While adventuring in Toronto: not the usual cityscape
As if it wasn’t enough to obsess about Reading and ReLi-ting, I’m also obsessing about the Toronto Book Award, whose shortlist was announced this week.
THE 2011 TORONTO BOOK AWARD (More deets here.)
What Disturbs Our Blood, James FitzGerald (Random House)
Étienne’s Alphabet, James King (Cormorant Books)
The Amazing Absorbing Boy, Rabindranath Maharaj (Knopf)
The Parabolist, Nicholas Ruddock (Doubleday)
Fauna, Alissa York (Random House)
I’ve got a thing for books set in Toronto, so I’ve been reading from the TBA lists for years now.
But the last time that I read all five shortlisted books? It was 2006.
Listening to a friend gush about visiting Prague earlier this summer reminded me of how much I love this city, but it also reminded me also how much I’ve come to take it for granted now that I call it home.
And, then, I read 2008’s shortlisted biography of Frances Loring and Florence Wyle (And Beauty Answers by Elspeth Cameron), which took me out to the streets and parks: adventuring.
Since then, I’ve been taking time to get re-acquainted with its streets and shores, its railways and intersections: I’ve been falling in love again.
This is the perfect year to find the city on the page once more, too.
Do you have a favourite city/place that you love to find in and out of books?
I love to read about New York City, which isn’t hard to do, since so many people write about it! But it’s the city I know best (which is to say, not all that well, but better than any other city), and it’s so much fun to read about familiar places, especially when it’s in older novels or historical fiction.
That’s a city I’d like to get to know better: I only know it through fiction now, but I’d like to get more personal with it! 😉