Breakfast at Tiffany's, by Truman Capote (@RandomHouseCa) #seenreadingTO

Northbound, Pape and Danforth

Caucasian woman, late 20s, with long curly brown hair, wearing glasses, red jacket, and sun-faded pink and white backpack.

Breakfast at Tiffany's, by Truman Capote (Knopf Doubleday)

Page 47:

She sighed and picked up her knitting. "I must be madly in love. You saw us together. Do you think I'm madly in love?"

"Well. Does he bite?"

Mag dropped a stitch. "Bite?"

"You. In bed."

"Why, no. Should he?" Then she added, censoriously: "But he does laugh."

"Good. That's the right spirit. I like a man who sees the humor; most of them, they're all pant and puff."

The skin has never been broken, but when her lover comes she buries her snout into her shoulder, sniffing her hair for evidence of new secretions, recognizing her own scent before relaxing into a sleepy trance. Her eye lids flutter, a content growl resting at the back of her throat before curling into herself for a short nap. When she awakes minutes later it's with a playful alertness. Now they can go outside?

The Blue Light Project, by Timothy Taylor (@RandomHouseCa) #seenreadingTO

Westbound, King and Spadina

Caucasian male, mid 30s, with short blonde hair, wearing a green hooded jacket, brown leather shoes and deeply-creased black jeans.

The Blue Light Project, by Timothy Taylor (Doubleday Knopf)

Page 246:

Open planters and waterfalls. People everywhere: chanters and singers, placards angry and distraught. The seething tension of for and against. He saw people dancing in front of a boom box over to his left. We don’t need this fascist groove thang . . . And the idea came. Loftin was amazed that he hadn't seen it before: fault lines running through the crowd. The story was in the fault lines. Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace. Everyone was adrift. The encircling authorities, the cameras, the grip of the hostage drama itself. Everyone living in fear about the end. The ending was the thing. And Loftin felt it in a flash, his own story arriving. There was a great war going on here about control over the ending. Each breath of this common air fully vested.

When you least expect it, he's been told. Stop looking and when you least expect it. He stares out the window counting house numbers, a game he's played since youth. Pick a number and imagine yourself as the home's owner, this future journey to be made by friends who will visit for the housewarming and secretly judge his taste and financial resources. 458. 460. 462. The streetcar rolls past a house with a worn couch on the front porch, not the homey kind, and a stack of soaked boxes leaning in the corner. He picks another number far ahead, time more to consider the woman who sits two seats ahead reading a new paperback, something with a mustard cover. He'll look out for it, the book with the mustard cover. He peers out the window. 1236. The house appears, it's tidy front lawn dotted with trees. Is that a Japanese maple, he wonders. What does he know about trees? He traces a reflection back to the reader who pulls a stray hair behind her ear her finger hovering by her lobe as if she's forgotten to lower her arm. Yes, he thinks, the trees could be her job. And the kids can rake the leaves.

The Beauty of Humanity Movement, by Camilla Gibb (@randomhouseca)

Northbound, Coxwell and Dundas

Caucasian female, late 20s, with short, reddish hair and smokey eyes, wearing pale green turtleneck sweater under white winter jacket.

The Beauty of Humanity Movement, by Camilla Gibb (Doubleday Canada)

Page 122:

Maggie sinks into the steaming water of the bath holding a wineglass aloft. She plugs the dripping tap with her big toe, and listens to the wind rattling a pane of glass in the reception room. She smells the chicken Mrs. Viên  down the hall must have cooked for dinner; she hears the monotone radio in the distance.

Perhaps it was the rare treat of company all day, but Maggie feels lonelier than usual this evening. These are the hours that should be spent with family and friends, sharing food and news of the day . . .

The cat has commandeered the empty boxes and the basement window ledge beside the toilet. The bath fills, a lone bottle of Labatt Blue sitting in the crisper. Would the last tenant come back to claim it? Was it a housewarming gift? She pops the top and takes a long haul, opening the oven to preheat the apartment. Four mirror squares on the south wall lengthen the bachelor, echoing bare surfaces in need of expression. She dips a foot into the bath water, submerges her calf, winter's growth standing on edge. The cat jaws its way through a piece of kibble, the only familiar sound in this new home. She sinks into the tub completely, places the beer on the floor beside her, and releases her belly along with a succession of ripples from toe to torso. For how long, she wonders, had she been holding it in?

Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem (Doubleday)

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Eaton Centre, Druxy's

Caucasian male, mid 40s, with boyish features, wearing  a grey fleece jacket and a tan bucket hat.

Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem (Doubleday)

Page 23:

I paced the sidewalk, trying to feel the pulse of the blackened building, to take the measure of the desolate block. It was a place made out of leftover chunks of disappointment, unemployment and regret. I didn't want to be here, didn't want Minna to be here. Coney paced me in the Lincoln, staring dumbly out the driver's window.

Four months and counting. The food court had become his office, his growing belly explained away to his wife as too many business lunches. It was the season, he'd say, pouring himself a bourbon as if to make the point that he wanted to leave work at work, and she'd go along with it because neither has really understood what it is the other does, never mind what constitutes one season from the next. So long as it pays the bills, they used to say. But he'd had a change of heart. Why had they never said, so long as it makes them happy? So, one night he did. He said, Don't we want to be happy? But she'd misunderstood. How could she not? So, he'd left it alone, giving notice the following day, certain that somewhere in his 43 years there was a story that could be told.

Free for All Friday: Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, Diana Gabaldon (Doubleday)

Free for All Friday

(Originally published October 10, 2007)

Westbound, Bloor and Pape

Caucasian woman, early 40s, with short brown hair and glasses, wearing a knitted blue sweater to match her knitted blue bookmark.

Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, Diana Gabaldon (Doubleday)

Page 77:

He felt the shiver of a goose crossing his grave, and shook it off, quaffing the punch in one swallow.

If a man had fallen face first into the plane of glass, she thought, back over the table to land on the deck beside the cottage, the pool of blood spilling from his neck would be unmistakably horrific. And while proportionate to its tiny body, she simply couldn't bring herself to feel anything for the grouse as she picked up its limp body, a ruby red pool under its head. She wondered if it was because she was hungry.