14 Canadian books to help motivate and inspire you in 2025
Reading a good book can help you start the year off right! Check out these 14 Canadian titles with themes of self-empowerment, finding one's voice and making sense of the world.
The Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté with Daniel Maté
In The Myth of Normal, Gabor Maté examines why chronic illness and general health problems are on the rise in Western countries with good healthcare systems. Maté explains how Western medicine, while technologically advanced, fails to treat the whole person and ignores cultural stressors. With his son Daniel, Maté untangles common myths about what makes us sick and offers a guide on health and healing.
Gabor Maté is a doctor and an expert on topics such as addiction, stress and childhood development. He's the author of several books, including In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, When the Body Says and The Cost of Hidden Stress.
Daniel Maté is a composer and lyricist whose musicals include The Longing and the Short of It, Hansel & Gretl & Heidi & Gunter and Middle School Mysteries. He's received the Kleban Prize for Lyrics and the ASCAP Foundation Cole Porter Award.
Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
In Revenge of the Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell revisits the lessons of his groundbreaking book The Tipping Point and reframes the subject of social epidemics in the current context. Using stories and research, Gladwell highlights a concerning form of social engineering and offers a guide to making sense of modern contagion.
Gladwell has written many non-fiction books including The Tipping Point, Blink, What the Dog Saw, David and Goliath, Talking to Strangers and The Bomber Mafia. He is also the co-founder of Pushkin Industries, a company that produces the podcast Revisionist History among others as well as audiobooks. Gladwell grew up in Elmira, Ont. and now lives in the U.S.
52 Weeks to a Sweeter Life by Farzana Doctor
52 Weeks to a Sweeter Life for Caregivers, Activists and Helping Professionals is a practical guide that offers weekly advice to helpers and activists struggling with exhaustion and burnout. Farzana Doctor uses her own experience as a social worker, community organizer and activist to discuss the challenges and necessity of setting boundaries and preventing overwork in a spirit of self and community care.
Doctor is an Ontario-based novelist, activist and psychotherapist of Indian ancestry. She is the author of several books, including the poetry collection Seven and the novels All Inclusive and Six Metres of Pavement, which won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award and was shortlisted for a 2012 Toronto Book Award. She was the recipient of the 2011 Dayne Ogilvie Prize from the Writer's Trust of Canada for an emerging lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender writer and the 2023 Freedom to Read Award.
Who We Are by Murray Sinclair, with Sara Sinclair and Niigaan Sinclair
Murray Sinclair made his mark on Canadian society as a judge, activist, senator, the chief commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the co-chair of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry — and he wrote all about it in his memoir Who We Are. The book answers the four guiding questions of Sinclair's life — Where do I come from? Where am I going? Why am I here? Who am I? — through stories about his remarkable career and trailblazing advocacy for Indigenous peoples' rights and freedoms.
Murray Sinclair was a former judge and senator. He died this past November, at age 73. Anishinaabe and a member of the Peguis First Nation, Sinclair was the first Indigenous judge appointed in Manitoba and the second appointed in Canada. He served as Co-Chair of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry in Manitoba and as Chief Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He has won awards including the National Aboriginal Achievement Award, the Manitoba Bar Association's Equality Award and its Distinguished Service Award (2016) and has received Honorary Doctorates from 14 Canadian universities.
Sara Sinclair is an oral historian of Cree-Ojibwa and mixed settler descent. She teaches at Columbia University and is currently co-editing two anthologies of Indigenous letters.
Niigaan Sinclair is a writer, editor, activist and the head of the Department of Native Studies at the University of Manitoba. He is the co-editor of Manitowapow: Aboriginal Writings from the Land of Water and Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World Through Stories. He won the Peace Educator of the Year award in 2019. He is also the author of the book Wînipêk.
I Heard There Was A Secret Chord by Daniel J. Levitin
Neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin explores how music calms the mind in I Heard There Was A Secret Chord. It discusses how human evolution is shaped by music, how music can be used as treatment for various ailments and how it is essential to our social behaviour as humans.
Levitin is a neuroscientist and writer known for his books This Is Your Brain on Music, The World in Six Songs, The Organized Mind, Successful Aging and A Field Guide to Lies. He is a professor at McGill University and the founding dean of Minerva University. He is a musician and composer who has been awarded seventeen gold and platinum records. He lives in California and Montreal.
What I Mean to Say by Ian Williams
Poet and Giller-Prize winning author Ian Williams is this year's Massey lecturer. In What I Mean to Say, the Canadian writer and professor has chosen to focus on the topic of conversations — more specifically, our inability to have them in an age of increasing polarization, cancel culture and emerging forms of online communication.
Williams is the author of seven books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. His novel, Reproduction, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize. He is a professor of English at the University of Toronto, director of the Creative Writing program and academic advisor for the Massey College William Southam Journalism Fellowship.
Let It Go by Chelene Knight
Let It Go by Vancouver author Chelene Knight explores ways to make resolutions that will bring more joy to one's life. The non-fiction work draws on personal experience and the advice of leaders from various Black communities to share methods of improving emotional and mental health during times of hardship. This includes looking at ways to reshape communication with those closest to you and redefine language, relationships and love to find one's own unique path to joy.
Knight is a writer and poet from Vancouver. She is also the author of Safekeeping, Braided Skin and Dear Current Occupant, which won the 2018 Vancouver Book Award. Her 2022 novel Junie was on the longlist for Canada Reads 2024 and won the 2023 Vancouver Book Award. Her work has appeared in literary magazines in Canada and the U.S., and she has been a judge for literary awards, including the B.C. Book Prizes.
What She Said by Elizabeth Renzetti
In What She Said, Elizabeth Renzetti draws on her experiences as a journalist covering women's rights and dives into the challenges that women are still facing in today's Canada. With humour and sympathy, she looks into everything from reproductive justice to pay disparity through the lens of how women can work together to protect their rights and work towards a more equal society.
Renzetti is a Toronto-based author and journalist who has worked for the Globe and Mail. Her other books include the essay collection Shrewed, the novel Based on a True Story and the mystery Bury The Lead written with Kate Hilton.
The Beautiful Dream by Atiba Hutchinson, with Dan Robson
The Beautiful Dream is Canadian soccer player Atiba Hutchinson's memoir. It spans his childhood in a suburb of Brampton and how he became a member of Canada's national soccer team and the six-time winner of Canadian Men's Player of the Year award. The book shows how Hutchinson's own journey mirrors the progression of Canadian soccer and shows how a seemingly unattainable dream can get close to reach.
Hutchinson is the recently retired captain of the Canadian men's national soccer team. He currently lives in Turkey.
Dan Robson is a senior writer for The Athletic. His books include Quinn: The Life of a Hockey Legend, Bower: A Legendary Life and Measuring Up: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons. He co-authored Ignite: Unlock the Hidden Potential Within with Andre De Grasse.
Salvage by Dionne Brand
Salvage blends autobiography and literary criticism to delve into Dionne Brand's experiences with colonial tropes in British and American literature and reassesses them in an anti-colonial light. Exploring narratives like Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Austen's Mansfield Park, she searches for what remains in the wreckage of an empire.
Brand is a novelist, poet and filmmaker who has been creating in various mediums for over 40 years. She is a member of the Order of Canada and has won numerous awards, including the 1997 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry for the collection Land to Light On and the 2006 Toronto Book Award for the novel What We All Long For. Brand also won the 2019 Blue Metropolis Violet Literary Prize presented to an 2SLGBTQ+ writer for their body of work.
Voice Lessons by Eve Krakow
Voice Lessons is a collection of personal essays that explore one woman's journey to find her voice — as an introverted singer, a writer, a mother and a person. Showing a deep love and understanding for human connection, these essays look into dealing with grief at an early age, the anxiety of young adulthood and the tensions that come with heritage and tradition.
Eve Krakow is a Montreal-based writer. Her work has been published in Grain Magazine, The Nasiona, JMWW Journal, Maisonneuve, Smithsonian Magazine and Shy: An Anthology.
Everything and Nothing At All by Jenny Heijun Wills
Everything and Nothing At All is an essay collection that discusses Jenny Heijun Wills' quest for belonging as a transnational and transracial adoptee, a pansexual and polyamorous person and a parent with a life-long eating disorder. Drawing on her life experiences, she creates a vision of family — chosen, adopted and biological all at once.
Wills is a writer born in Seoul and raised in Southern Ontario. Her memoir Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related won the 2019 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Award for Nonfiction and the 2020 Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book. She currently lives in Winnipeg and teaches English at the University of Winnipeg.
Bad Artist, edited by Nellwyn Lampert, Pamela Oakley, Christian Smith & Gillian Turnbull
Bad Artist is a collection of 21 essays about creativity featuring Canadian and international writers who refuse to conform to the narrative of toxic productivity.
Nellwyn Lamper is a Toronto-based writer, editor, bookseller and teacher. She is the author of Every Boy I Ever Kissed. She has written or edited for CBC First Person, She Does the City, The Huffington Post and The Ex-Puritan Literary Magazine.
Pamela Oakley is a Toronto-based writer, editor and educator. Her work has appeared in Canadian Running, Canadian Cycling, Today's Parents and the Kingston Whig-Standard.
Christian Smith is a biologist and the manager of research operations at the Brain Tumour Research Centre in Toronto. He is also the writer of the non-fiction book The Scientist and the Psychic: A Son's Exploration of His Mother's Gift.
Gillian Turnbull is the writer of Sonic Booms: Making Music in an Oil Town. She is the director of Writing and Publishing at the University of King's College in Halifax and has written for Chatelaine, Maisonneuve, The Walrus and The National Post.
The Art of Making by Jared Tailfeathers
The Art of Making follows Jared Tailfeathers' land-based journey to explore and understand his cultural and historical identity as a Blackfoot man. It goes into detail about the evolution of the Blackfoot Confederacy and all that came after it.
Tailfeathers is an Indigenous artist whose work explores the art, history and future of the Blackfoot and other Treaty 7 Nations.
