Yes, tax season is hitting. I did manage to download the most important tax documents, though I need to sift through emails looking for verification of what I gave to charities. Typically this is just $20 here and there, though I made some bigger donations this December in honor of my father. I'm basically on track, though I think there are some extra twists this year (or rather for 2018), as I ought to add up everything I spent advertising my Fringe show and renting out rehearsal space, since I certainly didn't break even, so that loss can be counted against other gains elsewhere.
Pretty much no matter my good intentions, it always ends up being a last minute scramble, though I do have pretty good spreadsheets to help me follow what I did for last year. Still, this is going to be a big part of the next two weekends. Blah.
Saturday, March 30, 2019
Short Books Again
It was pretty clear that the other downside of biking so much (aside from having to wash extra towels) was that my reading on transit would be cut down considerably. Of course, I can always try to carve out more time in the evenings, but there is always one thing or another (including feeling guilty about not quilting, as that is another thing I haven't restarted). This is particularly a challenge because the 2nd volume of the Musil is very thick and quite heavy. It is far too heavy to take to the gym, for instance. I really had hoped to finish this by mid April, but I can tell right now that most of the next two weekends will be taken up with US and then Canadian taxes.
Just to feel that I am not completely stalled, I am looking at taking up some shorter books. Mostly I'll be reading these at the gym (after I wrap up the first pass through Montaigne), but I may get crazy and read one or two out of sequence if I think I can get that done in a day or two.
The one that I need to get to/through the first is Immigrant City by David Bezmozgis. This one is due back to the library in about 10 days. I also need to carve out a bit of time to review the book before I actually return it.
Amit Chaudhuri's Friend of My Youth will probably be after that. I actually saw that they had a copy at Robarts, but the NYRB edition is finally available at the Toronto Library (and I can keep it for 3 weeks rather than 2, so that was the deciding factor, plus the cover is way cooler). It took me a while, but I located my copy of Freedom Song by Chaudhuri. This is actually three short works published together. Curiously, I read Afternoon Raag as a stand-alone book (from the library). Of the three works, I am probably going to tackle A Strange and Sublime Address next. This is actually made up of 9 stories about a boy spending his school holidays at his uncle's house in Calcutta (Kolkata). I wonder if I will like this better than Narayan's Swami and Friends, which I didn't like at all, due to the glamourization of a very spoiled child. Speaking of Narayan, his novels are generally on the short side. According to my reading list, the next one I am scheduled to read is The Man-Eater of Malgudi, but it will be quite a while until I get there. Still, if I do read A Strange and Sublime Address, then I'd probably feel "obligated" to turn to the Man-Eater next. In any event, I am much more likely to get through a couple of short Barbara Pym novels first (Some Tame Gazelle and probably Excellent Women).
Robarts also had a copy of Castle Gripsholm, a short novel by Kurt Tucholsky, which is forthcoming in May on NYRB. I skimmed it, but decided it didn't grip me enough to check it out and try to squeeze it in before finishing Musil. I'll probably get to it one of these days, but maybe not for a year or two.
I've already mentioned that I picked up a copy of Bellows' Ravelstein, and that is on the short side. I may well start taking that to the gym before I am completely done with the Musil (as my main reading). In the same stack, I have Vicki Baum's Grand Hotel. Interestingly, I own a version translated by Basil Creighton, whereas NYRB's version features revisions of that translation by Margo Dembo. It's very hard for me to tell how much improved the translation is, but my gut feeling is that this is not such a timeless piece of literature that I need to worry about it overmuch. Still, the Toronto Library does have the NYRB version, and I guess I can go ahead and borrow it just to see if I can spot any substantial changes. I should mention that it is about 270 pages, so shortish but not as short as these other novels.
Finally, I have gotten a few pages into a real hidden gem from NYRB - Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban. This book is told through alternating diary entries (at least that is what they seem to be) of two lonely, middle-aged Londoners. One diarist is a divorced man who works at a book shop, while the other is a female childrens' book author. (Interestingly, Hoban was not only the author of Riddley Walker (with strong parallels to A Clockwork Orange in its invented language -- and the inspiration for David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas) but of many childrens' books, including Bedtime for Frances!) They both begin having fantasies of freeing the sea turtles "imprisoned" in the London Zoo, and these plans are accelerated after they meet, which certainly suggests pre-echoes of Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water. This is a novel mostly about loneliness (in the midst of a major metropolis), but with quite a few sharp, even acidic, comments on modern life (early 70s). I'm pretty sure this will end up on my top 10 list for the year, and I can definitely imagine rereading in the future, particularly because it is quite short.
And with that, I really need to spend more time on taxes, so that I have at least some time today to dive back into Musil.
Just to feel that I am not completely stalled, I am looking at taking up some shorter books. Mostly I'll be reading these at the gym (after I wrap up the first pass through Montaigne), but I may get crazy and read one or two out of sequence if I think I can get that done in a day or two.
The one that I need to get to/through the first is Immigrant City by David Bezmozgis. This one is due back to the library in about 10 days. I also need to carve out a bit of time to review the book before I actually return it.
Amit Chaudhuri's Friend of My Youth will probably be after that. I actually saw that they had a copy at Robarts, but the NYRB edition is finally available at the Toronto Library (and I can keep it for 3 weeks rather than 2, so that was the deciding factor, plus the cover is way cooler). It took me a while, but I located my copy of Freedom Song by Chaudhuri. This is actually three short works published together. Curiously, I read Afternoon Raag as a stand-alone book (from the library). Of the three works, I am probably going to tackle A Strange and Sublime Address next. This is actually made up of 9 stories about a boy spending his school holidays at his uncle's house in Calcutta (Kolkata). I wonder if I will like this better than Narayan's Swami and Friends, which I didn't like at all, due to the glamourization of a very spoiled child. Speaking of Narayan, his novels are generally on the short side. According to my reading list, the next one I am scheduled to read is The Man-Eater of Malgudi, but it will be quite a while until I get there. Still, if I do read A Strange and Sublime Address, then I'd probably feel "obligated" to turn to the Man-Eater next. In any event, I am much more likely to get through a couple of short Barbara Pym novels first (Some Tame Gazelle and probably Excellent Women).
Robarts also had a copy of Castle Gripsholm, a short novel by Kurt Tucholsky, which is forthcoming in May on NYRB. I skimmed it, but decided it didn't grip me enough to check it out and try to squeeze it in before finishing Musil. I'll probably get to it one of these days, but maybe not for a year or two.
I've already mentioned that I picked up a copy of Bellows' Ravelstein, and that is on the short side. I may well start taking that to the gym before I am completely done with the Musil (as my main reading). In the same stack, I have Vicki Baum's Grand Hotel. Interestingly, I own a version translated by Basil Creighton, whereas NYRB's version features revisions of that translation by Margo Dembo. It's very hard for me to tell how much improved the translation is, but my gut feeling is that this is not such a timeless piece of literature that I need to worry about it overmuch. Still, the Toronto Library does have the NYRB version, and I guess I can go ahead and borrow it just to see if I can spot any substantial changes. I should mention that it is about 270 pages, so shortish but not as short as these other novels.
Finally, I have gotten a few pages into a real hidden gem from NYRB - Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban. This book is told through alternating diary entries (at least that is what they seem to be) of two lonely, middle-aged Londoners. One diarist is a divorced man who works at a book shop, while the other is a female childrens' book author. (Interestingly, Hoban was not only the author of Riddley Walker (with strong parallels to A Clockwork Orange in its invented language -- and the inspiration for David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas) but of many childrens' books, including Bedtime for Frances!) They both begin having fantasies of freeing the sea turtles "imprisoned" in the London Zoo, and these plans are accelerated after they meet, which certainly suggests pre-echoes of Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water. This is a novel mostly about loneliness (in the midst of a major metropolis), but with quite a few sharp, even acidic, comments on modern life (early 70s). I'm pretty sure this will end up on my top 10 list for the year, and I can definitely imagine rereading in the future, particularly because it is quite short.
And with that, I really need to spend more time on taxes, so that I have at least some time today to dive back into Musil.
Winter - It's Never Over
It is supposedly going to rain much of today (Saturday) and there is a strong chance that this will turn to snow at some point! Unbelievable. Well, I can recall one year that we had a dusting of snow in mid to late April, and I guess this is going to be one of those years.
It is true that Friday was pretty nice out, and I biked to work, making it 4 times in one week. Sunday should be warmer and melt any snow that actually falls.
We have another problem, however. The furnace, after valiantly sticking it out through the winter, has conked out. It may just be a simple fix or it might be more involved (and expensive). Unfortunately, this happened in the middle of the night, so there is no point in trying to call now and get an appointment for a service call. We have to wait until the morning. I am hoping that there won't be a huge rush on people wanting their furnaces serviced, since it has finally warmed up a fair bit (from 3 weeks ago). Still, it is extremely frustrating and certainly not something I wanted to have to deal with over the weekend...
Edit: Well, now that it is morning, the furnace is coming on and is not damaged irreparably. That's quite a relief! I suspect it is some quirk of the thermostat that we have to figure out. We may in the end still ask for them to send somebody out, but it doesn't seem to be nearly as urgent.
It is true that Friday was pretty nice out, and I biked to work, making it 4 times in one week. Sunday should be warmer and melt any snow that actually falls.
We have another problem, however. The furnace, after valiantly sticking it out through the winter, has conked out. It may just be a simple fix or it might be more involved (and expensive). Unfortunately, this happened in the middle of the night, so there is no point in trying to call now and get an appointment for a service call. We have to wait until the morning. I am hoping that there won't be a huge rush on people wanting their furnaces serviced, since it has finally warmed up a fair bit (from 3 weeks ago). Still, it is extremely frustrating and certainly not something I wanted to have to deal with over the weekend...
Edit: Well, now that it is morning, the furnace is coming on and is not damaged irreparably. That's quite a relief! I suspect it is some quirk of the thermostat that we have to figure out. We may in the end still ask for them to send somebody out, but it doesn't seem to be nearly as urgent.
More on Montaigne
I have generally been enjoying my exposure to his Essays. It is somewhat interesting to read through the notes of the Florio translation and have the editors note the various places Florio mistranslated Montaigne - and increasingly just refused to translate "dirty" poems from the Latin. For that matter, it is somewhat surprising just how often Montaigne talks about impotence or adultery. He had a fairly relaxed attitude towards the latter, even apparently for wives cuckolding husbands, though I suspect he might have felt differently had it happened to him (as he would likely have admitted in a follow-up essay).
There is no question that it is hard to pin down Montaigne, as he shifts quite a bit. At times, he comes across as an early Mencken. In Chapter 50, he writes "I do not think we [humans] can ever be despised as much as we deserve. ... There is, in my opinion, not so much misery in us as emptiness, not so much malice as folly." However, he very much enjoyed reading the great thinkers of the past, and he also commented favorably upon (good) writers who cared more about their virtual offspring (books) than their flesh and blood children (On the affection of fathers for their children). One thing that is pretty constant in his worldview is that he took an extremely dim view of women and their role in society. They were always jealous of each other (and suspicious of their husbands) and basically incapable of higher thinking. This frequently makes for tough going, and it is always a relief when he stops writing about women and returns to his favorite subject, himself.
In my first pass through the Essays, it looks like I will end up reading slightly over half of them. They are interesting enough that I expect I will get through them all, though I don't feel that Montaigne has changed my life or anything like that. While I'm glad I got a sampling of the Florio translation and then read an extended essay on how Shakespeare was directly influenced by this version, Florio is definitely not for me. It basically comes down to Frame (Everyman) or Screech (Penguin) -- or of course the free Cotton translation on Project Gutenberg, though that is pretty outdated. Following up on a tip from an Amazon reviewer, I wanted to see if the original academic press version of Frame's translation had the footnotes to allow the reader to know which Latin (or Greek) verse was being translated. I tracked down a copy at Robarts and found that, not only does Frame omit this information, even in the original edition, but he usually just puts in a translation of the verse and doesn't leave in the Latin (and then just notes "Virgil"). That's pretty extreme, and frankly very shoddy for what had been an academic press edition. I can tell this would really bug me after only a very short time, so I think there is no reasonable alternative for me but the Screech version. Curiously, Frame produced a bilingual edition of a handful of Essays and other writings, and this version does have the proper citations! But this is more of a curiosity than anything. I can barely read French and certainly not 400+ year old, antique French. I guess the only question is whether I order Screech now and put it in storage or wait until I've gotten through a few other books, such as Musil for starters. I think I know myself well enough to know the answer to that one...
There is no question that it is hard to pin down Montaigne, as he shifts quite a bit. At times, he comes across as an early Mencken. In Chapter 50, he writes "I do not think we [humans] can ever be despised as much as we deserve. ... There is, in my opinion, not so much misery in us as emptiness, not so much malice as folly." However, he very much enjoyed reading the great thinkers of the past, and he also commented favorably upon (good) writers who cared more about their virtual offspring (books) than their flesh and blood children (On the affection of fathers for their children). One thing that is pretty constant in his worldview is that he took an extremely dim view of women and their role in society. They were always jealous of each other (and suspicious of their husbands) and basically incapable of higher thinking. This frequently makes for tough going, and it is always a relief when he stops writing about women and returns to his favorite subject, himself.
In my first pass through the Essays, it looks like I will end up reading slightly over half of them. They are interesting enough that I expect I will get through them all, though I don't feel that Montaigne has changed my life or anything like that. While I'm glad I got a sampling of the Florio translation and then read an extended essay on how Shakespeare was directly influenced by this version, Florio is definitely not for me. It basically comes down to Frame (Everyman) or Screech (Penguin) -- or of course the free Cotton translation on Project Gutenberg, though that is pretty outdated. Following up on a tip from an Amazon reviewer, I wanted to see if the original academic press version of Frame's translation had the footnotes to allow the reader to know which Latin (or Greek) verse was being translated. I tracked down a copy at Robarts and found that, not only does Frame omit this information, even in the original edition, but he usually just puts in a translation of the verse and doesn't leave in the Latin (and then just notes "Virgil"). That's pretty extreme, and frankly very shoddy for what had been an academic press edition. I can tell this would really bug me after only a very short time, so I think there is no reasonable alternative for me but the Screech version. Curiously, Frame produced a bilingual edition of a handful of Essays and other writings, and this version does have the proper citations! But this is more of a curiosity than anything. I can barely read French and certainly not 400+ year old, antique French. I guess the only question is whether I order Screech now and put it in storage or wait until I've gotten through a few other books, such as Musil for starters. I think I know myself well enough to know the answer to that one...
Thursday, March 28, 2019
The Upward Climb
I'm getting close to being back in pre-winter conditioning. I actually biked to work 4 days this week (at least if you count a stop in over the weekend) and 3 days in a row! That's pretty incredible, given that it is still March. As it happens, Wed. was the first day where I wasn't questioning my sanity on the way in, due to the slightly warmer weather. It is probably going to rain today, but even if not, I think I should take a day off to rest. I will most likely bike Friday, and I am likely to leave work a bit early to go up to Robarts to look for some academic articles (for work) and probably to renew my alumni borrowing card.
I'll probably hold off one more week before hitting the scales to see just how much damage this winter did. About midway through the winter I had gained back about 5 pounds, but I think the second half of the winter was worse in the sense that I came close to losing the will to live.
One thing that I didn't do was do much swimming. I know that I tend to do more when I can hit the Regent Park Aquatic Centre on the way home on the bike, but after the introduction of 2-hour transfer on Presto, I could have gone more over the winter. At least I did stick to the gym routine. One of the only downsides of so much biking (and going to the gym) is that I have so many towels to wash...
Yesterday, I sort of mixed things up a bit. My mouth was still recovering from a filling. It didn't hurt all that much, but the dentist used so much anesthetic that my tongue was still fairly numb and I couldn't taste much. So instead of dinner and then the gym, I went to the gym first. It was kind of weird, wrapping up my workout while the mall was still open.
There are plenty of other things on my mind, but they mostly revolve around the stupidity of politicians (and the populace that chose them), so I'll just end here.
I'll probably hold off one more week before hitting the scales to see just how much damage this winter did. About midway through the winter I had gained back about 5 pounds, but I think the second half of the winter was worse in the sense that I came close to losing the will to live.
One thing that I didn't do was do much swimming. I know that I tend to do more when I can hit the Regent Park Aquatic Centre on the way home on the bike, but after the introduction of 2-hour transfer on Presto, I could have gone more over the winter. At least I did stick to the gym routine. One of the only downsides of so much biking (and going to the gym) is that I have so many towels to wash...
Yesterday, I sort of mixed things up a bit. My mouth was still recovering from a filling. It didn't hurt all that much, but the dentist used so much anesthetic that my tongue was still fairly numb and I couldn't taste much. So instead of dinner and then the gym, I went to the gym first. It was kind of weird, wrapping up my workout while the mall was still open.
There are plenty of other things on my mind, but they mostly revolve around the stupidity of politicians (and the populace that chose them), so I'll just end here.
Saturday, March 23, 2019
So sore
I guess I was pushing it a little bit. I have been so eager to get back into biking that I went out, even on days that it wasn't very nice. Friday I actually got snowed on in the morning! It was warmer coming back, but it was much windier than I was expecting, particularly when I was heading north.
More than anything, I am trying to shake off the winter blues. The winter really dragged, and by the halfway point I lost most of my willpower. I definitely gained back a fair bit of weight, and I just don't think I'll lose it back until I start biking regularly.
At any rate, it was quite cold on Sat. morning, and I ended up working around the house for a while. Finally, a bit after noon I went over to the gym to get in a slightly shortened workout, and then I biked to work! It wasn't so bad going there, but coming back I felt it in my legs. Every time I had to stop and restart the bike, my legs complained. I'm still quite sore, and I don't think I'll do this again anytime soon. I suppose I could try the biking first and then going to the gym in the evening, but mostly I should be trying to break into this a bit more gently. (As my wife says, I'm not a young kid anymore. Sigh...) My hands are generally pretty sore, but I would say they don't really ache the way they did a few months back, so that seems to be progress, even if my overall conditioning is shot.
More than anything, I am trying to shake off the winter blues. The winter really dragged, and by the halfway point I lost most of my willpower. I definitely gained back a fair bit of weight, and I just don't think I'll lose it back until I start biking regularly.
At any rate, it was quite cold on Sat. morning, and I ended up working around the house for a while. Finally, a bit after noon I went over to the gym to get in a slightly shortened workout, and then I biked to work! It wasn't so bad going there, but coming back I felt it in my legs. Every time I had to stop and restart the bike, my legs complained. I'm still quite sore, and I don't think I'll do this again anytime soon. I suppose I could try the biking first and then going to the gym in the evening, but mostly I should be trying to break into this a bit more gently. (As my wife says, I'm not a young kid anymore. Sigh...) My hands are generally pretty sore, but I would say they don't really ache the way they did a few months back, so that seems to be progress, even if my overall conditioning is shot.
Last Minute Museum Exhibit
I am very sorry not to have posted this last week, but work has been crazy and I simply ran out of time. At any rate, the Art Museum at UToronto has two separate but related exhibits on Indian (and Indian-Canadian) artists (more info here and here). However, both close today at 5 pm! Again, very sorry for the short(ened) notice!
If you can't make it, there is a handout archived here.
If you can't make it, there is a handout archived here.
The Art Museum is actually split between galleries on the 2nd floor of University College and then a smaller gallery space at the north end of Hart House. Of the two, I tend to visit Hart House more, just because it is closer to other Hart House events. Indeed, I managed to squeeze in my visit right before a matinee performance of Retreat at Hart House Theatre a couple of weeks ago.
Of the two, I did slightly prefer the exhibit in Hart House, focused on P. Mansaram. Most of the pieces were collages, with a mixture of stencil, textiles, paper and even currency all thrown into the mix. Here are a few pieces that caught my attention. They all appear to be from his Rear Window series.
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