What book influenced you most as a teenager?
Probably Go Ask Alice. That book felt so juicy and risqué. Made me realize I like exploring the dark side and that doing so is okay. If you are lucky you get to just walk through like a tourist you don’t have to live there.
Plus, it really added to my already present daydreams of being a drug-addicted runaway groupie, leader of a radical political group and other random 1960s clichés.
Who’s your favourite Canadian author? Toronto author?
I’d have to say Carol Shields. Sure, she was born in America, but I find her writing strictly Canadian. She really embodied that often felt but hard to pinpoint British-Canadian cultural connection. Larry’s Party is hilarious, and you will never think about pickling your own foods the same way again. She wrote from the male perspective in such a believable and sympathetic way. Maybe I am partial to her because she was an expat like me. Ha!
Favourite Toronto author would be Michael Ondaatje. I tried to read Billy The Kid when I first moved here and I didn’t get it. Years later I tried Coming Through Slaughter and I got hooked. I think I needed more reading experience in order to understand him. I needed to grow up a bit. I saw him in person last year at an event – such blue eyes. Who knew?
What’s the best book you’ve read set in Toronto?
I can’t really recall one I have read. The Jian Ghomeshi trial unfolding in the newspaper is like reading a book set in Toronto – like American Psycho or something. Toronto Psycho.
Where do you like to do your reading?
On the TTC. Taking public transit in this town takes so damn long that I might as well use that time to better myself rather than playing Candy Crush, right?
E-reader or the real thing?
Real thing. I like to mark up my books – underline and take notes in the margins. Can’t do that with an e-reader. Plus, I enjoy keeping the books I read, making piles of them I can then gaze at with pride. Lends me the illusion that I am an intellectual.
susanc@nowtoronto.com | @susangcole
