Cameron Bailey: My life in books
As Artistic Director of the Toronto International Film Festival, Cameron Bailey is always looking for a good story told well.
We asked the Canada Reads champion to share with us some of the other books he feels passionately about.
Mr. Pink-Whistle Interferes by Enid Blyton
"I lived in Barbados with my mother's parents between ages four and eight and started school there. We didn't have books in the rural house, apart from The Bible. My parents sent me a copy of Enid Blyton's Mr. Pink-Whistle Interferes. For four years it was the only book I owned and I read it dozens, perhaps hundreds of times. It was a fantasy story about a man with magical powers. I don't remember much about the story now, but I remember the look and feel of that green hardcover book, which I brought to Canada with me and kept well into my teenage years."
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
"My wife and I both read Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach on our honeymoon and somehow it cut to the heart of relationships, perhaps at a moment when we were vulnerable to that acute a perception."
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
"Our grade five class in suburban Toronto was assigned to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. My particular school copy came with every instance of the N-word underlined. I had to get up and read from that book in front of the rest of my (white) class. It was literally a textbook definition of how not to teach literature."
Ulysses by James Joyce
"My final year of an English Lit bachelor of arts degree was full of questions and alienation. What was going to be the point of four years' study when my courses now seemed hopelessly limited and I'd grown more passionate about cinema anyhow? James Joyce's dazzling language, astounding breadth of knowledge and above all his playfulness reminded me of what I loved about books from the first time I read Enid Blyton as a child."
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley, Beloved by Toni Morrison and The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
"In my undergraduate years at Western University I realized that I had to supplement my formal literature education with books that were at the time not in the English Lit canon. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Toni Morrison's Beloved and James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time made me realize that I wasn't crazy: there WERE different ways of experiencing the world that came from being a part of the African diaspora. The histories are different, the social realities are different, and they're no less valid. That took a long time to really grasp."