Wee! Books! I love to read. It is one of the great pleasures of my life. Curling up on the couch on a winter day, or on a Muskoka chair at the cottage, with a good book and a hot tea/cold drink is heaven. I love it! I also love collecting books in my book shelves. Apparently, I love this so much that I need to purchase myself a new shelf. The three book shelves in my tiny apartment are stuffed full of books, and there are some books that have to be laid horizontally above already-shelved other books. The situation is so dire, I actually parted with some of my cherished books by giving them away, or selling them at the used book store around the corner. (I made $10 last week!)
Despite my obvious need to purge my shelves/make more space, I have acquired even more books to read! My friends Morag and Cointrin and I have decided to choose 10 books from Entertainment Weekly’s list of 100 Modern Classics and get to reading! Our plan is to all read the same books and discuss them at our own little Book Club meetings. First up was The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.
I found this book only mildly interesting. I think it’s really geared more towards Marketing or Advertising executives. The content is presented clearly and pretty easy to understand, but I also found it a bit bland after a while. I couldn’t read this book all day… I had to split up my reading in chunks (mostly on TTC when there was nothing much else to do). I thought maybe I got bored because I had already studied some of the examples in a Social Psychology class in college, but even the examples that were new to me got a bit ‘Meh’ after a while. As of tonight, I am three quarters of the way through – I made it to the Case Studies! I’m reallllyyy excited to start our next book, Pastoralia by George Saunders, because I need to read something with actual characters and a plot line. It’s just much more pleasurable to me than a book about business/social epidemics.
Our little group of book afficionados decided that if we were going to have faux-pretentious book club meeting and discuss literature, we should choose a cute little cafe* in which to do so. Thus the search began for an independently owned, quaint little coffee shop or cafe that is easily TTC accessible.
Our first audition of a cafe was at the Mad Bean on Eglinton West. It has a supercute web page that made us all fall in love with it. The cafe itself is quite small, but very cozy. I had a sandwich and it was delish! A plus is that the cafe also sold books and art and local handicrafts/jewellry. Morag and I were excited to see pretty things (you know girls and trinkets) though Cointrin was a bit non-plussed at the earrings and necklaces and such. The owner was manning the coffee/espresso machine, and there was a delightfully nerdy young man who cashed out (and warmed up) my sammy for me. The cafe itself is pretty small, but there are a fair number of tables and chairs. I wish I had tried one of their actual coffee or tea bevvies to review, but I already had another coffee date earlier that afternoon and was coffee-ed out.
Overall, I would recommend the cafe, but not the book unless you are a fan of non-fiction and need to sell about a million of whatever product/service you’re schilling.
* I am sorry that I missed the accent egu on the ‘e’ in Caf(accent egu). I apologize to all the Francophiles out there!
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