Imagining Toronto Manuscript

In the rush of winter work, I forgot to post the news that Imagining Toronto has become more than a course: it's actually become the skeleton of a manuscript. Chapters are shaping up as follows:

Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Imagining Toronto: Constructing Identity and Place Through Urban Fiction
Chapter3: Strangely Familiar: Icons of Place, Invented Neighbourhoods and Urban Tribes
Chapter 4: Music From Elsewhere: Immigrants and Natives / Selves and Others
Chapter 5: Sexuality and the City
Chapter 6: The (Im)possibility of Dwelling: Home and Homelessness
Chapter 7: Urbia and Suburbia
Chapter 8: Surreal Toronto: The City as Imagined in Genre Fiction
Chapter 9: Toronto the Wild: Natural and Unnatural Settings
Chapter 10: Conclusion

I will concede, of course, that a book is not really a book until it has attracted a publisher, and that a book is not likely to attract a publisher until it has become a book. The chapters above are currently incomplete; some remain skeletal; they will almost certainly require reformulation. Moreover, current work commitments preclude truly focused writing until early May. In the meantime, I am limited to pawing at chapter sections like a raccoon washing foraged fruit in a brackish puddle. Food that can be consumed only in the dark.

But late at night, and on the subway, I have the liberty to read. In the next couple of days I'll begin posting short reviews of consumed works to this space. I'd be very happy to receive recommendations, too. I'm short on poetry, and would also like to read something torrid about Scarborough.