THE WOLF WHO WANTED A SWEETHEART

Last week was pretty busy.  On Tuesday I joined a Movie Meetup and saw the James Bond movie The Man With the Golden Gun (for the second time, but first time on the big screen). The last one directed by Guy Hamilton, it's one of the series' less successful entries, though it does have Christopher Lee as the villain.  My favourite part was the two Thai schoolgirls taking on a whole karate school (and wiping the floor with them, of course).

On Wednesday I went to Eton House near Pape station and saw Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still (for the second time) on a big video screen with the Life Begins at 40 Meetup.  It started the whole trend of '50s scoff movies, but as the title suggests it's a bit preachy and self-important in a way characteristic of the time. (The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit had the ad line "A movie that may very well be the very greatest!" You wish...) The Sam Jaffe character is clearly based on Albert Einstein.

On Thursday I went to another of Betty Anne's art walks.  I met a senior woman with wide round glasses like Iris Apfel, and Betty Anne said she's the Iris Apfel of Toronto!

I just finished translating the Portuguese children's book whose title translates as The Wolf Who Wanted a Sweetheart. (The author and illustrator are French, so I assume that was the original language.) It's about a wolf who's looking for love and learns to dress fancy and carry flowers and memorize love poems.  After getting nowhere, he sits down in the road to take off his painful cowboy boots, and a she-wolf runs into him and he finds love after all.  The lesson for boys:  Sit down on the sidewalk and hope a girl runs into you!

I'm almost up to the Battle of Waterloo in Vanity Fair. (I've started reading Lapham's Quarterly at lunchtime.)

ROLT

Moira went to Kingston (She's going to spend a week in Cape Cod again this year.)

Saturday I went to John Snow's new book club, where we discussed Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther.  I had to admit I couldn't get far into the book:  sensitive young characters like Werther make me impatient, partly because they remind me of when I was young and sensitive. (Another example:  Winona Ryder in the Generation X movie Reality Bites.) I want to say to them, "Welcome to the world!")

Anyway, we had a full turnout of half a dozen people.  We met in the basement of the Lillian Smith library, in the same place where we do the memoir slam.  Next month we're discussing Maurice Stendhal's The Red and the Black.  I don't have time to read it, but I'll come anyhow.

Sunday was the latest ROLT, and the topic was humour, with the title "The titter, the howl, the belly laugh and the boffo."  I read the Stephen Leacock story "Gertrude the Governess, or Simple Seventeen" as well as "The Gettysburg Address in Eisenhower's" and Robert Benchley's versions of opera synopses.  I would have read the first chapter of Vanity Fair and Robert Frost's poem "The Code," but I wasn't up to it. 

I used to write my memoir pieces on looseleaf in the same binder as my choir music.  But starting at today's slam, I've turned to writing in a Pierre Belvedere notebook of the same sort I used to write my diary in before going online with it.

I'm finally getting serious about my schedule for finishing Vanity Fair within six weeks (which allows for one library renewal). The other day I read over thirty pages!

Salsa on St. Clair

Sunday was the Classic Book Club, where we discussed The Yearling.  There were five of us, including someone who came because she thought it was the Poetry Meetup!

On Tuesday I saw the documentary THE GREAT MUSEUM at the Bloor.  It's about the Kunsthistoriche Museum in Vienna.  Another museum for my bucket list!  Their new chandelier-like electric lights have a very clever modern design.

On Thursday I borrowed Vanity Fair from the library.  I'd been hoping to finish the fraud issue of Lapham's Quarterly before starting it, but it's 800 pages long and I want to make sure to finish it before the next book club meeting.  Judging by the first chapters, it's pretty fun.

Thursday night I went to see the French-Czech animated science fiction feature Fantastic Planet at the Revue (for the second time, but the first time in a cinema). The place was packed and I was lucky to get in!  It's original but the animation is rather basic. (They also showed an odd French animated short titled Les Escargots.)

This weekend is the Salsa on St. Clair street festival.  I went to Hillcrest Park to read Vanity Fair and escape the noise. (I've developed a fantasy of meeting a girl who's reading a book of her own there...) On the way there, I saw another house that put out its excess books for whoever wants them, and I got a copy of Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth! (That's a book I mean to read one of these years.  I think Dr. Hassan liked it.)

Someone online accused Bernie Sanders of trying to "hijack" the Democratic Party.  If this be hijacking, make the most of it!