Vintage Contemporaries

As I had threatened to do, I have gone ahead and translated the list of Vintage Contemporaries into a proper checklist.  (This is close to complete, but probably a few have been missed, so feel free to add comments below on anything I overlooked.)  I have only read 10 or 11 of the 92 below (I feel I read Mona Simpson's Anywhere But Here, but can't vouch for that absolutely so will leave it out of the tally).  I'm not doing too much better on actually owning them -- 11 total and only 3 on the Vintage Contemporary brand itself, though I did just order Far Tortuga (and this should be the VC edition).  As in other lists, X stands for having read the book and O stands for owning it, even if in a different edition.

I think at one point I did own McGuane's The Bushwacked Piano, but left it behind in a move.  I'm not going to go out of my way to collect the books in this edition, but I will see about reading a few of them each year and perhaps I will eventually get through this list.

X The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker
X Room Temperature by Nicholson Baker*
    Love Always by Ann Beattie
    First Love and Other Sorrows by Harold Brodkey
    Stories in an Almost Classical Mode by Harold Brodkey
    The Debut by Anita Brookner
    Latecorners by Anita Brookner
XO Cathedral by Raymond Carver
    Fires by Raymond Carver
XO What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
XO Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver
    Bop by Maxine Chernoff
    I Look Divine by Christopher Coe
X  Dancing Bear by James Crumley (completely implausible and quite unpleasant)
    The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley
    One to Count Cadence by James Crumley
X  The Wrong Case by James Crumley (I liked this less and less as it went on)
    The Colorist by Susan Daitch
    The Last Election by Pete Davies
O  Great Jones Street by Don DeLillo
XO The Names by Don DeLillo
O  Players by Don DeLillo
O  Ratner's Star by Don DeLillo
    Running Dog by Don DeLillo
    A Narrow Time by Michael Downing
    The Commitments by Roddy Doyle
    Selected Stories by Andre Dubus
    From Rockaway by Jill Eisenstadt
X  Platitudes by Trey Ellis**
X  Days Between Stations by Steve Erickson
    Rubicon Beach by Steve Erickson
O  A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley
O  Last Notes from Home by Frederick Exley
O  Pages from a Cold Island by Frederick Exley
    A Piece of My Heart by Richard Ford
    Rock Springs by Richard Ford
    The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
    The Ultimate Good Luck by Richard Ford
    Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill
    Fat City by Leonard Gardner
    Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
X  Within Normal Limits by Todd Grimson
    Airships by Barry Hannah
    The Cockroaches of Stay More by Donald Harington †
    Dancing in the Dark by Janet Hobhouse
X  November by Janet Hobhouse
    Saigon, Illinois by Paul Hoover
    Angels by Denis Johnson
    Fiskadoro by Denis Johnson
    The Stars at Noon by Denis Johnson
    Asa, as I Knew Him by Susanna Kaysen
X  Lulu Incognito by Raymond Kennedy
X Steps by Jerzy Kosinski
    A Handbook for Visitors From Outer Space by Kathryn Kramer
    The Garden State by Gary Krist
    House of Heroes and Other Stories by Mary LaChapelle
O  The Chosen Place, the Timeless People by Paule Marshall
    A Recent Martyr by Valerie Martin
O  The Consolation of Nature and Other Stories by Valerie Martin
    The Beginning of Sorrows by David Martin
O  Far Tortuga by Peter Matthiessen
    Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
    California Bloodstock by Terry McDonell
    The Bushwhacked Piano by Thomas McGuane
    Nobody's Angel by Thomas McGuane
    Something to Be Desired by Thomas McGuane
X To Skin a Cat by Thomas McGuane
XO Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
    Ransom by Jay McInerney
    Story of My Life by Jay McInerney
O  Mama Day by Gloria Naylor
    The All-Girl Football Team by Lewis Nordan
    Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair by Lewis Nordan
    River Dogs by Robert Olmstead
X  Soft Water by Robert Olmstead
    Family Resemblances by Lowry Pei
    Norwood by Charles Portis
    Clea & Zeus Divorce by Emily Prager

XO A Visit From the Footbinder by Emily Prager
    Mohawk by Richard Russo
    The Risk Pool by Richard Russo
    Rabbit Boss by Thomas Sanchez
    Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson
    Carnival for the Gods by Gladys Swan
    The Player by Michael Tolkin
    Myra Breckinridge and Myron by Gore Vidal
    The Car Thief by Theodore Weesner
X  Breaking and Entering by Joy Williams
O  State of Grace by Joy Williams
O  Taking Care by Joy Williams
    The Easter Parade by Richard Yates
O  Eleven Kinds of Loneliness by Richard Yates
    Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

* It looks like 1990 is basically the cut-off point when the cover design shifted over to something less standardized.  Baker's 2nd novel (with the paperback edition coming out in 1991) is slightly out-of-sync with the others on this list, but I think I'll leave it on anyway as sort of a transitional cover away from the "De Stijl layout" that Vintage Contemporaries had throughout the 80s.

** This just blew my mind.  Apparently, I not only read this novel, but reviewed it on Amazon in 2009 (giving it only 2 stars).  I was there poking around to see if I could find one or two more books in the VC series from the 80s.  I'm a bit surprised that this completely slipped my mind, as I only have ever reviewed 3 books on Amazon, mostly keeping my reviews to this blog.  I suppose at some point I'll borrow this from the library to see if anything comes back to me, but it seems like I am not missing much (according to my earlier self).

† I ran across this book today, which brings the tally up to 93. This is a particularly odd case as this is the 4th (out of 13!) books Harington wrote about his fictional Ozark community, Stay More. I can't tell if Vintage published any others in the series, but I don't believe so, and certainly none others in the Vintage Contemporaries line. This novel may well be the oddest of the series as part of the book does appear to be written from the cockroaches' point of view.  Gross.

Backing Up

Like most people, I am generally not great about backing up my computer data, though I am actually reasonably good about backing up the creative writing pieces I am working on, as well as the material that I scan (and then shred).  However, the backup in that case usually means it is on two external hard drives and often burned to a data DVD, but I have no effective system for storing and retrieving the data DVDs.  This is something I am working on improving, though probably it will have to be something I pay the kids to help with, since I am a bit overwhelmed with other tasks right now.

I mostly work off of external hard drives, but my Achilles' heel is to leave them running as long as the computer is on, which just puts extra wear and tear on them.  I had actually heard the weird beeping that sometimes presages a hard drive failure and decided it was time to take action.  So I unplugged that drive.  On Monday I went and bought another external hard drive.  I was hoping to score a Black Monday sale, but only the 2T and 4T drives were on sale.  I have a (probably silly) conviction that for long term storage the 1T drives are going to hold up better than the larger ones.  In any event, I bought a 1T drive and brought it home.  I started by backing up photos and the core files I've scanned lately.  Then I backed up the drive I feared was failing.  Naturally, that drive seems fine now.  But it was still worth backing it up.  That put me at pretty close to 550 GB, and I was thinking I probably should have gotten the 2T drive after all. 

Anyway, I have a set of 4 externals that hold older material (mostly old music files and stuff from my dissertation, as well as old work files that I don't really need).  These are completely off-line and usually sit in a desk drawer.  One of the 4 had been failing from time to time, so I thought I would attempt to back that one up before it gave up the ghost for good.  I couldn't simply copy the contents over, as the new drive would be 40 GB or so short.  However, I knew that there was a lot of redundancy with the music files, so I went methodically through the different artists and got rid of the duplicate albums (making sure to keep the ones with the higher bit rates).  It took quite a while, but in the end the entire contents of that drive fit onto the new drive with about 15 GB to spare!  (And it really only crashed a couple of times, so that was reassuring.) 

Finally, I tracked down a few other music files I wanted to back up on yet another hard drive (that doesn't seem to be in immediate danger of failing), though in this case it was mostly about gathering up everything by each artist (more Thelonious Monk for example).  I ended up with only 3GB left over on the 1T drive!  It is currently unplugged, as it has been working overtime these past two days, but later on I'll spend some time delving into music files that I haven't really had access to for at least 6 months to a year or longer.  I really don't know how long it would take to listen to all the music on the drive, but certainly a long time.  I probably don't ever have to buy any music ever again, though I'm sure I will occasionally.  I'm not one of those people who feels music is devalued in this era where virtually everything can be streamed, but it is true I consume and listen to music in a very different way now than when I was younger and mostly heard music on the radio and only occasionally bought cassettes and then CDs from artists that really grabbed me.

Temptation (more books)

I suppose more often then not I am in the same boat with Oscar Wilde, who said* "I can resist anything except temptation."  I should report that I did resist temptation last night, though will likely only be a temporary victory.

I had dropped off a number of books at Robarts and decided to walk along Bloor to Bathurst in order to drop in at BMV.  I'm definitely going to be keeping an eye out to see if they get a bunch of the Alex Janvier catalogues.  In any case, they didn't have any (it may be more likely that they start getting them in late Dec. or Jan. as the exhibit at the McMichael winds down).  However, they had a full table of recent NYRB titles, mostly priced at 9 to 10 dollars.  If they had been just a bit cheaper, I probably would have scooped up a whole bunch.  As it is, I fought temptation off.  I was able to get home and verify that I do have Zweig's Beware of Pity already, as well as Kennedy's Ride a Cockhorse.  Also, I checked, and there was a general consensus that the brand new translation of Gogol's Dead Souls isn't quite as amazing as they (NYRB) made out, so that the earlier ones are still the ones to track down.  (As it happens, I have the Reavey translation, and then I did order a cheap edition of the Guerney translation, revised by Fusso.)  That said, I may well go back and get Tišma's The Use of Man and certainly Hamilton's Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky if it is there (I don't think it was).  But I will try not to go back for a few weeks.

I'll almost certainly get Faulkner's Collected Stories on my next visit, though I have decided to just get his Uncollected Stories from the library.  There are a number of Canadian authors that were of interest, but again, I think I can be strong and just get them out of the library.  But I will probably be weak with Elias Canetti's memoirs.  They had the 2nd and 3rd volumes in an attractive paperback edition from Granta for $7 each.  If the first had been there, I would have pounced no matter what, but I'll go check out the other BMV and Book City to see if the first one (The Tongue Set Free) is available, but otherwise, there are a few floating about that aren't too expensive, even with shipping to Canada.

Another book-related area I feel quite weak is around the Vintage Contemporaries series.  I don't even own all that many of them (mostly DeLillo and I think I still have McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City), in some cases replacing them with later editions, as with Raymond Carver, but they still remind me of all the time I spent in used bookstores in the late 80s and early 90s.  (Back then I also had a bit of a "crush" on Bard Avon, since they made a point of bringing out writers from South America, such as Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa and Jorge Amado.)  Vintage (and Avon) paperbacks are still around but only in bookstores that stock the equivalent of the "long tail" of retail.  Here is someone else with a deep appreciation for these books and, in particular, their covers.  I suppose it is just as well that no one has assembled all these books into a single lot and put it up on eBay, as I would probably go ahead and bid on it.  As it is, there are a few stores around that do stock these older editions, and I may make a bit more of an effort to pick some of them up.  But really at the end of the day, I do care more about the book content and not the cover.  I might just go ahead and generate a checklist of the 100 or so books in the Vintage Contemporaries series to see how far I have gotten through them, but definitely not tonight...

* Or rather had a character say (in Lady Windemere's Fan).  I enjoyed that play quite a bit, so I'll keep my eyes open to see if there will be another production in Toronto soon.

Mackenzie House

We got a reasonably early start on Sunday, leaving for downtown right after I finished grocery shopping.  The first stop was the holiday windows at the Bay.

I think my favourite was this relatively contained scene of downtown Toronto.

The other windows were bigger, with a large polar bear, as well as this winter scene with a rabbit and a special tree. (This last window was my daughter's favourite.)

Then we went into the Eaton Centre for lunch.  While I hadn't really come out this way to go shopping, we did pick up some leggings at Old Navy.

Then we walked over to Mackenzie House.  This is the last home of William Lyon Mackenzie, publisher, first mayor of Toronto (in 1834) and leader of the 1837 Rebellion (where he tried to establish Ontario as an independent republic!).  He went to the U.S. in exile, only returning in 1850.  The house was actually purchased on his behalf by grateful citizens.

There is a relatively short demonstration of the printing press in a mock-up of Mackenzie's printing house (which was further away) and then a house tour.  Here is a reproduction of the reward for Mackenzie, printed on the press in the back of the museum.  (One thousand pounds was a huge amount of money, more than it cost to purchase the Mackenzie House when first built.)

Since the house is lit to 1860s standards, many of my photos just didn't turn out that well, but here are a few.

Downstairs dining room (and Mackenzie's desk)

Upstairs bedroom (for 3 of Mackenzie's daughters)

Kitchen

We got to try homemade cookies, though we weren't able to stick around for the next batch, which looked quite tasty.  On the whole, it was a good visit, and I learned a fair bit about an important figure in Toronto history.  We were lucky that a streetcar was just pulling up as we got to Dundas.  Then on the way back, we stopped off at the library to get a few more books, so a productive trip, all in all.

Slow Saturday

I intentionally slowed down a fair bit today.  Really my main accomplishment was reading quite a number of R.K. Narayan short stories (just trying to untangle which books to read to avoid too much duplication is itself a bit of an effort) and also another small slice of Chatterjee's English, August: An Indian Story (it's an odd book and I wish it had a different title, as this one makes no sense even after the connection to the main character is established).  I had set out (over a year ago) to draw up a post on Narayan, and I think I am finally about ready to do so, though I want to wait until I read The Guide, which I should get to either in Dec. or Jan.  That will basically take me to the midway point in his oeuvre.

However, I did drop my daughter off at her friend's birthday party.  Then I went to the gym.  This is the first time I've gone since I got sick.  There were a few other times I had considered it, but actually I have managed to keep biking a little longer than anticipated (twice last week and probably twice next week), and I don't go to the gym on days that I bike.  The other time I was going to go, the TTC subway had a total meltdown and I ended up taking the College/Gerrard streetcar, stopping off at the mall and then going over the bridge.  So I wasn't really in the mood to go back over the bridge to go back to the gym.  It wasn't too bad, getting back into the swing of things, but it is clear I will have to make it more of a priority to go in Dec. when I expect to stop cycling to work.

I had contemplated heading up to the library, but I decided I didn't really need to go.  There is a chance I might stop in on the way back from downtown tomorrow.  Tomorrow will be a bit busier.  We're going to take a look at the holiday windows at the Bay (but not shop there, as I am still boycotting them).  We'll probably have lunch at the Eaton Centre, then walk over to Mackenzie House and check it out.  Then I'll bring everyone home, try to get a bit more done (probably finish up my second abstract for the TRB Innovations conference) and then go off to Toronto Cold Reads, since they are doing my 3Fest pieces.  Finally!  And that will take care of Sunday.

There are a few other outstanding tasks (like dealing with insurance and asking the bank to fix something about my on-line profile), but these can wait for next week.  I should probably double-check that no bills are due this weekend.  Also, I did buy a piece of lumber to try to fix the gate.  If it gets too cold to do it next weekend (as this one is probably a write-off), it will have to wait until the spring.  My biggest disappointment is that I didn't do too much writing this weekend, though I did a fair bit earlier in the week, so I shouldn't be too hard on myself.  No point in getting a complex over it...

Deadlines

Like a lot of people who take on a few too many obligations, I tend to organize my efforts around meeting deadlines (and/or responding to pressing requests from people above me in the organization).  That said, for things that are a bit tangential (like creative writing), it is much easier to forget about the deadlines all together.  I missed a whole bunch of deadlines for literary magazines (though I really haven't been preparing material for them either).  I did manage to enter the Toronto Star short story competition twice, but that's about it.

I already mentioned how gutted I was to just miss the Fringe lottery deadline (by 2 days I think).  But I did manage to get my 10 minute play submitted to the inspiraTO festival a few days early.  My 3Fest piece is going up this Sunday, and the organizer wanted some rewrites.  I got them in yesterday, just in case they still want a few more touch ups, but that's done.  And I just sent in a piece for the Dec. 4 Sing-for-your-Supper.  That's almost a week early, though I might send in one more piece if I can finish it up in time.  Meeting all these deadlines at least partly makes up for missing the others, though the Fringe still stings.

Tonight I need to take a bit of a break, but then I want to work on a short and a long abstract for TRB Innovations.  The deadline is Nov. 30, so I have a bit more time, but not so much that I can put them on the back burner.  If I don't get through them over the weekend, then it probably won't happen.  It is unfortunate that I have really been pushing to get transportation data from various agencies, and it has been like pulling teeth (and I still don't have it all in hand), but I should be able to write up the abstracts as if I knew what the findings were.  I guess this is a fairly standard trick, but I'm pretty good at it.  Anyway, this is probably the last major external deadline I have to deal with for the moment.

The Very Long Day

While I really didn't want to go, my manager requested that I go off to a meeting in Brampton Wed. morning.  It meant getting out to Yorkdale and then catching the 36B Go Bus to Bramalea Terminal and then walking to the actual meeting location in Chinguacousy Park.  I had to leave the house at about 7:20, which is very early for me.  I made it to the park a bit early, though it was too cold to really enjoy it.

Because I had an early afternoon meeting, I really needed to get back to the Bramalea GO Station to catch the 12:16 train.  I asked around and really no one was heading back there directly, but one planner thought she could drop me off on the way back.  So I was watching the clock quite intently.  At about halfway through, we were 10 minutes ahead of schedule, and then things went disastrously off-track.  And the meeting organizer added an unscheduled 5 minute break (that quickly devolved into 10).  In the end, the meeting went until 12:15.  I was fairly pissed.  I decided that since Brampton taxis are rumoured to be fairly poor, it just wasn't worth trying to order one and have it show up in the park.

Instead, I went with the planner all the way to Islington station, but then this was a much longer and definitely slower trip.  I didn't get back to the office until 1:50 (instead of 1) and I totally missed my next meeting.  All I can say is I will object much more strongly the next time I am expected to go to one of these meetings in a location that isn't actually served by transit.  Then the next two meetings (after the missed meeting) went long, which ruined my lunch and put me in a fairly foul mood for the rest of the work day.

Ideally, I would have just gone home and slept, but I had tickets to see 54-40 at the Horseshoe Tavern.  I went over on the Spadina streetcar, which got hung up for quite a while at the foot of Spadina.  Then I had so much trouble finding anything to eat.  The first pizza place didn't have any vegetarian slices ready.  The second did have some vegan slices, which really isn't my thing.  Plus, there was a persistent fly that managed to land on several slices of pizza, and I just couldn't imaging eating anything from that pizza place.  Then Subway didn't have any veggie patties, only falafel.  While I often like falafel, I don't want to eat it at Subway.  I finally found something decent on my fourth try.

Then I went over to the Horseshoe fairly early.  I did get a seat towards the back, which wasn't a problem for the opening act (Joydrop*), but during the headliner, many people stood up, but I just wasn't willing to, so I generally could only see glimpses of the band (mostly the lead singer).  I guess one good thing about the crowd being old was about 4 or 5 songs into the set, people got tired and eventually mostly did sit down.  I was pretty unhappy about 54-40 not actually starting until 10:45!  They opened with "Blame Your Parents," which is one of my favourite songs, but one that they are only singing sporadically on the tour.  Unfortunately, the lead singer kind of started a bit weak (or maybe they just doesn't practice this as much), but the band definitely got stronger as the set progressed.  This set-list seems fairly accurate.  They finally wrapped at just after midnight with a strong version of "Since When" and then the band led two sing-alongs: "Casual Viewin'" and "Ocean Pearl."  I was so exhausted I skipped the encore (most likely incorporating "I Go Blind"), but I just needed to get home.  I'm actually supposed to be out doing something tomorrow evening as well, but I may just have to skip it.

* I did manage to track down Joydrop's 2 albums, though I am not particularly familiar with the band.  I'll probably have to listen to them again to try to reconstruct their set, but I know they played "American Dreamgirl," "Beautiful" and "All Too Well" (probably the best song in their set) though in very different versions from the albums.  They also played a cover of Bowie's "Suffragette City."  I was surprised that someone in the audience seemed to know their material well.

Spadina Museum

I may have mentioned it previously, but throughout the month of November, the core Toronto Historic Museums have free admittance.  This includes Fort York and Spadina Museum.  The full list is here.  I had been in the museum at least once before and perhaps twice, but it had been a long time.  My daughter is generally interested in interior decorating and wanted to see it, so we set off right after lunch.

We managed to get inside just a few minutes after 1, and the guided tour hadn't quite left yet, so we joined that.  That was a stroke of luck, since it was 45 minutes until the next tour (you can't see the inside of the house except on a tour).  What's particularly interesting about this house is that four generations of one family lived in it from roughly 1866-1982 and all the furnishings are original (with the flooring, wallpaper and curtains reproduced from original samples).  The house is basically presented as it would have looked in the 1920s, which was a high point for the Austin family.

It was an interesting tour, and I will probably retain more from this visit than my previous ones.

There is only one weekend left to visit the historic museums, not that the full entrance fees are that high (and often the libraries have free passes).  I think next Sunday we will go first to Mackenzie House (which is not that far from the Eaton Centre and opens at noon) and then up to Gibson House in North York (which doesn't open until 1).  Apparently there is a working printing press at Mackenzie House (as Mayor William Lyon Mackenzie was a publisher).  And Gibson House should be decked out in Christmas finery, so that would be nice.  However, I have just looked it up, and there is going to be a subway closure on Line 1 next weekend.  The replacement shuttles were just such a pain that I think I'll have to pass on going up to North York (in particular I don't think my daughter could handle it).  So we might go the following weekend and just pay the entrance fee (and of course I'll try to score the free pass from the library).  I suppose there is a small chance we would try to go out to Etobicoke to see Montgomery's Inn after Mackenzie House, but that is probably just too much travel for one day, and I'll also have to see what the weather is like.

11th Canadian Challenge - 11th review - The Street

Mordecai Richler's The Street is a slim volume recounting Richler's adolescent years, growing up on St. Urbain in Montreal at the tail end of the Depression and during WWII.  It is an unusual book, in the sense that it mixes memoir and fiction, so for example he talks about the other Jewish kids he grew up with and he includes Duddy Kravitz, a fictional character.  Duddy Kravitz turns up in 3 or 4 of the 10 chapters of The Street, but he isn't nearly as overwhelming a presence as he is in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.  Here he is a bit more worldly than the young Mordecai (having a better understanding of sex and how babies are made) and toward the end of the book, Duddy starts the first of his many money-making schemes, installing peanut vending machines at key corners of the neighbourhood, but he is still basically just another average kid.  It is interesting how Richler describes himself and his friends as juvenile delinquents (not so different from the childhood memories of John Fante but with the critical difference that the Jewish kids are seen mouthing off to weak-willed adults).  Maybe it is a testament to natural ability that many of Richler's friends made something of their lives, even after skipping school regularly and rejecting the path to medicine or the law that their parents wanted.  (Only Hersh who is the main character of St. Urbain's Horseman -- and is probably the Hershey mentioned in The Street -- seems particularly bookish.)

Richler paints a fairly discouraging picture of life in this neighbourhood, where the kids hang out on street corners and harass and cat-call girls and young women.  The store owners all seem to be in a running battle with each other.  There is a lot of the kvetching that is almost obligatory in Jewish fiction.  Virtually every bit of national and international news is parsed to see if it is good for the Jews or not.  (There are a few flashes of this kind of logic in Arthur Miller's Broken Glass, which is set in Brooklyn right after Krystallnacht (1938), which was terrible for the Jews directly and indirectly in the sense that it might inspire anti-Semitic acts in North America.)  What makes this fairly different from Hugh MacLennan is that MacLennan only focuses on the French Canadians in conflict with Anglophones in Montreal, whereas Richler sees Jews and the French (called "pea-soups" by the boys) all under the thumb of the rich Anglophones.  At the same time, the French Canadians are able to set up resorts for themselves and claim territory as reserved for "Gentiles only," which was not an option for the Jews of Montreal.  Richler doesn't necessarily want to make apologies for the dirty tricks that his friends get up to, but he is exploring what happens to kids who feel shut out of the system by two or more layers of discrimination.  (Fighting against or at least reacting to discrimination of various kinds is also a common theme in much of Fante's work.)

It probably doesn't matter too much what is true memoir and what is a somewhat embellished tale told to make his point about what growing up in Montreal was like just before, during and after WWII.  Some of the families on the street suffer when their sons come home wounded (and one with such severe PTSD that he never fully recovers) and of course some do not return at all from the front.  Probably the most important sociological point Richler makes is that the war is actually quite good for many of the families and they are able to buy their way into Outremont (and ultimately better schools for the next generation of children).  Of course, it was not clear at that point in time whether Jews would become fully accepted into Canadian society, but at least some of the overt racism was fading away.  (Obviously one of the great ironies is that the rise of Francophone political power (and culture) in Quebec returns Jews to their outsider status in the late 1960s after they had made considerable inroads into joining Montreal's elite.  Many Jews ultimately felt more comfortable (and that assimilation was more feasible) in Toronto, and only the "bloody-minded" hung on in Montreal, like Barney Panofsky from Barney's Version.)

One of the more amusing (though still melancholy) stories is about a writer who rents the back bedroom from Richler's parents.  In the beginning, only Richler's mother has much time for this artist, but after he gets in print in a middlebrow magazine, the father gets interested (and a young lady down the block starts giving the writer the time of day).  However, the writer is not able to sell his novel (at least he actually finishes one, unlike so many self-proclaimed writers) and he finally tells everyone he has a job offer from Hollywood, but actually slinks off back to Toronto. I thought this was an interesting book, though overall it is a minor work, mostly useful in filling in some of the gaps between The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and St. Urbain's Horseman.

Writing and rewriting

I am in the middle of a fair number of edit jobs.  Today I finished tightening up Double Sabbatical and entered it into a 10-minute play competition here in Toronto.  That's fairly exciting, and I am particularly gratified that I am a few days early.  I should hear back by mid-to-late December if it is accepted into the festival.  That would be awesome.  I think it's actually a solid piece and it lines up well with the festival theme, so fingers crossed.

I have four notes that I need to address on my 3Fest piece (the one I started) and I should be able to get to them by Saturday or Sunday.  I believe these will go up on the 26th, so that's very exciting.  I will admit that I am starting to scale back my involvement with Toronto Cold Reads, but I'm sure there will always be a bit of a connection there.

I have another interesting opportunity, but I really don't want to jinx it by saying too much too soon.  But in the meantime, I need to push through to get a first draft of (and a better ending for) "Final Exam."  I might be able to spend a fair bit of time on this on Sunday, especially as I am skipping Toronto Cold Reads.

The last couple of times I was at Cold Reads, however, I wrote out five or so pages of the last scene of "Straying South."  I am kind of on a roll here.  I think I should be able to finish that scene and loop back and fill in a couple more of the missing ones.  My goal is to wrap this up by the end of November.

However, I may still get distracted by writing out two pieces for Sing-for-Your-Supper.  One is a straight-up parody of plays that have played Toronto recently (including Albee's The Goat and Annie Baker's John).  The other is more of a homage to Beckett's Waiting for Godot.  Those also have to be turned in towards the end of November.  Anyway, it is exciting, even if a bit of a strain to have so many things on the go at once.

Firefox has gone too far

I've generally been unhappy with how often I have to update Flash or perhaps it is the underlying Java.  Anyway, there are just a few websites that make it all but impossible to stream music except through FlashPlayer, including Hoopla and the BBC Radio sites.  Since they won't move with the times, I really don't have any option either.

I knew I was living on borrowed time with the various Firefox updates, but I really don't care for the changes that were introduced with version 58 today (or perhaps yesterday).  The legacy ePub Reader finally conked out completely (and I can't stand the new verson).  There are a few other things as well that trouble me about this upgrade.  So I have decided to roll back to an older version and disable the automatic updates.  I suppose there will come a day that I decide I just must upgrade and deal with all the other extensions that no longer work, but that day is not today...

McMichael Sunday

We're back from our trip to the McMichael.  It was fun, though I do wish I had felt better the past two Sundays and had been able to take the art bus, since I could have used the time to read instead of driving.  It would have been vastly less stressful and considerably cheaper, though I suppose there is some utility in not just forgetting how to drive around Toronto.  Anyway, I'll definitely keep an eye out to see if the art bus runs next summer and early fall.

We made fairly good time, leaving at 10:30 and arriving about 11:20.  There was one hairy moment trying to make the move from the 401 to the 400 N where people wouldn't let me get over, but I managed more or less at the last minute to cut across.  (Also, I couldn't believe that the ZipCar didn't have a CD player at all, which made the ride less enjoyable.)

I had hoped that some trees would still have their autumn leafs out, but the cold snap Friday and Saturday pretty much took care of all them.  I guess there is a certain austere beauty to winter (and you can even see a dusting of snow in some photos), but again two weekends ago would have been nicer for sure.

Inside looking out

One thing that was a little disconcerting was how much of the Group of Seven was not on display.  The main entrance normally is a mix of the Group of Seven artists, but this time it was only Tom Thomson and Joyce Weiland.  While she apparently was inspired by him, the pairing doesn't make a lot of sense and her largely conceptual art truly suffers in comparison to Thomson's.  Here for instance is her piece The Arctic Belongs to Itself.

In contrast, here are a couple of Thomson's smaller pieces.

Also, the space given to this exhibit meant that most of the actual Group of Seven paintings were off in storage.  I haven't seen my favourite Varley painting of the night ferry from Vancouver in about 2 years.  (Actually most of their masterworks are no longer on display, which is frustrating.)

The next exhibit, Cutting Ice, had some charm but just didn't feel like there was a lot of craft behind the pieces (mostly by Annie Pootoogook).  They did focus a bit on the routine and were generally domestic scenes.

Annie Pootoogook, Dr. Phil, 2006

Annie Pootoogook, Morning Routine, 2003

They aren't the same (as they are simpler and reflect a less cluttered world), but I had just a bit of a flashback to this Kurelek piece about a bachelor (at the AGO).

The next two rooms had guitars inspired by the Group of Seven.  I have to admit, I was somewhat regretting the trip out, but then we went into the Alex Janvier exhibit.  Apparently this was originally at the National Gallery, but it has transferred to the McMichael (maybe losing just a few of the paintings) and it will run through Jan. 21.

I was really gripped by these pieces, as it is such an interesting combination of abstract form and First Nations imagery.  In the end, it was definitely worth the trip to see this exhibit, and I would encourage people to check it out.

This piece is Janvier's homage to Daphne Odjig.

This one was really interesting in person, as there is a reasonably accomplished abstract expressionist painting but then it is covered with thin lines out of the op art toolbox, and the focus keeps shifting.  I don't ever recall seeing a painting work in precisely this way, and it was kind of an exciting discovery.

These were among our favourites, but there were many excellent paintings on view.  I checked out the catalog, but it was just a bit too pricey ($40).  Given that quite a few seem to have been printed up, I'll keep my eyes open at BMV and Book City.  I should be able to pick one up in the next few months for $25 or less, but in the meantime, I can check one out of the library to study these paintings a bit better.

Cleaned-up reading list

I was finding my main reading list just a bit too chaotic. I also depressed myself by calculating that I may well still be working on the list into 2021, so I decided to straighten it up and do just a bit of rearranging, even though in some cases the original logic of pairing books has been lost.  (Though given that many were not read in these pairings, it is probably not necessary to highlight them, though you can turn to the earlier list if interested.)  I still will be working off of this list (or one very like it) for the foreseeable future, and I'm sure soon enough I will be reading books out of sequence.  I still am ending most years with a massive novel (this year it will be The Way We Live Now), and I think I will try to work in one or two Dickens's novels each year, since I have actually read so few of them.  At least in the short term, I seem to have radically slowed down on the non-fiction front, but I'll probably squeeze a few in from time to time.

Lahiri The Unaccustomed Earth
Austen Sense and Sensibility
Trollope The Way We Live Now
Bove A Singular Man
Mordecai Richler The Street 
Austen Pride and Prejudice
Narayan An Astrologer's Day/Lawley Road/A Breath of Lucifer (stories)
Gaskell North and South
Dickens Hard Times (surprisingly unsatisfying -- North and South is far better)
Nancy Mitford The Pursuit of Love/Love in a Cold Climate/Don't Tell Alfred
Reve The Evenings
Zweig The Post Office Girl & Journey into the Past
Nina Berberova The Tattered Cloak & The Revolt
Bennett The Old Wives' Tale
Jane Bowles Two Serious Ladies
Spark Memento Mori
Didion The Year of Magical Thinking
Singer Enemies
Malamud The Assistant
Mitford The Blessing
Brand What We All Long For
Munro Friend of My Youth
Faulkner Flags in the Dust & The Unvanquished
P. Roth  - The Breast, The Professor of Desire, The Dying Animal
Bullins The Hungered One
S. Lem Solaris
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky Roadside Picnic
E. Wilson Hetty Dorval
Gaskell Wives and Daughters
Nancy Lee Dead Girls
Melville The Confidence Man
Mann Felix Krull
Kafka Amerika (the new translation)
Weinzweig Passing Ceremony
Tatyana Tolstaya White Walls: Collected Stories (combines On the Golden Porch and Sleepwalker in a Fog)
Maharaj The Amazing Absorbing Boy
Cline Ready Player One
Max Apple The Propheteers
Pablo Vierci The Imposters
Katherine Porter Ship of Fools
Khushwant Singh Train To Pakistan
Tayeb Salih Season of Migration to the North
Bouchet Sun of a Distant Land
Wilson Alif the Unseen
al-Khamissi Taxi (actually non-fiction reportage)
Mahfouz Midaq Alley
Paul Bowles The Delicate Prey & A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard
Kim Thúy Vi
Jez Butterworth Mojo (unpleasant play that wishes it were a Tarantino movie)
Hardy Far from the Madding Crowd (so very terrible that I bailed halfway in)
Lyudmila Ulitskaya The Funeral Party
Faulkner A Fable (vastly over-rated)
Banville Ancient Light 
Wayde Compton The Outer Harbour
Paul Auster Moon Palace  
Bioy-Casares The Invention of Morel & The Celestial Plot
Gregor von Rezzori Death of My Brother Abel (sadly disappointing)
DeLillo White Noise (I shouldn't jump so far out of order, but I think I shall anyway)
Updike The Rabbit Novels:

• Rabbit, Run
• Rabbit Redux
• Rabbit is Rich
• Rabbit at Rest
• Rabbit Remembered from Licks of Love

Jez Butterworth Parlour Song
Krzhizhanovsky The Letter Killers Club
David Lodge The British Museum is Falling Down
Homer Iliad & Odyssey
Atwood The Penelopiad
Virgil The Aeneid
Ovid Metamorphoses
Montaigne Essays (Selected) & Shakespeare's Montaigne (NYRB)
Musil The Man Without Qualities (after a 3 month slog!)
Max Apple The Oranging of America & The Jew of Home Depot
Narayan Malgudi Days (short stories)
Toews A Complicated Kindness
Cyprian Ekwensi Lokotown and Other Stories (includes Glittering City)
Achebe Arrow of God
Powers Morte d'Urban
Grimson Within Normal Limits
Stone A Hall of Mirrors
William Maxwell LOA novels (Bright Center of Heaven | They Came Like Swallows | The Folded Leaf | Time Will Darken It | The Château | So Long, See You Tomorrow)
Dawn Powell Turn, Magic Wheel & A Time To Be Born
Dawn Powell Angels on Toast 
Dawn Powell LOA novels 1944-62 (My Home Is Far Away | The Locusts Have No King | The Wicked Pavilion | The Golden Spur) 
Dawn Powell The Happy Island
(intersperse Maxwell and Powell)
Thisby The Good People of New York
Albert Cossery Men God Forgot & The House of Certain Death
Hanif Red Birds (so very disappointing)
DeLillo Cosmopolis (not good at all)
Amos Oz Judas
Pym Some Tame Gazelle 
Sontag Debriefing (I, Etcetera plus 3 additional stories)
Burroughs Naked Lunch (pretty grim reading overall)
Craig Nova Wetware (dropped this mediocre rehash of standard SF tropes)
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky The Doomed City & Monday Starts on Saturday
Evelyn Lau Fresh Girls and Other Stories
Celine Journey to the End of the Night
Tokarczuk Flights
Talk Linda Rosenkrantz 
Pedro Juan Gutiérrez The Insatiable Spiderman
T.C. Boyle The Road to Wellville & Drop City
Adam Langer Crossing California
Ariel Dorfman Burning City (abandoned 3/4 through, not worth my time)
DeLillo The Body Artist (really disliked this one)
Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay Panty
Sinclair Lewis (Main Street, Babbitt, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, Dodsworth and It Can't Happen Here) 
Maritta Wolff -- Whistle Stop, Night Shift, Sudden Rain, Buttonwood and The Big Nickelodeon
(intersperse Lewis with Wolff)
Tom Wolfe Bonfire of the Vanities
Paul Auster Leviathan
Masuji Ibuse Black Rain
Maugham The Razor's Edge
Maharaj Adjacentland
Elaine McCluskey The Most Heartless Town in Canada
Aeschylus The Oresteia
Aristophanes The Clouds & The Birds
Faulkner The Snopes Family (Hamlet, Town, Mansion)
Powers Wheat That Springeth Green
Bioy-Casares Asleep in the Sun
Mavis Gallant Home Truths
Natalia Ginzburg Family Lexicon
Morrison The Bluest Eye & Sula
Camilla Grudova The Doll's Alphabet
K.D. Miller Late Breaking
Malamud Pictures of Fidelman
Raspe-Burger Adventures of Baron Munchausen
Krzhizhanovsky The Return of Munchausen
Eggers A Hologram for the King
Kling Qualityland
Teju Cole Known and Strange Things (essays on literature, photography and politics)
Saunders Lincoln in the Bardo (dropped with prejudice after 30 pretentious pages) 
Guy Vanderhaeghe Things as They Are?
David Bezmozgis Immigrant City 
Mary McCarthy The Group
Pym Excellent Women
Murakami Men Without Women
Melville Pierre
Kierkegaard Either/Or & Fear and Trembling 
Tadeusz Borowski This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
Amis The Alteration
Carrianne Leung That Time I Loved You
Kamila Shamsie In the City by the Sea 
Mahfouz The Mirage (disappointing -- I read it before but suppressed the memory)
Walser Girlfriends, Ghosts, and Other Stories
P. Roth -- Zuckerman Bound, The Counterlife, Exit Ghost
Nikos Kazantzakis Zorba the Greek (dropped for too much stupid, macho posturing)
Carlos Fuentes Constancia and Other Stories for Virgins 
Kathleen Jamie Findings 
Richard Yates Eleven Kinds of Loneliness  
John O'Hara Waiting for Winter
Richard Yates Revolutionary Road
John O'Hara Appointment in Samarra
Anthony Marra The Tsar of Love and Techno
Bohumil Hrabel I Served the King of England
Vladimir Voinovich The Life of Private Ivan Chonkin & Pretender to the Throne
Craig Nova Incandescence & The Good Son
Ribeyro The Word of the Speechless & Marginal Voices
Fontane Effi Briest
Beckett Krapp's Last Tape & Three Novels
Waugh Decline & Fall and Vile Bodies
Cyprian Ekwensi People of the City & Jagua Nana
Ondjaki Transparent City
Victor Serge Conquered City
Vladimir Voinovich A Displaced Person & Monumental Propaganda
Fuentes Where the Air is Clear
Wendell Berry The Long-Legged House & The World-Ending Fire
Perec Life: A User's Manual
Walker Percy The Last Gentleman & The Second Coming
Benoît Duteurtre The Little Girl and the Cigarette (unpleasant and too self-satisfied)
Vargas Llosa The Time of the Hero
Lethem Feral Detective
Craig Nova The Informer
Robert Cohen The Organ Builder & Inspired Sleep
Chaudhuri Friend of My Youth
Chan Koonchung (Guanzhong) The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver
Elizabeth Bowen The Heat of the Day
Mieko Kawakami Ms. Ice Sandwich
Hideo Furukawa Slow Boat 
Fontane Before the Storm (try to arrange to read Dec. 2024)
Tolstoy War and Peace
Vasily Grossman Stalingrad & Life and Fate
Marra A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Vikram Chandra Love and Longing in Bombay 
Victor Serge Midnight in the Century
Don DeLillo End Zone
Ivan Vladislavić Double Negative
Pym Jane and Prudence
Sayle Overtaken
Bissoondath Digging Up the Mountains
Zalika Reid-Benta Frying Plantain
Skvorecky Miss Silver's Past & The Swell Season
Tanizaki A Cat, A Man and Two Women
Tomoka Shibasaki Spring Garden
Bellow Ravelstein
Roth The Human Stain
Prager A Visit From the Footbinder
Jem Calder Reward System: Stories
Morrison Home (very disappointing)
A. Barrett Ship Fever
Mahfouz In the Time of Love & The Search
Lowry Under the Volcano
Hesse Siddhartha
Mohsin Hamid Moth Smoke
Ghosh The Calcutta Chromosome
Khushwant Singh Delhi 
Lahiri Whereabouts
Narayan The Guide
Natalia Ginzburg The Road to the City (includes The Dry Heart)
Dickens Pictures from Italy & American Notes
Herzen Letters from France and Italy
Gogol Dead Souls
Conrad The Secret Agent
Bely Petersburg
Victor Serge Unforgiving Years
Kurkov Death and the Penguin & Penguin Lost
Pynchon The Crying of Lot 49 (and V???)
Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Ed Park Personal Days
John Fante The Big Hunger
Kawabata Palm-of-the-Hand Stories
Meera Syal Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee
Amitava Kumar Nobody Does the Right Thing
Berberova Billancourt Tales & Cape of Storms
Russell Smith How Insensitive & Noise
Julian Barnes Pulse (stories)
Takashi Hiraide The Guest Cat
Hemingway The Sun Also Rises
Fitzgerald This Side of Paradise
Hemingway A Farewell to Arms
Fitzgerald The Beautiful and Damned
Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls
Conrad The Duel
Dos Passos Adventures of a Young Man
Fitzgerald Tender Is the Night 
Hemingway A Moveable Feast
Fitzgerald The Last Tycoon
Guillermo Arriaga The Night Buffalo
James Crumley The Wrong Case & Dancing Bear
Gloria Naylor Mama Day
Fuentes A Change of Skin
Naipaul Miguel Street
Kevin Patterson Consumption
Lethem Fortress of Solitude
Lorrie Moore Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?
Kundera Life is Elsewhere
Sontag Against Interpretation
Didion Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Tim O'Brien July, July (felt like an extended riff on The Big Chill, not a stand-alone novel)
Paule Marshall The Fisher King
Bissoondath A Casual Brutality
Hoban Turtle Diary
Fuentes Aura
Russell Smith Muriella Pent
Nina Berberova The Ladies from St. Petersburg  
Laurie Colwin Family Happiness (disappointing compared to Happy All the Time)
Madeleine St John The Women in Black
Bove Quicksand
(after this more Pym and Doris Lessing* and a return to Mahfouz and Narayan)
Desani All About H. Hatterr
Bellow Adventures of Augie March
Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment
Conrad Under Western Eyes
Chekhov 7 Short Novels
Turgenev Smoke
Huxley Chrome Yellow
Turgenev Virgin Soil
Paula Martinac Out of Time
Huxley Mortal Coils (stories, incl. The Gioconda Smile)
Sciascia Open Doors & To Each His Own
Carter Wise Children
Gissing New Grub Street
Neruda Isla Negra
Fuentes Terra Nostra
Steinbeck To a God Unknown
Cesare Pavese Selected Works
Mary McCarthy Birds of America
P. Roth American Pastoral
Kafu American Stories
I.B. Singer Scum
J. Roth Radetzky March & The Emperor's Tomb
Walser The Tanners 
Pym Less Than Angels
Elizabeth Bowen Eva Trout
Natsuko Imamura The Woman in the Purple Skirt
McKay Home to Harlem
Don DeLillo Great Jones Street 
David Jones In Parenthesis
Constance Beresford-Howe The Book of Eve
Helen Weinzweig Basic Black with Pearls
John Lavery Sandra Beck
Rhyno To Me You Seem Giant
Saramago Skylight
Rushdie Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
R. Mistry Tales from Firozsha Baag
Adiga Between the Assassinations
Fisher The Conjure Man Dies
Angela Carter The Bloody Chamber
Welty The Robber Bridegroom 
Taylor The Wedding Group
Didion The White Album
Zaher The Coin
Gunter Grass My Century
Green Blindness
Saramago Blindness
Knut Hamsun Hunger
John Fante The Bandini Quartet (Wait Until Spring, Bandini; The Road to Los Angeles; Ask the Dust and Dreams From Bunker Hill)
Perec A Void
Camus The Plague (and perhaps reread/skim The Stranger)
Katherine Anne Porter Pale Horse, Pale Rider
Buzzati The Tartar Steppe & The Siren
Malraux Man's Fate
Koestler Darkness at Noon
Danilo Kis A Tomb for Boris Davidovitch
Victor Serge The Case of Comrade Tulayev
Thien Do Not Say We Have Nothing 
Kim Thúy Ru 
Pushkin Tales of Belkin
John Cheever Thirteen Uncollected Tales
Malamud The Fixer
DeLillo Ratner's Star
Skvorecky The Miracle Game & Dvorak in Love
P. Roth Nemeses (Everyman, Indignation, The Humbling, Nemesis)
Selvon The Moses Trilogy (The Lonely Londoners, Moses Ascending, Moses Migrating)
Lamming In the Castle of My Skim & The Emigrants
Rushdie The Golden House & Quichotte
M. Thomas Man Gone Down
Green Living 
Taylor Blaming 
Levi The Sixth Day
Mann The Magic Mountain
Huysmans Against Nature
Austen Mansfield Park (quite disappointing actually)
Chloe Benjamin The Immortalists
Gide The Immoralist/Strait is the Gate
Pynchon Gravity's Rainbow
Scarlett Thomas PopCo
Pym A Glass of Blessings
Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer
Christopher Isherwood Berlin Stories
Joseph Roth The White Cities/Report from Paris
Fante West of Rome
Ghosh The Glass Palace
Craig Nova The Congressman's Daughter & Tornado Alley
Kamila Shamsie Home Fire
Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America - indefinitely suspended for cowardice

de Tocqueville Democracy in America 
Trollope The Three Clerks
Achebe  A Man of the People
Cela The Hive (the new translation from NYRB)
Achebe Anthills of the Savannah
Hoban Riddley Walker
Tunney Flan 
Powys Wolf Soylent
Drew Hayden Taylor Take Us to Your Leader
Lem Tales of Pirx the Pilot 
Lem More Tales of Pirx the Pilot (a lot of Lem worth reading, but I might circle back first to Pirx and then Ijon Tichy (The Star Diaries, Memoirs of a space traveler and The Futurological Congress))
Victor Pelevin Omon Ra
Hardy Return of the Native
Steinbeck Tortilla Flat
Álvaro Mutis Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll 
Murdoch The Sea The Sea (way out of sequence, maybe rethink this)
Pynchon Against the Day 
DeLillo Players/Running Dog
Murakami Norwegian Wood
Austen Emma
Guillaume Morissette New Tab
Eugene Marten Waste (bleak nihilistic tale that I wish I had not read)

Gornick Louisa Meets Bear
Engel Bear & The Tattooed Woman 
Narayan The Man-Eater of Malgudi
Sciascia The Day of the Owl & Equal Danger 
DeLillo Amazons
Findley Dinner Along the Amazon
Churchill Cloud 9
Cortazar 62: A Model Kit
Lessing The Golden Notebook
Craig Nova The Book of Dreams
Musil Five Women
Jean Rhys Quartet & After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie
Munro Open Secrets
Didion Democracy
Guy Vanderhaeghe Homesick
Malamud The Tenants
Forrest Meteor in the Madhouse

Trollope Why Frau Frohmann Raised Her Prices
Vicki Baum Grand Hotel
Anna Seghers Transit (NYRB)
Bove Night Departure & No Place
D.H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers (uncut version)
Faulkner Sanctuary & Requiem for a Nun
Green Party Going
Woolf Mrs. Dalloway/Mrs. Dalloway's Party
Austen Persuasion
Isak Dinesen Babette's Feast & Ehrengard
Nabokov The Enchanter ?
Rushdie The Enchantress of Florence & Victory City
Elias Canetti Memoirs (The Tongue Set Free/The Torch in My Ear/The Play of the Eye) 
Narayan The Vendor of Sweets
Chatterjee English, August: An Indian Story
Dickens Oliver Twist
Celine Death on the Installment Plan
Mahfouz Heart of the Night & The Beggar
Balzac The Human Comedy/Pere Goriot
Davies The Salterton Trilogy
Salter Light Years
Didion Play It As It Lays
Trollope He Knew He Was Right
Bissoondath Doing the Heart Good
Rhys Good Morning, Midnight
Engel Lunatic Villas
Mann Buddenbrooks
Morrison Song of Solomon
O'Connor Wise Blood
Welty Delta Wedding
Zola The Fortune of the Rougons
Téa Obreht The Tiger's Wife
Ian Williams Reproduction
Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamazov


(I'll have to keeping intersperse a bit more Canadian fiction (I've already added a bit more Alice Munro and some Atwood), and probably some of the early DeLillo novels, a few more from Narayan and Mahfouz and perhaps Nabokov from their respective lists, reread Barbara Pym and then perhaps tackle Dickens and Trollope.  Still, this is a decent 2-3 year plan (or 4-5 if I throw in a lot of Trollope and Musil's The Man Without Qualities and maybe cycle back through Garcia Marquez and Vargas Llosa), so we'll just see how it goes.  I'm sure unpacking and rearranging the books will cause me to promote others on the list higher.  I think after I make it through this extended list, I will more or less work my way through the rest of the books on the shelves to make sure I have had a chance to read them all.  I believe I have read roughly 35% of the fiction & poetry books on the shelves, which is actually not that shabby.  That will obviously change radically if I add another bookcase of fiction, but I think I probably will have to break down and get more shelves.)


* If I really do start in on Lessing's Children of Violence series, I will probably follow it up with Eric Kraft's tres amusant books about Peter Leroy.  I got through 6 or so of the early short novellas but not the later, longer novels.  Anyway, I think before the Doris Lessing/Eric Kraft combo, I should revisit Jose Saramago, even though some of this will be rereading.  I'm thinking something sort of like this:

Saramago Skylight
R. Mistry Tales from Firozsha Baag
Adiga Between the Assassinations
Saramago Blindness
Perec A Void
DeLillo The Names
Saramago All the Names
Cunningham The Hours
Plato The Republic (special focus on Book VII)
Saramago The Cave
Plato The Symposium
Muriel Spark Symposium
Saramago Seeing
Norfolk The Pope's Rhinoceros
Saramago The Elephant's Journey
Murakami The Elephant Vanishes
Pynchon Inherent Vice
Faulkner The Wild Palms (linked through the palm trees of 'Miami Vice')
(I've already moved just a few up to the tail end of the main list) 

If I really do make it through this and have not gotten completely sick of this list, it will be time to really tackle Dickens and Trollope -- and for some variety the longer novels of Murakami -- and probably the Edmund White trilogy and Joyce Cary's First Trilogy.

I'm also thinking of tackling far more short stories in 2017-18, as I am tracking here.  I've already been reading Alice Munro fairly regularly and will start adding in Mavis Gallant and Bernard Malamud.  I might set aside a month or two in 2018 where I work through a number of short story collections in a cyclical fashion -- perhaps John Cheever, T.C. Boyle, Angela Carter, Elizabeth Bowen, Elizabeth Taylor, Doris Lessing, Flannery O'Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, John Updike, etc.  Maybe even John O'Hara and J.F. Powers. 

Undetermined position
(books that I purged (unread) but available in Toronto libraries)
Terry Darlington Narrow Dog to Carcassonne
Mulisch The Discovery of Heaven

Transferred from VPL lists

Husain Basti
Albert Cossery A Splendid Conspiracy (UT)
Albert Cossery Laziness in the Fertile Valley (UT)
Laura Lush Fault Line
Andrew Crumey Sputnik Caledonia
Amy Waldman The Submission
4 poets : Daniela Elza, Peter Morin, Al Rempel, Onjana Yawnghwe
Tash Aw Five Star Billionaire
Machado de Assis A Chapter of Hats: Stories
Machado de Assis The Devil's Church and Other Stories (UT)
Machado de Assis Esau and Jacob (UT)
Joseph Roth Right and Left  (UT)
Fernando Pessoa The Book of Disquiet
Cesare Pavese The Political Prisoner (UT)
Trichter Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Stewart O'Nan Last Night at the Lobster
Ben Winters The Last Policeman
Frederick Busch The Mutual Friend (UT)
Frederick Busch Closing Arguments
Ken Kalfus The Commissariat of Enlightenment
Ken Kalfus A Disorder Peculiar to the Country
Chloe Aridjis Book of Clouds
Sunjeev Sahota Ours Are the Streets (UT)
Rebecca Lee City Is A Rising Tide
Alex Shakar The Savage Girl
Jansson The True Deceiver
M. John Harrison Nova Swing
Richard Ford The Sportswriter (indeed the entire Bascombe trilogy and coda)
Bishop-Stall Ghosted
John Connolly The Book of Lost Things
Rowan Somerville The End of Sleep
Kenny Fries The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin's Theory (UT)
Hisham Matar Anatomy of A Disappearance
Sergio de la Pava A Naked Singularity
Samuel Delany Babel-17
Samuel Delany Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
Samuel Delany Nova ?
David Deutsch The Fabric of Reality
David Deutsch The Beginning of Infinity Explanations That Transform the World
Stephen Graham Cities Under Siege The New Military Urbanism
Jeffrey Eugenides The Marriage Plot
Michael J. Meyer The Last Days of Old Beijing
Jennifer Egan The Invisible Circus
Joe LeSueur Digressions on Some Poems by Frank O'Hara
Will Clarke Lord Vishnu's Love Handles A Spy Novel
Clark Blaise The Meagre Tarmac Stories
Josephine Johnson Now in November (TPL - reference only...)
Martin Flavin Journey in the Dark (UT-Downsview)

Lionel Trilling The Liberal Imagination Essays on Literature and Society (NYRB edition)
Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1920s & 30s By Wilson, Edmund (UT)
Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s & 40s By Wilson, Edmund (UT)
Edmund Wilson Memoirs of Hecate County
The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, & Memoirs By Bierce, Ambrose (UT)
Roald Nasgaard The Mystic North
Michael North Art and Commerce in the Dutch Golden Age (UT)