S. Worthen | Weblog

Last summer, while I was in Massachusetts, my Smith friend TC and I passed a pleasant hour in a bookstore. She recommended various books to me with with enthusiasm and, since I respect her taste in books, I bought one of them to tide me through some of my then-forthcoming travels.

I started reading the book on a bus. Before long, I was bored. I didn't care about the character, the plot was full of clichéd reversals, and nothing much had grabbed me about it. I stared out the window of the bus, or napped instead.

But, as is the way of book-readers, someone else whose taste in books I respect (cliosfolly) also recommended the same book. And then, eventually, through friends-of-friends LJ lists, I wandered across the author's own LiveJournal. Intrigued by these factors - and by how rarely I don't finish books, once begun - I brought the book along again as reading for a trip, this time on an airplane.

I still wasn't very excited after the first fifteen pages, or however far I'd made it last time, but then, finally, I settled into the storytelling, interesting things began to happen, I started to care about the characters, the frequency of clichéd reversals died down, and before the flight was over, I found I'd quite enjoyed reading Sherwood Smith's Crown Duel.

Toronto's annual literary Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention, Ad Astra, will be held this weekend at the Days Hotel and Conference Centre, up at 1677 Wilson Ave. The Jane bus provides frequent 24 bus service to get there. Nalo Hopkinson is this year's Writer Guest of Honor.

Cirque du Soleil's newest show, Corteo, will be coming to Toronto in late August/early September. If you give them your email address and sign up for Club Cirque (approximately twice-monthly emails, until you unsubscribe), you can register in the next 24 hours. As of Saturday, tickets will be on sale to the world at large. There will be last minute tickets available closer to the time, but, since Cirque shows are normally in high demand, they will be way over on the edge. Still, from personally experience, it's still well worth seeing even with last-minute edge seats, if you don't know where you'll be when it's in town.