Why Geller On Giller?

I am a reader. I will happily go anywhere that Ian McEwan or Margaret Atwood want to take me. I can suspend disbelief and join Ender’s Game or visit the world of The Company.  I enjoy spending time with a shopaholic or a dark and deeply flawed detective (whether American, Scandinavian or Scottish). 

I also like to have little reading projects. They are usually sparked by something I am reading….like my “Congo” project. I was reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and that led to King Leopold’s Ghost and then The Heart of Darkness.  My “J.D. Salinger” project started when I read his daughter Margaret A. Salinger’s memoir, Dream Catcher.  I re-read all his books and stories that I had read as a high school and university student. Then I read a memoir by his former lover Joyce Maynard (daughter of Canadian writer Fredelle Maynard), A Place in the World. 

Sometimes the project has been sparked by a movie or a TV show. I saw the movie Capote starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and I had to re-read In Cold Blood and then everything I could find in print by Truman Capote. 

In 2007 I was reading a Man Booker Prize winning book and I thought that I would like to read all the Man Booker Prize Winners. So in no particular order, thrown in among my other reading, I tackled the list. I did not re-read any winners that I had already read. Shortly before I finished this project in June of 2012, I was looking for information about one of the writers and found a blog with reviews of all the winners in chronological order. That encounter sparked the idea for this blog.

After I finished reading the Man Booker winners, I wondered what my next project would be. The Nobel winners?  Lord NO! Have you seen that list? Who are some of those people? Would I even be able to find translations of some of the authors? That just seemed like WORK, not FUN.

The Pulitzers? A possibility. But then I thought, hey, I am Canadian. I should read The Giller winners or the Governor General’s Literary Awards. After thinking it over, I have decided to read all the Giller Prize winners in chronological order….or as it is now known, The Scotiabank Giller Prize. But this time instead of keeping my opinions on the pages of my reading journal, I am going to send them out into the “blogosphere.”  I know this is not an original idea, but it gives me something to do in my spare time.

I will re-read any of the winners that I have already read and compare my reactions to what I thought the first time around. Thanks to KEM for the suggestion that I call the blog Geller on Giller. 

My next post will be my thoughts about The Book of Secrets by M.G. Vassanji, the first Giller Prize winner in 1994. I just finished reading it, and I am looking forward to talking about this book. Expect this post in about two or three days.
 

I will try to post a new book every 3-4 weeks. I will be getting all my books from the Winnipeg Public Library (either as an e-book or a hard cover). If I encounter a book with a waiting list, it may mean that I won't be able to keep to this schedule. 

Geller on Giller: one reader’s view of the Scotiabank Giller Prize winning books.