We’re in the age of podcasts: whatever your interest, there’s at least one person making episodes about it. Canada is especially known for its cutting-edge investigative and cultural podcasts, and for fans of Canadaland and/or Colour Code, we’ve picked two books that’ll be a great analog alternative to when your audiophile giftee’s phone battery dies.
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For the friend who follows up every utterance with “Oh, it’s from this podcast I listen to? It’s so good!” – give their ears a rest and their eyes a feast with these picks based off of two super-popular Canadian podcasts (and give your wallet a feast, too: they’re 15% off!).
Canadaland = = = The Handover by Elaine Dewar (Biblioasis)Love him or hate him, Canadaland’s Jesse Brown hounds the heels of traditional Canadian media outlets and digs up all kinds of dirt about our news and cultural landscape. Likewise, veteran journalist Elaine Dewar doggedly goes after what happened when “Canada’s Publisher” McClelland & Stewart (publishing home of Robertson Davies, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Leonard Cohen and others) was sinuously moved over to become an imprint of Random House of Canada (now Penguin Random House). This book reads like a perfect episode of Canadaland – impeccably researched, conversational, and always, always driving for the truth.
Colour Code = = = Braided Skin by Chelene Knight (Mother Tongue Publishing)Hannah Sung and Denise Balkissoon’s podcast Colour Code is about race in Canada: how we understand people’s intersecting identities – racial and otherwise – and how those identities influence how people move through Canadian spaces. They do all of this through insightful reviews of things in the news, nuanced conversations, and amazing guests (M.I.A., anyone?). Chelene Knight’s gorgeous debut poetry collection Braided Skin has all of that same nuance when addressing race: “braiding” being her preferred verb over “mixing” when referring to people of multiple ethnicities (a perfect tie-in to Episode 5!).* * *Podcast fans and those giving gifts to podcast fans will be familiar with how this deal works: buy either The Handover or Braided Skin (or any of our featured Bingemas titles) for 15% off, and get a bonus promo code for the month of January on a beautiful art card. Stay tuned for more Bingemas on this same bat channel until December 15th.
