Post-Christmas

This may have been the quietest Christmas we've had in a long time. We only had our immediate family for dinner and it was so much less stressful. The snow kept falling through most of Christmas week and except for a couple of forays to finish shopping, I remained ensconced in front of my fireplace.

Our older son and girlfriend came on Christmas eve and stayed until this a.m. (the 29th). Christmas day, we had gift opening with lots of pictures and laughs, brunch, some Scrabble playing, Rock Band 2, turkey dinner, more Scrabble playing and Rock Band (last year it was Guitar Hero), then more food and munchies. It was lots of fun. Mind you, I didn't play Rock Band, but it was sure fun watching others play it. Oh, and did I mention wine?

As usual, (among other things) first son got me books and second son got me CDs:

The books:



- A Good Catch - Sustainable Seafood Recipes from Canada's Top Chefs by Jill Lambert (foreward by David Suzuki); and

- Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami and a lovely Gustav Klimt bookmark.

I'm starting Hard-Boiled Wonderland and look forward to trying some of the recipes from Lambert's book.

The CDs:

She & Him - Volume One



The Last Shadow Puppets



Trust J to find me some new and interesting music. I think it's his mission in life to make sure I don't get stuck in a nostalgic coma of sixties and seventies music.

I'm really loving She & Him and I like some tracks from The Last Shadow Puppets, but I need to give it another listen.

What I find amazing (and heart-warming) is that both sons know me so well.

A booklover's dream - 1 million books

I came upon this Youtube video from a forum I frequent:



Love it when Lenore says their hours are "Every Saturday nine to five; anytime by chance; anytime by appointment."

Tuesday is Book Meme Day

I've seen this book meme (with slight variations) floating around for quite some time and always wanted to try it. Since it seems it's a "no blog idea" day, today is as good a time as any to give it a go. Please feel free to join in.

I'm always curious to find out what others are reading, so if you want to add a few words (as I am) about the book, please do.

And also because I'm nosy, I'd like to tag:

Wenda at Daring to Write
Joy at Joys News
Donny at Rambleville
Junebugg at Wasted Days Wasted Nights

Instructions:

1. Grab the nearest book.
   
2. Open the book to page 123.
   
3. Find the fourth sentence.
   
4. Post the next three sentences along with these instructions.
   
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.
   
6. State the book title and author.

So, here's mine:

Support for such a "minimal state" came from a variety of viewpoints that otherwise made strange bedfellows: anarchists, libertarians, neotraditional capitalists, certain greens, and so on. To the most extreme of these antistatists, writing up any government at all was a kind of defeat, and they conceived of their role in the congress as making the new government as small as possible.

Sax heard about this argument in one of the nightly calls from Nadia and Art, and he was as willing to think about it seriously as he was anything else.

- from Blue Mars – Kim Stanley Robinson

This is a book I finished reading a few weeks ago. It was still lying on my desk unshelved (have I mentioned I'm a terrible housekeeper?). It's the third book of Robinson's "Mars Trilogy".

The Mars Trilogy is a science fiction epic that I began reading several years ago. I liked the first two books, Red Mars and Green Mars, but for some reason didn't get around to the final one until now.

Robinson writes what is classified as "hard" science fiction. Not hard meaning difficult - though some might think so – but meaning book details are based on facts and real science as much as possible; as opposed to soft science fiction where almost anything goes, the only limit being the author's imagination.

As you can tell from the sentences I quoted, it's not all about science. Because it deals with terraforming and the settlement of colonies on Mars, there is a good deal of sociological discussion. I found this as intriguing as the science aspects of the book. Also because it covers quite a long time period, the characters are quite well-fleshed and I found myself increasingly invested in some of them. It's not for everyone, but nerdy-gal that I am, I found it both fascinating and fun.

For anyone interested, I found this link to a review on War of the Worlds: Mars Trilogy Review

Reading Queue - redux

Okay, after posting this --> Is this cheating?, I felt the tiniest bit guilty.

I realized I wasn't really giving the system a chance. I'm going to give it another try and this time I'm going to choose at least one of my current reads with this method.

Last week I came up with The Barclay Family Theatre on the random number generator and finished it over the weekend.

The next number up is 15, Captain Alatriste by Arturo Perez-Reverte.



And when I finish it, I'll remove it from the queue.

So now I've done it; put it down in writing, right here on my blog for all to see. Let's see how long I can keep it up.

Is this cheating?

As some of you may have noticed, I started a Reading Queue on my sidebar as a follow-up to this post based on C Max Magee's article on The Millions.

The unread books on my shelves were getting out of hand and I needed a better method of choosing the next book to read. I stumbled onto Magee's method and decided to give it a go. I've had mixed results.

I listed all the unread books on my shelves; I alphabetized them by title; I put them all on a spreadsheet and numbered them; I fed the data into the Random Number Generator (actually, it's called the Integer Generator, but who except mathematicians would call it that); et voila, out spits the number of the next book I'll read.

One little problem. There's a try "Again!" button. When I'm not in the mood for the book that comes up, I tend to hit "Again", again and again. Is that cheating? Methinks it is.

The 100 Book meme

Here's a book meme that I've run into a few times, but never bothered to do until I saw it on Wenda's Daring to Write.

A list of 100 books: You're supposed to bold the ones you've read; italicize those you'd like to read; cross out those you don't want to read (I've put an X next to them); and asterisk ** those you've never heard of. Wenda added 10 more of her own which I've also included. And true to my obsessive-compulsive nature, I've included a key and tallied up my individual totals at the end.

I'm not sure what this all achieves, but it was fun to do and reminded me of a few titles I'd forgotten.

Key:
Bold = read
Italics = would like to read
X = don't care to read
** = never heard of

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom) X
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks) X
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (George Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley) X
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay ) X
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb) X
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho) X
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella) X
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb) X
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver) X
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough) X
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice) X
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davies)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares) X
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding) X
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay) X
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving) X
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley) **
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind) **
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton) X
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch) X
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford) X
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

My totals:
Bold = read (61)
Italics = would like to read; (19)
X = don't want to read; (18)
** = never heard of (2)

and here are Wenda's extras:

101. Pilgrim (Timothy Findley)
102. The Englishman's Boy (Guy Vanderhaeghe)
103. Clara Callan (Richard B. Wright)
104. Cereus Blooms at Night (Shana Mootoo) **
105. Larry's Party (Carol Shields)
106. Suite Française (Irène Némirovsky)**
107. Divisadero (Michael Ondaatje)
108. Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell)
109. Alias Grace (Margaret Atwood)
110. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (Roddy Doyle)**

Random Numbers

One of the blogs I've discovered over the last couple of years is The Millions (A Blog About Books). It's well-written, interesting and about, well, books.

I hadn't visited in awhile, so when I went back, I decided to read some earlier Notable Posts (yes, there's an actual section called "Notable Posts"). The title, The Reading Queue Revisited, caught my eye. Like most avid readers, the owner of the blog (C. Max Magee), has a large stash of books on his shelves that he hasn't read and needed a way to get through, hopefully, in his lifetime.

I can relate. Just look at the four books I purchased a couple of blogs ago. They've now arrived and join the dozens of unread books already on my shelves and nightstand. This compulsion to accumulate books is somewhat akin to my aunt's post-Depression Era habit of picking up and saving every bit of string, paper and bag – just in case. Heaven forbid I'd be without reading material if some catastrophe struck and the computer and TV were unavailable. Never mind that maybe – just maybe – there'd be other things to worry about. It's kind of like a security blanket, I guess.

Aside from having a lot of books gathering dust, the other major problem with having so many unread books is deciding which book to read next. Each and every book on my shelves was either given to me or hand-picked by me for a reason -- the reasons for some being rather obscure now. So how to choose the next read from my growing To-Be-Read shelf? My usual method is to choose a few books at a time and start reading them concurrently. At some point, a favourite emerges and gets finished before the others. The by-product of this method is that I end up with books that are only partially finished and have lost their allure. They go back on the TBR shelf or languish in a pile on the nightstand or on the floor by my bed.

Anyways, back to C. Max Magee and his Reading Queue. He sorted his unread books and came up with a list of books that he'd like to eventually read. From this list, he vowed to randomly select each new and subsequent book to be read. Well, I could see, and he soon discovered, a problem with this "random" system. The problem being that the randomness factor tends to fall by the wayside when new, interesting titles come along and nudge out the old dust-gathering ones.

He's come up with an ingenious solution. He lists his books alphabetically and numbers them; then he uses a random number generator to choose his next book. I guess it's working because he's been using it since June 2005. Although it might be worthy to note that his original queue had thirty-one books before the random numbers system; and his current queue has fifty-one books.

Still, it might be worth a try.


Take a look at The Reading Queue Revisited to read the full article.

You can never have too many books

So I was switching purses the other day and found a booklet of coupons for Chapters (a Canadian version of Barnes & Noble or Borders). One of the coupons was for $5 Off any online purchase over $35. Egad! The expiry was in a few days.

So, like any sensible, budget-conscious booklover, I signed into my online Chapters account to see how I could make use of the coupon.

I keep an ongoing wishlist of desired and interesting titles and watch for them to go on sale or clearance (I almost never buy books at full retail anymore, which I'm sure doesn't make publishers very happy). I get a further discount by using my Chapters' loyalty card. When my budget allows, I send in an order of just over $39 (to take advantage of the "Free Shipping over $39"). An additional $5 off was just too irresistible.

Oh, and I almost forgot. I still had an unused gift card balance on my account (imagine me jumping up and down with glee).

What I got today for an out-of-pocket grand total of $13.75:

Vancouver Stories: West Coast Fiction From Canada's Best Writers – (introduction by Douglas Coupland)


This is a compilation of short fiction by Canadian authors. The stories are either set in or about Vancouver. I first saw this book in a hotel I was staying at for a weekend conference. I didn't have time to read all the stories, but knew it was something I wanted to get.

Some of the authors: Alice Munro, Ethel Wilson, Malcolm Lowry, William Gibson, Timothy Taylor, Zsuzsi Gartner and Madeline Thien.


The Birth House – Ami Mackay


A book recommended to me by a good friend and fellow nurse.


The Road – Cormac McCarthy


It's post-apocalyptic and Cormac McCarthy. Need I say more?


Coraline – Neil Gaiman


This book has been on my wishlist forever. A good, young adult fantasy story that I intend to take on vacation or to the beach. I've enjoyed Gaiman's other books and have heard good things about this attempt at younger fiction.

Book recommendations

It's always a bit of a crapshoot when you read a book recommended by someone else. I touched on this before in this post (Jan23-06) where a friend was reading a book by an author I recommended. I anxiously awaited his opinion – but – it never came. I was upset and annoyed. I've come to terms with it, but now I find myself in a similar situation.

For those who don't know me, I love reading. In the past, I'd read anything I could get my hands on; newspapers, magazines; fiction, non-fiction; even the backs of cereal boxes, in a pinch. I read everything from entertaining fluff to philosophy. There were very few books that I could say I absolutely hated. The optimistic side of me could always find something positive in what I read, even if it were a "been there, done that" and don't need to read him again.

As it turns out, I've become a little more selective in my old age. I've developed more interests and seem to have less time; and I get the horrible feeling that I'll never have enough time to read all the great books and authors I want to read; thus necessitating a more directed approach to choosing my reading material. I search out booklists and people's favourites – something I've always done – but now with an added determination. I'm also challenging myself with some authors and tomes that, heretofore, I've been reluctant to tackle.

One such challenge is Thomas Pynchon's, "Gravity's Rainbow". It was highly recommended by people I respect and after some warm-up runs with a few of his earlier works, I plunged in. I miscalculated the concentration needed and floundered, but I persevered. It took me three tries before I could get into it, but I now find myself almost half-way through and quite grateful for my never-give-up stubborn streak. It's been a wild ride through Pynchonland and will comment more when I finish it. But for now at least, I can honestly tell those who recommended this book to me that I'm reading it and like it.