One of our Cityline Book Club's favourite things about our current pick, Saleema Nawaz's Bone and Bread, is how wonderfully she captures the city of Montreal in her writing. From language politics to bagel shops, Nawaz's setting was so detailed and beautifully realized, that sometimes it felt like there were four main characters in the novel: Beena, Sadhana, Quinn, and Montreal. If reading Bone and Bread has inspired you to read more novels set in "La Belle Ville", check out our list of 8 more fantastic books set in Montreal. (The starred picks were suggested by Nawaz herself!) Mordecai Richler, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz: While all of Richler's Montreal-set stories would be perfect picks for this list, we're partial to his fourth novel, which takes place in Montreal during the 1940s and focuses on issues of race, religion, and class. * Heather O'Neill, Lullabies for Little Criminals: Montreal is the backdrop for O'Neill's hard-hitting tale about Baby, a 12-year-old girl who becomes a prostitute and heroin addict at a young age after the death of her mother and abandonment by her father. Zoe Whittall, Bottle Rocket Hearts: Set in the months leading up to the 1995 Referendum in Montreal, this critically-acclaimed queer coming-of-age story features themes of self-discovery, the development of personal identity, and the craziness of being in love. Gabrielle Roy, The Tin Flute: This Classic Canadian novel (originally published in French as Bonheur d'occasion) focuses on a poor family living in the Saint-Henri slums of Montreal in 1940, and is regarded as a key novel in laying the foundation for Quebec's Quiet Revolution in the 1960s. * Alice Zorn, Arrythmia: Set during the height of Y2K paranoia, this debut novel follows the intertwined lives of five Montrealers as they navigate the complex relationships in their lives. * Rawi Hage, Cockroach: This critically-acclaimed dark comedy follows an immigrant man who moves to Montreal from the Middle East and struggles to accept the poverty he is forced into there. Emily St. John Mandel, Last Night in Montreal: Love, amnesia, and the nature of obsession run throughout this gritty debut novel that is, naturally, set in the city named in its title. *Gwethalyn Graham, Earth and High Heaven: This winner of the 1944 Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction is a story of human relationships, focusing on a couple who is confronted by racial intolerance. Have you ever read a novel where the setting was so well described that you felt like you were right there, too? Tell us about them in the comments!

Meeting your boyfriend's parents is stressful enough. But when said parents are high-flying members of the Singapore elite, who have very specific ideas about who their son's partner should be? That's the unenviable position Rachel Chu finds herself in when her partner Nick Young invites her to a family wedding in Kevin Kwan's debut novel, Crazy Rich Asians. Being touted as one of the hottest reads of the summer, Crazy Rich Asians offers a humourous peek inside the world of the Singapore super-rich: how they live, what they spend their money on, and the way they react when an outsider enters their midst. Cityline.ca caught up with Kwan in Toronto recently to talk about the book -- check out the video interview below! [embed]bcid:2484533131001[/embed] What's your hot summer read? Share your picks in the comments below! Photo: Alexis Rodriguez-Duarte 

Are you reading Saleema Nawaz's Bone and Bread along with the Cityline Book Club? Last week we chatted with Nawaz via Skype from her home in Montreal, and she graciously answered all of our book club's questions about her stunning novel. Watch the video below and find out all about Nawaz's inspirations for the novel, her fascination with sisterhood and motherhood, and her love for Montreal. [embed]bcid:2479837037001[/embed] Are you enjoying Bone and Bread so far? Share your thoughts in the comments - we can’t wait to discuss it with you. Stay tuned for a list of our favourite novels set in Montreal, coming up right here in the Cityline Book Club next week!

We hope you're reading along with the Cityline Book Club and enjoying Bone and Bread by Saleema Nawaz! Our crew here at Cityline is loving this novel so far, especially Tracy, who showed her appreciation for the novel on her Twitter account: "In awe over Saleema Nawaz''s incredible writing talent. Bone and Bread is an insightful novel. Thoroughly enjoyed it!" She even said later that it has helped inspired her to read more CanLit! To help our book club get some additional insight into Nawaz as a writer, we asked her 10 questions about her writing habits and favourite books. 1. What was your favourite book as a child? A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and everything by Lucy Maud Montgomery. 2. What’s your current favourite book? Anything I would call a favourite is a sentimental favourite from the past. I tend to live in a book while I’m reading it, but once it’s over, I have a hard time calling to mind exactly what it is I’ve been reading!  The last book that I loved in an evangelical sort of way was Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant. 3. Was there a moment when you first knew you wanted to be a writer? There might not have been a single crystallizing moment that I still remember.  I know I had already decided in Grade One, when I felt very impatient with the process of being asked to draw pictures for my stories.  I could tell my pictures were dragging down the whole enterprise! 4. What is your favourite music to write to? I almost never write to music unless I’m out at a café, where sometimes the jumble of background sounds can be tuned out as a kind of white noise.  I can more easily ignore a television, but music is a huge distraction.  I really require silence in order to get anything done. 5. What author do you wish you could write like? I wouldn’t want to sound exactly like anyone else, though there are lots of writers with styles I admire.  I did once have the experience of reading a Carol Shields novel and feeling an odd sense of recognition in the prose. 6. Where is your favourite place to write? My favourite place to write is curled up on a corner of the couch, with my laptop on my lap. 7. What time of day do you do your best writing? When my schedule allows for it (which isn’t often!), I like to write in the morning, starting around 8:30, before talking or eating or doing much of anything. Time seems more elastic then, and the inner editor who might try to keep stuff off the page isn’t entirely awake yet. 8. What was your last great read? Midsummer Night in the Workhouse, a collection of short fiction by Diana Athill.  The stories are dark and funny and terrible in their perceptiveness. 9. What is the last book you gave as a gift? Dear Life by Alice Munro. 10. What do you do when you’re not writing? Besides writing (and reading, which is the other half of writing), my favourite activity is singing, and I sing soprano in a choir.  I’m also part of a knitting circle (though we’re not very much like the one I describe in Bone and Bread). Are you enjoying Bone and Bread so far? Share your thoughts in the comments - we can’t wait to discuss it with you. Stay tuned for a video interview with Nawaz about the novel, coming up right here in the Cityline Book Club next week!

Are you reading along with the Cityline Book Club? Our latest pick is Bone and Bread by Saleema Nawaz, and our Cityline staffers are loving it so far! Nawaz's writing style is lush and eloquent - we love how her prose reads almost like poetry. Want to hear an excerpt? We asked Nawaz to record herself reading a section of Bone and Bread - click here to listen to her reading from the first chapter. Are you enjoying Bone and Bread so far? Share your thoughts in the comments! We can't wait to discuss it with you!