We’re at the halfway mark of April and if you’re in Toronto, that means you have two weeks left to get in on the Keep Toronto Reading Festival. The city-wide celebration presented by The Toronto Public Library is chock full of events inspired by the One Book Selection.

This year, the chosen book everyone is reading is The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway, a bestseller about a cellist who continues to play while the city around him falls. In honour of the book,  Toronto Symphony Orchestra cellists performed, for 22 consecutive days , Albinoni’s Adagio, the very music from the novel, at locations across the city. These are the events that make a city truly wondrous. If you were lucky enough to be in one of these spots, you would be forgiven for losing your sense of time and place.

Still on the literary trail,  CBC Books asked Canadians to determine the most iconic Canadian fictional character. Leading the votes, I’m pleased to say, was Anne Shirley who beat out another precocious favourite, Winnie-the-pooh.

I know there are still those somewhere in the world who haven’t read this classic. Their lives, Anne would say, are perfect graveyards of buried hopes. For all the years I wished my name was Victoria, I settled into Anne after reading this beauty and discovering myself.

“Isn’t it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive-it’s such an interesting world. It wouldn’t be half so interesting if we know all about everything, would it? There’d be no scope for imagination then, would there? But am I talking too much? People are always telling me I do. Would you rather I didn’t talk? If you say so I’ll stop. I can STOP when i make up my mind to it, although it’s difficult.”

L.M Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables 

 Happy Reading!