Vote! Help select the next chapter for On the Same Page. Which Manitoba book, by a Manitoba author, do you think should get the On the Same Page this year? From the short list below, select the title you'd like for Manitoba's biggest book club. The poll closes Saturday, September 10, 2011.

• Baldur's Song, by David Arnason
• Winnipeg 1912 by Jim Blanchard
• Le Soleil du Lac Qui Se Couche / The Setting Lake Sun by J. R. Léveillé
• Black Bottle Man by Craig Russell

You may vote by clicking here. In October, 2008, The Winnipeg Foundation launched On The Same Page. The Literacy for Life Fund supports family literacy programming across Manitoba. Gifts to the fund are permanently endowed and the income generated supports inter-generational literacy projects at community organizations and library branches throughout the province.

My family always considered reading a favourite pastime. My father enjoyed James Gray and my mother loved Pearl S. Buck. Growing up I read all the books in my parent's and grandmother's library and what ever I could get my hands on from Leacock to Shakespeare, Spillane to Dickens. Looking at my night table I can tell you my taste in literature remains varied; Citizen of the World, the Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Volume One by John English, a collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle including The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Adventures and the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Distant Hours by Kate Morton, I Used to be Coloured but Now, I'm Black by June Harris, Dancing Backwards by Sharon Carstairs and Tom Higgins and 'ripped from the television screen', Heat Wave and Naked Heat by (?) "Richard Castle".

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It's easy to list what books are on my night table. But when I started to compile my list it seemed too obvious a task.

What was of interest to me was what books would be on my characters' bedside tables. The characters from Cul de Sac Moon are avid readers. They read to be inspired, entertained and to learn. It is no mistake that Addie's books are about troubled kids nor is it a surprise that both Sigge and Bernerd pursue their interests through literature. I am very fond of my characters and I really appreciate their literary recommendations. They are three rich and varied lists. I hope you enjoy their suggestions as much as I did.

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Now that we're seeing some sun and warmer temperatures, I aim to do my reading outdoors; here's four recommendations for the park, lake, beach (or night table, on those rainy evenings):

Slammerkin, by Emma Donoghue (HarperCollins Publishers Ltd).

Donoghue has most recently received wide attention for her novel Room, but her 2000 novel Slammerkin (the word is eighteenth-century vernacular, a noun that refers to both a loose gown, and a loose woman) is also definitely worth putting on your reading list. Donoghue, who holds a PhD in eighteenth-century literature, employs her expertise in this era to create a vivid, breathing account of late 1740's London, and the often-vicious circumstances faced by young women who lacked fortune, titles, or family. Our heroine, Mary, whose poor family casts her out once they deem her "unvirtuous," survives and adapts to the violent, dehumanizing world of mid-century London; the brutalities of Mary's life are simultaneously mitigated and exacerbated by her attraction to luxurious clothing, fabrics, accessories, and the liberty and status that these beautiful things symbolize.

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