Books & Martini Night

Toronto’s often called a city of neighbourhoods. According to Wikipedia, there are more than 200 distinct neighbourhoods within its boundaries. One of my favourites is the Annex.

I love it for its concentration of bookstores, coffee shops, sushi bars and cheap martinis on Wednesdays.

My BFF and I started a little tradition (partly captured in “Au Natural”), where go book shopping at various place along Bloor, most notably Seekers, Book City and BMV, then end up at Hey Lucy’s, where martinis are half-off on Wednesdays.

Since we’ve started doing this, we’ve expanded our little circle, and now a few of us go off and on, roughly monthly. It’s a wonderful thing.

I picked up a bunch of great stuff on Wednesday, and then added a few more books yesterday in a little excursion. My “to read” pile now stands at 35 books I now know, courtesy of GoodReads. Before I signed up, I’d buy books and they’d accumulate on my shelf faster than I could read them (despite good intentions), but I had no idea how far behind I was. Now there’s a count. Thanks GoodReads.

New additions to the pile:

• Player One, by Douglas Coupland
• Ripley’s Game, by Patricia Highsmith
• The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen
• Late Nights on Air, by Elizabeth Hay
• One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, by Pablo Neruda
• Smash Your Head on the Punk Rock, by Matt Bissonnette
• The Judgment of Paris, by Ross King
• The Bloodless Revolution, by Tristram Stuart
• Apropros Rodin, by Jennifer Gough-Cooper & Geoff Dyer

I’m excited. I’m really looking forward to reading Ripley’s Game especially. As I’ve mentioned, I have a bit of a crush on Tom. One Hundred Years of Solitude is our book club pick for this month, and I’m looking forward to reading that too. Oh hell, and everything else. That’s why I bought ’em.

Any recommendations on where I should start first?