It would almost be funny if it weren't so annoying. Just the other day the Star ran an article with the breathless headline that the TPL website was back up. If you actually read the article, it acknowledged that the website is still almost completely useless, pointing users to things that had never been taken down, like Overdrive. In fact, the on-site computers are still turned off and the library catalog and hold system (and indeed museum pass* booking system!) are all off-line and will be at least through Feb.
As it happens, I went into my local branch yesterday. While I don't really need any more books to divert me from the current reading list, which already has a few last-minute additions (principally Lermontov and Goncharov), I had noticed a fairly new collection of short stories by Zora Neal Hurston, Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick. What is notable about this collection is that there are 4 lost stories set in Harlem, which is forcing a revision to the claim that Hurston was a purely "country" writer. It was still on the shelf, so I decided to grab it. I chatted briefly with the librarian, and she said there had been weekly delays on hitting the internal progress markers. She didn't think things would be back to normal until mid to late March, which sounds about right. I guess the only saving grace for a person like me with too many books out (Shields's Swann and now Crooked Stick) is that nothing is actually due until the system is back up and running. But I do wish it were already back up...
Over at the still functioning library system, i.e. Robarts, I was able to get a few art books back on time. I decided to check out Lodgers ✓ by Nenad Veličković, which at least is pretty short. I also borrowed Once Upon a Time (Bomb) by Manlio Argueta.** I couldn't even really reconstruct how I cam across these books, but it was probably indirectly through the New York Times Book Review. I'm pretty sure that Lodgers was advertised at the back of Drago Jančar's Joyce's Pupil, though exactly how I came across Joyce's Pupil, I'm not so sure.
Incidentally, this past edition of NYTBR was pretty deadly in terms of adding too much on top of an already teetering pile of books. There was a piece on the fiction of Lima, Peru (sorry, I know it's behind a paywall...). From that I took that I really ought to read César Vallejo's Human Poems ✓. Also, A World for Julius by Alfredo Bryce Echenique and Lost City Radio by Daniel Alarcón. All of these are at Robarts, and I think I'll be able to tackle Vallejo's poems, Lodgers and Lost City Radio. A World for Julius is simply too long for me to try to read in two weeks, so this one will have to wait for me to see if TPL does have a copy somewhere in the system and borrow it that way. Anyway, certainly enough (reading) distractions for one week.
Actually, that reminds me that I think I'll be able to stop by the Music Library on Thurs. and borrow a few CDs. It used to be alumni borrowers could only listen to CDs in the library itself, but at some point after COVID that restriction was lifted. Score! Obviously, it won't take me nearly as long to get through a few jazz and classical CDs as it would to read a couple of novels and some poetry...
Edit (02/05): I was able to finish up McCarthy's The Group (and I'll write a bit about it later), but I have not launched into Pym's Excellent Women yet. I had two Robarts books (which still carry hefty late fees!). They're on the short side, but I probably really do need to hunker down and just read this weekend. I will technically be between jobs, so that may help. Anyway, I was able to return a few books back to Robarts this evening, but couldn't help myself and borrowed The Empty Book by Josefina Vicens, which is apparently a quite short novel about the difficulties of writing a novel. It might be appropriate, though I am a bit more blocked with my drama writing, not least because there is no great outlet for it at the moment. So I have 3 books from Robarts before I return to Pym and then most likely A Hero of Our Time and then probably a Rushdie novel (and perhaps O'Brien's America Fantastica on the trip to Buffalo). Always so much reading on the go.
* This one is a particularly bitter blow, since it was only a few months into some new on-line system only a few months before the attack. They had a system where physical museum passes were handed out that had been in place for years and worked well overall. I think it was pure stubbornness on the management's part not to revert back to the old system, esp. once it became clear the recovery was going to be a many-month process.
** While nowhere near as frustrating, Robart's copy of Argueta's Little Red Riding Hood in the Red Light District is in limbo, or rather has been removed from the shelves and is in an apparently month-long process to migrate it to the Downsview storage facility. I keep hoping that it will pop up as available at Downsview, but it looks like I have longer to wait. Not that I don't have plenty to read in the meantime...
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