New Fiction

It's always hard to dip my toe back into blogging after some time away.  I actually have (hand)written out 10 or more pages of what I have been up to in the past month or so, but don't feel like typing it out, at least not right now when I still have a lot of pressing business to take care of, even on the weekends.  I used to have a pretty decent voice-to-type program called Dragon.  I am sure by now the technology is so much better than it used to be, and indeed there are probably freeware versions that would be perfectly adequate.  (But before I go too far down this road, I would have to see if I even can get the computer to recognize a pair of headphones (with a microphone!) in order to even test it.)  Something for another day, though it is awfully tempting to just read out all the many pages I have been writing these past few months, most often at the Rex. 

Indeed, I was over at the Rex last night to see Eric St-Laurent for the second time this month.  I only could stay for the first set, so I didn't get to see his "freak-out" number where they compress 15 or more hits into one super fast medley.  (I was joking with him a bit before the show that his versions were an awful lot like Alien Ant Farm's version of "Smooth Criminal," to the point that no one would know if he was riffing off the original or the cover...)  Anyway, they sounded good, though the mike on the congas was too hot, and hopefully they fixed that in the second set.  Still, I was glad to manage to catch them (and write out a few more pages of my planning epic), since I wasn't sure that would have the time.  I was meeting Andrea over at Carlton to see Midnight Cowboy, which I had never seen, even though I had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen.  Still, a pretty gritty movie in lots of ways.  Glad to have seen it now (and Taxi Driver not so long ago).  I also was able to stop by Bulk Mine on Yonge and pick up some packets of Quavers for the book club meeting on Monday.  (We're reading Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, which is of course also depressing, and we agreed to try to bring British snacks...)

In terms of my reading, I am slowly making my way through Castellanos's The Song of Lamentations, and I made a big push on Dickens's Dombey and Son on Wednesday evening while out at Budweiser Stage to see Simple Minds, as well as Modern English and Soft Cell (the last one being quite boring actually, and I read during their set, aside from during "Tainted Love").  It did sprinkle on and off, particularly during Soft Cell, but it was much better than I was expecting, weather-wise, so that worked out.  However, I didn't want to bring anything aside from a poncho and my phone, so fortunately I was able to get an ebook version of Dombey and Son loaded onto the phone.  I have just over 300 pages to go, so hopefully I can wrap that up by the end of next week.  Some books are worth the extra length, but this one drags a fair bit.  (If only I had managed to get 100 more pages into it on the train ride to Ottawa, then I would really feel I was nearing the finish line.  As an aside, it looks like Via workers aren't going on strike after all.  Yea!)  Getting home from Budweiser Stage was a nightmare, and I wished I had biked there after all, though of course I wouldn't have done that, given the forecast.

 
Anyway, as if I didn't have scads and scads of unread books around the house, but I thought I would highlight just a few novels from this list in today's Guardian.  A handful of them aren't even available to reserve at the library, and if I don't write them down now, I just won't remember them.

These are the ones that are catching my eye:
The Tiger’s Share by Keshava Guha
Gunk by Saba Sams
Dream State by Eric Puchner
Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis
Endling by Maria Reva (might be interesting to compare to Kurkov's Grey Bees)
Spent by Alison Bechdel (should not take too long to read, as this is a graphic novel)

So perhaps a manageable summer reading list, if I didn't have so many other books I feel guilty about not reading...