for Terry Punchout on February 10, 2026.

https://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads/meet-the-canada-reads-2026-contenders-9.7040200

https://www.cbc.ca/books/thenextchapter

If you have any comments or suggestions that you would like to share with Rebecca and Tara or you are interested in joining their monthly virtual book talk for adults or the new one for youth books starting in May 2026, please email them at [email protected]

Rebecca is excited to chat with Canadian author Leslie Shimotakahara about her latest novel, The Breakwater, which will be published by Cormorant Books in April 2026.

https://www.cormorantbooks.com/Books/T/The-Breakwater

"One morning in Toronto, Cathy Matsumoto’s father, Yasuo, calls to announce he intends to visit a dying cousin in British Columbia.

Cathy’s never heard of this mysterious relative before, but she begrudgingly agrees to plan a family trip with her father and daughter, Tessa, to Victoria, the hometown Yas was forcibly evicted from when Japanese Canadians were interned during World War Two. It's only in BC that Cathy learns this “cousin” is actually Yas’s younger brother, Stum, who’s been languishing in psychiatric care, abandoned, ever since Yas committed him to Essondale Asylum before the war.

Yas tries to fend off probing questions from his daughter and granddaughter, but revisiting old haunts brings back memories of the brothers’ boyhood rivalry and coming-of-age near Victoria’s Chinatown, when Yas’s resolve to hold their fractured family together clashed against Stum’s troublesome turn toward a life of gambling, crime, and consorting with prostitutes.

In this heartbreaking family story, two brothers, both old men not far from death, must at last confront long-buried family secrets — and their lingering effects on subsequent generations."

Recommended Books:

https://leslieshimotakahara.com/

https://www.instagram.com/leslieshimotakahara

It's Book Chat time! Rebecca had a meh reading month and Tara crushed it!! 

Rebecca (@canadareadsamericanstyle):

Tara (@onabranchreads):

If you have any comments or suggestions that you would like to share with Rebecca and Tara or you are interested in joining their monthly virtual book talk, please email them at [email protected]