Caucasian male, 60, with grey hair and mustache, wearing black pants, black T-shirt, and blue silk shirt, surrounded by a semi-circle of audience members.
The Jesus Sayings: The Quest For His Authentic Message, Rex Weyler (House of Anansi Press)
Page 110:
The image satirizes religious pretension with a counterculture sense of humour. For Jesus, spiritual awareness is not something to boast about. It starts with the smallest seed, invades highly structured society like a weed, and provides protection for innocent creatures. As we assemble Jesus’ most likely original oral teachings, we can start here, with the lowly mustard seed.
Once a week, yellow school buses lined up outside the elementary school. She watched from the tarmac, clutching her hopscotch puck, as the buses filled front to back, the neighborhood’s children dangling their heads and hands out the open windows. She waved as they pulled away, her best friend bouncing and clapping, en route to the promise of free bibles and doughnuts, and a 25¢ treasure taped under the seats of 100 lucky souls.
30 in 30: Jeramy Dodds reading from Crabwise to the Hounds. Buy it here.
Asian male, late 20s, with short spiky hair, wearing glasses, black jacket and scarf, pressed blue jeans, and white sneakers.
The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, Robin Sharma (HarperCollins)
Page 9:
Perhaps he had settle down in India, a place so diverse that even a restless soul like his could have made it his home. Or maybe he was trekking through Nepal? Scuba diving off the Caymans? One thing was certain: he had not returned to the legal profession. No one had received even a postcard from him since he left for his self-imposed exile from the Law.
If he had to leave today to live on a desert island, he wouldn’t take his favourite books, or music, not even his favourite jersey or pet cat. He’d take a box of all the things he’d been holding when she took his breath away. A grapefruit spoon when she’d asked if he’d like her to buy an extra toothbrush. A safety pin when she’d leaned forward to kiss his forehead while he tried to fasten a presenter’s badge to her lapel. A tin of loose tea leaves when she’d announced she was pregnant, really pregnant. And while impractical, his father’s coffin, when he’d looked over to see her crying and realized that, one day, she would miss him this much too.
Indigo, John and Richmond, leaning in the book stacks.
Caucasian male, early 30s, with wavy, brown hair and dark beard, wearing plaid green jacket, black jeans with stitched back pocket, carrying an old leather bag.
Icefields, Thomas Warton (NeWest Press)
Page 180:
He digs absently with the toe of his boot. There is a faint blue shadow in the hollow where the spilled liquid fell. He crouches, brushes away the snow crust with his gloved hands, digging a hole into the powdery layers beneath. Further down the snow solidifies again. Sexsmith stabs his alpenstock into the hole, strikes a hard surface. Rock, he thinks, and scrapes at it, glimpses a faint reflected gleam.
On the other end of the long drive, while three will shovel a throughway, one will have to make the pathless haul to the front door to turn on the power. They spend the last thirty minutes trying to find a radio signal, listening out for commercials, playing a bastardized version of Rock, Paper, Scissors they made up in high school, twenty years earlier. A pizza jingle beats a car ad, a car ad beats a realtor, and anyone selling hot tubs or saunas beats them all. Inside the cottage, he strips to his shorts and jogs in front of the space heater, an open bottle of red breathing on the counter beside frost-bitten ice trays.
Caucasian woman, early 20s, with thick black hair and glasses, wearing a black vest and red fleece, carrying a black and orange computer bag, dripping umbrella hanging from the strap.
Nightwood, Djuna Barnes (New Directions)
Page 42:
He thought: “She has the touch of the blind who, because they see more with their fingers, forget more in their minds.” Her fingers would go forward, hesitate, tremble, as if they had found a face in the dark. When her hand finally came to rest, the palm closed; it was as if she had stopped a crying mouth. Her hand lay still and she would turn away. At such moments Felix experienced an unaccountable apprehension. The sensuality in her hands frightened him.
She pulled her knees to her chest and closed her eyes, the latticework of the bay’s ripples bouncing behind her eyelids. The breeze licked past her ears, playful and warm, tickling up and out of her summer shorts. She recognized the familiar swoop of hummingbirds in heat, the male chasing tail of the female along a perfect semi-circle, an arc so perfect it was as if they were strung on wire, pullied back and forth by an invisible hand.
This weekend, I’m running a contest at Twitter in partnership with Chapters-Indigo. They’ve offered up a generous gift card so I can go shopping! For you!
But this is where the real fun begins! Using your 10 words, I’ll be your personal shopper, hand picking a book I think you might get a kick out of!
So git on over to @seenreading, and show me what you’re made of!
On to the entry:
(Originally published March 18, 2008)
Bloor Line, sensibly dressed.
Caucasian woman, mid 30s, with brown hair pulled back into tight ponytail, wearing glasses, houndstooth black and grey coat, black work slacks, sensible black shoes with solid heel, and a silver thumb ring.
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, Kim Edwards (Penguin)
Page 320:
Yet the experience had left her changed, in ways both large and small. She laughed more and took more time off work. She’d started volunteering on weekends on Habitat houses; while building a house in eastern Kentucky she had met a warm, ruddy, fun-loving man, a minister recently widowed. His name was Ben.
When she was eleven she constructed a fanciful game for herself hammering nails into the planks of the wooden fence dividing her yard from her neighbour’s. She used nails from her father’s toolbox and when those were out she started pulling nails from the back half of the neighbouring fence to the other side of yard. When that threatened to fall in, she started pulling nails from the inside wall of the tool shed. Each morning, while her mother took her morning power walk, she resumed her efforts, the fence uselessly bejeweled while the family car prepared for the worst.
Caucasian male, mid 30s, with full beard, wearing black dress pants, blue dress shirt (sleeves rolled to elbows), and scuffed leather shoes. He pulls methodically at his moustache like the hair of a Crissy Doll.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon (Picador)
Page 72:
Sammy performed the rapid series of operations — which combined the elements of the folding of wet laundry, the shoveling of damp ashes, and the swallowing of a secret map on the point of capture by emerging troops — that passed, in his mother’s kitchen, for eating.
Her job was to wait below, terry cloth shorts bunched between her chubby legs, while he climbed the television tower. She kept a look out for adults, older siblings, or anyone, really, with sense enough to call his parents. He would be quick. By his rules of the game, only once up and down constituted a closed case. Then they could retreat to the basement, the young boy and his neighbour, lie on the couch together, still, “getting the girl” his reward for another mystery solved.
Free for All Friday
(Originally published February 21, 2008)
Bloor Line, standing out from the crowd
Caucasian male, early 50s, with long face, wavy grey hair parted down the middle, “I Am Salman Rushdie” button pinned on North Face jacket, wearing red jeans, and white sneakers.
The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins (Mariner Books)
Page 150:
So, we have seen that eyes and wings are certainly not irreducibly complex; but what is more interesting than these particular examples is the general lesson we should draw. The fact that so many people have been dead wrong over these obvious cases should serve to warn us of other examples that are less obvious, such as the cellular and biochemical cases now being touted by those creationists who shelter under the politically expedient euphemism of “intelligent design theorists.”
As a boy, he’d stood in the woods watching. The man was the first redhead he’d ever seen naked, the second man. His body hair was shocking, not in mass or texture. It glowed, back lit by a low morning sun. This minister had started dating his mother. His minister. They were bathing in the lake, thinking him still asleep. This was the first redheaded naked minister he’d ever seen, he thought, and went back to bed.
East African male, mid 20s, wearing black leather jacket, black cap, red glasses, and slick lip gloss.
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Max Brooks (Three Rivers Press)
Halfway through:
The name, Avalon, comes from some stock footage one of the students had shot during the siege. It was the night before their last, worst attack, when a fresh horde from the east was clearly visible on the horizon. The kids were hard at work — sharpening weapons, reinforcing defenses, standing guard on the walls and towers. A song came floating across the campus from the loudspeaker that played constant music to keep morale up. A Scripps student, with a voice like an angel, was singing the Roxy Music song. It was such a beautiful rendition, and such a contrast with the raging storm about to hit. I laid it over my “preparing for battle” montage. I still get choked up when I hear it.
He was thirteen, stretched out in the basement watching television. The window was propped open, the screen in place to deter curious cats from poking in their heads. The sound of feet passing by didn’t startle him. It was dark and all the street noises had become one — ball hockey out front, a car radio two houses down. Besides, the gate was locked. If someone was in the backyard, it would mean they’d scaled the fence, pausing beneath the window where his mother slept.
That was the night he learned to believe in monsters.
Caucasian woman, 60s, with short red hair, wearing bright red lipstick, purple eye shadow, gold rimmed glasses, checkered wool coat, and wool fisherman’s cap.
Postmortem, Patricia Cornwell (Pocket)
Page 6:
An open doorway led into a corridor running the length of the house. To my right appeared a series of rooms, to the left was the kitchen, where Marino and a young officer were talking to the man I assumed was the husband.
The man beside her has been drinking. He sits with his hands carefully placed in his lap, elbows in. He stares straight ahead, his expression soft, an attempt to look nonthreatening. She’s detected the smell, her hand in front of her face a cautious attempt to block his booze. But while she enters the pages of her crime novel, she misses a clue, the tear at his collar, the smear on his neck in the shape of a hand.
Check out this great video by Adam Schwabe from DearToronto.com. Adam tagged along with me one day, and now there’s actual evidence that I exist! I’m not just the Big Foot of the Book World!
See you Monday, January 5, 2009 with fresh entries! Happy Holidays!
(Originally published October 31, 2007)
Starbucks, Spadina and Richmond
Caucasian male, early 40s, settled deep into an easy chair, legs crossed wide, staking his claim in the early morning rush of bar drinks and lingering line-ups.
The Communist’s Daughter, Dennis Bock (HarperCollins)
About page 177:
We found room in a railcar loaded with an irreplaceable cargo of government-issue rice, perhaps four hundred bags in all, stacked right to the ceiling. Approximately three hours into our journey, however, in the middle of the night, I was awakened by an all-encompassing silence. We were no longer moving.
He’s a young boy, about ten, moving his tray along the rails, considering the desserts. J-ello, red and green, in a glass sundae dish, topped with a hardening dollop of piped whipped cream. Milk chocolate pudding in a glass dish, topped, again, with a hardening dollop of piped whipped cream. A glass bowl of creamy rice pudding with raisins. Something layered and spongy, kind of creamy with a dusting of chocolate slivers. He lifts it and smells. Strong. Alcohol. The clock strikes the hour and he turns to scan the dark wood panel wall. The bird slides in and out, followed by the lederhosen couple chasing each other through the shell, two times. He looks toward the long hall leading to the women’s washroom, back to his table and his grandmother’s beige purse, tan overcoat. She has trouble swallowing and she’s been gone a long time.
