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 to 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!
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