Saturday, May 6, 2017

Canadian book blow out

There are only about 7 weeks left in the 10th Canadian Challenge.  While there will be an 11th Challenge, I still have a fair number of books I wanted to review.  Looking over this list, I think I will have to reorder my reading list yet again.  At this point, I will still get through Murakami's 1Q84 (which I am enjoying, but which is very long!) and then move all the relevant Canadian novels way, way up the list.  Then perhaps I will mostly be back on track.

The books I really hope to get to are:
Morley Callaghan The Many Colored Coat
Hugh MacLennan The Watch That Ends the Night
Jane Urquhart The Stone Carvers
Findley Not Wanted on the Voyage (just made it in time!)


I'm not quite as fussed about Bissoondath's The Soul of All Great Designs , but it's fairly short, so I'll probably sneak it in.

Ideally I would also get to Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Miriam Toews's A Complicated Kindness, but they aren't as pressing, and they'll probably be among the first books I review for the 11th Challenge (along with Atwood's dystopian trilogy beginning with Oryx and Crake).  Similarly, if I can read Munro's Friend of My Youth or a short story collection by Mavis Gallant, that would be great, but perhaps not worth distorting my reading list any further.

I no longer appear to own a copy of The Watch That Ends the Night.  I'm pretty sure I owned one back in the 90s, and I'm leaning towards buying another copy.  I dropped in at this odd bookstore that has just about reopened on Pape.  There was a nice reading copy of the Book Club edition from 1959 in stock, and I probably should have just bought that.  However, I am most familiar with the 1986 paperback edition, which would be cheaper (and also easier to read on the train).  He said he might have a copy of that in storage, and I said I would check back in a couple of weeks.  Maybe I'll end up springing for the hard cover in the end



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