Cutting It Close

I think I mentioned that I just gave up on trying to submit a piece to the Toronto Star short story contest.  I do have a decent idea and it was written out, but I just couldn't find the time to type it out.  (I definitely should take a week off and just type up all the other material I have written in long-hang before I completely forget what I was trying to write out.  My hand-writing is pretty hard to decipher, even for me...)

Anyway, as I mentioned a couple of times, my old computer went down, and I really needed that to some some specialized computing to finish up this paper.  I really should have spent the evenings working on it, but mostly I spent the time on work work unfortunately.  So I ended up backed into a corner and the one week extension I had came and went, and I said I would try to wrap it up and turn it in over the weekend.

On Friday, I did manage to get the estimation software working, and I also figured out how to get Stata to produce weighted cross-tabs.  This is something that is a breeze in SPSS, though I used to have to do this from home, since I can't get my employer to install SPSS.  I did work from home on Friday.  Now in an ideal world, where I wasn't being pressed so much on the work front, I probably would have gone to see Gary Smulyan playing on Thurs., and then run over to the Revue to see Wenders's The American Friend on Friday.  Instead, I ended up staying until the last minute and then went to see Smulyan on Friday instead.  It was a good show.  I wrote out a lot of notes for the paper, though I have to admit, this was more useful for getting my thoughts together, and I didn't really use most of them in the final draft.

Sat. I went to the gym reasonably early, then took my daughter over to this bakery where she will be volunteering next week.  Her mother took her home, and I went over to Woodbine Beach.  I want to check out the Winter Stations exhibit.  I seem to manage to get to it every other year, and I was reasonably determined to go this year.  The pieces aren't really what one would call great art, but they are somewhat playful, and the best of them allow for children to clamber all over them.

It was pretty chilly, and I had to make a big loop to get back to Beach Cinema.  I had checked a couple of times, and Mickey 17 was playing at 3:30.  However, when I got there at 3:27, someone had changed the schedule, and it was now scheduled to play at 3:10!  Even with the 10 minutes of trailers, I would be coming in a few minutes into the film, so I just turned around and left.  This happened to me before, spoiling one of the very last times I could convince my daughter to let me take her to the movies (I think it was the Wreck It Ralph sequel where they had switched the times of the regular and 3-D versions of the film).  I'm generally a pretty unforgiving guy, and this will probably be the very last time I attempt to see a movie at Beach Cinema.  I swung by the Jones Library on the way back, and then mostly just crashed, between disappointment and general exhaustion.  I had debated going back out to see Smulyan a second time, or maybe to see if I could catch an evening show of Mickey 17.  In the end, I didn't really do much, aside from get some rest and run a few last cross tabs of the data.  I should have pushed myself to write more of the paper, but I just didn't.  

On Sunday, I biked over to Jimmie Simpson to swim.  Then I picked up a few groceries.  Then I worked on the paper pretty much straight though until 6 pm.  I then ran over to the Revue to see Guy Maddin's My Winnepeg.  Transit was not cooperative, and I ended up showing up 5 minutes late, just as the final previews were showing.  (This is getting a bit old...)  It was an interesting film, mixing true stories about Winnepeg history with his own family history.  It was certainly quirky.  I took the King streetcar (and actually was able to get a bit more of the paper drafted on the way).  I ended up stopping in at the office, and just powered through.  I ended up turning in a really rough draft after 1 am.  In fact, I found out (at the last minute) that I had formatted the paper incorrectly, so I tried to get that in shape, which took maybe another 30 minutes.  It's far from my best work, but it's not too shabby for a paper written in a day and a half, and the main thing is it keeps me on the program for this conference in Ottawa in May, and it sets me up to work with these professors on turning this into a proper paper.

I finally left the office around 2 am.  Fortunately, the streetcars were still running, and I just managed to catch a Kingston car, which dropped me off at Queen and Carlaw.  Unfortunately, the night bus wasn't scheduled to stop by for 25 minutes, so I had to walk home.  My mood was not helped by the fact that it actually snowed, and of course I hadn't thought to wear books.

I worked from home on Monday, though I should have take more time off.  I ended up going over to Paradise after all.  And I left enough time this time that I was able to drop in at African Palace for Ethiopian food.  I was there to see Fellini's La Strada.  Wow, that was a depressing film...  I don't exactly regret watching it, but I can't really envision watching it again.

I generally am not taking transit much these days, but, when I do, I am slowly making my way through Soseki's I am a Cat.  I brought this on the trip up to Ottawa and managed to get 300 pages into it (which is definitely better than my progress on a few other long trips).  I only just recently hit page 400, and there are 200 pages more to go!  I have to admit, this isn't really grabbing me, so I am trying to read it gently, and I will take it over to Seekers Bookstore after I finish reading it.

 

I think for the last few chapters, I will alternate a relatively short book and then a "cat" chapter.  I think it will likely be Gide's Lafcadio's Adventures, perhaps Dawn Powell's story collection Sunday, Monday and Always and then Joy Williams's State of Grace.  That might provide a bit of variety while still clearing out a few more books.  I think after this will be Lampedusa's The Leopard and then maybe Dorothy Edward's Winter Sonata (or I could reverse them while winter is still fresh in memory).

It's going to be another overstuffed week, but I am going to try not to do quite so much over the weekend.

Computer Almost Back in Business

The timing was just terrible to try to carve out time to set up this new computer, as I had an incredibly busy week at work, just like the previous week in fact.  We had a number of impossible deadlines, and the only realistic way to make them was to work overtime.  I definitely can't have this become the new norm.  As if that weren't enough, I needed to try to write a paper by the end of day.  I thought just possibly I could do it, but the questions at work never stopped, and at some point I just gave up.  Indeed, I eventually went to The Rex to see Gary Smulyan (backed by Neil Swainson and Terry Clarke).  I did write down a lot of notes for the paper, but I didn't have a laptop or any such thing with me.  I told the people at the conference that if the portal for papers was still open on Sunday, I would submit, but that would be the best I could do.  I probably shouldn't even have promised that, as I desperately need a break.  If it hadn't been for work (and this paper deadline) I would probably have managed to see Smulyan yesterday, then I might have gone to see Wenders's The American Friend at the Revue tonight.  That said, going to see Smulyan was fine; I believe this is the first time I've heard him live.

I'm not actually sure what I will do tomorrow.  Ideally, I will take my daughter to this bakery she is supposed to volunteer at next week, though I suspect she will bail on me, esp. as it will likely rain.  I'd like to go swimming, though I have to say the times aren't ideal, though I might be able to make it back to Matty Eckler in the early evening.  I would like to get over to 401 Richmond, but that seems unlikely.  It looks like there is one exhibit at Red Head Gallery that closes tomorrow, but I think I will just not make it.  I definitely need to get to 401 Richmond on the 29th.  I believe this is the same day I am seeing Truck at Factory, so at least I'll be in the right general area.  Anyway, I am likely to be staying east this Sat., as I will see if I can get to the Beaches to see Winter Stations (which closes March 30, I believe), and then will likely see Mickey 17 at the movie theatre out that way as well.  (Of course, this does somewhat depend on not feeling particularly guilty about missing the paper deadline.)

Anyway, back to my computer updates.  While I would never have recommended this, there have been a few positives.  I believe I mentioned that Mailstore now works again after a gap of several months, and I was able to find the old emails.  I was able to get TotalRecorder working after getting those old emails back.

It tooks a few tries but I managed to get iTunes back on the computer.  So far it hasn't kept asking for the password, knock wood.  A lot of programs were relatively simple to get back, including 7-Zip, VLC Player and Libre Office and IfranView (once I remembered its name).  I ended up going with a new CD ripper - EAC (Exact Audio Copy).

What was relatively difficult to the point I nearly gave up was getting Kindle and Calibre set up the right way.  (I was getting extremely put out over this.)  However, I think it is oddly enough a staging issue in fact.  It is best to get Kindle for PC back on the computer, then Adobe Digital Editions, and then finally the right version of Calibre.  It was incredibly frustrating, but it seems to be working again.

About the only thing I haven't been able to figure out is how to bring MODI (the MS Tiff editor) out from hiding.  It is possible that it simply isn't possible in Windows 11, and there are a handful of alternatives, but it is still annoying.  And while I think I downloaded the latest version, I don't think I have installed Notepad ++, which I will need to do, as I have a need for it coming up quickly.  I also have a subscription to SPSS (as well as Disney and Crave).  I don't think I'll get the temp license for SPSS back in time, so I really ought to follow through with cancelling!

Oh, there is also some good news.  I had copied some of the key files from the damaged hard drive to a USB memory stick, but it basically said everything was damaged and corrupted.  This was a hard blow, but I wanted to give it another try, so I picked up a new hard drive from Staples.  I was able to copy the damaged files.  I believe this was a successful rescue effort (and it was just a failure on the part of the USB stick, not expecting such a huge transfer of data!), though I will have to sit down later and try to open up every one of the transferred files.  So this put me in a pretty good mood for once.  I think the amount of files that I actually lost is probably pretty low, all things considered.  (Weirdly enough, I can't seem to recover a playlet I wrote as SFYS was winding down.  I submitted it through Google forms, rather than emailing it, or I could track it down that way.  I still have the hand-written notes, but I certainly don't feel like retyping it if I don't have to...)

Ok, with that I really had better get back to this paper, at least for an hour or two.  Ciao! 

Edit to add: I forgot that I have plugged in an old scanner, and the new computer doesn't seem to recognize it.  So I am a little hesitant on trying to install drivers and such, though I may do that at some point, after I clear the desk to the point I can see which cable is going where!  I do have a newish printer, and if things get to that point, it can do basic scanning, but I would still prefer to get this old scanner working.

Three Off-the-Beaten Path Film Makers

I've been thinking a bit more about Universal Language, which was the Canadian film where almost all the dialogue was in Farsi or (to my mind) very strangled French.  I suppose this was partly to foreground the strangeness of the world of the film but mostly as a nod to the Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiarostami.  I've actually seen very few of Kiarostami's films.  I'm fairly sure I will not really care for his work, but I'll try to watch a few of the more central films, like Taste of Cherry and perhaps Certified Copy.  I did watch The Traveler, which is about a selfish boy trying to see a soccer match, at TIFF, but I didn't enjoy it at all.  It reminded me too much of Narayan's Swami and Friends.

Here's a shortened list of Kiarostami films that are generally available in North America:
The Koker trilogy - Where Is the Friend's Home? (1987)
And Life Goes On aka Life and Nothing More (1992)
Through the Olive Trees (1994)
Close-Up (1990) - not part of the Koker trilogy
Taste of Cherry (1997)
The Wind Will Carry Us (1999)
Ten (2002)
Tickets (2005) with additional sections directed by Ken Loach and Ermanno Olmi
Certified Copy (2010)
Like Someone in Love (2012)
24 Frames (2017) - Posthumously released

I don't think I've seen any of these, though it is possible I watched Like Someone in Love at TIFF.

Kiarostami also was the story writer on Jafar Panahi's The White Balloon, which I'll probably get around to one of these days.  It's not really all that many films, and nearly all are still available through Criterion (though the DVD of Taste of Cherry is no longer available, as they put out a Blu-Ray instead).

While there are not great similarities between Kiarostami and Aki Kaurismäki, I usually think of them together, though I would say Kaurismäki films are definitely more plot-driven.

Here are Kaurismäki's main films:
O Crime and Punishment  (1983)
O Calamari Union (1985)
Shadows in Paradise (1986)
O Hamlet Goes Business (1987)
Ariel (1988)
Leningrad Cowboys Go America  (1989)
The Match Factory Girl  (1990)  
Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses (1994)   
Total Balalaika Show (1994)
O Drifting Clouds (1996)
The Man Without a Past (2002)
Lights in the Dusk (2006)
Le Havre  (2011)
The Other Side of Hope (2017)
Fallen Leaves (2023)

I actually own a couple of DVD sets by Kaurismäki, though they are mostly gathering dust.  I did watch Hamlet Goes Business, which is certainly quirky.  I did see Fallen Leaves at TIFF back when it came out.  I thought I had seen The Other Side of Hope at Facets in Chicago, but given the timing, that's not possible.

Fairly recently, a new Blu-ray set came out, covering essentially everything Kaurismäki did through The Other Side of Hope.  It's a tough call, given there is a fair bit of duplication with what I have.  Also, I'm fairly sure I'm not going to really be into the Leningrad Cowboys.  The middle ones in the Proletariat Trilogy (Ariel and Match Factory Girl) and late films are covered pretty well by Criterion and are easy to rent through the library.  I would definitely have gotten the set had Fallen Leaves been in there, but it stops just short.  I will probably think about it for a while (and watch a couple other of his films) and then most likely get it anyway given all the shorts and bonus features in the set, but I'm a little annoyed.

The last film-maker in today's post moves us from Finland to Sweden.  Roy Andersson is another quirky director.  Apparently, he has retired from film-making, but one never knows.  I've certainly seen a higher proportion of his films, as I definitely saw You, the Living (perhaps at Facets) and I'm almost certain I also saw A Pigeon...  I thought that the scene with the house moving on tram tracks (from You, the Living) was similar in spirit to some of the more absurd sections of Universal Language.

Andersson's main films
A Swedish Love Story (1970)
Giliap (1975)
Songs from the Second Floor (2000)
You, the Living (2007)
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014)
About Endlessness (2019)

A Blu-Ray set came out from BFI with all of these films, aside from Giliap, and adds a documentary, Being a Human Person.  I went ahead and ordered this and am just waiting for it to turn up.  So that's the round-up for today.

 

Computer Follies

I was pretty close to having a meltdown in that I know I had backed up everything in my MailStore archives, but I wasn't able to find it anywhere.  It finally turned up thankfully.  Now it is definitely easier merging two databases if I had MailStore Server, but you have to pay for that.  I am going to see if I can get it to work with the freeware version, but I have saved off the new archive (of the recent emails I haven't been able to back up for months), in case something goes wrong, as it likely will...

It terms of overall priorities, I would say it is getting Total Recorder back up and running, and then the wav editor I use.  I'd like to get Calibre reinstalled soon, as well as Kindle_for_PC and then probably iTunes.  I'm pretty sure I do remember my password for iTunes.  For whatever reason, I had to plug in my password every week or so, so I got increasingly salty towards Apple. 

So there was a snag, as there always is with MailStore in that it upgraded to version 25 recently, which means that old archives are invalid.  It's possible to downgrade to 24.2, which I did but it isn't entirely clear how to then export the files into the new format.  I'm sure it is possible, and at least my old emails (from as far back as 2011) are still saved, which is what I really cared about, even though some of the even older emails are in a not particularly useful format.  I think what I will do is rerun the archiving of my current email, which seems a bit stupid, but it will combine newish emails with what was already archived, and then I'll figure out how to move the whole enchilada over to version 25, though not for a month or two I suspect.

I had some image editing program I liked - Irfanview or something like that.  And a PDF editing software that was useful - I think it was PDF Split And Merge Basic.  And there is supposed to be a way to restore the MS Tif editor (MOBI?), so I'll see if that is still possible in Windows 11.  I will probably reload Beyond 2020 which is a special software used to look at Census data files (from the Canadian Census) and 7 Zip. And I guess LibreOffice, though I don't use it all that much.  Oh, and I guess Comic Rack to read cbr files.

The last rolling update for the evening.  TotalRecorder was pitching a bit of a fit, but I finally got it up and running.  One added bonus was the registration key I had (from an email in that archive from nearly 10 years ago!) still worked, so I am golden.  

I think I'll just download a few more of the missing programs but actually install them in a day or two.  

 

Back in Business (& Back on the Bike)

I truly don't have much time to post right now, but I thought I would mention that about a week ago, my home computer crashed.  I knew this was coming and had been fairly good about backing stuff up, but then work got extremely busy and I went a bit crazy downloading stuff from Anna's Archive.  This was all just sitting in my Download folder, and in fact I had bought another flashdrive and was going to copy everything the next day (famous last words) whereas that day I was making space on another hard drive in order to free up space on my phone (prior to heading out to Ottawa to see Our Lady Peace and Collective Soul*).

Anyway, Windows decided to do an unauthorized upgrade.  (Given how many major issues and slow performance are attributable to Windows upgrades, I think it is probably worse than any virus I've ever dealt with.)  This led to a complete hard drive failure.  I am sure Bill Gates would say that if I only had left enough free space on the C drive, then it wouldn't have tried to write to corrupted sectors, etc., but it's still completely unacceptable.  In fact, this all happened right before my trip to Ottawa, so I was stewing about that the whole way up and back.

On Sunday I removed the hard drive to see how much could be recovered.  I took the remaining computer shell over to Staples for electronic recycling and to see if they had any computers in stock that had optical drives, specifically a CD/DVD burner, and they did not.  While I knew it was a waste of time, and it was impossible to talk to anyone on the phone!, I went over to the big Best Buy at the Eaton Centre, and they didn't have anything either.  They tried to sell me on an external optical drive.  As it happens, I have one of those, which I have been using for quite some time since my desktop started failing (it was the second or third bad omen!), but even it is acting up a bit.  So I wasn't going to start off with a computer without one!  I went one more place with no success, and then I went over to Paradise to see a Seijun Suzuki film called Yumeji.  Unfortunately, I didn't like it at all.  Then I managed to get over to the Women from Space event on Bathurst.  

It was sold out, but I thought I might as well see if they had any tickets at the door.  Not only they did have a few spots left, but because I was coming in during the second act, I only paid $15 (not $20).  I was there to see Myra Melford, Ingrid Laubrock and ​Lesley Mok play.  Sadly, I found their version of free jazz to be really disappointing and frankly boring.  I ended up leaving about 40 minutes in.  I'm not exactly sorry I went, but generally I don't like free jazz and I probably should stop going unless it is someone that I know will be somewhat entertaining like Ken Vandermark.  On the whole it was not a great day.  After all that, I finally broke down and ordered a new computer.  I ended up getting a pretty basic model, and I do wish I had been able to get more internal memory, but that meant it was impossible to get the optical drive for some reason.  So I will probably be even more reliant on external hard drives than before, though maybe that isn't the worst thing in the world; it will force me to be more disciplined about backing up files.

I'm going to skip over the week.  It was a very long week at work.  I also realized I had let the deadline slip for the CTRF conference up in Ottawa in May.  Technically, I was supposed to have the paper ready by Friday, as well as register.  Unfortunately, due to other reasons, I cannot install estimation software like alogit or even the freeware Larch, on my work laptop, so that meant it was a waiting game until the new computer showed up and I could reinstall absolutely everything.  (This is really proving to be a drag.  I may make a list of everything I had added to my computer and now need to reinstall, and generally restore passwords to accounts, etc.)  I did get a one week extension, though this will likely not be enough.

The one thing that I did for fun was go see Performance Review.  Outside the March was putting this on in a coffee shop in the Trinity-Bellwood area.  Getting there was a drag, and I nearly gave up on the streetcars to take a taxi.  I'm glad I didn't as there was a very delayed opening, and the performance didn't actually start until 8:30!  In the meantime, you could order coffee or tea and a cookie.  It's basically a fictionalized take on the various jobs the playwright (and performer) had in her early to mid twenties, focusing on a particularly bad event in each.  It was quite interesting.

Anyway, I was expecting the computer to be delivered on Mon., but it actually came in on Thurs., which was terrific.  It's taken a few days to get it mostly where I need it to be, though I still have 5 or 6 key programs that still need to be migrated over.  One perhaps surprising bonus is that MailStore is working again.  About 4 or 5 months ago (or maybe even more) it stopped working with by Bell email account, which was super annoying.  On the plus side, the version of the archive that I copied over (when I knew the computer was dying) covered everything I downloaded before the linkage was no longer supported.  I am a bit concerned about merging the two, but there are ways to do it.

I think I need to get that working this afternoon to see if I can find the key to TotalRecorder (and then request a new one because you need a different version with Windows 11.  (While I would have preferred to buy a computer with Windows 10, it just wasn't an option...)  The other things that may be a bit trickier will be to reinstall Kindle on my new computer, since I want a slightly older version, as well as getting Calibre to work again.

I do have some bad news in that virtually all but not all of the files I copied over (when I turned the old, corrupted hard drive into an external drive) are not viable.  On the positive side, I was able to generate a list of all these files, and many I can download again from Anna's archive.  It's going to be annoying but at least I have a record of what is currently corrupted.

The other, more positive news is that the weather has improved, and I have started biking to work again.  I was in fact going to bike to go swimming in Regent Park, but the swim times moved from 11-1 to 7-10 am.  Not at all happy about that.  I need to do a few tasks, including dropping off some pants and picking up something at the library, and I might stop in at Distillery to check out the galleries, but I will have to put off 401 Richmond for next weekend.  I'm pretty sore, however, and I hope that I am back to my normal comfort level in a couple more weeks.  At this point, I am running quite late, so I had better just do a couple of things right now (and risk the rain) and then maybe go swimming this evening at Matty Eckler.  I am just going to have to skip a couple of movies I would like to see at Carlton and then hope that Mickey 17 sticks around an extra week at Market Square.  (Ironically, one of the movies I am picking up at the library is Rumours that only lasted a week or two at Market Square and TIFF.  Hopefully, that doesn't happen to me this time around...)

* After all the trouble I took to get up to Ottawa for this concert, they ended up adding a date at Budweiser Stage.  Not too happy about that...  It was a good concert, and I particularly liked Collective Soul, and I had a terrific view of the stage, but I am not sure I would have gone had I known they would indeed tour Toronto after all...

Still Cold, Less Snow

An awful lot of the snow did melt last week, which generally lifted my spirits a bit.  Maybe the best outcome was that the bridge over to Gerrard Square was clear enough that I could actually just wear my tennis shoes, so I went over the bridge Friday evening and went to the gym.  I'm trying to get back to my routine where I either went to the gym or swimming a second time each week, esp. when I am not doing all the biking, which is how I got most of my cardio.  Now coming back, there were definitely spots that were wet and starting to ice up, but I managed ok.  It seems that most of this dried up by Sat., whereas when I was downtown (on Sat.) there were many ice patches on the sidewalks, so I clearly needed my boots.  Nonetheless, I am about to head over to the gym (and groceries) shortly, and I think I can get away with tennis shoes one more time.

It was very cold walking around yesterday, and the TTC was not great.  They had closed down Osgoode to Bloor-Yonge.  There was some trickle down impact in that because of the huge number of shuttle buses they needed at Osgoode, some (and perhaps all) of the Queen streetcars were stopping short, which meant even more frustration and having to make longer walks in the cold.  

I was trying to get to the Regent Park pool by 11, so I could leave by noon and still make it to TIFF by 12:45.  I jumped on an off-route streetcar thinking it was the Dundas streetcar, but it was the Queen streetcar!  Which took me pretty far out of my way, so I didn't make it to the pool until 11:15 or so.  I was fairly efficient, and managed to get in 18 laps and left right before noon.  I decided because of the subway shut down, I would just take the streetcar to Dundas to the AGO rather than taking the subway one stop and still having to walk.  I had to hustle (and it was bloody cold), but I made it to TIFF by 12:42.  I enjoyed Universal Language, which is inspired largely by the Iranian cinema of Abbas Kiarostami (and to a lesser extent by Guy Maddin*).  As has been reported elsewhere, the movie either takes place in Montreal or in Winnipeg, though a Winnipeg where everybody speaks Farsi, which is certainly a bit unsettling.  I'll circle back with a few more thoughts on the film later.

I had forgotten my pass to get into work, so I just went over to No Frills and then up to St. George.  I dropped in at the Bata Shoe Museum, mostly because I wanted to see their exhibit on 80s fashion.  I had thought I missed it, but it still runs a few more weeks.  It's fine, though it's only a small exhibit.  I spent only about 20-30 minutes in the museum, as I am not really a shoe person.

Then I went to Robarts and dropped off a few books, though not the ones still at work, and picked up Bradley's The Ministry of Time, which the book club at work is reading for March.  I'm actually mostly done with the huge stack of poetry I have checked out from Robarts, though I have a few books out from TPL.  Anyway, I should be able to return to reading novels next week, finish up Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time (where I am about halfway through), wrap up Last Night at the Lobster (only 100 pages left) and then read The Ministry of Time.  Then some of the other books I had planned to read - Lafcadio's Adventures and The Leopard are next up.  Actually, next weekend, I will be coming back from Ottawa.  I think I'll read Soseki's I am a Cat on that trip.

I did stop in at BMV and tried to sell off my Region 2 DVDs (La Notte and L'Avventura).  Unfortunately, the video buyer (downstairs) was tied up and the main buyer wouldn't even look at them.  I don't know if I should try again or just email Seekers and Circus Books to see if there is any interest.  I don't want to be carting these all over town, trying to flog them...

I just came home after that.  It was still cold, and I was tired, so I didn't go back out, even though Winnetka Bowling League was playing somewhere on Queen St. West.  Strangely enough, I have some indecipherable scribble on the calendar.  I have no idea what this is, though it looks like I have two question marks, so it clearly wasn't something that was high priority to see.  I've gone through the list of usual suspects (The Rex, Revue, Paradise, TIFF, Factory, Tarragon, Alumnae, Coal Mine, Red Sandcastle, even TPM and Assembly) and just have no idea what I was thinking.  So I think I will just go in to work for a bit (after the gym), try to catch Anora around 3:50, then drop off these books at Robarts and come home.  If I have time, maybe I will finally watch another Almodovar film, Matador perhaps.  Ok, if I am going to get this done, I need to get going.  (At least I did cook what we are having for dinner already...)

* I haven't seen all that many Maddin films, though I did see Archangel at View the North where Maddin actually did a bit of a Q&A.  Anyway, the Revue is showing Maddin's My Winnipeg on March 23, and I'll probably go see that.

Small Frustrations (Continued)

I have a post titled exactly like this from last month, but I suppose it is because so many days are filled with small frustrating things that even I recognize are small potatoes compared to all the truly terrible things going on in the world, like Trump selling out Ukraine or global warming making the planet unlivable for our children.  I am probably feeling even more raw than usual because we are sleep-walking into an election in Ontario where Doug Ford is going to get another sweeping and totally undeserved victory.  About the only tiny good news on the horizon is that at the federal level, we might be looking at another minority government for the Liberals, as Canadians have decided that PP is far, far too much like Trump for their taste.  Here's hoping anyway.  This turn of events might or might not sway me to finally get that tattoo I have been contemplating.  The truth is, not that I am so scared of the pain, but that I might not want to have a Canadian tattoo when I am fairly sure I will be fed up with Canada (as I am with everything else) before too long.  I am, however, wondering about getting a tattoo memorializing The Barbaric Yawp, which was a poetry magazine I was editor of for a few years while an undergraduate.  (I've been thinking about this episode in my life lately because it represents an intriguing road not taken...)  I'll scan a picture of the logo in the near future, since I would need one anyway to take to a tattoo parlour.

To get back to the point, it can actually be a very thin line separating a day that is predominantly frustrating versus one that was overall positive in my mind.  As a recent example, I have been having to work far too long at work with only occasional breakthroughs with far more setbacks lately, which colours pretty much everything.  I have been trying to get over to Carlton to see The Night is Short: Walk On Girl, and it was showing at 7 pm (and then maybe 9:45) Monday through Thurs.  It became fairly obvious that I was going to have to work late on Monday, and I briefly debated going to the late show but just went home.  Now I would likely have tried harder to go on Monday if there was even a chance I could see Mulholland Drive at the Revue on Tues., but the tickets were sold out and I didn't feel like standing in the rush line (like I did for Withnail and I).  So that meant I would shift Night is Short to Tues., though there was another potential snag in that I was roped into a work call with the L.A. office from 6-7, so I tried to find out if there was a place with free wifi around.  It actually didn't look promising at all, as this part of downtown is a Starbucks desert and the nearest Tim Hortons is very much an urban one with essentially no amenities.  I'm not even sure if it has a bathroom...

In the end, I ended up working until 5:50 on something else, so there wasn't any chance of getting up to College anyway, so I just (somewhat grumblingly) took the call from the office.  Fortunately, it wrapped up early (a rare occurrence!), and I had just enough time to make it to the theatre, slipping in during the previews for Mickey 17, which is looking like a movie that I would enjoy, so I'll plan on catching that in a few weeks when it opens.  The theatre was pretty full for a Tues. evening.  This is such a weird movie, but I think it may be my second favourite anime, right behind Paprika, which I'll watch again if it shows up at Carlton in the near future.  I was pretty hungry throughout, but overall the evening was a pretty good one as I managed to snatch some personal time back for myself.  I was even able to get to Bulk Barn, though this was after the show not before.  They were warning people, we are only open for 8 more minutes, then 5 more minutes, etc., but I was lightning fast and picked up some trail mix before they kicked everyone out.

So that made for a pretty good evening, though I did end up going to bed instead of writing up a short story for the Star's contest, and then I had hoped maybe to type it up Wed. over lunch (as the deadline was 5 pm) but ended up working straight through lunch and didn't even eat until 2:30, then went straight back into meetings.  While I did ultimately leave work at an almost reasonable time (6:30),* I never found the time to type this in (and indeed the story probably works better as a playlet than as a short story, not that I have found an outlet for my theatre writing since SFYS went dark yet again).  Anyway, I was still beating myself up a bit over this while I marched over to TIFF -- only to find that the 6:45 showing of Universal Language was sold out.  So incredibly frustrating.  This sort of thing just reinforces how frustrating I find TIFF in general and why I gave up my membership there.  I spent a bit of time going through the schedule of TIFF and The Fox, which is also showing Universal Language this week.  Go figure!  (I was hoping it might turn up at Market Square, which sometimes carries the movies around the same time as TIFF.**  It doesn't have Universal Language, but they are showing Anora, and I suppose I might try to check this out on Sunday, if I don't have anything else planned...)  It looks like the best bet is to try to catch Universal Language on Sat.  Either I can see it at The Fox at 1:45, or at TIFF at 12:45 (in the relatively roomy Theatre 3 where there are plenty of seats) or in Theatre 5 at 3:30, which is a pretty small and sometimes uncomfortable theatre (and it is about halfway sold out already).  If I was confident that I could bike, then I could commit to either 1:45 at the Fox or 12:45 at TIFF, but if I am stuck on the streetcars, it is a lot dicier because they are still diverting the Dundas streetcar, as far as I know.  While it warmed up a lot and the snow is receding, the streets were still far too messy for me to attempt to bike in.  It looks like the temperature is going to drop this weekend, and it will likely snow, so biking is probably out.  I would have to get to the swimming pool by 11 and leave by noon to have a shot at making it to the 12:45 TIFF showing, though I suppose I could plan on going to TIFF for that first showing, but if something went drastically wrong, I could reverse direction and make it to The Fox in time.  So I guess that is a workable back-up plan, though I have to remember that I can only take the subway to Osgoode (Queen) rather than St. Andrew, which is annoying though not a fatal flaw.  It would make going to Anora a lot more challenging, and clearly I would be better off biking or maybe taking the King streetcar than dealing with the subway and shuttle buses.  

Nonetheless, this spoiled my plans for the evening (and I was then feeling too grumpy to drop in at the Rex).  I was only slightly mollified that when I got home, I saw that two things I had ordered showed up.  One was the Blu-ray of La Notte.  I was starting to get a bit worried that it wasn't going to show up, so I'm quite glad it made it.  (I'm now only waiting on Lord Vishnu's Love Handles and a graphic novel called Street Cop.)  The Blu-ray is indeed really sharp.  Now that it is here, the next time I am at BMV, I can see if I can sell off my region 2 DVDs of La Notte and L'Avventura, hoping to get a bit more dosh back if they are sold as a set...  Also, I had decided to order a copy of Tory Dent's Collected Poems.  It wasn't entirely clear from the description if this actually was a collected (and essentially complete) poems or a selected, so I decided to gamble.  I would say in general, Tory Dent is not particularly well known, and if one thinks about poetry about the AIDS crisis, one turns to Thom Gunn's The Man with Night Sweats.  

As powerful as Gunn's book is, it is written from the perspective of one on the outside looking in.  Gunn was certainly impacted by AIDS, losing many, many friends, but he was HIV-negative (and died of a drug overdose (in his 70s!)).  Tory Dent is one of the only poets I am aware of, and certainly the only female poet, that wrote from the inside on what it was like to be living with AIDS.  As an aside, I would like to find a way to include her in my anthology (to do my part in buttressing her legacy) but none of her poems fit well and her preoccupations were so different that it almost seems insulting to try to pull out a poem that has a transportation angle (rather than about her journey and struggles with the medical establishment).  Anyway, the volume is indeed her collected work, including all the poems in her three collections, along with a handful of early unpublished poems.  

I did have to bump Ariel Dorfman's The Last Song of Manuel Sendero off the shelf to make room, so I will move that up on my brand-new reading list to make up for that.

In general, reading is going fairly well.  I have been reading a lot of poetry lately.  I did sort of give up on Jon Silkin.  I was just not finding his work that interesting even after reading 400 pages (out of about 800 in his massive Complete Poetry).  I finally settled on reading the remaining unpublished poems.  I have to admit that I did like some of his later poems more, but I am definitely not on his wavelength.

I generally am enjoying Wesley McNair, who is a New England poet.  He strikes me as a bit more engaged in the world than say, David Budbill, who is much more in the Gary Snyder vein.  McNair's Late Wonders has a trilogy of long narrative poems conflating his family's travails with the (declining) state of America.  I'm only just starting in on them, but they remind me of the impulse behind Updike's Rabbit novels.  I'm generally enjoying Lynn Emanuel's work as well.  I think I just need a sustained push to get through some Wanda Coleman books, and then I can finally return to novels (Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time and then I think Gide's Lafcadio's Adventures immediately follows, though I probably should read Bradley's The Ministry of Time as soon as my copy turns up at the reserve desk at Robarts).  Tonight, I venture over to the Theatre Centre to check out Monks, which I never was able to see at last year's Fringe.  For once I have the tickets to a sold out show...  Given the trip out there is so long, I can catch up on a bit more of my reading.  Unless there is another unforeseen disruption (or they try to force me to work past 6:45 tonight), the omens are generally positive for today (aside from the fact that Ford will be re-elected, which of course is a major, major downer, though there is nothing I can do about it).

* I'm not the only one that is generally working too long these days.  The newly inaugurated book club at work had to push the meeting off by a week because no one could make it.  I suspect this will be a monthly issue, but we shall see

** Still so annoyed that Rumours disappeared after such a short run.  I could have scrambled my schedule a bit and probably saw it at either TIFF or Market Square, though I think that was a week I was travelling for work, which made it particuarly hard.  Rumours has finally come out on DVD, and I put a hold on a copy through TPL, so maybe will get to watch that by the summer...)

Sick of Snow

So very, very tired of all this snow.  It is seriously messing up my life.  Last Sunday, they cancelled The Merchant of Venice in advance.  I mean better knowing it was cancelled than showing up and finding it was cancelled.  That would have been worse for sure.

The view of my back porch, which looks like it won't be clear of snow until April or something.

Actually, snow has been messing up my outings for even longer, since we had the first big snowfall on Wed. (so 10 days or so ago).  I was over at Hart House for a mentorship event.  It became pretty clear early on that most people had bailed.  I think in the end only 3 or 4 mentees showed up and maybe 10 mentors.  I talked to a couple of the staff attached to Hart House, mostly about Toronto (and Hart House) as it was in the early 90s.  All 3 of us lived in the East End, which seems pretty common.  (UT employees that were around since the 80s are more likely to be living in the Annex, but that was already a bit out of reach by the 90s...)  I called to make sure that the jazz show was going on at the Rex.  They thought it was a bit odd I would call, but I vividly recall checking with the Green Mill in Chicago to make sure they were open, only to walk over in the middle of a huge blizzard to find they were closed.  To be fair, that blizzard was several times worse than what we have faced this past week or so.

So I went back to work for about an hour, then went over to the Rex.  It was a sparse crowd, maybe 60% of the front area was full.  I did consider going back on Thurs. but then got caught up with other things.

Anyway, what makes the Merchant of Venice cancellation so upsetting is that they did schedule a make up performance (for today incidentally) but I couldn't move things around to make it work, and the other two nights last week I could have gone, they were sold out (and made very little attempt to shuffle things around and squeeze me in).  Now I don't care much for the Merchant of Venice at all, but I suspect they did a fine job (and Shakespeare Bash'd is down to just a single real performance per season).  So I am feel pretty raw about it.  Just in general all this snow is making me even more surly than normal.

I did debate going to the Rex on Sunday but just stayed home instead.  (Probably the smart choice.)  I think Fantasia was playing at TIFF, and I strongly debated going to that, but decided to skip it.  (I'm not entirely sure whether they went ahead with the show or also cancelled.  An awful lot of venues and museums called things off on Sun.  So I was particularly glad I had been criss-crossing the city on Sat., which I may get around to writing up at some point.)

There wasn't much playing at the movies (or at least that I wanted to see) on Family Day.  TIFF was completely shut down, which I thought was odd.  I was not really sure I wanted to leave the house to get over to the Rex, but I did in the end.  (The bus service was reliably terrible per usual, and I briefly turned around, then trudged on up to Danforth.)  It was actually a CD release party, and the group included Mike Murley, Neil Swainson and Reg Schwager, so I'm glad I went in the end.

I was able to get pretty much everything I wanted to yesterday, though again no thanks to the TTC.  I went swimming (which I hadn't managed to last Sat. because the 506 streetcar was delayed by 15 minutes).  They actually are rerouting the Dundas streetcar, so I had to walk to Parliament, where I just missed a bus, and the next one wasn't even showing up on the tracker!  So I had to walk over to the Distillery District.  I was not in a great mood by that point, even though the sun was out and it was a bit warmer.  I couldn't believe how terrible the service was at the little bakery right by the entrance to the Distillery, so I stomped out and dropped in at Corkin.  Corkin hadn't changed its displays up at all, so I went over to Thomas Landry.  

I liked this piece a lot, though not quite enough to buy it (at their price), even though it would pair really well with a few other things I own.

Jean-Daniel Rohrer, L'espris des lieux II, 2022

I made it over to Canadian Stage's Fat Ham, which is a reworking of Hamlet, in plenty of time.  Overall I liked this, though there were a few parts that were a bit troubling (almost glorying in how uneducated most of the characters were, and how Juicy was pinning his hopes on a digital degree in Human Resources from the University of Phoenix, when he seems a bit smarter and clued in than that, at least compared to the other characters, particularly when he then launches into a few of the lesser known soliloquys).  But overall it was good, and it was fairly short (90 minutes), which was even better.

Then in the evening we went up to North York to see Dimanche, which is sort of a wordless set of vignettes using a lot of puppetry and special effects to contemplate the end of the world after global warming wipes out all the icebergs and the major cities are all flooded.  Cheery stuff, but a lot of this was really interesting.  It was only 75 minutes, though perhaps 5-10 minutes could have been trimmed, as one or two scenes just went on a bit too long.

Today is all about music.  I have a Tafelmusik and an Esprit Orchestra concert, so I had better run over to the gym and get the day started.  Ciao!

A Few Quick Jottings on Poetry

I am a bit torn between taking the time to write down my thoughts properly, which will probably require a few posts, and just dashing off some thoughts that are top of mind.  I may split the difference: writing just a few things now and then setting up some posts where I track transportation and "vacation" poems.  I think the likelihood of me ever finishing the first project, let alone the second is so slim, but I guess it's worth having a few goals along the way.  (I was really in deep despair just the other day over the state of the world, and I decided I really ought to move some of these projects forward as there is so little else to motivate me when I cannot be consoled with all the usual blather about "how it gets better," when quite frankly the world is getting worse and at a pace no one is ready for...)

Anyway, I have been reading Michael Longley (incidentally I started about two weeks before his recent passing), and this led to John Burnside and even Frank Ormsby's Goat's Milk.  I was surprised to find that I not only had read Longley's Collected Poems over 10 years ago (probably right after I hit Vancouver) but had made a list of my favorite poems from that volume!  I certainly didn't remember that, which just goes to show that I really have to write down more of my thoughts before they escape.  In general, I am not a huge fan of Longley's (both because he stuck with rhymed poetry long after it was out of fashion and he is mostly a rural poet*).  Burnside is very much a religious poet (and in a way that irks me far more than it does with Mary Oliver, for example).  That said, he had a few transportation related poems that were pretty interesting.  So far I am finding Goat's Milk** the most to my taste of the bunch.

I will likely go ahead and set up pages where I just start dumping these titles but generally not cross-linking to the actual poems, so I don't forget any others (after I had gone to the trouble of finding them in the first place).  I do recall that Frederick Seidel has quite a few poems about riding motorcycles of all things.  And John Balaban has a number of poems on being in Vietnam (though generally as a soldier, so the theme would have to be stretched to the breaking point and beyond to just include people in foreign places, even if at work on in a war, to accommodate those poems).  But his bicycling poem would fit, though it is only one poem out of a sequence.  And there was a poem from a collection I checked out recently from Robarts, which I believe was just called "Train," which I liked a lot.  I hopefully can track this down right away, but this is why I need a better system obviously.  So anyway, this is just off the top of my head of recent discoveries, and I will go find the original lists from where I have saved them to generate the full lists. 

Transportation poems:

Eileen Myles "PV" from Maxfield Parrish - subway
(She actually has quite a few about bicycling, and I am hoping to find one that is short enough and not completely profane, but that seems unlikely.)

Jack Gilbert "Suddenly Adult" from The Dance Most of All - train

John Burnside "III: Pilgrimage" from "Roads" in The Asylum Dance - bus
(I generally don't like excerpting poems or even one poem from a series, and there may be better examples, but this has several gripping lines.)

The Poet on Vacation:

Jack Gilbert "Worth" from The Dance Most of All

Anyway, several years back I was on a Ralph Gustafson kick.  I eventually picked up all three volumes of his Collected Poems, but I had to order them as Vols. 1 & 2 and  Vols. 1 & 3!  I finally parted with one copy of Vol. 1.  I'm still burned up that the signed copy of Configurations at Midnight was lost in the mail, and I still hope that some day it will make its way to its destination or be returned to the store.  I do have one signed copy of a selected poems, and from time to time I consider buying another.  It turns out there is a bookstore near Casa Loma that has quite a few.  I think I'll wait until spring, and then head over and see what they have in stock.

And with that, I think I need to wrap this up and get back to just reading poetry in order to return these books on time.

* Though for some reason he writes quite extensively on Greek mythology, particularly reworking scenes from The Iliad and The Odyssey.

** Milk keeps cropping up in unlikely places.  There is a new lit. magazine starting up in Toronto called Milk Bag.  I decided to submit something, even though it is pretty clear I am not the target audience, and indeed they didn't take my submission.  Then I checked out Black Milk by Tory Dent; my quick perusal of this volume suggests an affinity with Christopher Smart.  "Black Milk" is also a poem in Almadhoun's Adrenalin (though this may be challenging to actually borrow...).  And Charles Simic has an early collection titled Return to a Place Lit by a Glass of Milk.

The Very Snowy Day

I guess it was Wed. evening that we really got hit with snow.  I feel particularly let down because the weather forecast had been for Thurs. to briefly warm up (above freezing at any rate) and then cool down again over the weekend.  Well, that didn't happen.  Maybe the huge mass of snow in the area kept the temperatures down.

I stayed out fairly late on Wed. (at the Rex), and I forced myself to shovel when I got back, though it snowed so much overnight that it didn't look like I had shoveled at all in the morning.  I thought I was going to go back in on Thurs., partly because I had a dentist appointment and partly because I had hoped to check out the same group at the Rex again.  But work was really quite intense and the transit system was suffering a mini-meltdown so I ended up staying home and rescheduling the appointment, then working quite late (not helped by the fact that Excel destroyed about 2 hours of work, somehow saving the file into some black hole that it could not retrieve from later, which was really the icing on the cake).

I did go back out on Friday, and conditions still weren't great.  It certainly isn't as fun to have a snowy day when you are an adult and school isn't cancelled.  (Indeed, the TDSB and TCDSB had snow days, which really are only called once or twice in a decade!).

I suppose reality is always bleaker...

Friday I left for work but at a strange hour.  There were minor delays at every leg of my journey, but I did make it in.  I again was working pretty intensely on top of back to back to back meetings, and I finally had a chance to run out to the bank and for food at 3:15, but all the local food courts were closing up, and I didn't have time to get over to Union Station.  Fortunately, there is a Subway nearby, though it wasn't what I had planned on grabbing.

I left at 5:15 and went straight to Bau-Xi, since I was trying to streamline my activities on Saturday.  It was fine, but they really don't update it nearly as often, leaving all the main exhibits to their Dufferin gallery.  Then I went in and checked out the AGO for a while.  There was a small James Tissot exhibit that was mostly prints.

James Tissot, The Thames, 1876

I also had a chance to see some old favourites, as well as the Light Years exhibit, which has some great photos by Stan Douglas, Rodney Graham and Jeff Wall, as well as several Philip Guston paintings.  This runs through early Nov., so plenty of time to still catch it.

Andy Fabo, The Craft of the Contaminated, 1984

Now what I should be doing is holing up and reading through a huge stack of poetry on loan from the various libraries, but what I will actually do is head out, go swimming, then to the Textile Museum (before it closes for several months!), then try to get up to Bloor for one last shot at getting Lord Vishnu's Love Handles, then down to 401 Richmond, and then if it isn't too late, I'll see a film at TIFF.  I should probably stop by work for a bit.  I guess there is at least a chance I will get over to the Rex, though I think they are sold out tonight.  I will be back to the Rex for a CD release party(!) either Sun. (at seeing Shakespeare Bash'd doing Merchant of Venice) or Mon.  I'm actually running late for all this, so I will circle back and fill in some details later.  Ciao!

New Reading List for 2025 (and well beyond!)

I decided it was finally time to retire this list, and merge it with this list (where I am perhaps 75% through it) and add in the books from the book club at work (which I'll at least try to tackle) and books I've bought in the past year or so or indeed anything that takes my fancy.  I think I mentioned already that Clarke's Lord Vishnu's Love Handles is calling to me for some reason.  I have looked for it at the BMV near Eaton Centre and Circus Books and a couple of bookstores on Roncesvalles yesterday.  Next Sat., I should be able to quickly stop in at BMV on Bloor and Seekers (and presumably the AGO and Bau-Xi and the galleries in 401 Richmond).  Basically, the only books I am looking for at the moment at the Love Handles book, Craig Nova's The Good Son and if there is anything by Robert Coover (though I did order The Public Burning and I supposedly have ordered a copy of Street Cop, but the internet book store needs to confirm this will be shipped), which allows me to be super focused once I cross the store threshold.  In other words, I am the guy looking at the shelves and running back out, not someone trapped in the bookstore line from hell (as in Tom Gauld's cartoon).

At some point in the spring, I will try to get to Peter De Vries Slouching Towards Kalamazoo (which I picked up because I grew up there) and then of course would also want to read Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Novel for good measure.  I have both of the Didion books in her Modern Library collection, but will need to grab them from Robarts as this tome isn't conducive to reading on the train or at the gym...

Just a couple of amusing asides.  It's weird that I seem to have read Hobson's November, but I don't recall it strongly, and then I wrapped it up (again?) on a recent trip to NYC (and left it at the youth hostel where I was staying), but I still don't have a very clear impression of it.  I should probably skim just a few pages to make sure that was the Hobhouse I was reading.  (I am sure I was reading a Hobhouse novel, as someone commented on it on the subway, saying that Hobhouse was out of fashion these days...)  I may or may not still have my NYRB edition of Hobhouse's The Furies.  I will see if I can track it down (likely downstairs in a box) by the time I get to her on the list.  (I think I have time ;) .)  

Speaking of transit book news, just the other day, I saw someone reading something intriguing on the streetcar, and when we went around the bend, I saw it was Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem, which I just mentioned I will try to tackle this spring.  Then that evening I saw someone with what I thought was a deluxe edition of Atwood's Oryx & Crake (and I took that as a sign), but in fact it was Yarros's Onyx Storm, which I have no intention of reading.

Still, I will see about finally getting to the MaddAdam Trilogy this late fall/winter and then Lessing's Children of Violence in 2026.  These are probably stretch goals...

Piercy Woman on the Edge of Time
William Maxwell So Long, See You Tomorrow & Stories from LOA Vol. 2
Dawn Powell Angels on Toast 
Dawn Powell Sunday, Monday and Always (Stories) 
Durrenmatt Once a Greek
Skorvecky Two Murders in My Double Life
Gide Lafcadio's Adventures
T.C. Boyle Drop City & A Friend of the Earth
Pynchon The Crying of Lot 49
Singh Delhi: A Novel
Gide The Immoralist & Straight is the Gate 
Powers Wheat That Springeth Green & The Stories of J.F. Powers
Joy Williams State of Grace & Escapes & The Visiting Privilege (stories)
Lampedusa The Leopard
Mavis Gallant The Cost of Living (stories)
Tim O'Brien In the Lake of the Woods
Morrison The Bluest Eye & Song of Solomon
Bradley The Ministry of Time
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)
O'Nan Last Night at the Lobster
Russo Empire Falls
Mahfouz The Beggar
Faulkner The Wild Palms
Narayan The Vendor of Sweets & The Painter of Signs
Flannery O'Connor A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Carol Shields The Republic of Love & Happenstance
Pynchon Inherent Vice
Suárez Havana Year Zero
Conrad Victory & Chance
Welty Delta Wedding
Tom Wolfe Bonfire of the Vanities
Aeschylus The Oresteia
Murakami Killing Commendatore
Faulkner The Snopes Family (Hamlet, Town, Mansion)
Mieville The City and the City & Perdido Street Station
Malamud Pictures of Fidelman

This part of the list is basically books I've picked up in the past year (and are queue-jumpers)
Denis Johnson Angels
Dorothy Edwards Winter Sonata
Soseki The Three-Cornered World
Sorokin Blue Lard (NYRB) & The Queue (NYRB) 
Platonov Chevengur (NYRB)
Sunil Gangopadhyay Days and Nights in the Forest
Warren Cool Water
Holmes Go
Plymell Benzedrine Highway 
Sorokin Teluria & Red Pyramid (stories)
Heather O'Neill Daydreams of Angels & The Capitol of Dreams
Ethan Canin Carry Me Across the Water
Engel Sarah Bastard's Notebook
Jelloun The Last Friend
Baker The Fermata
Martin The Consolation of Nature
Erdrich The Sentence & Shadow Tag
George Orwell Decline of the English Murder
Engel Sarah Bastard's Notebook
Wells Love and Mr. Lewisham
Azuela The Underdogs
Matthiessen Far Tortuga
Skvorecky The Bride of Texas (maybe on my second long trip of the year?)
Lightman Mr g
Huxley The Devils of Loudun
Larbaud Barnabooth His Notebook (tipped to this by Perec)
Brink Rights of Desire
Connolly This is It
Vassanji Everything There Is
Drabble The Dark Flood Rises
Kingsolver Prodigal Summer & Animal Dreams
A. Roy The Folded Earth
Marcial Gala Call Me Cassandra
Janet Hobhouse The Furies & Dancing in the Dark & Nellie without Hugo 
Allende Island Beneath the Sea
Vargas Llosa Way to Paradise & The Neighborhood
Talib Smokescreen
Zsuzsi Gartner The Beguiling
Zevin Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

This is the start of the long-tail list:
Melville Pierre
Kierkegaard Either/Or 
P. Roth -- Zuckerman Bound, The Counterlife, Exit Ghost
Richard Yates Eleven Kinds of Loneliness  
John O'Hara Waiting for Winter
Richard Yates Revolutionary Road
John O'Hara Appointment in Samarra
Ariel Dorfman The Last Song of Manuel Sendero 
Craig Nova Incandescence & The Good Son
Ribeyro Marginal Voices
Will Clarke Lord Vishnu's Love Handles A Spy Novel
Waugh 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
Walker Percy The Last Gentleman & The Second Coming
Vargas Llosa The Time of the Hero
Lethem Feral Detective
Craig Nova The Informer (not really that good)
Robert Cohen Inspired Sleep
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. 2025)
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
Pym Jane and Prudence
Forster Howard's End & A Room with a View
Skvorecky Miss Silver's Past & The Swell Season
Tanizaki A Cat, A Man and Two Women
Bellow Ravelstein
Roth The Human Stain
Ghosh The Calcutta Chromosome
Khushwant Singh Delhi 
Dickens Pictures from Italy & American Notes
Herzen Letters from France and Italy
Bely Petersburg
Victor Serge Unforgiving Years
Kundera The Festival of Insignificance & Ignorance
Soyinka The Interpreters
Kawabata Palm-of-the-Hand Stories
Meera Syal Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee
Pyong-Mo Ku The Old Woman with the Knife
Fitzgerald This Side of Paradise
Hemingway A Farewell to Arms
Fitzgerald The Beautiful and Damned
Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls
Dos Passos Adventures of a Young Man
Fitzgerald Tender Is the Night 
Hemingway A Moveable Feast
Fitzgerald The Last Tycoon
John Cheever The Wapshot Chronicle & The Wapshot Scandal
Gloria Naylor Mama Day
Fuentes A Change of Skin
Naipaul Miguel Street
Sontag Against Interpretation
Didion Slouching Towards Bethlehem & The White Album
Fuentes Aura
Russell Smith Muriella Pent
Bove Quicksand
Desani All About H. Hatterr
Conrad Under Western Eyes
Chekhov 7 Short Novels
Turgenev Smoke
Turgenev Virgin Soil
Huxley Mortal Coils (stories)
Gissing New Grub Street
Neruda Isla Negra
Fuentes Terra Nostra
Steinbeck To a God Unknown
Cesare Pavese Selected Works
P. Roth American Pastoral
Atwood MaddAdam & The Year of the Flood & Oryx & Crake
Kafu American Stories
J. Roth Radetzky March & The Emperor's Tomb
Walser The Tanners 
Pym Less Than Angels
Elizabeth Bowen Eva Trout
McKay Home to Harlem
Don DeLillo Great Jones Street 
Saramago Skylight
R. Mistry Tales from Firozsha Baag
Adiga Between the Assassinations
Fisher The Conjure Man Dies
Angela Carter The Bloody Chamber
Taylor The Wedding Group
Zaher The Coin
Green Blindness
Perec A Void
Victor Serge The Case of Comrade Tulayev
Kim Thúy Ru 
Malamud The Fixer
DeLillo Ratner's Star
Skvorecky The Miracle Game & Dvorak in Love
P. Roth Nemeses (Everyman, Indignation, The Humbling, Nemesis)
Selvon Moses Migrating
Green Living 
Levi The Sixth Day
Huysmans Against Nature
Pynchon Gravity's Rainbow (& V?)
Scarlett Thomas PopCo & The End of Mr Y & Our Tragic Universe
Pym A Glass of Blessings
Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer
Christopher Isherwood Berlin Stories
Joseph Roth The White Cities/Report from Paris
Ghosh The Glass Palace
Craig Nova The Congressman's Daughter & Tornado Alley
de Tocqueville Democracy in America 
Trollope The Three Clerks
Achebe  A Man of the People
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
Murdoch The Sea The Sea 
Pynchon Against the Day 
DeLillo Players/Running Dog
Murakami Norwegian Wood
Austen Emma
Guillaume Morissette New Tab
Gornick Louisa Meets Bear
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
Jean Rhys Quartet & After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie
Didion Democracy
Malamud The Tenants
Forrest Meteor in the Madhouse
Barley The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut
Trollope Why Frau Frohmann Raised Her Prices
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 Ehrengard
Nabokov The Enchanter 
Elias Canetti Memoirs (The Tongue Set Free/The Torch in My Ear/The Play of the Eye) 
Balzac The Human Comedy/Pere Goriot
Davies The Salterton Trilogy
Trollope He Knew He Was Right
Bissoondath Doing the Heart Good
Rhys Good Morning, Midnight
Engel Lunatic Villas
Mann Buddenbrooks
Blish Cities in Flight
Welty Delta Wedding
Zola The Fortune of the Rougons
Téa Obreht The Tiger's Wife
Ian Williams Reproduction
Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamazov
Lessing's Children of Violence (Martha Quest; A Proper Marriage; A Ripple from the Storm; Landlocked; The Four-Gated City)
Muriel Spark The Mandelbaum Gate
John Cheever The Stories of John Cheever
James Purdy The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy
Eric Kraft's Peter Leroy series (Little Follies; Where Do You Stop?; Herb ’n’ Lorna; Reservations Recommended; What a Piece of Work I Am; At Home with the Glynns; Leaving Small’s Hotel; Inflating a Dog; Passionate Spectator; Flying; Persistence; Albertine's Overcoat (aka Peerless Television Service and Repair))
(Saramago detour -- a few of these are listed higher up)
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) 

Undetermined position, or the very long tail, which include books that I purged (unread) but are available in Toronto libraries
Terry Darlington Narrow Dog to Carcassonne
Mulisch The Discovery of Heaven
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
Ben Winters The Last Policeman & Countdown City & World of Trouble
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
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)