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Just finished Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland. It was ok, though I thought she chose an awkward ending. I much preferred her previous novel, The Namesake. I'm launching into Uzma Khan's Trespassing. After that, Jane Eyre. Incredibly this will be the first time I've read it, though I know the broad outlines of the plot. In university, we read Wuthering Heights instead...

I slogged through 450 pages before finally throwing in the towel. So tedious. Instead of The Confessions, this book should be titled Some Self-Recriminations, More Self-Justifications and 1000 Examples of How People I Trusted Done Me Wrong.

He should cut to the chase and press them in editions of 1, so that Pharma Bro, Martin Shkreli, can buy them all up. I'm not too impressed with this latest batch of vinyl fetishists.

I had hoped to get to Hudson (the DeJohnette/Scofield group), but the show was sold out up here in Toronto! I generally have been so busy at work that I wasn't able to focus on the first week of the jazz festival at all. However, I did manage to see The Claudia Quintet at a free show! This is apparently their 20th year as a fairly stable ensemble around drummer/composer John Hollenbeck. It also was their first concert in Toronto (and apparently 2016 was their first time in Montreal)! Anyway, quite an interesting show. The audience clapped so hard I couldn't actually hear the names, but apparently the bassist was Drew Gress, whom I had heard of from his own albums. I'm not sure I've seen him live before. He was particularly good on A-List, which was sort of the closest they came to straight-ahead jazz during the set.

I finished up Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage a while back. It's an interesting mix of whimsical and serious moments, driven by an overwhelming urge to give Biblical patriarchs, such as Noah, a big kick up the arse. I liked it a lot, but it's not for everyone. Currently in the middle of Rousseau's Confessions. Perhaps he does protest a bit too much. The edition I am reading is nearly 600 pages! After that, Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland. I really liked The Namesake, so I hope this is at the same level.

Enjoyed The Man in the High Castle. Parts of the plot move at pulp speed. The ending is sort of evocative, though still a bit anti-climatic. Not Wanted on the Voyage is also good. I've just hit the point where Lucifer shows up in disguise to get a spot on the Ark. I'm also reading the Confessions of St. Augustine, but am very underwhelmed for literary and extra-literary reasons.

A few books on the fantastical side. I'm reading PKD's The Man in the High Castle. Then Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage.

I actually have gotten the albums in my wish list to a small number, and I have planned to quit soon. I noticed that the site is quite revamped and now you download as a zip file rather than through the download manager. What is very interesting is that it used to be (years and years ago) you could download multiple times, but they stopped that. It seems to have come back now, so music I downloaded a long time ago is now available again. I will do a search to see if anything was lost (due to losing an external hard drive) and download again. And then I'll quit.

Qiu Miaojin Notes of a Crocodile (NYRB) My impressions were very negative. It was a boring, whiny tract, full of self-pity. I really can't understand why this was a cult book, other than she wrote openly about homosexuality at a time her culture was not receptive. And probably also because the author committed suicide, which always generates its own cult followers... Anyway, I wouldn't recommend this at all. I am now launching into Morley Callaghan's The Many Colored Coat. I am cautiously optimistic.

It was already too long, so I don't feel cheated...

I finished 1Q84. It had a few interesting moments, but certainly nothing that justified its length. In many ways, I consider the ending a cop-out. I am almost done with MacLennan's The Watch That Ends the Night. It's quite good. I personally like it far more than his Two Solitudes or Barometer Rising. It's mostly a love triangle with political overtones (one of the parties involved goes off to fight on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War). While it is a very different (and perhaps wiser or more forgiving) book, there are a few interesting parallels to Ford Maddox Ford's The Good Soldier (which I hope to reread this fall).

I read a bit about Moore's take on the character, that the James Bond myth was so over-the-top, since everyone knew he was a spy (even the dealers and bartenders) that you might as well treat it all as a lark. That makes sense to me, and I like most of the Bond films with Moore in them, though Moonraker is pretty terrible. I have absolutely no interest in the gritty, "realistic" films of the Daniel Craig era. That isn't Bond to me at all (it's basically just Jason Bourne), though of course many people lap them up.

I thought it was pretty interesting but at 1/3rd in, it switches from having elements of magic realism and the uncanny to a full-on fantasy novel with supernatural beings involved. At this point, I'll finish it, but I think it was a wrong turning point. (Also, how many times does he need to reference Orwell's 1984? -- it comes up over and over and over.) I just stumbled across Murakami's story "Town of Cats" in The New Yorker, which cleverly edits together some of the key events from 1Q84 and boils down 450 pages into 5 or 6! Now if he had just done that for the second half of the novel! After this, two Canadian novels: Callaghan's The Many Colored Coat and MacLennan's The Watch That Ends the Night.

I just read through Elise Partridge's The If Borderlands (NYRB Poetry), which includes all 3 of her published collections and a handful of unpublished poems. One of my favorites was "Alternate Histories" (originally published in The Exiles' Gallery): If they had straightened, not veered, if they'd caught the night ferry. If the Consul's clerk had replied, if west-running tracks had cleared. If she'd taken the hallway stairs. If he hadn't missed the warning while he whistled at tea. If they'd walked home late from the fair.

I got the email. It is sad, but the writing is definitely on the wall. My kids don't understand the point of CDs at all. The computers at work don't have CD-drives, so you have to convert the CDs to play them anyway, so it isn't that far to cut out the middle step and just go digital and streaming. Anyway, I have been eyeing the Beehive set for some time, and it is still in print, so I ordered it. But this will probably be the last time I order from Mosaic. Between the terrible exchange rate and the brutal shipping (and customs!) to get things to Canada, it just isn't worth it any longer. As a certain someone would put it -- Sad!

A Hologram for the King An interesting movie-version of the novel by Dave Eggers (which I haven't read). Among other things, it comments on globalisation and the hollowing out of manufacturing in the West. Like many consultants, we chased some big contract in the Middle East (though Bahrain, not Saudi Arabia) and in the end, we were more than happy when the deal fell through. The guy who is Tom Hanks' driver/guide in the film is definitely a highlight.

Apuleius's The Golden Ass After that, Murakami's 1Q84

Reading two books that are loosely linked through the hotel/motel theme: the epic I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita and Rick Moody's Hotels of North America. The latter is much shorter and is quite interesting in how the book is built up of reviews of hotels (or motels) where the reviewer stayed. The reviewer is an over-sharer, which is putting it mildly.

James Rosenquist, one of the last major figures from the Pop era, has passed away. I saw an interesting exhibit of his massive works on paper, which was quite nice. Also in 2003 or so, I saw the Rosenquist retrospective at the Guggenheim. Obit here: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/apr/01/james-rosenquist-pop-artist-f-111-dies-83

I've just finished Queneau's Zazie in the Metro. What a wild book. Still sort of fascinating that they even attempted to translate into English. I'm aware of the film version, but haven't decided if I will get around to watching it or not. Still reading quite a few short story collections with a few more on the way. Juan Rulfo's The Plain in Flames was good but I got a little tired of all the machismo of men killing other men, generally over no reason at all. It's the sort of book that if written by anybody else would cause tut-tuttings of how can you write about Mexicans in such a stereotypical manner... David Bezgozmis's Natasha and Other Stories. Worth a look. I thought the title story was excellent. I'm about to start Guy Vanderhaege's Daddy Lenin and Greg Hollingshead's The Roaring Girl.

For all the praise they got, I am finding the stories in Malamud's The Magic Barrel to be incredibly sour and often disappointing. I suppose the focus on people whose lives were circumscribed by poverty and prejudice (particularly against Jews) was a necessary corrective during the self-congratulatory Eisenhower years, but I am finding them depressing. Minstry's Family Matters is also depressing, though I was expecting that. I seem to be on a bit of a short story kick at the moment. I'm going to be working my way through Juan Rulfo's The Plain in Flames, Natasha by David Bezmozgis and Guy Vanderhaeghe's Daddy Lenin. I probably ought to read at least a few William Trevor and T.C. Boyle stories, but I'll hold off on them for a bit longer.

How is this? It looks promising, and I have it in my library queue.

I finally finished Absalom, Absalom! To be honest, it didn't seem worth the effort this time around. I like The Sound and the Fury considerably more, though my favorite Faulkner remains The Reivers. Definitely underwhelmed by Bright Magic, though I did like "Materialism: A Fable." Just wrapped up Juan Rulfo Pedro Páramo, which all seems to take place in a City of the Dead somewhere in Mexico. Tomorrow I launch into Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters.

Slowly making progress with Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! It's a fairly straight-forward story told in an incredibly convoluted fashion... Also, dipping into Alfred Doblin's Bright Magic (NYRB Classics), which is apparently the first time that Doblin's short stories have been collected in English. I have to admit they aren't doing a lot for me. The cover is nice, however.

I used to try to combine a stop at Dusty Groove with a peek at what was on at Corbett & Dempsey -- quite a cool little gallery.