This was a truly wonderful and engaging read, and not just because I work in the Canadian bookselling industry myself! The tone of the writing is a perfect mesh of informal/informative without being "academic," with a humorous tone running throughout the text. I really enjoyed the mix of industry history, author biography, and political context the author chose in order to frame and explain the CanLit "boom." This is the type of writing that will appeal to general readers just dipping their toes in the subject, along with anyone with background knowledge as well.

I think my favourite feature were the little mini-reviews spread along the page margins, featuring pivotal works as they were discussed in the text and reviewing them within a modern context. There were some I'd never heard of, and even though the author didn't often review them favourably (many don't seem to stand the test of time) i still became interested enough in several of them to seek them out just due to the context of the writing, or the engaging histories of the author. The story and early demise of Harold Ladoo was the most striking of these for me, and though his book first book wasn't something likely to be on my radar before reading ... it definitely is now.

My only criticism is over the brief amount of text given to female authors in particular, and the discussion of sexism and feminism during this period. It felt like a token acknowledgement pushed towards the end of the book, and I would have loved to see a bit more research and discussion going into that topic beyond what we were given.