Toronto by book: 10 reads by authors who capture the city

James Joyce famously captured a day in the life of Dublin in Ulysses each detail so well drawn you could create an exact replica of the city if it were to disappear. Visitors on Bloomsday (named for Leopold Bloom, the main character), June 16, are invited to pick a chapter and walk in the footsteps of the characters: a way of helping people get to know the place.

Toronto doesnt have a single book mapping it out, but there are spots throughout the city that inspired writers enough for them to capture. Here are 10 admittedly selective titles: pick one up, read and walk the city in the steps of these quintessentially Toronto characters.

1. In The Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje famously invokes the building of this city around the turn of the century and specifically the Bloor Viaduct .

The bridge goes up in a dream. It will ink the east end with the centre of the city. It will carry traffic, water, and electricity across the Don Valley. It will carry trains that have not even been invented yet.

Night and day. Fall light. Snow light. They are always working horses and wagons and men arriving for work on the Danforth side at the far end of the valley . . . and on October 18, 1918 it is completed. Lounging in mid-air.

The bridge. The bridge. Christened Prince Edward. The Bloor Street Viaduct.

2. The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood takes place in and around Toronto: the Toxique is widely known to be The Rivoli on Queen St. W .

The Toxique is one of their favourite places: not too expensive, and with a buzz; though its a little arch, a little grubby . . . Posters of out-of-date alternative-theatre events are glued to the walls, and people with pallid skin and chains hanging from their somber, metal-studded clothing slough through to the off-limits back rooms or confer together on the splintering stairs that lead down to the toilets.

They dont go there at night, of course, when the rock groups and the high decibels take over. But its good for lunch. It cheers them up. It makes them feel younger, and more daring, than they are.

3. Consolation by Michael Redhill cantilevers between past and present, boosted by Redhills incredible research of a Toronto long disappeared. Go down to the Harbourfront or over to the Toronto Islands ; your imagination will be piqued.

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Toronto by book: 10 reads by authors who capture the city