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the mayor and his customers

Geist sent out a summer reading survey, asking writers,authors, politicians, hockey players, TV personalities and other Canadians which books they were or weren’t planning to read this summer. Mayor Rob Ford of Toronto sent the following response:

Thank you for your email.

As I promised during the mayoralty election, I am dedicated to delivering customer service excellence, creating a transparent and accountable government, reducing the size and cost of government and building a transportation city.

I will continue to work on behalf of the taxpayers to make sure you get the respect you deserve.

This note is to confirm that we have received your email and that we are looking into your matter.

Please feel free to follow up to check the status of your email.

Thanks again and have a great day.

Yours truly,

Mayor Rob Ford

City of Toronto

We’re all in this together.

Note: Mr. Ford sent no further response.

top 5 books to make you feel better about your vacation

I never vacation away in summer. Why trade the West Coast for airports, crowds, traffic, bad moods? Instead, we pretend the house is a cottage—drag the supper table onto the lawn for that “hang loose with the meals” thing that happens at cottages. We also drape wet beach towels out the windows, track sand in the house, dangle those disgusting mosquito coils from every light fixture and leave a couple of empty opened suitcases lying around for that “just arrived” ambience.

This summer, I plan to sit in an old Cape Cod chair beneath the willow tree in the backyard and read five exceptional writers and their latest books:

1. Empire of the Beetle: How Human Folly and a Tiny Bug Are Killing North America’s Great Forests by Andrew Nikiforuk (Greystone)

2. Come from the Shadows: The Long and Lonely Struggle for Peace in Afghanistan by Terry Glavin (Douglas & McIntyre)

3. Living in a Dangerous Climate: Climate Change and Human Evolution by Renée Hetherington (Cambridge)

4. My Year of the Racehorse by Kevin Chong (Greystone)

5. You Exist. Details Follow. by Stuart Ross (Anvil)

—M.A.C. Farrant

5 books that geist staff plan to read when summer is over

1. Jerusalem by Guy Delisle (Drawn & Quarterly).
—Eric Uhlich

2. Liner notes of every Leonard Cohen album.
—Michal Kozlowski

3. Who Could That Be at This Hour? by Lemony Snicket (Little, Brown).
—Kelsea O’Connor

4. Womanthology: Heroic by over 150 amazing women (IDW).
—Chelsea Novak

5. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic). I know nothing about it, but it seems to complement the fall consumption of Hubbard squash pie.
—Lauren Ogston

book you pretend to read while checking someone out

A Queer and Pleasant Danger: The true story of a nice Jewish boy who joins the Church of Scientology and leaves twelve years later to become the lovely lady she is today by Kate Bornstein (Beacon Press). Ideal because if the person I’m checking out doesn’t recognize the cover and at least give it (and me) the good nod, there’s almost no chance I want to step up my flirt.

—S. Bear Bergman

best book and beer combo

Moby Dick by Herman Melville and Fat Tug IPA by Driftwood Brewing Company.

—EVENT

Derek McCormack’s Haunted Hillbilly (ECW) and a Pilsner Urquell. Something about how McCormack writes creates an overwhelming sense of being on a bad bender—one where you know things are going wrong, but you don’t have your wits about you enough to do anything about it. You have no choice but to lurch along for the ride, not seeing enough to completely understand what’s happening to you, but knowing that whatever it is, it’s bad.

—David Milne

Bigfoot, a graphic novel by Pascal Girard (Drawn& Quarterly), and Sasquatch Stout, a yummy chocolate beer by the Old Yale Brewing Company.

—Doug Savage

best book and wine pairing

The Thirteen (Random House) by Susie Moloney, born in Winnipeg, and Gimli Goose, a pop wine created in the ’70s to compete with Baby Duck and named after Gimli, Manitoba.

—Aqua Books, Winnipeg

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez (Vintage) and an Argentinian Malbec.

—Room Magazine

Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lamand Tesco Reka Valley Bulgarian Merlot ($5.29 per bottle).

—Ricepaper Magazine

top 5 books you want to read this summer, but won’t

The five books I want to read this summer, but won’t, are the same books I had on last summer’s list:

1. Remembrance of Things Past, Volume 1, by Marcel Proust.

2. Remembrance of Things Past, Volume 2, by Marcel Proust.

3. Remembrance of Things Past, Volume 3, by Marcel Proust.

4. The Year of Reading Proust: A Memoir in Real Time by Phyllis Rose (Scribner).

5. How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard (Bloomsbury).

If I were to add a sixth, it would be Facebook.

—Michael Turner

summertime reading

I haven’t had the opportunity to while away a summer reading books since I was sixteen. I remember it well. For reasons inexplicable, I had decided in that year that I might die (not imminently, but in that woebegone sixteen-year-old way) before having had sex and reading all of the literary classics. Not being able to do much on the sex front, and because I am a Virgo, I organized my upcoming summers into the great themes of literature so that I might plow through all of the classics. That year the theme was war, the following year it was utopia and then the following year I had to get a job—well, two jobs. So summertime reading was effectively done.

I wondered who, besides people in cottage magazines, does this summertime reading thing? Is it real? Is it something that only people with cottages do? Is it a pastime of the rich?

I started to ask questions of those around me who I knew were readers.

My informal survey revealed this:

1. People sigh with longing and regret when you ask aboutsummer time reading.

2. Self-employed people don’t seem to take much time off. If they do, it’s for Christmas back east with strange families.

3. When people say, “Let us repair to the cottage,” they mean that literally. Most vacation time seems to be spent not pottering about so much as doing vital structural work on cottage-like places.

4. “W.G. Sebald is dead, so what’s the point of reading anymore?”

5. I don’t know any of the idle rich.

—Faith Moosang

book that you leave at the beach

The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje (McClelland &Stewart). Just walk away, and you’ll be fine.

—Gregory Betts

From This Moment On by Shania Twain (Simon & Schuster).

—Jane Silcott

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (Anchor). In the hopes that some future civilization digs it up and thinks that it’s an actual chronicle of the end of the world.

—Doug Savage

movie you’ll watch instead of reading the book

The Avengers. (Few people know that it is actually loosely based on Beyond Remembering: The Collected Poems of Al Purdy, published by Harbour.)

—Doug Savage

top 5 things to do instead of reading this summer

1. Buy books you want to read.

2. Make space for these books on your bookshelf.

3. Introduce these books to house guests and explain to them why these books caught your eye.

4. If someone expresses interest in one of these books, give it away.

5. If, by Easter the following year, any of these books remain unread, try reading one.

—Michael Turner

1. Suntan. Block the sun from your eyes with a book.

2. Fashion your books into planter boxes. Grow tomatoes.

3. Re-create the plots of your favourite books using finger puppets.

4. Dust your books. Check their pages for mites.

5. Forget this. Read a book.

—PRISM international

1. Braid what’s left of your hair.

2. Work in a bookstore.

3. Play Margaret Atwood Monopoly.

4. Fall in love.

5. Stare at your phone like everyone else.

—Aqua Books, Winnipeg

best one-handed summer read

With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn, edited by Amber Dawn and Trish Kelly (Arsenal Pulp).

—EVENT

Any of the Marketplace series by Laura Antoniou(Mystic Rose Books). Bring your brain. That 50 Shades of Whatever business is a sad, bad-perm situation compared to Antoniou’s dirty, dirty, hot stories.

—S. Bear Bergman

monkeypuzzle by Rita Wong (Press Gang). Poetry only needs one hand.

—Ricepaper Magazine

top 5 books not to read this summer

Anything by:

1. Michael Ondaatje

2. Margaret Atwood

3. Naomi Klein

4. Michael Ignatieff

5. Stuart McLean

Does this make me a bad Canadian?

—Connie Kuhns

1. A Good House by Bonnie Burnard (Harper Collins)

2. Leaven of Malice by Robertson Davies (Penguin)

3. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry (McClelland & Stewart)

4. Lives of the Saints by Nino Ricci (Cormorant Books)

5. Larry’s Party by Carol Shields (Vintage)

—George Bowering