Good news at long last! Marcello got his passport and the wedding can finally go ahead! Everyone is now busy and happy. The wedding is scheduled for November 24th, so we all have plenty of time. It is a real relief, and makes me happy even as I write this. The dress has to be made, I have to find shoes to go with it, invitations have to be done & sent out...but the best man he & I wanted has accepted, and I'll be meeting him next week. To think I read him when I was at Ryerson! This really closes a circle, keeps it rolling...

Closed circles, unities: all my dreams and a lot of my waking life seem to be about these things. It is a weird feeling to think, this is it; I won't see this again for a long time. We went back to the Trinity College Book Sale to see if they had a half-price last-day sale, but no, they didn't. I politely inquired and was told that it was complex - something about dealers - and that Trinity 'likes to think' that their books are better than those at the other sales. I didn't really know what to think of that. I mentioned this comment yesterday to some UC Book Sale people and the looks on their faces were hard to read - surprise? Hmm, not really. This isn't the place for me to talk about Trinity - I probably have said enough, quite frankly. This is what I found there:

George Eliot - Daniel Deronda - Her last novel and one that probably tends to get overlooked. When I was a girl I read a list in The Book of Lists of the Top 10 Most Boring Novels of All Time, and George Eliot was #1. It was The Mill On The Floss, though I am guessing this one may have also been there. Huh. This looks very good, so the hell with them.

Thomas Hardy - Under The Greenwood Tree - While walking around I am more & more thinking of myself as a wife; a word I don't mind, for the most part. Over ten years ago I read Jude the Obscure and didn't want to be a Sue Bridehead, or a Jude Fawley for that matter, either. (I told someone it was depressing, then they told me Tess was even more depressing. I have no intention of reading it.) But this Hardy is different - short, reasonably happy, the only thing being mourned is a kind of rural life that he once knew that was disappearing even as he was alive. And it's about a happy courtship. I got a really nice copy for $2 as I guess no one reads the more (ho) obscure Hardy, just the big ones that have all been turned into movies or Masterpiece Theatre series.

Square Meals - Jane and Michael Stern

Because there was no half-price sale, there was plenty of room to roam around and look at things; I was able to somehow see more. I found this and found it irresistable. Old American recipes from the 20s to the 50s, written about with real love and understanding. I'm not sure how homesick I will be in London, but this book will really help when I want to make things I remember, and things my grandmothers used to make...

A guide to the Bronte Parsonage - I hope to go there one day, but in the meantime I can read this. No doubt I will feel tall there, like in Keats' House.

The Pictorial History of St. Paul's Cathedral by E.T. Floyd Ewin M.V.O. O.B.E. M.A.- I got several of these pictorials at UC (Canterbury, Westminster and Houses of Parliament, Hampton Court, Cambridge). They are the sort of things you can look at and read as a tourist, walking around, or just read as someone longing to visit these places (I've only really been to one of them so far). None of them are very recent, which kind of adds to their timelessness (St. Paul's is from the mid-60s). I have no idea if these things are still printed, or whether anyone under 30 in the UK has ever seen one. I am under the impression (a wrong one, maybe, but typical) that they are sold at university book sales across North America and nowhere else.

After Trinity comes St. Michael's, but I had to wait until Friday to go - a brilliant sunny day, the day Marcello got his passport - and I found just two books there...

The Mabinogion - This is the classic Welsh collection of tales. I have no idea how to pronounce it, but I do know I have some Welsh roots on my mom's side, and the last time I heard anything about it, the theory was it was written by a woman.

Letters From The Editor - ed. by Thomas Kunkel

This is one of the best books of letters ever! Harold Ross was the founding editor of The New Yorker - he went through all sorts of trials and tribulations, but he was funny, sharp and his letters are meant to be read out loud - his voice is that pure and unmistakable.

After going to St. Mike's I went to the UC Book Room, more on a hunch than anything else. Sure enough, a rookie volunteer was there and I straightened her out on what went where and what had to be done with the receipt book and the holds pile and all the rest. She was happy to have me boss her around (well, it was more like I instructed her with some cheerleading) and I found...yes, another Penguin Classic. (The Eliot, Hardy, Mabinogion are all Penguins.) Someone once looked at my shelves and said I had a fetish for them, but then I would buy nothing but them and be obsessive. I like them, sure, but then there's a lot I don't want, so I don't think I have a fetish. Anyway, I found Daniel Defoe's The Storm - an account of the worst storm ever to hit England, in 1703. It was a hurricane, complete with cows in trees and windmills catching on fire as they were turning so rapidly. It should be good...

Yesterday I went to the Robarts Library Book Store - a nice little place right by the cafeteria that's open two days a week. And I found...another Penguin Classic. (It had just appeared that day; clearly I was meant to buy it.) John Donne's Complete Poems in English, come on down! Some days I can look and look in vain for even halfway decent poetry, and other days it is literally just sitting there waiting for me. The woman who runs the Woodsworth Book Sale was there behind the counter, so we had a good talk and she wished me "more happiness than I think I deserve". And I wish the same to you all.