Book (Sale) News

It's not like I need more books.  In many ways it is a sickness that I have so many, but I will say I've been getting better at picking up cheap books that are not for me but for the Little Free Library out front.  This sort of satisfies the urge to hunt for books and have them in my hand (temporarily) and still not end up with one more book on a stack that I won't get to for years.  Or at least that's what I tell myself.

It turns out that I missed the UVic book sale.  It was Sept. 19-23.  Now the 21st, I was in Stratford all day, and then I was getting ready for a trip out to Vancouver.  But I probably could have stopped by on the 20th had I known about it.  I just didn't really see any signs about it and haven't been going to the UT campus (and definitely not UVic) as much lately.  This site helps keep track of the book sales, and presumably it will flip over to 2025 sale dates at some point.

I guess the St. Michael's book sale was the same time as University College's sale.  I didn't find out about the sale at St. Mike's in time, and this was the first time I dropped in to the one at University College.  Incidentally, I found out about University College due to a small notice pasted onto a Little Free Library in Leslieville!  It just so happens that University College's sale (and St. Mike's) are on at the same time as Word on the Street in Queens Park, which may be intentional or just a quirk of the calendar, as the book sales generally are all scheduled very early in the new school year.  I'll come back to a short report on the University College sale and Word on the Street shortly.  I haven't missed the one at Trinity, which is at the end of Oct., but the only day I can go check it out is the 24th, right before a concert I am attending, so I'll just have to hope this place doesn't have a strict bag policy...  (Or maybe I'll leave work early, go to the sale, drop books off at home and come back downtown.  A bit daft, but I've done odder things before.)

Generally most (non-rare) books at these sales are $3 to $5, which is certainly good, but not as amazing (for stocking up the Little Free Library) as the $2 books at St. Andrews.  I can't find a listing on-line.  They usually have one book sale that runs at the same time as the TIFF festival, but then there are other book sales throughout the year.  Perhaps one in the spring and one in summer.  I usually find a few things of interest there, so I'll try to figure out what sort of schedule they really are on.

I mentioned before that I had stopped off at the Toronto Reference Library for their rare book sale back in Sept. and picked up a few art books but passed on a John Marin book.  They said that the Winter book sale was the one with all the cheap, cheap books, so I'll try to go back to that.  This is supposed to be Nov. 14-6.  Now as it happens, I am debating going to NYC on Nov. 13, and if I do that, I would perhaps take the train to DC for a day, so I might not actually make it back by the 16th, but we shall see.  This is mostly about stocking up with books for outside, so it isn't completely essential that I go.

I also mentioned that I gave up on Powers's The Gold Bug Variations.  It was ultimately not sufficiently interesting for me to overlook how much Powers needed to show off the world how clever he was.  I liked Joy Williams's The Quick and the Dead much more, though it was quite episodic, and I didn't think the ending made a lot of sense.  These shortcomings will probably keep it from being one of the best books of the year, though there have been a lot of generally disappointing books this year (2023 was generally a better year for reading).

That said, I am tackling Powell's The Golden Spur next, and this should be tres amusant.  I reread the last few pages of The Wicked Pavilion to help me get back into the right frame of mind.  And right after that, it will be Kilometer 101 by Maxim Osipov (from NYRB).  These should be pretty interesting, and neither is terribly long.  

I'm off to Stratford next weekend (to see Something Rotten in fact), and I'll be taking DuPont's The American Fiancée with me.  The following weekend I should be travelling to Raleigh, and I'll likely finish that book and take something I can leave behind with me (maybe Manu Joseph's Serious Men).  And then I fly the week to Edmonton immediately after that.  I have a few options, but probably I'll take Oliver Twist, though I'm wondering if perhaps I should consider Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles.  As I said a bit before, I definitely want to tackle Atwood's The MaddAdam Trilogy soon, but it doesn't actually work as well as the others as a long travel read.

I see I have run out of time (largely due to the many, many times I had to try to restart the computer to upgrade Kindle, which still isn't working quite properly).  I'll try to fill in a bit more about Word on the Street when I get back.

I'll just end with some thoughts on shorter books.  I am mostly done with Freud's The Question of Lay Analysis and should wrap that up this weekend with a bit of a push.  I had planned on tackling Kennedy's Ironweed as the next very short book, but actually I picked up Melville's Billy Budd combined with The Encantadas for $1 from the University College books sale.  I have read a fair bit of Melville (including both The Confidence Man and Moby Dick twice!), but never Billy Budd.  So I'll read that next and then put it outside.  After this (from the "short list") probably a collection of Orwell's lesser known essays and then perhaps Huxley's The Devils of Loudun.  I should be able to squeeze in Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 in there somewhere.  And then maybe Forster's Howard's End.  The only issue with that it is in an omnibus with A Room with a View, so it doesn't particularly feel like a short read.  Well, first world problems and all that.  Time to run.  Ta!

Sad Art Day

I thought about calling this Bad Art Day, but that would be unfair.  I just wasn't moved by a lot of what I saw on Sat., both during the day and at Nuit Blanche, but I don't think much of it was bad art, though I might make an exception for what is on at the Market Gallery, where almost everything on view is a bit of a rip-off of Norval Morrisseau's style.

Sat. did get off to a bit of a rocky start, when I turned up at the Regent Park pool and because nearly all the life guards had called in sick at the last minute, the hot tub wasn't open (sigh) and we had to wait in line until enough other people had left the pool, so that was quite annoying.  And even though there were slightly fewer people swimming laps than usual, the medium lanes were just as congested as ever.  I managed to get in 19 laps and finally bailed before I got even more frustrated.  It wasn't a complete disaster, but it wasn't ideal.

I ran over to the TMU Image Centre, since I hadn't seen this since the main exhibit switched over to one featuring Lee Miller.  Most of the images are fashion-oriented and not very interesting to me, though there is a room of her WWII images, some of which are grim indeed.  But this exhibit mostly feels like a missed opportunity.  They surely could have found a space for Lee Miller taking a bath in Hitler's tub on the day his death was announced, which is generally read as a way of mocking him.  (More on that story here.)

But her connection to the art world, particularly Picasso, is turned into nothing more than a footnote, and none of the 1000s of images she took of him and his work (or any of the published Vogue spreads) are included.  This seems like a very poor decision on the Image Centre's part.  Anyway, more on Miller and Picasso here.

After this, I tried unsuccessfully to buy a mango lassi, then went over to The Powerplant.  I wasn't particularly interested in the exhibits.  I ran next door and saw some of the exhibits there.  That paid off, as the Power Plant wasn't going to participate in Nuit Blache and the building next door was closing quite early (8:30!).  This is a far cry from the glory days of Nuit Blanche when many museums participated all night long (or at least that's how I remember it).

I went over to the St. Lawrence Market and ran upstairs to the Market Gallery.  As I already indicated, this was very disappointing, and I ran back home, stopping along the way to pick up some groceries.

I had real work to do in the afternoon and early evening, and I didn't actually head out for Nuit Blanche until 9:15 or so!  My path this time was the Lee Daniels Lightbox in Regent Park, then the Bentway (though I actually overshot it and ended up in Liberty Village!).  I think I actually saw a coy-wolf skulking around but didn't manage to get a picture.

It really did look almost exactly like this, however, and I did wonder if it was a wolf, though a coy-wolf (or Eastern Coyote) is certainly more likely.

The Bentway art was ok but nothing particularly spectacular.  There weren't all that many people around either.  I was disappointed that there was nothing in Fort York proper (and I guess there wasn't last year either), though there was an inflated light bulb (sponsored by Toronto Hydro) near Fort York.

It was quite challenging to get back to Stackd Market (because drivers on Bathurst were so terrible!) but that was perhaps the most interesting site of the night.  

There was some DJ playing as I biked past The Well, but it didn't look like there was actually any art on view, so I kept going.  I should have hooked right on Spadina, but the traffic was insane, even worse than Bathurst, so I went on to Blue Jay Way and finally got over to Harbourfront.  I guess I probably should have backtracked to the Music Garden, but I just didn't feel like it.  There wasn't all that much art where I was, but there was a great big space filled with multicultural food vendors.  At least there was quite the buzz of people out at night, having a good time.  (I also guess there was some stuff on at 401 Richmond, and I do regret not going back for that, but again it would probably have involving having to deal with Spadina traffic...)

Then I went over to Union and saw a few things, though again one exhibit had closed early.  There was something going on at King and Bay, but it was indoor art and the line to get in was far too long.  I was astounded that there was nothing going on at Nathan Philips Square, which is usually kind of the heart of Nuit Blanche.  There certainly wasn't much on on Yonge St., particularly compared to last year when Yonge was sort of the spine of the whole thing (pre-pandemic Spadina was more of the heart of things).  There was one last outdoor exhibit at Yonge-Dundas Square.  It wasn't all that interesting.  What was more interesting was I was there at the same time as the cyclists doing their own sort of art parade showed up, then they went to King and Bay and I went home.  

I think I spent roughly 2.5 hours out and about, which is probably a bit less than most years.  

I guess there were a few things of interest that I did miss, including some billboards that were "talking" to each other (not quite sure where that was), but I felt this time around things were too spread out and not very well coordinated.  I was really disappointed in how few art hubs and/or spines there were this time around, aside from the waterfront sites, maybe because the city didn't want to pay even more overtime to deal with traffic control (and deal with even more complaints from suburbanites who already hate driving around the city).  As far as I can tell, no streets were shut down for Nuit Blanche, and they usually are.  It was also a major disappointment that no or nearly no major art institutions or civic centres (with exception of Union Station) were participating.  I definitely found this a real missed opportunity.  So, as I said, a fairly sad day for art in the city...