As I mentioned recently, I’m going to try from time to time to showcase and celebrate the physical books I’ve read, reviewed, and/or from which I’ve gathered #todayspoem snippets of inspiration. Today’s treasure is A Saving Grace, by Lorna Crozier, published in 1996 by McClelland & Stewart.
The book’s dust jacket has a cutout window which reveals a prairie farmland picture underneath.
Separating the book’s dust jacket with the cutout window from the rest of the book reveals that the prairie farmland picture is embossed directly onto the hardcover book board.
Lorna Crozier’s signature appears on the book’s front cover. When you can recall the moment when you received the signature from the author, doesn’t it lend the book object a special glow forever after? Even if a book is pre-signed, doesn’t it lend the book an additional bit of warmth?
As part of my daily #todayspoem tweeting routine, I recently accompanied my selection of an excerpt from Margaret Atwood’s poem “Spelling” with some pictures of the treasured limited edition chapbook from which the poem came, entitled Notes Towards a Poem That Can Never Be Written (published in 1981 by The Nightshade Press). It’s a slim, striking, verging on unwieldy, utterly unlikely rendition of a chapbook. Its somewhat thorny but beautiful physical demeanour, complete with stitched string binding that just might be sending some kind of a message unto itself, almost seems to echo the acerbic, urgent poems contained within. (Hmm, let’s think about writing book reviews that include a review of how well the physical book supports the book’s thesis, themes, tone, etc. Yes, I know that will be a challenge, but perhaps a healthy one, in this increasingly digital world.)
Inspired by interested comments about the Atwood chapbook pictures from Twitter book friend @barbhowson, I’m going to try from time to time to showcase and celebrate the physical books I’ve read, reviewed, and/or from which I’ve gathered #todayspoem snippets of inspiration.
Today, I dipped into Charles Bukowski’s The Last of Night of the Earth Poems (1992, Black Sparrow Press). Many of not most of the works comprising Bukowski’s prodigious output were published by fabled Black Sparrow Press in handsome, well-crafted editions that gave to his and the works of other avant-garde writers of the 1960s and 70s a reverence that was often a long time coming from a broader audience and readership. That was due in large part to the vision of Black Sparrow founder John Martin, whose literary legacy is described here and has still been kept alive today. As David R. Godine, the licensed distributor who took over the Black Sparrow backlist when John Martin retired in 2002, points out:
These are not reprints: they are the original publisher’s editions, trucked direct from John Martin’s former Santa Rosa warehouse to ours. Most of the books are hand-sewn, on creamy, heavy, acid-free paper, with distinctive cover and text designs by Barbara Martin. Most of the books, once they are sold out, will not be reprinted.
Bukowski’s The Last of Night of the Earth Poems is a fine example of Martin’s publishing care and craft.
This limited edition of Charles Bukowski’s The Last Night of the Earth Poems includes tipped-in doodles from the poet himself.
Swallow by Theanna Bischoff is a lush exercise in pairings, forged and broken, and multiplicities, often layers and layers of them. That this rich layering doesn’t become affected or overpowering is testament to Bischoff’s ability to keep the effects balanced against the clear, emotionally resonant account of a young woman coping with the sudden loss of a beloved sister and the unravelling around her of other relationships and support.
The story of Darcy and her younger sister Carly is as unsettling yet infectious as Carly’s bubbly, off-kilter personality. Separated by six years, older Darcy moves steadily towards comparative maturity and security from high school to moving away to university and career, establishing connections outside her family. Carly tries to embark on her life’s path, but it’s an uneven and fraught start, to say the least. Carly’s youthful wackiness and unpredictability – endearing to some, infuriating to others, such as Darcy and Carly’s stepfather – grows into recklessness and to behaviours possibly indicative of clinical attention deficit and bipolar issues. Darcy is wrenched between her love and concern for her sister and her desire to forge her own life – until she is abruptly and cruelly relieved of that dilemma by her sister’s suicide.
Of what, then, is Swallow so lavishly composed to both frame and cushion this harsh central tale? The matryoshka doll conceit of the old nursery rhyme “The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly” not only contributes to the book’s multi-faceted title, but stitches the book together structurally and thematically (who is swallowing whom at each unhappy turn?) as well as hearkening to a childhood whimsy that Darcy and Carly perhaps never really enjoyed.
Recurring images of and references to broken and injured bodies, lost or possibly stolen children, abandoned children and families, absent and surrogate fathers and most pervasively, twins and partners – some potential matches, some comfortably or uneasily together, others sadly separated – all echo the troubled and troubling lives that Darcy, Carly and their frustratingly enigmatic mother navigate with diverging degrees of success. Darcy and Carly’s surrogate father, a gentle widower nicknamed Papi, rescues stray cats to which he gives the names of Toronto subway stations. The subway is the literal and figurative undercurrent of Swallow, acting as both a connector and a dramatic element of disconnection. (And again, that title … Darcy reclaims the subway but doesn’t allow it to swallow her in the end.)
The most potent symbol playing on that ever-present title is only mentioned once:
“Did you know, Darcy, that swallows mate for life?” … “Maybe you’ve seen people with tattoos of swallows before. It actually dates back to sailors, who often had to go away for a long journey. Swallows symbolized hope for their safe return home, back to those they loved. And if someone didn’t survive, if a person drowned at sea, legend said that swallows would find the person’s soul and carry it up to Heaven.”
In the end, the dizzying multiplicities are stripped down to simple singulars – the most poignant that of one parent and one child, soldiering on. That ultimate resolution perhaps seem all the more stark, but also simple, courageous and even hopeful, because it emerges from so many complex, almost suffocating layers to get there.
Thank you to NeWest Press for providing a review copy of Swallow, by Theanna Bischoff.
I’m thrilled to introduce Bookgaga blog visitors to a very special guest book reviewer. Amanda Earl is an eloquent and prolific literary supporter, and writer and artist in her own right. I suspect many of you reading this blog already know her and perhaps have met her in person at one of the many arts events in which she takes part.Amanda’s most recent poetry chapbooks and e-books are “Sex First and Then A Sandwich” (above/ground press, Ottawa, Ontario, 2012), “me, Medusa” (the red ceiling press, UK, 2012). Her poems appeared recently or are forthcoming in Rampike, fillingStation and In/Words Magazine. Amanda is the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the Bywords Quarterly Journal, and the (fallen) angel of AngelHousePress. Follow her on Twitter @KikiFolle or Pinterest pinterest.com/kikifolle/. For more information, please visit amandaearl.com.
If I understand correctly, the object of Today’s Poem (#todayspoem) is to expose the general tweeting public (the Tweetosphere) to a daily dose of poetry in 140 characters or less. These poem bits are also posted by ardent poetry enthusiasts or Internet junkies, take your pick, on Pinterest, along with a photo of the author or book cover. Today’s Poem is the brainchild of Vicki Ziegler, who I know as @Bookgaga on Twitter, but haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet. I am trying to lure her to the Ottawa International Writers Festival this fall for tea and book mayhem.
I began taking part in Today’s Poem this year, most likely in January. At first, I simply opened a book of poems at random and tried to find an excerpt that was compelling and brief enough to post. I had some trepidations about this exercise. What if I wasn’t representing the poet’s work properly by excerpting those 140 characters? I found I often had to exclude parts of lines to fit within the 140-character limit or I could choose to continue in another tweet, thereby breaking the line with the noise from the traffic of other tweets. But the thought of the goal of the exercise, to help people (and myself!) rediscover or discover exciting poetry, motivated me to dive in. I think this is a very creative use of Twitter, which is often just a place for narcissistic self-promotion and the repetition of sweet homilies. I commend @BookGaga for her altruism and initiative.
My most recent month-long ritual has been to post lines from the work of Anne Carson, not just her poetry, but also her translations of Greek and Latin plays, her essays and her novellas in poem form. I am fascinated by Carson’s exploration of form, the tension between formal elements and the everyday. As a former translator myself, though never a literary translator, I am interested in Carson’s take on the translation, both in the essays she writes about a single word, such as “bittersweet” and the translations themselves in the way in which they enliven and create their own new spaces, much in the way Erín Moure, another literary hero of mine, does with her translations from the Galician or invented personas.
I think of Anne Carson as a model of literary exploration, my older poetic sister. She is eclectic and daring, willing to try anything to explore the limits of her craft, and I respect that, aspire to it for my own writing. Not to mention that she didn’t have her first book published until she was 42 when Brick Books published Short Talks, probably the most treasured of her books on my shelves. While I’m past 42 by many years, Carson demonstrates that there is hope for the spineless.
Starting August 1, 2012, I posted a line from the most recent collection of her work I own, Nox. I don’t have Antigonick yet, Carson’s update of Antigone in a form similar to that of a graphic novel.
My poetry shelves are arranged for the most part alphabetically, and for the most part, according to the order that the work was published, but books have a tendency to unsort themselves for the avid reader. I posted lines from Carson’s work in approximately publishing order with most recent first.
August 1: “The phoenix mourns by shaping, weighing, testing, hollowing, plugging and carrying towards the light.” Nox (New Directions, 2010)
I am intrigued by Carson’s focus on the retelling of myth and the reanimation of Greek and Latin literature to present day. I wasn’t educated in the classics, alas. Carson’s writing is a way to learn about them, a way in.
I love Carson’s wit and sense of humour:
August 8, 2012: “Always planning ahead that’s me, practical as purgatory my mom used to say.” Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera (Knopf, 2005)
Am astounded by the beauty of her lines, which aren’t sentimental, but visual and memorable, often with an edge:
August 12, 2012: “A fell dark pink February heaven/Was/Pulling the clouds home, balancing massacre/On the rips.” Men in the Off Hours (Knopf, 2001)
August 18, 2012: “Hotel gardens at dusk are a place where the laws governing matter/get pulled inside out,/like the black keys and the white keys on Mozart’s piano.” The Beauty of the Husband (Knopf, 2001)
Carson deals with concerns such as death, anger, youth, beauty in ways that resonate and strike a universal chord.
August 23, 2012: “Youth is a dream where I go every night/and wake up with just this little jumping bunch of arteries/in my hand.” Plainwater (Knopf, 1995)
For a very good overview of Carson’s work and insightful interviews, I heartily recommend:
I have been gratified by the responses of others on Twitter and Pinterest. Carson’s lines from Today’s Poem have been retweeted and repinned by people from all over Canada and the UK, possibly from the States too. One of the goals of this exercise for me is to spread the good word about poets whose work excites me.
August 31: “Sappho begins with a sweet apple and ends in infinite hunger.” Eros the Bittersweet (Princeton University Press, 1986)
In one of the sports literature arenas that already boasts many seminal works of great storytelling and rhapsodic prose, Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend, by Larry Tye is a distinguished, inviting and elucidating addition. The book captures a pivotal time in the evolution of baseball and of North American society. As if there isn’t already a motherlode of stories and milestones to make that a captivating read, this book is rendered even livelier because it focuses on arguably the sport’s greatest practitioner and groundbreaker on numerous levels: athlete, entertainer, ambassador, philosopher clown prince and African American icon Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige.
Close to the turn of the last century, Satchel Paige was born in Mobile, Alabama into the brimming, struggling but loving family of gardener Robert and domestic worker Lula Page – “close” because Satchel’s birthdate was long in dispute and frequently subject to scrutiny and confusion, some of it generated by Paige himself. And yes, even the spelling of Paige’s name changed as he embarked on a storied career as a virtually unstoppable baseball pitcher with raw talents evident at an early age that were honed starting with a teenaged stint in reform school.
Paige’s professional journey took him through the Negro leagues, an evolving amalgam of amateur, semi-professional and professional teams and leagues comprised chiefly of African Americans and some Latin Americans. The Negro leagues started in the late 1800s and lasted until the early 1950s, overlapping with Major League baseball for a few years after black players started to be integrated in that white-dominated sporting domain. Paige himself weighed in to the debate about who should have been the very first black player to break the baseball colour line, a role that fell famously to Jackie Robinson. Paige was still one of the first to cross that often treacherous barrier with signature aplomb, and certainly the one to leave the most indelible marks. Those marks were made and cemented before he departed after his last professional game in 1966, just shy of his 60th birthday (assuming we could, by then, trust his purported birth certificate).
If the range and longevity of Paige’s professional accomplishments against a backdrop of racial tension and societal change isn’t riveting enough, there’s also the diverting portrait of a singular man: charmer, trickster, and bon vivant (whether, at any given time, he could afford the cars, clothes, food, drink, companions, appurtenances et al that filled his lively and peripatetic life to overflowing). He was a life force exuding an ebullience that probably intentionally glossed over the pain he contended with maintaining a seemingly effortless physical prowess that was in play, quite literally, year round – from league play to barnstorming and other games and exhibitions across the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. That pain surely extended to the emotional challenges of being separated from loved ones, not to mention being socially separated, even when that was supposedly a thing of the past. Paige’s almost unstoppable and at times inexplicable joie de vivre only seemed to fray around the edges in his final years, when he was out of the game and probably felt freer to give vent to some of the injustices with which he’d contended and had seemed to dance over, around and through at the time.
Author Larry Tye’s skills at distilling a complex story with layers of themes, towering mountains of data and gaping valleys of omissions in the data (for a sport deeply fascinated with and rich in statistics, recordkeeping in the early days and outside of the then exclusively white major leagues was sketchy at best) are breathtakingly impressive. That the themes and data are digestibly interwoven with infectious storytelling – true or tinted delightfully rose-coloured, all told with gusto – is more impressive still. That this daunting assignment was further complicated by a central figure who contributed as much to his own mystique as he did to his rightful legend makes the whole package, with astutely marshalled sources and research, extraordinary.
Some knowledge of baseball is useful to follow the terminology and have some frame of reference for the excellence of the accomplishments of Paige, his contemporaries and those who came after. Still, the reader will not be intimidated by an overly technical examination of the game. Tye frames well and accessibly where Paige stood in the context of the sport and its evolution, along with where he stood in the context of social changes external to but internalized by and affecting the sports world in which he operated and often but didn’t always thrive. Finally, Tye paints a vivid but also clear, honest picture of Paige, where there are wide and vibrant swaths of impressionistic versions of Paige out there (with some brushstrokes by Paige himself), but bringing the man into the sharpest focus possible to date, and possibly ever.
Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend is, by the way, a great read aloud book – that’s how my husband and I read this entire book. That’s tribute to Tye’s crisp, pleasant style which matches Paige’s argot in note perfect tandem … and of course, to the treasure trove of witticisms and repartee either on the record or legendarily associated with Paige and his contemporaries. (Yes, you can easily and abundantly google them.)
We all know about the storied and powerful #fridayreads hashtag and tradition, whereby folks tweet what they’re reading on Friday. It’s a way to shout out and celebrate reading, good books and hard working writers, publishers and booksellers.
While touting the virtues of one of writer Angie Abdou’s great book reviews today (The Dead Are More Visible, by Steven Heighton), a fellow book tweep (@davideburga) declared that the review had inspired him to make the book his #fridayreads selection. Ah, the instantaneous, twinkling magic of Twitter!
So, OK then … What if we pointed folks to great reviews before Friday, so that they can make some good and informed reading decisions for Friday and the weekend?
Thus is born #thursdayreviews … let’s see how it goes:
For #thursdayreviews, on a Thursday, tweet a link to a good review of a book that you think someone should make his/her #fridayreads.
The #thursdayreviews link can be to your own review, or a review that you like and/or that inspired you to pick up a specific book.
In the spirit of the week that was (start here), #thursdayreviews can also be a negative review of something that shouldn’t be one’s #fridayreads. Ahem. Be nice, or at least be constructive, OK?
Did I have any idea I’d be this far along a journey through poetry when a bunch of us bookish Twitter friends had the first #todayspoem discussion back in late 2011? What I did know is that I felt very committed from the outset to giving it a concerted try. I would do my best to read and share via Twitter every single day an excerpt from a poem to which I’d given some consideration and reflection. So far, so good. I was still enthusiastic when I checked in after two months, and six months in, I’m still interested, motivated, intrigued, jazzed … and have yet to miss a day.
What I didn’t know when I sent my first #todayspoem tweet on December 25, 2011 was where my poetry explorations would take me. What I also didn’t realize is how many others would be along for the adventure, and how their contributions, comments and insights would send me off on new side trips along the way.
Overall, the exercise (which has never felt like an exercise, actually) has compelled me to revisit and go deeper in my own library. It has also inspired me to go further afield in print and online, with poets with whom I was already familiar, but also very excitingly with poets old and new I was encountering for the first time.
And what of the daily poetry excerpts and selections themselves – my own and those of other #todayspoem contributors? Well, every day is a fresh intersection with where I am and how I’m feeling and what that day’s poem provokes, evinces or confirms. Not a day goes by that those simple tweets and where they lead have amused, amazed, surprised, touched, agitated, intrigued and more. Try it for yourself.
So, without (much) further ado, here is a list of the poets whose work I’ve read and incorporated in #todayspoem tweets since December 25, 2011. For each name, I’m going to link to a biography, article, interview, review or some other resource that might inspire you to go off on a few poetry side trips yourself. Thank you to the poets, publishers, #todayspoem contributors and poetry lovers in general who have filled and enriched the first six months of this venture, and are likely to help me turn this into a lifelong habit.
“To crow would have been out of place; and besides this rooster wanted to be different.” Irving Layton, The Laughing Rooster (1964, McClelland and Stewart)
“The paper’s still empty, the poem unwritten. You would have done better to have talked to your mother.” PK Page, How to Write a Poem from Coal and Roses (2009, Porcupines Quill)
“Kevin Costner stayed in this hotel Babe Ruth and Calvin Coolidge too This is a sacred place” August Kleinzahler, Sleeping It Off in Rapid City (2008, Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
“I started spelling my name backwards, retreating from the space a name makes.” Rosemary Sullivan, Sisters from The Space a Name Makes (1986, Black Moss Press)
“and the wind began to blow and all the trees began to bend and the world in its cold way started coming alive.” John Darnielle, Woke Up New from Get Lonely (2006)
“It’s the spot where the dogs always stop overlong, then look at me as if to say, Explain this, please.” Chase Twichell, The Park From Above (2012, Plume Poetry)
“And when Peace here does house He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo, He comes to brood and sit.” Gerard Manley Hopkins, Peace from Poems (1918)
“It was the last conversation I ever had with her. I told her I liked baseball, to make her happy.” Dave McGimpsey, What Was That Poem? (2011, Walrus Magazine)
“Outside there are sirens. Someone’s been run over. The century grinds on.” Margaret Atwood, Secular Night from Morning in the Burned House (1995, McClelland and Stewart)
“a rediscovery and immersion into poetry, specifically the joy of reading poetry aloud” – Audiobook narrator and voice artist Xe Sands discusses how she has expanded her poetry landscape thanks in part to #todayspoem
Here are the books I’ve read so far in 2012, with links where they exist to books that I’ve reviewed (either here on this blog or briefly on Goodreads). As I’ve remarked before, it’s a competition with no one but myself, but it is always interesting to reflect halfway through the year where one is at with one’s reading, both quantitatively and qualitatively. This has been another good year. How is your reading going so far in 2012?
I’m delighted to introduce Bookgaga blog visitors to another splendid guest book reviewer. Barbara McVeigh is a dedicated and enthusiastic teacher-librarian working in Southwestern Ontario. She’s a writer and avid, omnivorous reader who combines her own interests, such as cycling, with particular emphasis in her reading and book curating on the area of sport literature. Barbara is active on Goodreads, and you’re guaranteed a lively discussion when you converse with her via Twitter – @barbaramcveigh.
The Sisters Brothers: A Defense
I was reluctant to read The Sisters Brothers for a long time. It was getting mixed reviews and being nominated for so many damn awards. Not a good sign. However, I bought (and read) the book because I was attending the Stephen Leacock Medal presentation, which The Sisters Brothers had won.
The book has been criticized as not having a story, for having too much senseless violence, and for its weird, anachronistic language and characters. Because of all these reasons, I loved the book.
In terms of plot, The Sisters Brothers moves along in short chapters. Each chapter left me breathless and wondering where the characters were going to next. We do not expect what happens to happen. For example, after being treated for a tooth infection and then robbing the dentist of his novocaine, the narrator defies a witch’s curse in order to save a horse he doesn’t want from a grizzly bear. These short chapters allow the brothers to quickly move from place to place and interact with the best the Wild West has to offer.
The novel also delivers emotional sucker-punches and subverts the expectations of the Western genre. In a typical Western, you’d have two cowboys in white hats who come to save the day. Instead, we have the brothers Charlie and Eli Sisters whose job it is to mercilessly kill Hermann Kermit Warm, and dispose of anybody who gets in their way. When hatching a plot, Charlie says: “Morals come later. I asked if [the plan] would make sense” (DeWitt 222). As they head towards their mission and move from misadventure to misadventure, we cheer them on.
The strength of the subversion lies in the empathy the reader feels for Eli Sisters. I read this book out loud to a student and was immediately struck by the strength of the voice: gravelly, rolling and soaked with whiskey. Now Eli isn’t just your run-of-the-mill heartless killer. He’s looking for true love and personal improvement. He is also loyal to his bloodthirsty brother. Yet, Charlie (whom is often described as a psychopath in reviews) doesn’t always come across as the baddest of the bad, either. At one point Charlie tells Eli the story of how Eli got his freckles. The story demonstrates their brotherly bond, as well as revealing Charlie’s protective spirit.
Still, these aren’t men in white hats. When the brothers are in situations where they could behave as if they were good guys, they defy our expectations. On their way to California to find Warm, Eli and Charlie come across a 15-year-old boy alone in the wild. They give him food and listen to his life story. Apparently, everyone who meets this boy hits him on the head. In the usual Western script, the reader would expect that the two heroes would adopt the boy and care for him. But Charlie and Eli can’t: They’re assassins. They hit the boy on the head to disarm him and then abandon him (not once, but twice) on their journey.
The reality of scenes like this would be horrible if played straight. Patrick DeWitt at the Stephen Leacock presentations spoke about using comedy as a weapon. The humour deflects the bite of reality. This is the Wild West “where life ha[s] no value” (Fisher). The boy evokes every sense of pathos: no mother, a missing father, unrequited love, and a naive optimism that the brothers will take him under their wing. Their interaction is touching and funny, and then the boy disappears from the book. Like all the minor characters in the novel, whether it be the intermissions girl, the dirt coffee prospector, or the weeping man, these characters appear “for no real reason” (Edwards). In an interview, DeWitt says that these characters have no symbolic value; they are just “semi-humorous vaudevillian prop[s] wandering into someone else’s scene” (Edwards). What these characters do provide is the quirkiness and atmosphere for this great rollicking story.
The action quickly continues to California and comes to an unexpected conclusion. There’s a moment when the elastic seems to snap backwards and fortunes are reversed, much like Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow.
Initially, I felt the ending wasn’t satisfactory. There’s a reversal of position for Eli and Charlie, but I wanted them to get some sort of reward. A few readers (and definitely some characters) might say that, in the end, Charlie and Eli got their “just desserts”. Still, I felt that since we’ve grown to like these two anti-heroes, something good should’ve happened to them. But then I found, on second thought, that something good does happen; it’s just not in terms of a monetary prize.
Comedy as a weapon not only deflects the harshness of reality. If the humour is sharp, it also reveals a message or truth. And what does the humour of The Sisters Brothers reveal? That despite “the difficulties of family [and] how crazy and crooked the stories of a bloodline can be” (DeWitt 11), it is only family you can trust. In a world that changes in the blink of an eye and where life has no value, it is only with family you can find safety and home.
So should you read The Sisters Brothers, especially since there’s a danger you may hate it rather than love it? Here’s the warning I like best: “If the characters and briskly paced events don’t appeal to [you] early, it is unlikely it will get better” (Trembley). If you can preview the book, do. I strongly recommend that you saddle up and go on a wild ride with Eli and Charlie Sisters.
Works Cited
DeWitt, Patrick. The Sisters Brothers. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2011. Print.
The cottage dock is beckoning. When I wander down to it for a lazy afternoon of refreshing beverages, relaxing and reading, I aim to have some of these books in my tote bag. These are all titles that have been calling to me from the tbr pile for some time:
Tell It to the Trees, by Anita Rau Badami
The Chemistry of Tears, by Peter Carey
The Little Shadows, by Marina Endicott
Canada, by Richard Ford
Killdeer, by Phil Hall ✔
Monoceros, by Suzette Mayr
How to Read the Air, by Dinaw Mengestu
Magnified World, by Grace O’Connell
The Juliet Stories, by Carrie Snyder ✔
Night Street, by Kristel Thornell ✔
These ones aren’t dock books, but ones I want to enjoy on my porch in Toronto … and with a TTC pass nearby so I can leap up, inspired, to go exploring:
Stroll, Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto, by Shawn Micallef
Seen Reading, by Julie Wilson ✔
Of course, it’s all subject to change, whim, fancy and recommendations from my erudite and persuasive book friends. What are your summer reading aspirations … and inspirations?
(As I read them, I’m ticking them off my list … ✔)
