CBC’s Canada Reads has released its longlist for this year’s battle of the books.

The theme this year is books that change how we see, share and experience the world around us.

The five panellists for this year’s competition – and the books each panellist has chosen to champion – will be announced on Jan. 23.  The debates will take place March 17–20.

The titles on the 2025 longlist are:

• The Whispers by Ashley Audrain (Viking/Penguin Random House Canada)
• Watch Out for Her by Samantha M. Bailey (Simon & Schuster)
• A Two-Spirit Journey: The Autobiography of a Lesbian Ojibwa-Cree Elder by Ma-Nee Chacaby, with Mary Louisa Plummer (University of Manitoba Press)
• What I Know About You by Éric Chacour, translated by Pablo Strauss (Coach House Books)
• The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue (Harper Perennial)
• When the Pine Needles Fall by Katsi’tsakwas Ellen Gabriel, with Sean Carleton (Between the Lines)
• Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper (Penguin Canada)
• The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard (Simon & Schuster)
• Jennie’s Boy by Wayne Johnston (Knopf Canada/Penguin Random House Canada)
• Becoming a Matriarch by Helen Knott (Knopf Canada/PRHC)
• Dandelion by Jamie Chai Yun Liew (Arsenal Pulp Press)
• However Far Away by Rajinderpal S. Pal (House of Anansi Press)
• Clyde Fans by Seth (Drawn & Quarterly Publications)
• Girl Runner by Carrie Snyder (House of Anansi Press)
• All Our Ordinary Stories by Teresa Wong (Arsenal Pulp Press)

Correction, January 10: Girl Runner is published in Canada by House of Anansi Press, not Harper Perennial, as originally stated.