The mysterious book that made George Toles feel that perhaps he’d “never thought about human beings at all”? It’s by Finnish novelist Tove Jansson. Summer reading continues with a list from George Toles, long-time collaborator of filmmaker Guy Maddin and distinguished professor with the department of English, film and theatre, Faculty of Arts.

Anyone who’s ever taken a course with Toles — or had the good fortune to sit beside him on the bus to university or anywhere else — knows that his reading tastes run from eclectic to the raucous and beyond, and that he always has a plethora of interesting and amusing insights about whatever he’s reading, or has read.

Which seems to be nearly everything — except, as irony would have it, the first book on his list, Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, which runs a monumental seven volumes, and which, in addition to taking top honours as his favourite novel, is a work that Toles is “obliged to concede that I haven’t read in its entirety.” How did an unfinished book make his top ten list? To explain the mystery of the uncompleted favourite and to discover the rest of the books that made his list, read George Toles’ discussion of his top 10 books.

Read about George Toles' Top Ten in The Bulletin online.