The Insufferable In Support of the Unreadable

If you love books (as I do), I'd advise you to give the widest berth possible to CBC's Canada Reads. What began, years ago, as an annual competition to determine which one worthy work of Canadian literature the entire nation should read that year (and it is difficult to imagine a more purely Canadian project than that) has devolved into a victimhood whinge-fest as various angry "progressives" shill for the one book that EVERY CANADIAN MUST READ BECAUSE IT HAS THE POWER TO CHANGE THE WHOLE FREAKING PLANET, FOREVER AND EVER, AMEN!!!

In other words, not an endeavor that promotes reading for the sake of reading; reading as one of life's greatest pleasures.

No, that's much too hedonistic and frivolous for the Ceeb Savonarolas.

If anything, Canada Reads pushes joyless reading, reading that's good for you, dammit! (the literary equivalent of, say, cold porridge sprinkled with wheat germ), for the sake of marching in lockstep with other true believers.

Too bad Mao's Little Red Book isn't Canadian. It would have been a Canada Reads shoe-in.



Update: The antithesis of--and antidote to--Canada Reads:

Reading is not about progressing toward a finish line, any more than life is.