Seen Reading

Breakfast at Tiffany's, by Truman Capote (@RandomHouseCa) #seenreadingTO

Julie Wilson (The Madam) — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 15:12:00 +0000

Northbound, Pape and Danforth

Caucasian woman, late 20s, with long curly brown hair, wearing glasses, red jacket, and sun-faded pink and white backpack.

Breakfast at Tiffany's, by Truman Capote (Knopf Doubleday)

Page 47:

She sighed and picked up her knitting. "I must be madly in love. You saw us together. Do you think I'm madly in love?"

"Well. Does he bite?"

Mag dropped a stitch. "Bite?"

"You. In bed."

"Why, no. Should he?" Then she added, censoriously: "But he does laugh."

"Good. That's the right spirit. I like a man who sees the humor; most of them, they're all pant and puff."

The skin has never been broken, but when her lover comes she buries her snout into her shoulder, sniffing her hair for evidence of new secretions, recognizing her own scent before relaxing into a sleepy trance. Her eye lids flutter, a content growl resting at the back of her throat before curling into herself for a short nap. When she awakes minutes later it's with a playful alertness. Now they can go outside?

How I Live Now, by Meg Rosoff (@RandomHouseCa) #seenreadingTO

Julie Wilson (The Madam) — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 13:46:38 +0000

Eastbound, Queen and Laing

Asian female, 40s, with short black hair, wearing long tan coat, tweed cap and Hunter wellies.

How I Live Now, by Meg Rosoff (Random House)

Page 23:

She told me things I never knew like her sister was all set to go to university to study history when she fell in love with my father and decided not to go after all, which made their father furious. When she went away to live in America hardly any of the family was speaking to her. Then from the top of her desk Aunt Penn took down a framed picture of two young women looking almost the same, one of them laughing and one looking serious and holding on to the neck of a huge wild-looking gray dog Aunt Penn said was called Lady, as a joke because she had no manners at all, but look how your mother adored her. I’ve seen plenty of pictures of my mother at home, but almost always with my father and not a single one taken before he knew her, so this was strange because she looked so different, happy and young like someone you’ve known in another life. Aunt Penn said I could keep the photograph but I said No thank you because it seemed to belong to that desk and that room, and I didn’t want to drag it away to a foreign place.

The Zamboni circled the ice rink, starting at the outer edges, working its way closer to the centre, erasing the grooves left during the first period of open skate. She sat in the change room hugging a Styrofoam cup of vending machine hot chocolate, a square of sponge toffee balanced on her knee. The boy beside her fanned through a stack of hockey cards, showing them off to the other grade four students, tapping them carefully into a tidy block he wrapped in two thick elastic bands. He dropped the lot into the base of his boot, the pack bouncing gently before settling into the heel. He toed his way to the boards, first on the ice before the Zamboni had parked itself in the belly of the building, a smattering of applause fading into a new mix of 70s top hits. She peered into the boot, a full set of Ninja cards, and Welcome Back, Kotter, too, waiting at home, coated in a sheet of petrified bubble gum dust, no perceived value in the trade market that she knew of. She shuffled down the bench placing her feet into the boots of her classmate, signaling to their teacher a sudden need to use the washroom.

The Blue Light Project, by Timothy Taylor (@RandomHouseCa) #seenreadingTO

Julie Wilson (The Madam) — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 13:33:11 +0000

Westbound, King and Spadina

Caucasian male, mid 30s, with short blonde hair, wearing a green hooded jacket, brown leather shoes and deeply-creased black jeans.

The Blue Light Project, by Timothy Taylor (Doubleday Knopf)

Page 246:

Open planters and waterfalls. People everywhere: chanters and singers, placards angry and distraught. The seething tension of for and against. He saw people dancing in front of a boom box over to his left. We don’t need this fascist groove thang . . . And the idea came. Loftin was amazed that he hadn't seen it before: fault lines running through the crowd. The story was in the fault lines. Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace. Everyone was adrift. The encircling authorities, the cameras, the grip of the hostage drama itself. Everyone living in fear about the end. The ending was the thing. And Loftin felt it in a flash, his own story arriving. There was a great war going on here about control over the ending. Each breath of this common air fully vested.

When you least expect it, he's been told. Stop looking and when you least expect it. He stares out the window counting house numbers, a game he's played since youth. Pick a number and imagine yourself as the home's owner, this future journey to be made by friends who will visit for the housewarming and secretly judge his taste and financial resources. 458. 460. 462. The streetcar rolls past a house with a worn couch on the front porch, not the homey kind, and a stack of soaked boxes leaning in the corner. He picks another number far ahead, time more to consider the woman who sits two seats ahead reading a new paperback, something with a mustard cover. He'll look out for it, the book with the mustard cover. He peers out the window. 1236. The house appears, it's tidy front lawn dotted with trees. Is that a Japanese maple, he wonders. What does he know about trees? He traces a reflection back to the reader who pulls a stray hair behind her ear her finger hovering by her lobe as if she's forgotten to lower her arm. Yes, he thinks, the trees could be her job. And the kids can rake the leaves.

Notes from a Small Island, by Bill Bryson (@McClellandBooks) #seenreadingTO

Julie Wilson (The Madam) — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 13:00:51 +0000

Southbound, Greenwood and Dundas

Caucasian female, early 60s, with short grey hair, wearing red-framed glasses, long black trench coat and green and red silk scarf.

Notes from a Small Island, Bill Bryson (McClelland & Stewart)

Page 72:

Knowing already of the town's carefully nurtured reputation for gentility, I moved there in 1977 with the idea that this was going to be a kind of English answer to Bad Ems or Baden-Baden - manicured parks, Palm Courts with Orchestras, swank hotels where men in white gloves kept the brass gleaming, bosomy ladies in mink coats walking those little dogs you ache to kick (not out of cruelty, you understand, but from a slmple, honest desire to see how far you can make them fly). Sadly, I have to report that almost none of this awaited me.

She was at the age now of the mother of that author, the one who wrote a family column on raising a son as a single mother, trying to date while starting a new novel and the recent addition of her mother living steps away in the converted garage. It had been her study for years, but now it housed the woman the author described "as alien to me as if she'd fallen from the stars, beyond the stars, far beyond the stars where it's common sense to wear a cable-knit sweater on a summer day, and, judge me if you will, all I could imagine in that moment was her head facedown in the sand, my hand holding her in place, catching just a few solitary moments of sunshine against my bare shoulders." At the time, it had horrified the woman. She'd always been coldblooded and dreaded the day her own child might resent her for needing to layer. But there was something to be said about these small dogs, their neighbour's in particular, no bigger than the base of a compost bin.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond (Penguin) #seenreadingTO

Julie Wilson (The Madam) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:43:15 +0000

Northbound, University and Spadina

Caucasian male, late 50s, with short grey hair, wearing blue windbreaker, black dress pants and Blundstones.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond (Penguin)

About halfway in:

But it needs to be said at the outset that an individual should not expect to make a difference through a single action, or even through a series of actions that will be completed within three weeks. Instead, if you do want to make a difference, plan to commit yourself to a consistent policy of actions over the duration of your life.

On his way to the Kiss and Ride, he listened to the morning DJs run over the day's entertainment, the most bizarre story about a Chilean newspaper vendor who had over 82 tattoos of Julia Roberts covering his torso. 82. Had Julia Roberts been in 82 movies? Was he choosing stills, promotional shots? Oh, maybe the one from that award show when she turned up with short, blonde hair. Did her appearance on Law and Order order count? Or Friends? Who would bother to know this much about Julia Roberts? He listened on. The tattoos started with Erin Brokovich. Really, he thought. Well, she did show more cleavage. And her hair was at its best. And there was the motorcycle guy. Huh, did the Chilean man envision himself as the motorcycle guy? And what about his wife? If he had a wife. How would she feel making love to Julia Roberts for the rest of her life? Or . . . what if it was her idea? He listened on, intrigued suddenly by man's commitment to the marital cause.

Room, by Emma Donoghue (@HarperCollins) #seenreadingTO

Julie Wilson (The Madam) — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 13:03:01 +0000

Westbound, Queen and Pape

Caucasian female, mid 30s, with long, brown hair, wearing black wool pea coat and yoga jeans tucked into leather, knee-high boots.

Room, by Emma Donoghue (HarperCollins)

Page 180:

Ma says the plates aren't a problem, the blue doesn't go on the food, she gets me to rub it with my finger to see. Also the forks and knives, the metal feels weird with no white handles but it doesn't actually hurt. There's a syrup that's to put on the pancakes but I don't want mine wet. I have a bit of all the foods and everything are good except the sauce on the scrambled eggs.

For the past week, the woman has taken to sitting at the table directly across from her, staring. She wears the same clothes every day, a white-and-blue striped tuque, heavy winter coat torn at the left elbow, and tan pants under a summer floral print skirt. Her eyes are blue, pale and watery, like the scientist who after studying in the Arctic for a year came home to discover his eyes were shades lighter than when he'd left. She wonders, as the woman thumbs wet crumbs off the neatly-folded napkin left by the last customer, if the world looks better or worse from behind a foggy lens.

Crush It!, by Gary Vaynerchuk (@HarperStudio, @HarperCollins)

Julie Wilson (The Madam) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 17:04:04 +0000

Southbound, Spadina and College

South Asian male, mid 20s, with bright, red hair, and wide, black-framed glasses, wearing green jogging jacket and low slung jeans.

Crush It!, by Gary Vaynerchuk (HarperStudio)

The Internet is only fourteen years old or so—it's so young it hasn't even had sex—yet it has already crushed many of the biggest communication platforms known to humankind, and it's not done. The Internet is as powerful as oxygen, but we have not seen its full capabilities.

His twin brother was fourteen when he slipped beneath the undertow off Matagorda Beach in Texas. Swim parallel to the shore, he thought. He thought it hard. Swim parallel to the shore, brother. When his brother emerged covered in sand, but calm, he spoke of a pocket of air that had saved him, their cousin's inflatable surfboard pinned to his face like a mask, and a glorious blue light that had cradled him, rocking him safely to shore. Grabbing his brother's hand, he pulled him to the water's edge, thinking, You must see for yourself.

No Great Mischief, by Alistair MacLeod (@mcclellandbooks) #seenreadingTO

Julie Wilson (The Madam) — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 22:25:19 +0000

Northbound, Yonge and College

Caucasian male, early 30s, with short red hair and sleepy expression, wearing black trench coat and blue scarf wrapped up to his ears.

No Great Mischief, by Alistair MacLeod (McClelland & Stewart)

Page 159:

Later, as she slept, she was strangely awakened and there was the form of a woman standing by her bedside. She sat up and the form moved to the foot of the bed and seemed to beckon to her. She dug her elbow into her husband's back but could not awaken him. The room was in semi-darkness, but because it was summer and Aberdeen so far north it was brighter than one might expect. She looked more closely, straining her eyes. The form moved toward the door and then seemed to vanish.

Outside the birds whistle, the window open just a crack since the temperature steadied above zero day and night. The room smells less musky this way, even if it means extra blankets on the bed. Counterintuitive, sure, but all in the good name of their seasonally-renewed love affair taking the shape of missed dinners in place of lingering love-making. Spring brings out the children in them, the desire to use daylight to their advantage, neither one of them having to duck out from the fort of covers to turn off the light in time for the big sleep.

The Beauty of Humanity Movement, by Camilla Gibb (@randomhouseca)

Julie Wilson (The Madam) — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 17:48:53 +0000

Northbound, Coxwell and Dundas

Caucasian female, late 20s, with short, reddish hair and smokey eyes, wearing pale green turtleneck sweater under white winter jacket.

The Beauty of Humanity Movement, by Camilla Gibb (Doubleday Canada)

Page 122:

Maggie sinks into the steaming water of the bath holding a wineglass aloft. She plugs the dripping tap with her big toe, and listens to the wind rattling a pane of glass in the reception room. She smells the chicken Mrs. Viên down the hall must have cooked for dinner; she hears the monotone radio in the distance.

Perhaps it was the rare treat of company all day, but Maggie feels lonelier than usual this evening. These are the hours that should be spent with family and friends, sharing food and news of the day . . .

The cat has commandeered the empty boxes and the basement window ledge beside the toilet. The bath fills, a lone bottle of Labatt Blue sitting in the crisper. Would the last tenant come back to claim it? Was it a housewarming gift? She pops the top and takes a long haul, opening the oven to preheat the apartment. Four mirror squares on the south wall lengthen the bachelor, echoing bare surfaces in need of expression. She dips a foot into the bath water, submerges her calf, winter's growth standing on edge. The cat jaws its way through a piece of kibble, the only familiar sound in this new home. She sinks into the tub completely, places the beer on the floor beside her, and releases her belly along with a succession of ripples from toe to torso. For how long, she wonders, had she been holding it in?

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, by Mary Roach (@wwnorton)

Julie Wilson (The Madam) — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 16:03:05 +0000

Southbound, Broadview and Danforth

Caucasian male, with short brown hair, wearing blue tuque, green scarf and red-and-white striped second-hand sweater.

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, by Mary Roach (W. W. Norton)

Page 79:

It was a pretty place to die. The mansion on Blue Hill Avenue was the showpiece of the Dorchester, Massachusetts estate known as Grove Hall. Four stories tall, with a porticoed porch and cliques of indolent shade tress, the mansion had been home to T. K. Jones, a wealthy merchant in the China trade. In 1864, it was bought by a physician-cum-faith healer named Charles Cullis, who turned it into the Cosumptives' Home—a charitable operation for late-stage tuberculosis (a.k.a comsumption) patients. With the discover of antibiotics sixty years off, prayer was a useful treatment as any then on offer.

From his bed, the man's father appeared to stare intently at a framed 1819 aqua tint of the boxer Tho. Shelton standing at the ready, fists raised and loosely clenched, his razored bangs combed forward into a handsome peak, pencil-thin sideburns tracing the line of his hard jaw. But it was the bloated flesh below the tie on the boxer's pants his father studied, the way it lead the boxer's frame like an expectant mother. A grandchild, how wonderful.