Books and ice cream

So I forced myself downtown to attend my boss' husband's novel launch (he's an U Ottawa academician), in a chic biblio cafe on the Plateau called "Salon B" on St-Laurent (just past the Parc des Amériques, corner Rachel). The right choice: perfect blue skies, and somewhat warm in the dark white-stripped zipper sweater I wore. I strolled from the McGill campus through the ghetto, stopped at the Metro in the Galeries du Parc to get myself some healthier snacks (sultana raisins, roasted corn kernels), and then at my grandma's who lives nearby. Then I bussed up, and got there right on time, stood there for a few long minutes (my boss + colleagues weren't there yet) watching the crowd of lit people happily chat in the white-walled small room with hardwood floors that is the upper section of Salon B (we never saw the footbridge they said they would deploy).

They served a delicious bruschetta with a vertically-aligned thin crisp piece of bacon, and pita bread with a hummus dip. After the presentations, they served panini bread with brie cheese and mango or apple, and two simple salads, one Greek (cubes of feta, red onions, tomatoes, the usual), and the other Italian (basalmic vinegar, what seemed to be dried game meat).

The underlying themes of the novel remind me a lot of Murakami's latest. Oedipian thematic (in this novel, father and son also don't get along, father dies -the premise to story-, and he ends up sleeping with his mistress), and general exploration of death (characters dying, finding their "spirit"/influence passed on through other characters).

Finished the evening walking down St-Laurent, getting a green tea + ginger ice cream from Ripples (which just reopened for the summer) - and I quickly note that ginger in ice cream is such a delight, gently spicy as it melts on your tongue - and hung out at Wee's for 30 mins, and finally walked back down on Parc, and commuted back home hard asleep, masterfully waking up at the right moments.