Five Simcoe County libraries squared off against each other in a cover-to-cover competition this summer: Barrie, Bradford West Gwillimbury, Essa, Innisfil, and Midland. Based on Canada Reads, each library selected a Canadian book and a local celebrity champion. The final live debate took place on Tuesday, September 29. Two books were crowned winners!
Simcoe Reads Judges' Choice Winner
BPL's champion Lisa Morgan took home the title of Judge's Choice winner! Lisa was championing Thea Lim's An Ocean of Minutes.
Our Champion: Lisa Morgan
Lisa Morgan has been the Midday Host at 107.5 KOOLFM in Barrie for 13 years. She holds a BA from The University of Ottawa but got into radio at age 17 and it sort of stuck!
Some of her earliest memories are of being read to, at home and at school. She spent her summers as a child biking to the little blue library in Beeton and checking out stacks of mystery novels like the Bobsey Twins and Nancy Drew. Her tastes have expanded since then and she has a long list of favourites that she will gladly share if you want a book recommendation.
Lisa lives with her husband and two children. Her 7 year-old daughter is a bookworm. She says "Books are precious! To me, books are like jewels!"
Our Book: An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim
Shortlisted for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize and a Best Book of the Year according to Real Simple, the Globe and Mail, and the CBC, this follows the love story of two people who are at once mere weeks and many years apart.
In this novel America is in the grip of a deadly flu pandemic. When Frank catches the virus, his girlfriend Polly will do whatever it takes to save him—even if it means risking everything. When she finds out there’s a company that has invented time travel, she agrees to a radical contract: if she signs up for a one-way-trip into the future to work as a bonded laborer, the company will pay for the life-saving treatment Frank needs. Polly promises to meet Frank again in Galveston, Texas, where she will arrive in twelve years.
But when Polly is re-routed an extra five years into the future, Frank is nowhere to be found. Alone in a transformed and divided America, with no status and no money, Polly must navigate a new life and find a way to locate Frank, to determine if he is alive, and if their love has endured.
An Ocean of Minutes is a gorgeous and heartbreaking story that paints an intimate portrait of endurance and complexity of human relationships and the cost of holding onto the past—and the price of letting it go.
Simcoe Reads Community Choice Winner
EPL's champion Emily Wood took home the title of Community Choice winner! Emily was championing Craig Davidson's The Saturday Night Ghost Club.
Champion: Emily Wood
For Emily Wood, words are inherently an inextricably a part of her life. An avid reader from a young age, her love of books quickly developed into a love of writing stories, a passion she continues to pursue in hopes of becoming an author herself. She studied Communications at the University of Ottawa and later earned a diploma in Print & Broadcast Journalism at Durham College, and currently works as a Marketing & Communications professional for a charitable foundation. Though she’ll read just about anything you put in front of her, her favourite books include edge-of-your-seat thrillers, dystopian novels, a good whodunnit and, of course, anything set in a creepy old house.
Book: The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson
Growing up in 1980s Niagara Falls--a seedy but magical, slightly haunted place--Jake Baker spends most of his time with his uncle Calvin, a kind but eccentric enthusiast of occult artifacts and conspiracy theories. The summer Jake turns twelve, he befriends a pair of siblings new to town, and so Calvin decides to initiate them all into the "Saturday Night Ghost Club." But as the summer goes on, what begins as a seemingly lighthearted project may ultimately uncover more than any of its members had imagined. With the alternating warmth and sadness of the best coming-of-age stories, The Saturday Night Ghost Club examines the haunting mutability of memory and storytelling, as well as the experiences that form the people we become.