Introducing Evergreen Book Club
written by Canadians, read by the world
I love books. I have my entire life. I credit my parents who started my book collection before I was born and continued to foster my love of reading through my life. When my own friends started having kids I told them up front, I don’t know anything about toys but I will be getting them books for birthdays and Christmas.
Reading and writing, at least for me, are a crucial part of life. They are the escape from reality when it gets too tough, a portal to other worlds, and a look into the lives of others. As important or as trivial as you want them to be. And absolutely key to empathy.
Five months ago I stumbled into the spotlight quite unexpectedly. Immediately I knew I wanted to do something with it to support authors, I just didn’t exactly know what that could look like. At first I tried little “Toonie Tuesday” segments online to direct people to smaller known indie authors. Then I started up Evergreen Current and made a Saturday Arts & Culture column to share what I’m reading among other things.
But in the background, as I’ve mentioned before in this very newsletter, I wanted to do more. I wanted to start a book club. So, over the last few months I’ve been sketching out ideas and planning what my ideal book club would look like. And I’m finally ready to share it with all of you.
Evergreen Book Club
100% Canadian authors
Accessible
1 fiction book each month
1 non-fiction book each quarter
participate as much or as little as you want
Why Canada?
Why not Canada? Canadian authors are in a unique position in the book world. If you choose to set a book in Canada it’s less likely that you’ll be picked up by a major publisher in North America. Canadian authors are also told to change our spelling to American English, remove our unique lingo, and conform to ideas that Americans will understand. It’s simply a money issue - they have a larger market and if you want your books to sell you need to make it digestible for those consumers. Much like The Tragically Hip or the House Hippo, Canadian authors who insist on telling Canadian stories might become famous within our borders but it can be challenging elsewhere.
But Evergreen Book Club is not limited to Canadian readers, quite the opposite! I’m hoping that by highlighting Canadian writers we can expand their reach and show the world just how much talent we have here.
Something else I considered is that Canadian authors get paid when their books are checked out at the library, and I knew I wanted the library to be a big piece.
Accessible
I’ve tried to join book clubs in the past and quickly lost interest for one reason - I could never get the hold in at my library.
I haven’t always been in a position to purchase books and a lot of book clubs feature brand new releases. As any dedicated library user will tell you, holds on new books can be months long. By the time the book would come in the book club had already rated it and spoiled the plot.
So with Evergreen Book Club I wanted to do things a bit different. The majority of books will be ones that aren’t brand new. They might be a couple years old or even decades. Ones that you might be able to find at a used book store, borrow from a friend, or get at the library.
Attention will be paid to looking for works that have audiobooks and large print available. And if I do choose a new book I’ll put it at the end of the quarter to give you time to budget or get an early request in at the library.
Book Selection
Which brings me to book selection. I’ve decided to release my picks quarterly instead of every month. There are a few reasons for this. The first of course being the library availability I mentioned above.
The second is that by choosing four books at a time more thought can be put into works that connect with each other in some way lending more cohesion to the selections. And yes, I did say four books per quarter (3 months).
The third reason is because in addition to picking one fiction book per month, I’ll also been choosing one non-fiction book for the quarter. I think that non-fiction can be really intimidating for people. And I know for many of us takes a lot longer to read. I want people to have time to go at their own pace and not feel the pressure to be able to consume what can be rather hefty material in a short period of time.
Participation
Speaking of time, I want this to be something people are excited about, never something they feel is a chore. You do not need to formally sign up for Evergreen Book Club and you can participate as much or as little as you want.
Each quarter I’ll announce my book choices in a video on YouTube and via the Evergreen Current newsletter. Halfway through the month I’ll host a livestream on YouTube where people can come to chat with me about where we all are with the book so far. And at the end of the month there will be a debrief about the book. I’m hoping to be able to interview authors on the YouTube channel as well. All of this content will be entirely free.
For those who want to delve deeper, there will be a paid subscribers exclusive chat on Substack ($5/month or $50/year). By making it exclusive it ensures a safer space for people to chat without the spam or bots often encountered on social media. It also allows me to keep doing this work long term.
I’ve also been in talks with indie authors, many of whom are not available in libraries, who would like to offer special giveaways that will be open to everyone. As Evergreen Book Club grows I hope to offer more surprises and goodies for you as well.
But when does it start?
Canada Day, naturally.
Book selections will be announced on Saturday, June 28th and the first quarter will run July, August, and September. The next quarter will have book selections announced on the last Saturday before the first of October.
So that’s it, that’s the plan. For as long as I have this microphone in front of me I’m going to use it to amplify the voices of Canadian writers and share my love of reading. Please tell your friends and anyone you know who might be interested in joining a low-key, online, no pressure book club.
If you’re already a subscriber to Evergreen Current, don’t worry, my weekly news recaps will continue for as long as the world continues to be a confusing dumpster fire of events. This is just something extra if you want to join in. The Arts & Culture column will continue with its CanCon quota as is.
Aaaaahh so happy you’re doing this!