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.

Room, by Emma Donoghue (@HarperCollins) #seenreadingTO

Westbound, Queen and Pape

Caucasian female, mid 30s, with long, brown hair, wearing black wool pea coat and yoga jeans tucked into leather, knee-high boots. 

Room, by Emma Donoghue (HarperCollins)

Page 180: 

Ma says the plates aren't a problem, the blue doesn't go on the food, she gets me to rub it with my finger to see. Also the forks and knives, the metal feels weird with no white handles but it doesn't actually hurt. There's a syrup that's to put on the pancakes but I don't want mine wet. I have a bit of all the foods and everything are good except the sauce on the scrambled eggs.

For the past week, the woman has taken to sitting at the table directly across from her, staring. She wears the same clothes every day, a white-and-blue striped tuque, heavy winter coat torn at the left elbow, and tan pants under a summer floral print skirt. Her eyes are blue, pale and watery, like the scientist who after studying in the Arctic for a year came home to discover his eyes were shades lighter than when he'd left. She wonders, as the woman thumbs wet crumbs off the neatly-folded napkin left by the last customer, if the world looks better or worse from behind a foggy lens. 

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?

Sanctuary Line, Jane Urquhart (McClelland & Stewart)

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Caucasian female, late 40s, with long, large blonde hair, and striking blue eyes, wearing white ski jacket and new Sorels.

Sanctuary Line, Jane Urquhart (McClelland & Stewart)

Page 17:

In spite of the times when she was home on leave and making every effort to pay attention to each of her old friends while her mind was thinking, thinking, thinking about one man. In spite of the way she returned to this house and collapsed into an orgy of confession with me as her unlikely priest, I couldn't really hear what she way saying. Except, when one is set apart by passion and goes into the world of that secret, there seems no reason to take heed of anything beyond those gestures that protect the secret.

Her family has been protecting their secret so well, they no longer speak of it. They no longer speak. Not in seven years have they uttered one word. Not as hard as you'd think with only the three of them, each with day jobs and rooms in each far corner of the house where they retreat to their books and hobbies. And she knows what you're thinking. What if they stub a toe? What then? But they were never allowed to swear, so why would they start now? Besides exclamations don't count. In fact, laughter is encouraged, humming, and tra-la-la-ing even. It gives the neighbours comfort and provides good distraction from the fourth room in the fourth far corner of the house.