By Susan Fox Rogers, ed. Once, on a canoe trip that turned out to be more vigorous than some of the trippers were prepared for, when we finally got to the end of a long portage I was asked something along the lines of “how can anyone keep going like this?” And without thinking I […]
Book #29 – Virtual Clearcut : Or, The Way Things Are in My Hometown
By Brian Fawcett Brian Fawcett co-taught some required course or other that I took in grad school. There was a lot of reading — maybe two books a week — and also weekly writing assignments. Not big stuff, just reflections on various aspects of a particular topic, two or three pages long. I wrote a […]
Winter garden
Winter garden Originally uploaded by morecoffeeplease. Tarragon and “oregano” (it’s probably some sort of extra-pungent thyme, but we’ve always treated it as oregano) from my grandfather’s garden in the foreground. The spiky red-barked bit at left is a dogwood originally purchased by P’s dad. A slightly melancholy scene…
Book #28: Mirror Mirror
By Gregory Maguire After some reflection, I’m not sold on Maguire’s stuff (Wicked is his biggest success). I don’t mind some darkness in my fairy tales, but do they have to be corrupt and sordid as well? The concept is great — turning fairy tales inside out — but Maguire excels at repellent characters and […]
D and M working on the bathroom
D and M working on the bathroom Originally uploaded by morecoffeeplease. We told M she could colour the plywood right before the wainscotting went in, so here she is taking us up on that. With both hands! In the background, D is installing wainscotting. Also note the lovely new window trim. Looks kinda like a […]
Book #27: Biscuit Finds a Friend
By Alyssa Satin Capucilli (Author), Pat Schories (Illustrator) D fell asleep on the couch this afternoon. M wanted to make everything all perfect for him, so she went down and very sweetly covered him up with her special quilt, put some books next to him for when he woke up, turned off the light, closed […]
Book #26: MapArt Metropolitan Toronto Pocket Atlas
I’m crazy tired and not up to books with actual words and plots and characters and things, so today I think I’ll stick to pretty pictures. This is a great little map book. Very handy when we have to venture places where there might be dragons — north of Eglinton and whatnot. It’s probably neither […]
Book #25: Good Bones
By Margaret Atwood Short stories — very short, most are only a few pages. Many touch on themes of gender. Some of the best ones showcase Atwood’s needly humour, ranging from a perfect satire of PC fairy tales (There Was Once) to a sendup of gender roles (Making a Man) to a brilliant mashup of […]
Book #24 – Microorganisms: From Smallpox to Lyme Disease
By Thomas D. Brock, ed. My poor sick green-faced sproglet is finally sleeping, and since she’s in my bed(*) I’m trapped at my desk doing quiet things, so I’m choosing from among the books on the shelf above my desk. This book seems apropos. Microorganisms is a good basic introductory text. Well-organized, decently written (more […]
Book #23: Paris to the Moon
By Adam Gopnik Gopnik writes about his five years living in Paris. Somehow he managed to write about it without making me hate him. ..Mostly.
Choice
This is a US campaign, but I’ll leave out the Bush-directed stuff and join in anyway. Choice of all kinds is critical to our free existence as adults. I do not think I would have had an abortion if I had become pregnant accidentally. My biological clock went off when I was about 18, so […]
Book #22: Wonderful Life
By Stephen Gould Fascinating stuff here. Stephen Gould is more often known for his natural history books aimed at casual readers (Bully for Brontosaurus and the like) — but this is not a book aimed at the general public. Wonderful Life is an exploration of the extraordinarily old, very different forms of life discovered in […]
Ai yi
Whoah, someone really has her cranky pants on this weekend, and they must be chafing her, too. Anyone want to borrow a really foul-tempered five-year-old? She likes sleepovers! And she doesn’t eat much! …Actually I suspect she’s getting sick, poor mite. We had her in bed at ten to seven last night with no protesting […]
Book #21 – Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes On An Imperfect Science
By Atul Gawande Gawande succeeds at conveying the art that is medicine (that is much of science, really), the combination of knowledge, past experience and plain old gut feeling that goes into any decision. It’s worth reading just to get a better understanding of how people learn to be doctors — information which might be […]
Book #20: McCarthy’s Bar
by Pete McCarthy McCarthy’s Eighth Rule of Travel is that you should never pass a bar with your name on it. So for that among other more complex reasons, off he goes to Ireland. Everyone else seems to find this book much funnier than I did. That’s not to say it isn’t funny — it […]
Book #19: The Summer Tree
By Guy Gavriel Kay Guy Gavriel Kay’s writing gets a little purple in spots and the drama can tend to melodrama. He’s good at both character and storyline creation, though, so his books are fun despite the occasional soppy spots. The Summer Tree is the first book in the Fionavar Tapestry trilogy, which is an […]
Mine has hammocks
Courtesy of xkcd:
Book #18: Snow Crash
By Neil Stephenson Who can resist a book starring a character named Hiro Protagonist? I’m normally kind of meh on Neal Stephenson. Some of his other books, while they have wonderfully imagined alternate realities, are a little low on plot. Not a problem here. It moves. The characters are fun. The Mafia control pizza delivery. […]
Amused
So Maddy’s kindergarten has a new “borrow a book” program, in which a book comes home in a little plastic bag and we’re supposed to help her point to letters, find patterns and basically admire the pretty colours and stuff while we read it to her over and over until she’s memorized it. Once they’ve […]
Book #17: Calculus Made Easy
By Sylvanus P. Thompson I once had a logic professor, the rumpled/ bespectacled/ round/ beaming English type, who announced in the first class of the term “it is my job to make logic as pleasant as possible.” This book (which was first published in 1910 — I notice it’s recently been updated and modernized, which […]