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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