12th Canadian Challenge - 18th Review - The Most Heartless Town in Canada

I am cutting it very, very close to get this review in on the last day of the 12th Canadian Challenge!  While I expect I will migrate to the 13th Challenge (I definitely have enough books particularly if I tackle a few Atwood novels), I did want to go ahead and review this book and get it in under the wire, so to speak.

The author, Elaine McCluskey, does live in Novia Scotia.  She was involved in swimming clubs (though she avers in a postscript that her children's experiences were 180 degrees different (and better) than those she writes about here).  Perhaps most importantly, she was a press bureau chief and still teaches journalism.  This gives her solid credentials to write the story the way she did, which I will explain briefly.

I'm not entirely sure you can SPOIL the plot when some key elements were already on the back cover blurbs, however, McCluskey does go to some trouble to withhold information from the reader for quite some time, so I will go along with the charade...

Minor SPOILERS follow

The novel is more or less launched because a terrible event occurs in Myrtle, Nova Scotia (someone has poisoned 8 bald eagles), which leads to quite a bit of press coverage, including a 2000 word feature in a major Toronto newspaper (apparently modelled after the Toronto Star) accompanied by a photo of a high school girl and a young man.  The photo is referred to several times as being along the lines of a Diane Arbus picture.  While there is no actual photo in the book, the cover gives a fairly good representation of what the photo looked like, with a couple of differences.

First, the girl (Rita) was described as being fairly heavy.  Second, there is a boy and his dog in the background, but these don't appear at all on the cover.  It turns out that the book is actually narrated by Rita and the boy (Hubert).  It's implied that both* are writing long journal entries or perhaps even letters (to the press?) to tell what led up to that terrible day and the aftermath.  (It's not impossible that McCluskey was inspired by Hoban's Turtle Diary, though Rita and Hubert hardly interact in Myrtle.)

While we do find out (eventually) who actually killed the eagles, the book is not truly that concerned with this person, but rather the way the fallout from all the media attention impacted Rita and others. McCluskey is pretty good on this aspect of the story (and derives a very unflattering portrait of her star journalist, who loves to make people from small towns fell small).  McCluskey also has a fair bit to say about Diane Arbus and how she didn't really seem to think about how she would thrust children into the spotlight in very unflattering ways.**

One of the main themes running through this book is how adults don't really know best and that they can do quite a bit of damage to children.  This may be because they simply don't know how to set appropriate boundaries (Drew's mother), or because they are in over their heads (Pammy, the swim coach), or because they simply prefer not to deal with reality (Rita's mother, Ethna).  Hubert seems to have a decent relationship with his mother, but his father committed the ultimate sin of dying on him and leaving him quite bereft and adrift.

Another area McCluskey is pretty good on is how adults in positions of authority can typically get most kids to do anything (specifically Pammy duct tapes two children together and throws them in a pool, which really should have led to her immediate removal as swimming coach).  As far as I can remember, I was generally outwardly respectful to authority figures but, on the inside, thought most adults were fairly clueless.  (Of course, I still think this and haven't been proved wrong yet...)

While this sounds like it could be quite a downer of a book, it is quite amusing in many places and it is worth reading.  The high school children do manage to swim upstream as it were and become adults (perhaps with a healthy distrust of authority figures and skepticism on how the media works).  It is true, however, that none of them distinguished themselves that much at swimming, though a couple do ok after switching to other sports.  As an aside, it is interesting to read a sports-themed novel focusing on the also-rans rather than teams on the cusp of a championship or even a winning season.  I think I may circle back and write a bit about my experience as a teacher-chaperone to a high school team, but fortunately nothing quite as awful happened to any of the young women on our team (though I suppose a few did get pregnant too young).


* While it is important to get both perspectives to sort of triangulate a lot of things that happened in Myrtle (Rita has the inside scoop on the swim team and Hubert spent more time with "outsiders" in the town), one small criticism is that they both end up sounding very much alike, and it often takes a paragraph or two to tell which character is actually writing.

** I assume he's told the story various ways over the years, but McCluskey found some sources on Colin Wood (the boy with the grenade) where he implied that being in the photograph caused him quite a bit of grief over the years.  However, in this article, he seems more sanguine about it, indicating that much of his stress at that time in his life came from his family and not from the photograph per se.

12th Canadian Challenge - 17th Review - Cluster

I'm not quite sure why it has taken so long to get around to reviewing Cluster (when I reviewed Thammavongsa's 3 earlier collections back in April).  Some elements are pretty similar to the previous collections.  Thammavongsa engages in some word play.  She sort of plays with the tropes of being an outsider poet, particularly when she thinks back to her youth as an outsider in Toronto with immigrant parents.  (There are a few poems where she explains why she is in so few photos as a child, and it isn't simply because her parents were too poor to buy film for the camera.)  I may have simply missed him the first time around, but there are a couple of poems where she talks about her younger brother and how he was overlooked a fair bit, wearing her cast-off clothing, which must have made things even harder for him as a boy in staid Toronto in the 1970s.  In general, people who liked this aspect of Found and Light will find many of the poems basically tread the same ground.

However, she has added to her repertoire with a new type of poem, which I liked quite a bit.  Thammavongsa has included 5 poems (Brokerage Report I - V) that sort of read like found poems (if one was randomly scrolling through the financial pages of a newspaper).

Here's a short section of "Brokerage Report II": "It's robust.  The complex dynamics / of a particular cycle. ... / ... / In summary, given / the difficulty of predicting and time, / we do remain optimistic. ... / ... / It's robust. / Trends.  The risks could be amplified."

"Brokerage Report III" also tries to sugar coat bad news for the presumed investor: "Yield.  Energy prices sank / today.  Focus on rising / earnings instead.  Bigger / profits and a higher finish."

Given how financial news has become a staple of primetime news (and not just an esoteric report for investors), it is a bit surprising fewer poets and authors have really tackled the stock market.  I thought Thammavongsa had an interesting take, which did add to my enjoyment of Cluster.

What's On - Summer 2019

I see with a (minor) sense of shame that I did not get around to filling in this post until the Toronto Jazz Fest was essentially over.  There is one day left (today), and I am likely to catch the Bernie Senensky Septet at 6:45 on stage at Hazelton Ave. in Yorkville.  I wouldn't say this was a particularly interesting or compelling Jazz Fest, though I caught a couple of acts earlier in the week (Melissa Aldana and Kris Davis).  Mostly they are getting fairly big pop or jazz-lite names to appear (Diana Ross and Norah Jones) for the ticketed shows.  Chris Potter is showing up at the Rex, though the tickets are far beyond what I am willing to spend ($55 or so) to see anything at the Rex.  I'm a little sad I didn't find anything to go to at the Rex during Jazz Fest (I was tempted by Autobahn, but then listened to their music on Youtube and realized I didn't like it after all).  But the shows in July look fairly strong and I may make it out a few times, perhaps to see Allison Au and maybe Kirk MacDonald.

I did see the Kindred Spirits Orchestra last night playing Prokofiev's Symphony 2, Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis and a lost Piano Concerto by the Canadian composer André Mathieu.  Apparently, the score was recently reconstructed from a performance recorded on some 78s and some stray parts!  The last movement was fairly interesting, though it did have about 3 too many false endings.  (Maybe it could have been used on the Lord of the Rings soundtrack...)  Overall, it was a strong concert.  I had decided at the last minute to go, and knew from experience that I could just show up and get a ticket.  (I'm still a bit annoyed/chagrined that the orchestra in Hamilton was so shambolic about letting people know if the box office was actually going to be open and missed out on a Prokofiev Violin Concerto that I wanted to see.)  On Canada Day, the KSO will be off in Unionville doing some crowd-pleasing marches and bits of film scores.  That's a bit far for me to go.  There is a chance I will catch them next May in Richmond Hill doing Shostakovich's Symphony 15 and then, almost certainly, a year from now at the Glenn Gould Studio downtown doing Tchaikovsky's Symphony 5.

It doesn't look like there is quite as much music at Nathan Phillips Square this Canada Day (one year I saw Barenaked Ladies there), but there will be some sort of celebration at City Hall.  Also, after quite the kerfuffle when the government cancelled the official celebration, the Liberals are having a smaller picnic at Queen's Park on Canada Day.  Now lists a bunch of other things to do.  Probably the most interesting of the bunch for me is Broken Social Scene at Harbourfront, but I think I will pass, having seen them already as the openers for Arcade Fire.

One interesting experiment that goes through July into early August is Outside the March's The Tape Escape, where groups of 4 or 8 patrons explore the recently-closed Queen Video store.  I think it is inspired by escape rooms, but I certainly hope it isn't an actual escape room, since that is not something I want to do.  (Also, it has to be wrapped up in an hour one way or another.)  Well, I'll find out soon enough, as I am going on July 5.  In the fall, Outside the March is putting on Annie Baker's The Flick.  I've already seen this (Steppenwolf in Chicago), but the fact that Outside the March puts so much effort into the immersive side of things, and the fact that it is playing right around the corner at Crowsnest has inspired me to go again.

Another exciting development is that the Toronto Fringe decided that, based on the solid sales from last year's Fringe for the site specific shows east of the Don River,* they could set up an actual site at Crowsnest, so there will be a bunch of Fringe shows there this year.  Now I have to admit, none of them completely grab me, but I think I'll go to one or two just because it is so close.  For me, the best of the bunch seem to be The Huns and In Waking Life.  I'm just about to put my Fringe order together, and I think the others I'll check out are an outdoor performance of The Taming of the Shrew, Molly Bloom, The Commandment, Three Men and a Bike, probably Dandelion and perhaps Box.  That's a healthy number of shows, but nothing like last year when I ending up going to see 12 or more shows (I've lost count and don't feel like trying to reconstruct last Fringe).  I actually have to compress Fringe a bit more than normal, since I have family in town for the second week and will mostly be doing touristy things with them.

I haven't entirely decided, but I may check out the Hamilton Fringe in the later part of July.  But having taken a quick look at the schedule and my vacation plans, I probably can't realistically make it out there.

I'm also just exploring the SummerWorks schedule, which covers early August.  This incarnation looks extremely political and experimental, with very few works that are traditional plays or even sketch shows.  Clearly there is a place for this (and apparently this place is SummerWorks), but this doesn't really interest me at the moment.  And that makes me a little sad.  My 20 or even 30 year old self would have been all over this, but I am at a point where I just don't really feel that political art makes a difference (other than allowing the creators, and to a lesser extent the audience, to vent).  They have a sort of interesting tour/performance piece on a bus, but it is at a time when I can't go, and then there is a staged reading of Nicolas Billon’s Greenland, which I might check out.  There is also the 3-hour Antarctica, which seems like a longer version of Greenland, so I have to decide if this really is a good use of my time...

Back to the outdoor theatre theme, Driftwood Theatre is doing their Bard's Bus Tour again and this year they are back in Withrow Park on July 26 and 27.  Last year for some reason, they skipped Withrow.  They are doing a musical version of A Midsummer's Night's Dream.  I think I'll go, even though a year or two back, Shakespeare in the Ruff had a somewhat similar concept.

This year Shakespeare in the Ruff is doing The Winter's Tale (in late August-early September).  This is far from my favourite Shakespeare play, though I'll likely go to show my support.

I'll likely skip Shakespeare in High Park again, as I just find the seating excruciating.  I definitely have no interest in Measure for Measure.  I have perhaps a bit of interest in Much Ado About Nothing, but so much depends on the cast and the direction.  (Upon further reflection, I recall that I find the main plot fairly appalling and the antics of Benedick and Beatrice don't really make up for it.  I think I'll pass, having seen this twice already over the past 3 years.)

I'm still probably skipping Shaw entirely (Barker's Victory is the only thing that might induce me to go, and this is definitely a feel-bad piece), but I'm now leaning towards Henry VIII at Stratford, though I have to figure out the most reasonable time to go, which may ultimately be in September.**

I think this covers the main events this summer, or at least the ones that have caught my attention.  Actually, I have hardly looked into music at all.  I was a bit bummed that some groups are touring but skipping Toronto, and in general, I'm not that interested in music festivals.  For me, some of the most interesting concerts will be in the fall or winter (Tinariwen at Danforth Music Hall and apparently Laurie Anderson in Jan.).  However, there are some free concerts at Yonge-Dundas Square, and I'm fairly likely to try to see Skye Wallace on July 26.  So it looks like I'll be fairly busy this summer.


* Not that I really expected it, but a bit of recognition for the trail-blazers of last year (and maybe a bit of a discount on a pass) would have been nice...

** In terms of other out of town activity, the main exhibit at Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal doesn't interest me that much, though the one the following year does.  There's a reasonable chance we could even do that over spring break 2020, so that's sort of my tentative plan.  I would like to get to Ottawa to check out the Gauguin exhibit which closes Sept. 8.  It will be a bit of a challenge to squeeze it in, but I can probably make it.

Low-Key Weekend

As far as I can tell it was a fairly uneventful Pride weekend here in Toronto, which is a good thing.  It was quite hot out, so I hope no one got sunstroke.  I know that the preparations were extensive, and that traffic had been blocked as early as Friday afternoon for the various parades Sat. and Sun.  I didn't really feel like going and dealing with the crowds (the Raptors parade was crazy enough!), and I had a fair number of things I had to do over the weekend.  I did find out, pretty much at the last minute, that Carly Rae Jepsen was going to be riding a float and singing, but that wasn't quite enough to tempt me out.

Instead, I dropped off a bike at the bike shop for a tune up.  I did some weeding and gardening with my daughter.  The yard is looking better though is not "done."  I did laundry, though unfortunately will have to rerun it because I felt asleep instead of putting it in the dryer.

Sunday I went to the gym and then the grocery store quite early.  Later I was able to sit outside for a while and catch up on some reading.  I'm nearly done with Douglas Adams' Life, the Universe and Everything.  This should be the third time through the trilogy proper, and it will be the second time I've read So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.  I'm not entirely sure* I read Mostly Harmless before.

I'm also making decent progress on Ovid's Metamorphoses.  I had already dipped into the Raeburn translation (Penguin) and didn't care that much for it.  I then checked out Melville's translation (Oxford) and found it kind of stuffy.  Also he was such a jerk about running down other translators, including Humphries, so I returned it right away.  Mandelbaum tries too hard to render the poem into rhyming couplets.  In the end, I am going to stick with Humphries, but will also check out Golding, which is the version with which Shakespeare was familiar.

I didn't make quite as much progress on cleaning up the back room as I would like.  Given that I have company coming in about two weeks, I definitely need to start on that!  Also, I should try to wrap up some bureaucratic business.  I might be able to get that done before heading off to work.  Finally, I should probably just bite the bullet and book our summer travel (planning on heading to DC in August).  Next weekend I'll probably be doing more external events, including the winding down of the Jazz Fest and then the weekend after that is Toronto Fringe, so having one relatively quiet weekend is a good thing.

* Going through some Goodreads reviews, I am quite certain I haven't read this book.  A few fans are quite adamant that this book spoils everything that came before (and recommend skipping it), though I'll still give it a shot.

Rap Parade

I'll come back around later tonight to flesh this out, but I thought I would share a few of my photos from the parade.  I have the mixed pleasure of working right next to Union Station, so when there are major events, it is quite the drag to get to work, to say nothing of getting into and out of the building itself.  However, I biked to work today, avoiding the masses of extra people on the TTC and GO trains.  A smart choice, though a bit later in the day I had to move my bike inside to prevent people from climbing up on it to get a better view.

There really wasn't anything to see for hours, and I decided I really didn't want to stand outside in the crowd waiting.  Aside from that, I did have work to do...

But we had a decent viewing area from the 2nd and 3rd floors, and I did gravitate back in time to see Nick Nurse on his own ahead of the pack.

Then it was the mascot and a float.  Then Drake's Jeep, though I think he had gravitated back to the team bus.  Then finally we had two or even three team buses.

I can't actually tell if it is Leonard or Lowry or someone else holding the trophy, but I did see the trophy with my own eyes.  Despite all the years I lived in Chicago, this is actually the first time I've been this close to a victory parade!  It is probably Ibaka taking selfies from the top of the bus, but I'm not actually sure.

Aside from the extremely unfortunate and selfish actions of the people who fired a gun at Nathan Phillips Square (4 injured, though apparently not life-threatening), it was actually a pretty amazing and mellow crowd.  I think there were very few incidents along the way.  All in all, a fairly amazing day, and even the weather cooperated.

Next mega-book?

I'm still a bit drained from getting through Musil's The Man Without Qualities.  That was an extremely long slog, particularly the last 150 pages.  It didn't help that I knew there was no meaningful ending, but it sort of dissolved into a variety of possible directions!

Perhaps I should focus on shorter books for a while.  One author that I haven't really investigated as much as I should is the acid-penned Evelyn Waugh, so maybe I'll grab one of his short novels.

Nonetheless, I have made quite major strides in getting through the rarefied parts of the canon.  I'm certainly the only person I know that has managed to read Joyce's Ulysses (twice!), Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and Musil's The Man Without Qualities.  Quite the trifecta...

That's not to say that some other people have done so.  While I wasn't that interested (or in fact interested at all) in the artworks in the exhibit focusing on Gregg Bordowitz at the Art Institute, I was interested that they included an entire wall of bookcases from his personal library.  I saw we had fairly similar tastes, at least in keeping "important" books.  He had the same edition of Musil and Proust, though he had the "corrected" Ulysses, which I've always felt was a mistake.  He also had a slightly different edition of Montaigne's Essays, speaking of another major milestone I've gotten around to recently.  And a one-volume set of Canetti's Memoirs.  In fact, there was a huge overlap between his shelves and mine, though I had more Canadian authors, as well as authors from South America (I didn't see Garcia Marquez for instance) as well as the obscure Russian writers that NYRB has been promoting.  Naturally, I didn't have nearly as many books on art nor on history or philosophy (as that is all stored in the basement).

Grossman's Stalingrad has just been shipped to me, and I am certainly tempted to read that along with Life and Fate, though I think I probably should read War and Peace beforehand, and maybe Fontane's Before the Storm, but then this becomes a many month process, and I really ought to wait for poorer weather when I am back on the TTC on a routine basis. 

In terms of stand-alone mega-novels, I could read the new(ish) translation of Don Quixote, Fuentes's Terra Nostra, Leon Forrest's Divine Days, Gaddis's The Recognitions, Alasdair Gray's Lanark, Murakami's Kafka on the Shore or Perec's Life: A User's Manual (to say nothing of the long shelf of Dickens...).  If I complicate things even more by adding in multi-book series, that would include Canetti's Memoirs, Fante's The Bandini Quartet and rereading Durrell's Alexandria Quartet.  While I do hope to get through all of these in the next five years or so (though maybe not all of the Dickens...), I think the ones that are calling the strongest are Terra Nostra, Life: A User's Manual and Kafka on the Shore.  Maybe I should just roll the dice to decide what to bring along on the next long train ride.

Back from Chicago

I am just back from Chicago.  It was one of those lightening trips that I sometimes take,* trying to squeeze as much as possible into a couple of days.  While there were a few things I would probably have done had I had an extra day or two (the Smart Museum of Art and a side trip to Powell's Books in Hyde Park, though I certainly had enough books already in my bag!, perhaps the National Museum of Mexican Art, checking out the public art in the Loop along Dearborn), I definitely got a lot done.  I saw a couple of plays on Thurs., as well as the DePaul Art Museum.  I also managed to get back to the hotel and checked in on the dying seconds of the Raptors game.  Incredible!  It's still sinking in that they actually pulled it off.  I'm so glad that it didn't go to a Game 7.  While the Raptors would have been heavily favoured with all the injuries to the Warriors, you just never know.**  I realize some people will always place an asterisk on this win, but they can go suck eggs, frankly.

On Friday I went to the Art Institute for close to 3 hours (and in fact the Cultural Center in the half hour before the Art Institute opened!).  I saw quite a bit of the Art Institute, but did skip a few sections, primarily the folk art wing and the older (pre-Impressionist) European art.  I was a bit bummed that the major Caillebotte was not on view, but it was in Berlin (in exchange for a major Manet (In the Conservatory) for their Manet special exhibit).

I guess it wasn't the worst trade in the world.  In addition, they had one of Caillebotte's Floor Scrapers on loan from the Musee d'Orsay as sort of a three-way trade, though I don't know what the Musee d'Orsay was asking in return...

I then ran off to the South Side to pick up some mail that had been piling up, since my last trip to Chicago.  Given that the bag was now quite heavy, I went straight back to the hotel.  Then I walked up to the MCA.  I have to admit that I wasn't that interested in the Virgil Abloh exhibit, though there has apparently been a fair bit of local buzz about it.  And I was really turned off by the pop-up store selling his gear.  But I got to see it all for free due to reciprocal membership privileges.

At any rate, I headed over to a fairly new Target to buy some snacks, then crossed over the Chicago River to get over to Millennium Park to see a free concert.  They were doing Beethoven's 8th Symphony and some world premiers after the intermission.  It was definitely odd programming, and a fair number of people, including myself, left at the intermission.  Apparently, Beethoven thought the 8th was a better symphony than the 7th, though I have to say I don't agree with that assessment.  And that was pretty much the trip.  I had contemplated going up to the Green Mill for old time's sake, but just was too tired.  I also wanted to get to Midway by around 8:30 in the morning, so I didn't want to be out too late.  I think the one thing that was a bit of a disappointment was that I didn't eat particularly well (mostly fast food and a very mediocre Thai restaurant on Lincoln), but I suppose I can correct that on the next visit.

I did manage to get through a fair bit of reading on the trip.  I wrapped up Achebe's Arrow of God, which is the third book in his African Trilogy (focused on the impact of colonialism in Africa).  I have to say that I didn't care that much for it, perhaps because I got tired of the number of times one person would tell another to "eat shit."  Also, quite a few of the metaphors involved excrement, and I just got tired of this as well.  The ending was sort of bleakly ironic, however, though it didn't completely redeem the novel.  I also got through 2.5 (out of 5) books in the Hitchhiker's Trilogy.  I'm not entirely sure I read the last one, Mostly Harmless, so I decided I would reread all of them, for the first time in probably 10 years or so.


* Interestingly, I had to compile a list of all the dates I have been out of the country for the past 5 years.  I made another lightening trip to Chicago in 2016, an overnight trip to Cleveland in 2015, a slightly longer trip to Minneapolis and Chicago in 2016, and Buffalo/St. Louis/Chicago in 2015.

** I thought that the Raptors really should have won Game 5 except for a combination of really hot shooting by Curry and Klay and cold shooting by Lowry, Gasol, et al.  Then the NBA basically came out and admitted that the blown foul call (or rather no-call on Gasol) would likely have swung the game the other way.  In a sense, I thought Game 6 probably should have gone to the Warriors, but perhaps Curry used up all his luck in Game 5.  Needless to say, I am very glad the team doesn't have to go through the stress of a Game 7.  Now we just wait and see what Kawhi decides to do, though I don't think there will be too many hard feelings if he leaves in the end.

So Close

I had really meant to get over to the gym Monday night, but I was completely exhausted from work (4 straight hours of leading interviews to fill a junior position), and I was frankly sick of getting rained on, pretty much all day.  I woke up to find that, despite some outrageously poor 3-point shooting (which hopefully will not be repeated), the Raptors lost by one measly point!  However, Kevin Durant went down again and is out for the rest of the series, and that will take a heavy toll on their team.  (He really probably should not have been out there in the first place.)  While it will be a real struggle to win Game 6 in Oakland, I think the Raptors have to go in and take the title away and not chance a Game 7.  If Game 6 is Wed., I will try to make it to the gym (to do my part), though I am heading out of town Thurs.  If it is Thurs., then they'll be on their own...

Catching Up

Not sure it is really possible to catch up on everything over the past 3 or so weeks.  Work has been fairly intensive.  It got much worse, but lately things are on the upswing.  We're taking our main findings to the Board at the end of the month, so we are sweating a bit over that.

I haven't actually seen all that much theatre.  I did see Hand to God at Coal Mine.  It was definitely different.  I had actually planned to riff on a fairly silly thing that someone in the Coal Mine administration said, but I'm not sure I care that much anymore.

There are some amazing shows like McCraney's The Brothers Size (oops, I guess this recently closed) and Lett's August: Osage County at Soulpepper (for another 3 weeks or so), but in both cases I didn't want to take away from the performances I had seen at Steppenwolf in Chicago.  Still, I would recommend checking out August: Osage County if you've not seen it before (and no, the movie doesn't really count).

I did see The Memory of Water at East Side Players, but really disliked this play, leaving at the intermission, feeling that my time could be spent finishing up (finally!) Musil's The Man Without Qualities.  I may discuss this disappointing play in a separate post (though it is somewhat like beating a dead horse).  I somehow missed a George Walker play at Red Sandcastle, and while I probably would have gone, I actually had seen this play from the Suburban Motel series previously, and it wasn't a premiere as the website mistakenly informed me.

At any rate, I did manage to finish Musil, as well as Ed Park's Personal Days (ok satire of corporate drones, but not as good as Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris), Saul Bellow's Ravelstein (started reasonably well, but was pretty shapeless and baggy by the end -- probably would have been better off as a novella), Albert Cossery's The House Of Certain Death, and in a new twist, a couple of novels (The Doomed City and Monday Starts on Saturday) by the Strugatsky Brothers which I had to read on my phone.  It's not my favorite way of reading, and I'll try to avoid this in the future.*  I read a couple of poetry books by Canadian poets, and I'll certainly try to get around to reviewing them this month.  Finally, I ripped through Madeleine St John's The Women in Black in a couple of days.  (It is nice to be reading some shorter and generally less serious works as summer finally gets underway.)

I did catch a couple of concerts at the Bach Festival (held on the Danforth!), even taking my son to one matinee.  Probably the most rocking event I attended was the CD release party for Agit Pop, the new CD from The Lowest of the Low.  That was quite a bit of fun.  I've now seen TLOTL 3 times (and 2 separate CD release parties!), which is quite a bit for a band from the 90s that has only relatively recently reformed and started touring again.

I did make it over to the Gardiner Museum to see the Ai Weiwei exhibit, which was ok but a bit underwhelming.  There was only a relatively small pile of porcelain sunflower seeds and none for sale in the gift shop.  This weekend I finally got serious about checking out some of the Scotiabank photography exhibits around town.  A few had already closed, but I saw 5 or so on Saturday (and one the previous Sunday at Todmorden Mills) and then two more on Sunday.  I'll try to get over to the Hart House Museum before the end of July in order to catch their Carrie Mae Weems exhibit.

Somewhere towards the beginning of all this, I took my son to TCAF at the Toronto Reference Library.  I was pretty good and didn't buy much at all, though I did take notes on things that I thought might be of interest down the road.  I got into a bit of a discussion with the rep from NYRB, who saw I had my Musil tome with me.  We talked briefly about Rezzori's Abel and Cain, as well as the fact that they are publishing a chunk of volume 2 of The Man Without Qualities as Agathe (the Forgotten Sister).  I personally found the Ulrich-Agathe storyline particularly dull, so I am surely not the intended audience. 

I that largely covers things.  I decided to largely bail on Luminato this year (tickets are just a bit too expensive, and I'm starting to get uptight about all my discretionary spending), though I'll probably check out a few Fringe shows.  I'll write about this in a separate post fairly soon.  And of course, like most of the city, I am waiting with bated breath to see if the Raptors pull it off on Monday.  I think that's about as much detail as I want to go into for now.


* In terms of actually deeply enjoying anything I've been reading (rather than just enduring it), Cossery wasn't too bad.  However, I haven't really connected with any fiction since Russel Hoban's Turtle Diary a while back.  Unfortunate.  Indeed, I just started Achebe's Arrow of God.  I had high hopes, but I can tell right off the bat that this isn't really my thing.  I'll try to finish it, however.

Breaking radio silence (Go Raptors!)

This may have been the longest I have gone without posting in some time, though I have made very minor updates to my primary reading list, striking off books I've finished.  It's not that I didn't feel like writing, but I just haven't really had the time.  When I am at the computer at home, I'm working on one special project or another (and feeling guilty about not having time to support an academic research paper).

However, I thought it was worth posting to celebrate the Raptors and their improbable success.  I certainly hope I don't jinx it, but it does seem improbable that they don't win one more game out of the next three (with two of them being at home).  Famous last words I know, and they really need to put the hammer down on Monday.  The good news is that they finally have a player or two with that killer instinct, who won't let up until it is over.  Even if Kevin Durant comes back in game 5, he will be so out of shape that he will probably do more harm than good, aside from providing moral/emotional support for the Warriors, but he might actually contribute in game 6 or 7, so best to close it out Monday.

I'll be honest and say that I didn't think they had that much of a chance against the Bucks after losing the first two games (and getting so close to winning the first one must have been heart-breaking) and then just barely winning game 3 in double-overtime.  However, that was sort of the low point, and the other (non-Kawhi) players finally started hitting their shots, and the series turned in their favour.

At the start of the championship finals, I didn't think they had a particularly good shot at knocking off the Warriors, but I didn't feel it was impossible, as they #1) had home-court advantage and #2) play much more intense defence than most of the West Coast teams the Warriors normally play against.  In fact, Five-Thirty-Eight gave a slight edge to the Raptors, but even they weren't sure they believed their model.  At any rate, I was at the gym on Friday, just occasionally checking out the score, and the Raptors were hanging pretty tough with the Warriors until about halfway into the first quarter when they went completely cold.  They were just slowly digging their way out of that hole when I left the gym, but I didn't really like their chances.  Of course, they pulled away in the third quarter and that was it.  It's kind of odd for me to care about a sporting event that has so little to do with me (aside from messing up traffic near where I work!), but I would like them to win.  Toronto will go pretty crazy (and Trump will sulk and send out some stupid tweets).  I may even do the superstition thing of repeating what I did last Friday (to obviously give them a better chance of winning game 5).  So that means working out at the gym at the start of the game, which means I probably need to go to the gym early today.  A small sacrifice on my part.