Bibliophile - August

Well the 8th month of the year has come and gone and I managed to pack in 11 books raising my number of books read this year to 69.

It was another eclectic month of reading. A memoir, a little music history and some amazing fiction. I wanted to read The Mockingbird Next Door about the author of to Kill A Mockingbird so I read the novel first. It still stands up. A terrific tale. The memoir of Marja Mills from the time she first met and then lived next door to Harper Lee and her sister I found to be somewhat lacking.
I finally got around to reading Jayne Martin's collection of short tales, Suitable for Giving. A nice read. I often found myself sniggering throughout this book. And that's a good thing.

As a fan of 60s and 70s music, particularly The Beatles I enjoyed The Beatles - Solo, about each of the Fab Four's solo careers. Not much new here but great pics and reading about these guys is always interesting. By the time I was done I'd bought 2 CDs and 3 BluRays. Hooked me like a fish.

I rated several reads 5 stars this week. The first was Before I Go To Sleep. Think a sophisticated Groundhog Day. It's about a woman who loses all memories every 24 hours. So day after day she works at remembering her past and with some surprising results.

I loved John Williams 1965 masterpiece Stoner. It's about university professor William Stoner who leads a rather mundane life in academia, while trapped in a loveless marriage. Sounds boring I know but the writing around this sad tale is magnificent, as evidenced in this excerpt that really resonated with me:

"In his forty-third year William Stoner learned what others, much younger, had learned before him: that the person one loves at first is not the person one loves at last..."

I ended the month with The Pyramid by Henning Mankell. It's a collection of short stories that explore his Detective Kurt Wallander's early years. In this book Mankell nicely ties up some loose ends about his chief protagonist. If you're fan of the Wallander series, you have to read this.

The best read of the month had to be the three volume Divergent series by Veronica Roth. If you like Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games or Margaret Attwood's MaddAddam Trilogy, you'll love Divergent. After reading this I saw the movie and I have to say it was excellent, very close to the book.

Here's a full list of the books I read in August...

To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee ****
The Mockingbird Next Door - Marja Mills ***
Stoner - John Williams *****
Before I go To Sleep - S.J. Watson *****
The Divergent Series - Veronica Roth
Divergent *****
Insurgent *****
Allegiant *****
Suitable for Giving - Jayne Martin ****
The Beatles - Solo: The Illustrated Chronicles of John, Paul, George and Ringo
after the Beatles - Mat Snow ****
Bad Signs - R.J. Ellory *****
The Pyramid - Henning Mankell ****

Let me know what you're reading these days.

The Polka Dot Door

A long time ago, when I was 22, my first child was born. That kid grew up on a little Canadian kid's show called Polka Dot Door, produced by the TV Ontario network. And Dad, more often than not, sat through those shows with his little one. Nine or so years later when a brother, and a year after that when a sister came along number one son was moving on to Knight Rider and The Dukes of Hazzard. But there was a nice overlap where his siblings picked up where he had left off with Polka Dot Door. And Dad was right there to welcome them. So you're looking at a Polka Dot Door veteran. The show began in 1971 and ran to 1993. I didn't watch the full run but I did get in my fair share. The formula was pretty simple. A young male and female host, which seemed to change every week, sang songs, told stories, made crafts and generally did their best stimulate little brains. The show opened as follows... Imagination Day! Oh boy! ...

Hello Goodbye

Today a bit of a reflective piece. Rather than being funny, this is about the funny. It's a day of mixed emotion at nonamedufus . You see, after several months of inactivity I've dropped a couple of former blogger buddies off my blog roll. I kept hanging on and hanging on hoping they'd return to active blogging but, alas, after waiting in one case five months I've decided to let them go. I'm going to miss - going to? I have been missing - Margo at the Screaming Me-Me . She was one funny lady. From time to time she and I would engage in a feud or two for several days at a time but it was all in fun both for us and, I think, for our readers. And we'd leave each other funny comments, poking fun at each other. I miss her friendship and our humorous exchanges. The other blogger I'm letting go is Chelle, The Offended Blogger . Chelle was a special lady. In addition to her own blog she created and managed Humor Bloggers Dot Com where humour bloggers like m...

The Dangling Conversation

There's a debate underway in my household between my wife and I. I say "underway" because it hasn't quite reached the "raging" stage. If you want raging, my wife (a Francophone) and I (an Anglophone) from time to time (usually in a weak moment of my own making) slip into our number one discussion around why we don't speak more French at home - ergo - when am I, a former public servant who learned French at the expense of our gracious taxpayers and was technically rated bilingual (even though I hardly used it), going to improve my use of Canada's other language? This one never gets resolved, hence it's ongoing nature. But the current debate is over a remark I casually made the other day. I'm no geek, but with a lot of time on my hands I surf the web, converse on Facebook and such and - I have to admit - "I'm nonamedufus and I'm a Twitterholic". In an epiphany-like moment I was struck by the apparent impact of social networkin...

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