Published on August 8, 2024

Quebec Book Day / On August 12, I’m Buying a Quebecois Book!

On August 12th, I’m Buying a Quebecois Book!

By Read Quebec Staff

This #12aout, discover a book from here!

August 12 is Quebec Book Day, known in French as « Le 12 août, j’achète un livre québécois  ». Founded in 2014 by authors Patrice Cazeault & Amélie Dubé, August 12 has since become one of the highest-selling days for bookstores across the province.

Not only does 2024 mark the day’s tenth anniversary, it’s also been a big year for Quebecois books: Kate Beaton’s Ducks from Drawn & Quarterly continues to top charts as the best-selling title by a Canadian publisher, Catherine Leroux’s The Future won the Canada Reads 2024 competition, and Montreal-born author Sarah Bernstein’s Study for Obedience took home this year’s Giller prize. Meanwhile, off the page and to the screen, the One eRead Canada campaign made Dimitri Nasrallah’s Hotline freely accessible as an audio- and eBook throughout the month of April. Across genres and across formats, readers around the world are discovering and devouring Quebecois literature, and we couldn’t be more thrilled.

Here at Read Quebec, we’re excited to showcase the latest local literature with a special focus on English-language books published, written, and translated within Quebec. Beyond bestsellers and prizewinners, we’re also eager to share hidden gems and forthcoming titles that may just become your next pageturner. 

Head to ReadQuebec.ca/Books to discover our Fall catalogue, and share your recommendations by tagging us and using the hashtags #12aout  #12aoutjacheteunlivrequebecois and #QuebecBookDay. Looking for inspiration? Get started with some favourites from our team below, or pick up a copy of the new Montreal Review of Books to read about some of the latest releases!


12 Books for August 12

Malcolm’s Picks

Mood Swings by Frankie Barnet

Penguin Random House Canada, 2024

From the publisher’s website:

“In a pre-apocalyptic world not unlike our own, a young Instagram poet starts an affair with a California billionaire who’s promised a time machine that will make everything normal again—whatever that means.”


Nunavik by Michel Hellman

Éditions Pow Pow, 2016

From the publisher’s website:

“Author Michel Hellman meets with his editor Luc Bossé and casually promises to write a sequel to his best-selling book Mile End. But the Montréal neighborhood, with its trendy cafés and gluten-free bakeries, doesn’t seem half as inspiring as it used to be. Part memoir and part documentary, Nunavik follows Hellman on a trek through Northern Quebec as he travels to Kuujjuaq, Puvirnituk, Kangiqsujuaq and Kangirsurk, meeting members of the First Nations, activists, hunters and drug dealers along the way.”


C’est ton carnage, Simone by Chloë Rolland

Del Busso éditeur, 2024

From the publisher’s website:

“Griffintown est sur le point d’être rasé. Le compte à rebours a débuté pour deux immeubles aux destins croisés : un petit hôtel et un ancien club de boxe. D’un côté, Béatrice, de l’autre, Simone.

«En traversant le viaduc, elle rêvait déjà de frapper dans le sac de toutes ses forces, de mimer les gestes d’un combat, même perdu d’avance, même sans adversaire, sauf le monde entier qui rageait contre ses tempes.»


Nived’s Picks

Do You Remember Being Born?, by Sean Michaels

Penguin Random House Canada, 2023

From the publisher’s website:

“Marian Ffarmer is a world-renowned poet and a legend in the making—but only now, at 75 years old, is she beginning to believe in the security of her successes. Unfortunately, a poet’s accomplishments don’t necessarily translate to capital, and as her adult son struggles to buy his first home, her confidence in her choices begins to fray. Marian’s pristine life of mind—for which she’s sacrificed nearly all personal relationships, from romance to friendship to motherhood—has come at a cost.”


Like Every Form of Love by Padma Viswanathan

Penguin Random House Canada, 2023

From the publisher’s website:

“From the Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist, a gripping exploration of class, race, friendship, sexuality, what an author owes her subject and what it means to be a good person—all wrapped up in a riveting Canadian true crime story.”


Botanica Drama by Thom

Éditions Pow Pow, 2024

From the publisher’s website:

“After rising day after day for billions of years, the Sun — recovering from a bit too much celestial partying the night before — makes a fateful decision to stay in bed. With the Earth plunged into darkness, everyone from Philomène the flower to Death itself face dire consequences, trapped in an everlasting winter and surrounded by mysterious creatures that have emerged from the shadows. Can anything make the Sun shine again?”


Alexandra’s Picks

The Philistine by Leila Marshy

Linda Leith Publishing, 2018

From the publisher’s website:

“Nadia Eid doesn’t know it yet, but she’s about to change her life. It’s the end of the ‘80s and she hasn’t seen her Palestinian father since he left Montreal years ago to take a job in Egypt, promising to bring her with him. But now she’s twenty-five and he’s missing in action, so she takes matters into her own hands. Booking a short vacation from her boring job and Québecois boyfriend, she calls her father from the Nile Hilton in downtown Cairo. But nothing goes as planned and, stumbling around, Nadia wanders into an art gallery where she meets Manal, a young Egyptian artist who becomes first her guide and then her lover. “


Portrait of a Body by Julie Delporte, trans. Helge Dascher and Karen Houle

Drawn & Quarterly, 2024

From the publisher’s website:

“As she examines her life experience and traumas with great care, Delporte faces the questions about gender and sexuality that both haunt and entice her. Deeply informed by her personal relationships as much as queer art and theory, Portrait of a Body is both a joyous and at times hard meditation on embodiment—a journey to be reunited with the self in an attempt to heal pain and live more authentically.”


Dandelion Daughter by Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay, trans. Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch

Esplanade Books, 2023

From the publisher’s website:

Dandelion Daughter is an intimate portrait of growing up having been assigned the wrong sex at birth. Set against the windswept countryside of the remote Charlevoix region some five hours north of Montreal, Boulianne-Tremblay’s autobiographical novel immortalizes her early years as an alienated boy trapped in a world of small-town values.”


Rebecca’s Picks

Good Want by Domenica Martinello

Coach House Books, 2024

From the publisher’s website:

“Exploring the value and shame ascribed to our desires both silly and serious – artistic, superficial, spiritual, relational – these poems grapple with deeply rooted questions: How can there be a relationship between goodness and godliness, if god is a character with shifting allegiances and priorities? Is clarity worth the pain of redefining your experience of the world? Is privacy the same as secrecy the same as deceit? Each caveat becomes a prayer, ritual, invocation, dream, or confession, requiring a blind faith that feels increasingly more impossible to sustain.”


Here Is Still Here by Sivan Slapak

Linda Leith Publishing, 2024

From the publisher’s website:

“Isabel, raised in a family of post-war Jewish immigrants in Canada, embarks on a journey to find love, purpose and home, navigating between Montreal and Jerusalem. In Here Is Still Here, Sivan Slapak explores human connection and identity with compassion and wit, reminding us that no matter how far you go, you remain yourself.”


Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein

Penguin Random House, 2023

From the publisher’s website:

“A young woman moves from the place of her birth to the remote northern country of her forebears to be housekeeper to her brother, whose wife has recently left him.”


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