If we took a holiday *

Posted on by boj Posted in Books, General

well, look at that! i missed the whole week of blogging! and i don’t feel like using capitals. there could be only one meaning to this…..i’m on vacation!!!! yay!!!

hens

what have i been up to? well, absolutely nothing! recharging batteries, reading, some holiday celebratory stuff, etcetera, etcetera. i’m starting to feel good again. i still haven’t unpacked from the move, but i’m working on it. i just might get the office and kitchen set up tonight.

i’ve been reading quite a bit though. i’ve completed my little austen spell with ‘pride and prejudice’ which i enjoyed. i then got back to the canada reads series for 2006 and read ‘a complicated kindness’ by miriam toews. a complicated kindness i liked the book well enough to read it in three days (i measure my enjoyment of the book by how fast i read it). it is a sad tale but the author gets the teenage angst nailed down quite well.

i’ve also read cocksure by mordecai richler. cocksure this is a hilarious book that also took me three days to read. so there you go. chris and i are going through the canada reads 2006 books in order to actually enjoy the radio series about these books in april. anyone cares to join in on the fun? we’ve also got our hands on deafening which is another book from the list so i think i will read that one next. chris, on the other hand, is fussing over classic libraries so he’s two books behind me. will he catch up? stay tuned.

* madonna… back in ’83. before I started grade 1. man! where does the time go?

Reading Week

Posted on by boj Posted in Books

As I might have mentioned previously, I have been reading quite a bit lately. I finished ‘The Colony of Unrequited Dreams’ and I must say that I enjoyed it. Very much like ‘In the Skin of the Lion’ this books takes a piece of Canadian history and attaches a story to it.

Partially because of the hype and curiosity inspired by recent cinematic overtures, and partially for change of pace, I have decided to take a short break from Canadian fiction and picked up Jane Austen’s ‘Mansfield Park’. I’ve seen the movie few years ago so I wanted to compare the two. Though movie did add a few juicy details about minor characters not detected in the book, it was otherwise spot on. I read book quickly enough to judge it enjoyable so I just might read a few more of Austen’s works.

It’s the World, Dummy!

Posted on by boj Posted in Engineering Princess

After many years of reading the same opinions over and over I finally read an article that said something I haven’t heard before

I haven’t entirely made up my mind about the article, but I like where it is going. I wonder if the new wave in engineering culture is inevitable and coming, I would certainly like to see one.

Sorry for being more obscure than usual (strange but possible). I am not happy with the status quo but still haven’t quite put a finger on what’s wrong and how to change it. More to come for the remainder of my working life. The revolution is slowly struggling along. Ya-ha!

Cold is just inverted hot?

Posted on by boj Posted in General

I just had a disturbing discussion with one of Chris’ Nano people that profoundly disturbed me. I was talking with this kid from The South (I assumed this from discussion) and complained about the hotel I stayed in California (or Nevada) last year. The hotel had this sign asking guests to conserve energy. The rooms, on the other hand, were not insulated and the doors had about a centimetre or so of nothing between themselves and doorframes. This caused me to run the air conditioner all night (I can’t sleep with the noise) since the hot air would just seep in. The kid thought I was crazy for wanting to turn the air conditioner off as there is so much energy there is no need to conserve it. She also claimed that insulation would not do anything because the heat gets in anyway. In any case, I am glad to live in the place where building technology is so scientifically advanced, even if the temperature gets down to –40, the furnace only needs to be on for 1/3 of the time.

Book Report: Oryx and Crake

Posted on by boj Posted in Books

Well, what do you know, I actually liked Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. It was science fiction, which I didn’t expect, but then again, I hadn’t read the back cover before I started reading. The plot is your typical sci-fi doomsday distopian morality story, but it reads well and is engaging. I still haven’t decided whether I will read any more Margaret Atwood’s books. I just might, but not for a while as I have a whole pile of books to get through until I won’t know what to read any more.

Currently I am reading ‘The Colony of Unrequited Dreams’ by Wayne Johnston. This is all in my quest to read all books I am remotely interested in from the CBC’s Canada Reads list.