A Book That, for Obvious Reasons, is NOT on the Scaramouche Reading List

From the Toronto Star:

Toronto novelist, poet, activist and Anglican priest Maggie Helwig’s Girls Fall Down has been named the Toronto Public Library’s Keep Toronto Reading One Book community reading program’s 2012 selection as the book all Torontonians should read this spring.

Set in Toronto in 2002, Helwig’s 2008 novel explores post-9/11 angst and urban paranoia when a teenager collapses in the subway after commenting on “the smell of roses,” sparking panic and the fear of terrorism among the population despite official assurances that no one is in danger...

Don't know about you, but the idea of an entire city Reading One Book is far too coercive and totalitarian for me; thanks very much, but I prefer to select my own reading material. Besides, the Hamas Charter and the Muslim Brotherhood's plan for global conquest rather belie the premise of the activist's fiction, don't you think? In the words of that old joke: Just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean people aren't out to get you.