Since we're a big group of book lovers here at Cityline, we're inviting our viewers to read along with us! For our very first book club pick, we read Will Ferguson's 419 (Penguin Canada) - did you read it, too? Be sure to watch the video of our book club meeting to see what we thought of the book, and to enter for your chance to win a book prize pack courtesy of Penguin Books! For our latest book pick, we'll be reading Bone and Bread by Saleema Nawaz (House of Anansi), and once again, we hope you'll read along with us! Here's the book's synopsis:

Beena and Sadhana are sisters who share a bond that could only have been shaped by the most unusual of childhoods -- and by shared tragedy. Orphaned as teenagers, they have grown up under the exasperated watch of their Sikh uncle, who runs a bagel shop in Montreal's Hasidic community of Mile End. Together, they try to make sense of the rich, confusing brew of values, rituals, and beliefs that form their inheritance. Yet as they grow towards adulthood, their paths begin to diverge. Beena catches the attention of one of the "bagel boys" and finds herself pregnant at sixteen, while Sadhana drives herself to perfectionism and anorexia. When we first meet the adult Beena, she is grappling with a fresh grief: Sadhana has died suddenly and strangely, her body lying undiscovered for a week before anyone realizes what has happened. Beena is left with a burden of guilt and an unsettled feeling about the circumstances of her sister's death, which she sets about to uncover. Her search stirs memories and opens wounds, threatening to undo the safe, orderly existence she has painstakingly created for herself and her son.

We're so excited to start reading this beautifully written novel, and we hope you'll read along with us! Want a copy? We have 5 copies to give away to some lucky readers, courtesy of House of Anansi! To enter for your chance to win, tell us about your last great read in the comments below! Over the next six weeks, we'll be sharing tons of great features about the novel and the author, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at our office discussion of the book! So go out and grab your copy, and get reading! We can't wait to discuss with you!

Have you been reading along with the Cityline Book Club? Our first book pick, 419 by Will Ferguson, led our Cityline staffers to a great discussion about the novel's rich characterization, non-linear plot lines, and the troubling situation of the oil exploitation in Nigeria. Want to see what we had to say? Watch our book club meeting below: [embed]bcid:2413478332001[/embed] If you read 419 along with us, we want to know what you thought of the novel! Post a comment below with your thoughts on the book, and you’ll be entered to win a book prize pack courtesy of Penguin Canada! For our next book club pick, we'll be reading Bone and Bread by Saleema Nawaz (House of Anansi), and once again, we want you to read along with us! For more information on our latest pick, and for your chance to win a copy, click here.

Have you been reading our first Cityline Book Club pick, 419 by Will Ferguson? Here at the studio, we've been loving this gripping, Giller prize-winning novel and so we jumped on the chance to chat with him when he came through Toronto recently to promote the paperback edition of 419. You asked, and he answered! Watch the video below and find out all about Ferguson's inspiration for the novel, which characters were his favourite to write, and what he's working on next. [embed]bcid:2322040765001[/embed] If you've been reading along with us, we want to know what you've thought of 419 so far! Post a comment below with your thoughts on the novel, and you'll be entered to win a book prize pack courtesy of Penguin Canada!

For almost two years, the Cityline Book Club has been your source for all things literary. Full of in-depth author interviews, book reviews and features, plus giveaways for our book-loving viewers at home, we love being the online destination for your bookish needs. And because we here at Cityline are avid readers and we love discussing our new favourite reads in between in-studio tapings and on-location shoots, we decided to take our book love to the next level...with an actual book club! For our very first book, our Cityline staff will be reading Will Ferguson's 419 (Penguin Canada) - and we want you to read along with us! Here's the book's synopsis:

A car tumbles down a snowy ravine. Accident or suicide? On the other side of the world, a young woman walks out of a sandstorm in sub-Saharan Africa. In the labyrinth of the Niger Delta, a young boy learns to survive by navigating through the gas flares and oil spills of a ruined landscape. In the seething heat of Lagos City, a criminal cartel scours the internet looking for victims. Lives intersect, worlds collide, a family falls apart. And it all begins with a single email: “Dear Sir, I am the son of an exiled Nigerian diplomat, and I need your help ...” 419 takes readers behind the scene of the world’s most insidious internet scam. When Laura’s father gets caught up in one such swindle and pays with his life, she is forced to leave the comfort of North America to make a journey deep into the dangerous back streets and alleyways of the Lagos underworld to confront her father’s killer. What she finds there will change her life forever...

We're so excited to start reading this Giller-award-winning novel, and we hope you'll read along with us! Want a copy? We have 5 copies to give away to some lucky readers, courtesy of Penguin Canada! To enter for your chance to win, tell us about your last great read in the comments below! Over the next six weeks, we'll be sharing tons of great features about the novel and the author, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at our office discussion of the book! So go out and grab your copy, and get reading! We can't wait to discuss with you!

Outer space and public relations might seem like an unusual combination, but under Terry Fallis’ careful pen, these two elements set the stage for his hilarious third novel, Up and Down (McClelland & Stewart). The story follows protagonist David Stewart as he begins a new career in the world of international PR, after leaving his previous job on Parliament Hill. While David quickly realizes that his new post is incredibly different from his old role, he’s still unprepared for just how “out of this world” his job is going to be, until he’s assigned to his first major project: revitalizing public interest in NASA’s space program. But while David might be somewhat caught off guard in the fast-paced PR world, Fallis spends his days as a public relations consultant, and he previously worked in Canadian politics. “I am a member in good standing of the write-what-you-know school […] and for a very long time I’ve just had this very strong interest in space,” Fallis explains. (And while this third novel focuses on Fallis’ knowledge of PR and space, his first two books, The Best Laid Plans and The High Road, centred on federal politics.) In Up and Down, David kicks off his new job with a bold idea: a Citizen Astronaut lottery contest that would send one Canadian and one American to the International Space Station. But while the execs at David’s agency are hoping for a young, athletic, lumberjack-type to fill the Canadian space boots, they end up having their hands full with Landon Percival, who is quite the opposite from their ideal winner. While this novel was a departure from his first two books, Fallis enjoyed getting to further explore his long-standing love of space, a passion he can trace back to July 20, 1969 and Neil Armstrong’s first steps onto the surface of the moon. Although he was only nine years old at the time, Fallis vividly remembers being at his summer camp’s nightly campfire when the camp counselors brought out a small, portable television. “With two rolls of tinfoil wrapped around the rabbit ears and endless adjustment, finally the snow on the screen parted and I could see Neil Armstrong standing on what they called the porch of the lunar module,” remembers Fallis. “And as he slowly descended the nine steps of the ladder, with each step I would swivel my head and look out the window of the lodge and see the moon hanging in the night sky over Lake Temagami, and I would swivel my head back [to the TV screen].” But although this moment kick-started Fallis’ interest in space, meeting Marc Garneau, Canada’s first astronaut, is the “other-worldly” moment that made Fallis the most tongue-tied. “I was unable to construct complete sentences for the first 10 minutes of the interview,” Fallis says about their first of two meetings, which took place while he was still in the planning stages of the novel. Garneau graciously advised Fallis on some of the more technical aspects of his novel, including the protocol of a shuttle launch, and he also read the entire manuscript once it was completed and even added his own proofreading notes. “[Garneau] pulled out the manuscript and there were about 50 post-it notes stuck throughout it. My heart was in my throat…but it was nothing. He had proofread the manuscript, not just read it, […] and he really liked it.” Garneau’s seal of approval on the novel is now emblazoned in a blurb on the book’s cover. Getting advice from Garneau so early in the novel’s development was essential to Fallis, due to his unique style of building an extremely detailed outline before he actually starts the writing process. Fallis says he’s always written this way, and it was likely enhanced due to his training as an engineer in university. “It’s a very engineer’s approach to writing: I need a blueprint before I build the bridge, and I need a blueprint before I write the novel,” explains Fallis. “And I think that allows me to write much more efficiently and allows me to focus all of my questionable cerebral powers on actually just crafting the words, and not being halfway through a paragraph and thinking, ‘well what’s Landon going to do at the end of this paragraph?’ If I’m thinking that, how can I be writing as well as I can?”