Saturday Photo: Light at the End of the Tunnel?

The days are getting shorter and shorter--only three weeks to the Solstice, more or less, and the sun around here is rising about 7 a.m.  Dark days, indeed.  The prospect of a holiday season in confinement makes it all even more depressing.

But this morning, when reading that the Canadian government projects having the majority of the population vaccinated against Covid 19 by next September, I suddenly felt much more hopeful.

Yes, things are rotten right now, but all signs are that it won't last forever, if we're prudent.  Next year at this time we ought to be able to be planning big get-togethers, promising grandkids a visit to see Caisse Noisette, not worrying about crowds when shopping...

Of course, we have to get there, and it may be a long slog.  But let us enjoy what we can this year, and hope for the best for next.
 

Saturday Photo: What to Do on a Dark Winter Day

 

Elena Ferrante’s top 40 books by female authors

What to do these long, dark days when you may be in semi-lockdown: Elena Ferrante's top 40 novels by women (from The Guardian.) I've read 13, how about you?

• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Fourth Estate)
• The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (Virago)
• The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar, translated by Anonymous (Europa Editions)
• Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann, translated by Philip Boehm (Penguin Classics)
• A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin (Picador)
• Outline by Rachel Cusk (Faber)
• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (Harper Perennial)
• A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio, translated by Ann Goldstein (Europa)
• Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, translated by Tina Kover (Europa Editions)
• The Lover by Marguerite Duras, translated by Barbara Bray (Harper Perennial)
• The Years by Annie Ernaux, translated by Alison Strayer (Fitzcarraldo)
• Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg, translated by Jenny McPhee (Daunts)
• The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer (Bloomsbury)
• Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (Windmill Books)
• Motherhood by Sheila Heti (Vintage)
• The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek, translated by Joachim Neugroschel (Serpent’s Tail)
• Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd (Picador)
• Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (Flamingo)
• The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing (Flamingo)
• The Passion According to GH by Clarice Lispector, translated by Idra Novey (Penguin Classics)
• Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli (Fourth Estate)
• Arturo’s Island by Elsa Morante, translated by Ann Goldstein (Pushkin)
• Beloved by Toni Morrison (Vintage Classics)
• Dear Life by Alice Munro (Vintage)
• The Bell by Iris Murdoch (Vintage Classics)
• Accabadora by Michela Murgia, translated by Silvester Mazzarella (MacLehose Press)
• Le Bal by Irene Nemirovsky, translated by Sandra Smith (Vintage)
• Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates (Fourth Estate)
• The Love Object: Selected Stories by Edna O’Brien (Faber)
• A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor (Faber)
• Evening Descends Upon the Hills: Stories from Naples by Anna Maria Ortese, translated by Ann Goldstein and Jenny McPhee (Pushkin)
• Gilead by Marylinne Robinson (Virago)
• Normal People by Sally Rooney (Faber)
• The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (Harper Perennial)
• White Teeth by Zadie Smith (Penguin)
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Simon & Schuster)
• The Door by Magda Szabò, translated by Len Rix (Vintage Classics)
• Cassandra by Christa Wolf, translated by Jan van Heurck (Daunts)
• A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (Picador)
• Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar, translated by Grace Frick (Penguin Classics)

Saturday Photo: Concrete and the End of the Road...

 The Globe and Mail this weekend is featuring a number of articles about cities.  Among them is one about the role that concrete has played in building them, and the threat it poses for us all.  Check it out here.

Saturday Photo: Bicycles and Winter...

It snowed on Tuesday, and is shirt-sleeve weather today.  Good day to go for a bike ride--or if you're like me, a walk.

Bixi, Montreal's bike share service, goes for another week, good weather or bad weather.  I haven't seen the stats on its use this year.  Probably down a bit because of the lock down early in the season, although a general increase in bike riding for the same reason might weigh the balance the other way.

Whatever, more and more people in Montreal are riding bikes all year 'round.  Probably good for their health, probably also good for the CO2 balance.