By sandy
This will definitely be a literary month for me. I'm a member of the (Toronto) Harbourfront Reading Series, after a hiatus of several years, and I'm trying to get back into the habit of attending the weekly readings. I've discovered a lot of interesting new authors this way in the past, as well as seeing some of my favourites read over the years: Margaret Atwood, Robertson Davies, Timothy Findlay, Rohinton Mistry, Wendy Law-Yone, Anthony Burgess, Don DeLillo, Bharati Mukherjee and others too numerous to list.
Every October for the past 26 years, the Reading Series hosts the International Festival of Authors, an amazing 11 days of readings, interviews and panel discussions with over 70 authors from around the world. This year, I have tickets for four readings:
- Jonathan Coe (U.K.) and Tim Winton (Australia)
- David Baddiel (U.K.), Julian Barnes (U.K.) and Michael Crummey (Canada)
- Karin Fossum (Norway), Juris Jerjevics (U.S.A./Latvia) and Minette Walters (U.K.)
- Dionne Brand (Trinidad/Canada), Anne Fleming (Canada), Shani Mootoo (Canada) and Donna Morrissey (Canada)
There were some very tough decisions here, since there are usually several readings going on at once, and I want to go to all of them! I'll post my impressions of the readings (and list all the new books that I buy) as they occur, the week of October 23rd.
Coincidentally, that same week I've been invited to a book launch for Que(e)rying Evangelism, a book about (I think) the acceptance of gays into mainstream religions, written by the Rev. Dr. Cheri DiNovo of the Emmanuel Howard Park United Church, who performed the first same-sex marriage in Canada. Even though I'm an unmarried straight chick and definitely not a fan of organized religion, I'm fully supportive of same-sex rights, including marriage, so I'll drop by to check it out. No invitation required: it's at the Gladstone Hotel on Queen West, Monday October 24th starting at 7pm.
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