Big Read

Orillia's Big Read is your Library's community reading program!  We select one exceptional title each year with the goal of creating a sense of community through the shared experience of reading and discussing the same book. 2025 is our 19th year!  

We are pleased to announce the 2025 Big Read is "How To Survive a Bear Attack" by Claire Cameron! Watch us reveal the 2025 Big Read.

In this debut memoir from the bestselling author of The Bear and The Last Neanderthal, Claire Cameron confronts the rare genetic mutation that gave her cancer by investigating an equally rare and terrifying event—a predatory bear attack. PLACE A HOLD NOW. 

Check out past Big Read selections:

2024- "The Cure for Drowning" by Loghan Paylor: Kit McNair is a daredevil in boy’s clothes who longs to escape 1930s southern Ontario. When Rebekah Kromer, an elegant doctor’s daughter, moves to to town, she and Kit are drawn together by an undeniable attraction that will tear their families apart and send each of them off on a separate path to war.

2023- "I Only Read Murder" by Ian Ferguson and Will Ferguson: In this comedic crime novel, a once-beloved television sleuth finds herself far from Hollywood and witness to a murder during a small-town theatre production—and is convinced it’s up to her to solve the case

2022- "Daughters of the Deer" by Danielle Daniel: In this haunting and groundbreaking historical novel, the author imagines the lives of women in the Algonquin territories of the 1600s, a story inspired by her family’s ancestral link to a young girl who was murdered by French settlers

2021 - "The House In the Cerulean Sea" by TJ Klune: This beautifully written tale of magic and transformation describes how a tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children. 

2020 - "Beyond the Trees" by Adam Shoalts: A thrilling odyssey through an unforgiving landscape, from "Canada's greatest living explorer."

2019 - "A Girl Named Lovely" by Catherine Porter:  Insightful and uplifting memoir about a young Haitian girl in post-earthquake Haiti, and the profound, life-changing effect she had on one journalist's life.  

2018 - "The Broken Girls" by Simone St. James: This novel combines the eerily Gothic with a suspenseful crime drama, intertwining a ghost story set in a boarding school in Vermont during the 1950's with a revived murder mystery case currently being dug up at its abandoned and crumbling ruins.

2017 - "Birds Art Life" by Kyo Maclear:  A writer's search for inspiration, beauty, and solace leads her to birds in this intimate and exuberant meditation on creativity and life--a field guide to things small and significant.

2016 - "The Naturalist" by Alissa York:  Three Americans journey down the Amazon's Rio Negro in 1867.

2015 - "The Martian" by Andy Weir: Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him & forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive.

2014 - "Settlement" by Ann Birch: The untold story of scandal and political intrigue in early Toronto.

2013 - "The Painted Girls" by Cathy Marie Buchanan: A gripping novel set in Belle Époque Paris and inspired by the real-life model for Degas's Little Dancer Aged Fourteen and a notorious criminal trial of the era.

2012 - "The Woefield Poultry Collective" by Susan Juby:  A fresh, funny tale of Prudence, a transplanted New Yorker who inherits Woefield, a run-down farm on Vancouver Island.

2011 - "Ragged Company" by Richard Wagamese: Four homeless friends seek refuge from the weather at the cinema.  A lottery win changes their lives and friendships in unexpected ways.

2010 - "Old City Hall" by Robert Rotenberg: A slick and contemporary tale of crime and justice in Toronto, Haliburton and points in between. 

2009 - "The Uncommon Reader" by Alan Bennett: What would happen if the Queen visited a bookmobile? Would she neglect her duties if she became an avid reader?

2008 - "Midnight at the Dragon Cafe" by Judy Fong Bates: A cross-cultural coming-of-age tale set in small-town Ontario.

2007 - "Down in the Dumps" by Mel Malton: A fun and breezy story of an amateur sleuth in the woods of Muskoka.