As we get ever closer to spring in all of it’s glory, you may be looking for a book to read over April. Well, look no further. Once again, VPL is participating in the One eRead Canada program and you can participate!

If this is your first year participating or hearing about it, One eRead Canada was created by the Canadian Urban Libraries Council / Conseil des Bibliothèques Urbaines du Canada (CULC/CBUC). It’s a bilingual, nationwide book club. A book by a Canadian author is selected each year and then made available in English and French as an eBook or eAudiobook without waitlists or holds. It runs all through April, starting right on the first, and it’s a great way to connect readers across Canada.

So, hearing all of that, you may be asking: What’s this year’s title?

Well, in English, this year’s title is What I Know About You by Eric Chacour, translated by Pablo Strauss. In French, the language it was originally published in, it’s known as Ce Que Je Sais De Toi. Our summary on Bibliocommons describes the story this way: “In a tight-knit Levantine Christian family in 1960s Cairo, Tarek’s entire life is written in advance. He’ll be a doctor like his father, marry, and have children. Under the watchful eye of the family’s strong women, he starts to do just that — until a patient’s son, Ali, enters his life and turns it upside down. The two men’s unsayable relationship sparks a series of events as dramatic as the Six-Day War and assassination of President Anwar Sadat playing out in the background.”

Eric Chacour, the book’s author, was born in Montreal to Egyptian parents. So far, What I Know About You is his first and only novel, and it has been widely acclaimed, being a finalist for both the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers.

If you’re interested in other books featured in One eRead Canada, we still have them in the collection. The very first book ever selected for the program, back in 2019, was Glass Beads by Dawn Dumont, a book of interconnected stories about a group of four Indigenous people living on a reserve. Last year’s selection was Valid by Chris Bergeron, described as a ‘dystopian autofiction’ and told as a monologue by a trans woman being held captive by an AI in a future Montreal. Other books include Vi by Kim Thuy, The Break by Katherena Vermette, Tatouine by Jean-Christophe Rehel and Hotline by Dimitri Nasrallah.

Starting April 1st until April 30th, you can find What I Know About You/Ce Que Je Sais De Toi on OneDrive/Libby, Hoopla and Cantook Station. Happy reading everyone!