Alexis and Melanie have started Roughing It In The Books. I love the tagline, “someone always dies in the end.”
Roughing It In The Books is what I love best about the internet. Here are two women who love books, reading, writing, publishing and are having an online conversation about it that we can all follow and/or join.
The site focus is on Canadian Literature.
I don’t know anyone who reads the classics anymore – not the Canadian Lit. classics anyway. Ask Canadians about them and they roll their eyes and mutter something about Roughing it in the Bush – which, unless you have actually taken a University level Canadian Lit. course you probably haven’t read. Susanna Moodie’s whiney tale of life in the New Country is the quintessential Canadian novel people love to hate. Ask a non-Canadian and their reaction would probably be, “Canadian what?”
So true!
When you talk to people who haven’t studied Canadian Literature, they really have no idea that we live in a land full of amazing writers. And the reference to Roughing It In The Bush by Susanna Moodie is another clever inside joke. Even those of us to studied Canadian Lit. were steered to Sinclair Ross (1908-1996), Ernest Buckler (1908–1984) and Susanna Moodie (1803-1884). All great authors for many reasons, but they just don’t stir up the same connotations as their English or American counterparts. There’s even something sexy and unknown about Australian Lit. or Caribbean Lit.
I’m enjoying the current updates on the Canada Reads Challenge.
