The Scotiabank Giller Prize is one of Canada’s biggest literary awards. Started in 1994 and named for the late Doris Giller, the award is gear toward recognizing excellence in Canadian long form and short story fiction. It started with a cash prize of $25,000 for the winner and has grown to a prize of $100,000 for the winner and $10,000 for each other finalist since partnering with Scotiabank in 2005. Each year a jury of five hand selected judges work their way through submissions of published works from each year (from October 1st to the following September 30th). They begin by announcing a long list in early September, followed by a short list in late September, and culminating in the announcement of the annual winner in early November at a literary gala type event.
Each year readers and lovers of Canadian literature wait with anticipation as the long list then short list are announced, the titles quickly becoming higher in demand through libraries, book stores, and even audiobook apps. This year’s “Giller Season” began on September 6th with a whopping fourteen books announced (picked from 138 submissions) on the long list. Leading up to this announcement, a friend asked if I was interested in trying to read the whole long list (typically twelve books) before the short list was announced. Loving a challenge, especially a literary one, I jumped at the chance and said yes immediately. I would attempt to read the full long list before the short list was announced! It turns out though, the time between the fourteen listed books and their five listed finalists was just a short three weeks. The short list for this year was announced on September 27th. As I am not one to give up that quickly, I decided I would try to finish the long list anyway. I even did my best to guess which books may make an appearance on the list and read a handful of books that would have qualified before the long list was released.
It turns out for all my preparation, when September 6th rolled around, I had only read one and was halfway through a second of the long list, which was actually even two books longer than I had expected it to be. Much like other CanLit fans, I headed straight to the websites for my local bookstores and libraries in an attempt to fill my bookshelf with the necessary books to complete my challenge.
Luckily I already owned and had finished Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century and I also owned and was halfway through We Measure The Earth in Our Bodies. On my Kobo I also owned What We Both Know and was able to easily purchase three more of the fourteen titles (If An Egyptian Cannot Speak English, In The City of Pigs, and Pure Colour). I turned to my Scribd app to search for books as well and managed to find Avenue of Champions in ebook format as well as All The Quiet Places and Mouth to Mouth in audio format (I knew adding audio would really help me finish more of the list). A Minor Chorus had not yet been released but was coming the week after so I pre-ordered it from my local chain bookstore and received it with plenty of time to finish it. This left four books that were more challenging to get my hands on.
By complete chance, and I swear this was serendipity, a friend had just checked out Hotline (an otherwise hard to find book) and Stray Dogs from the library the week before, knowing I would read them quickly she allowed me to borrow her loans (which I will check out for myself at a later date) and return them to her before they were due back to our wonderful library. Then The Sleeping Car Porter was nowhere to be found in the city until I emailed my local indie book store (that I wish I shopped through more, it’s simply quite out of my way) and discovered they had some on order even though it was not available through bigger chain store until after the short list was expected. This same indie book shop (shout out to BookMark Halifax) also had a copy of Lucien & Olivia, another book that was otherwise hard to find. So with one trip over to Halifax I managed to get the last two books I needed.
I really feel like getting all of the books into my life within that short three-week period was like an inflated, wordy, bookish scavenger hunt. It added some suspense to whether I’d even have a chance to work through my reading list, which, of course, I believe appears to be the biggest challenge. Luckily these fourteen books were all reasonable in length with most of them being between 200-250 pages. There were two that were over 300 pages, a few under 200, and one that was even a mere 95 pages. This lended itself nicely to my being able to complete so many. The “how” I managed to read the 12.5 remaining books I still needed to get through before the 27th? I simply did it. I spent my evenings, my spare time, my ten minutes here and there, my late into the nights, my mornings, my drives, etc etc reading or listening to the absolute gold standard of Canadian Literature and it was an absolute delight. I finished the last two books on my Giller reading list late in the day on September 26th.
Did I enjoy all of the books on the long list? I did not.
Did I even enjoy all of the books that have made it onto the short list? Also no.
But I absolutely experienced each of these literary gems and it was a compelling, fantastic, and rich way to use my time.
In the end I made my short list predictions as so: Hotline, The Sleeping Car Porter, We Measure The Earth in Our Bodies, Lesser Known Monster of the 21st Century, and If An Egyptian Cannot Speak English. With a wildcard of Lucien & Olivia thrown in (because I loved it).
On September 27th the Giller Prize 2022 judges announced the following short list: Stray Dogs, The Sleeping Car Porter, We Measure The Earth in Our Bodies, Lesser Known Monster of the 21st Century, and If An Egyptian Cannot Speak English
All of these books are worth your time. I highly recommend engaging in the Giller Prize short list. These books are the highlight of the Canadian Literary Excellence. These books will lend themselves to important and engaging discussions, education, cultural learning, and connection with other readers and hopefully even the works themselves. For those of us who are already deep into the throes of Giller Season, we will be spending the next six weeks reading the short list, discussing books with friends, and thinking about which book will be crowned this years winner. We only need to wait until November 7th to find out.