Ubalblog

[  Mood: Cool ]
[  Currently: Listening to CBC Radio ]

Aya is a fifteen year-old girl who is desperate to be famous. It is several years after the mind-rain, when Tally Youngblood freed the world from "Prettytime". Each city appears to have gone on its own way. Aya’s city (most likely Tokyo) has switched to a merit based economy. Most people do good works to get credits. So you do your homework, you earn five credits. But you can also earn credits based on your face-rank, in other words how famous you are. The more famous your are, thebigger your house, the more gadgets you can own, you get the idea. Think of it as our reality TV world gone amuck.

The city is made up of cliques. Our heroine Aya wants to be a famous kicker, like her brother. Kickers are reporters, so she must break a big story. What Aya doesn’t realize that in doing so, she will betray friends, meet the most famous person in the world and uncover something far bigger than she could ever imagine.

While not as good as the first three books of the Uglies series, Extras is still a masterpiece of world building. Author Scott Westerfield has taken our fame obssesed society and taken it to the nth degree. And that makes it engaging. This is a good read for adults and teens and will be appearing in an upcoming After Harry.

[  Mood: Distorted ]
[  Currently: Listening to CBC Radio ]
So the city got hit with what could be termed as a perfect storm.

* The bus drivers went on strike last night stopping our transit system cold.
* A winter storm hit the city yesterday. Snow and freezing rain have blanketed the city. We have got at least 20 cm according to Environment Canada, but according to the radio we have gotten 34 cm. That is about a foot of snow.
* Because of the storm, school buses have been cancelled, but the schools are open. So if you need childcare, you have to drive your kids to school.
* One of the main comuter bridges has been reduced to two lanes due to some structural issues.
* Certain postal workers are on strike as well and given that the places they are picketing are on major intersections, traffic gets slowed even more.

Yeah – so apparently the commute is a bit of a hassle. The husband unit has arranged a carpool, but given the delays, the ride has yet to appear.

Be happy you are not here.

[  Mood: Happy ]
[  Currently: Listening to CBC Radio ]

Brit Paul West is hired by a French firn to develop an authentic English tea house chain. He moves to Paris and finds himself almost immediately struggling to fit in to to the City of Lights. He finds navigating the streets while trying to avoid piles of dog poo. Paul also finds that in France, work has a whole different meaning, what with strikes and workers who don’t actually work. Finally, he also finds that Parisiam women are completely different than British women.

Author Stephan Clark has created a laugh out loud piece of fish out of water fiction. The reader is taken along on Paul’s journey down the rabbit hole. This is so worth reading. I have requested the next one from the biblio.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
[ Currently: Trying to read to my son, who likes to randomly flip pages,  ]
Another port that I am expanding.

Microserfs is a wonderful book from Michael Copeland, the wunderkind of Can Lit. It explores the lives a group of Microsoft Employees and the endless drugery of their lives. Until the majority of them jump ship and create a start-up and then tbe novel takes a sharp left turn.

One of the most memorable scene in the book comes early on when one of the characters gets a scathing email from Bill Gates and proceeds to lock himself in his office. His friends become worried when he fails to emmerge after a few days, so they head off to the grocery store to buy flat food that they can slide it under the door.

A wonderful, quirky book.

[  Mood: Amused ]
[  Currently: Listening to CBC Radio ]
As I mentioned in our podcast taping last night, Canadian politics has suddenly gotten very exciting.

We have a parliamentary system here in Canada, which means that the party who gets the most votes gets to form the government. In our recent election, the Conservatives won enough votes to form a minority government.

And so they set about to govern. The problem is they forgot they were a minority. They came forward with an economic bill to address the looming financial crisis. A bill devoid of any real economic policies. Instead they went after their favourite ideological targets. Specifically:

The Public Service Unions – a proposal their wage increases rolled back and right to strike removed.
Pay-Equity – the conservatives want to set aside human rights tribunal decisions and not work towards equal pay for work of equal value
Funding for Political Parties (based on how many votes they recieved in the last election) – this too would be recinded, despite the fact that some people voted for some political parties just so that they could get funding. Of course, the Tories also have a huge war chest, so they don’t need the money

When they presented the bill, the expected the opposition to roll over, like a good dog. This is in part because it’s what the opposition had done in the previous parliament, but also because the Liberals (one of the opposition parties) are in the midst of picking a new leader.

But the opposition didn’t roll over. Instead they have quickly banded together and negotiated deal to take over the government as a coalition.

But, wait, you ask. How?

Well they would bring down the Tory government on a non-confidence motion and then go to the Governor General and say "Hey Queen’s representative, instead of calling an election, we’ll govern."

This has put the cat among the pigeons. The Tory government is shrieking about it being an assault on democracy, despite the fact it has happened before. And despite the fact that the Tories were willing to do the same a few years ago.

The Tories have started to back pedal and ramp up the attack ads. The Governor General is rushing back from a European trip. Talk radio has gone nuts.

This is, quite frankly, the most exciting to happen in Canadian politics in a long time. I am getting the popcorn.

[  Mood: Amused ]
So the Americans have just finished Thanksgiving and, along with us Canucks, are heading to Christmas. So we all might have a turkey or two in our future.

So imagine my glee when I found this site. Now I knew that deep-fried turkeys were de-riguer south of the boarder, but I did not know that things like this existed.

If you can’t see the picture, those are pecans and an a honey glaze overtop of the deep-fried bird.

So my question is, when did turkey become dessert? I can feel my arteries hardening just looking at the picture.

So now I am waiting for the chocolate fudge flattop turkey to appear.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
[ Currently: Breastfeeding My Son ]
Still porting

While I enjoyed this book, I found it diffficult to follow at times, with Steinbeck’s dialogue not flowing in a natural way. Cathy is an evil woman though, and having a villain like her makes the novel very engrossing. Of course many a literary scholar would disagree that Cathy is a villain in the classic mustache twirling kin of way, but believe me she is evil.

Steinbeck says that this book is based on stories from the area he grew-up in, and indeed there are some Steinbecks in the book, but other things I have read about this book say that it is a retelling of the Adam and Eve (in the book this is Adam and Cathy) and then Cain and Abel (Cal and Aron), so who knows how much is based in fact, and how much is from his imagination.

Good book, and yes I got this one from Oprah too. But the next one I did not. Promise.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
[ Currently: Breastfeeding My Son ]
Still porting

I first fell in love with this story when I saw the movie when I was much, much younger. I indentified so strongly with Olan. (I don’t know what that says about me.) When Oprah picked this for her book club, I thought, I must read it. (I am not a big book club follower – I read either too quickly or two slowly)

And I am very glad I did. The story of Wang Lung has some very moralistic overtones, if you leave the land, bad things happen, but the true heroine of the piece is Olan. It is her struggles and matter of fact practicality about life that allow Wang Lung to succeed. It is only after Olan has gone, that he realizes exactly what she was, yet even then, he can not bring himself to love her.

It’s a truly brilliant book and everyone should read it.

[  Mood: Cool ]
[  Currently: Watching My husband knock down some baby furniture ]
Again, I am porting some old posts from another blog I used to have.

So first off, let me admit this, I am a huge fan of this long running British Soap Opera.

This book preports to be a novelization of the entire run of the series. It does cover the major plot points, focusing on the very popular and log running characters such as Ken Barlow, Emily Nugent/Bishop, Bet Lynch, Elsie Tanner, Len Fairclough, Rita Littlewood/Fairclough/Sullivan and Gail Potter/Tilsley/Plat/Hillman. Unfortunately they leave out the entire McDonald Clan, not to mention the entire fabulous Battersby clan, who are turned into bit players except for Leanne’s involvement with Nicky Platt. This means that one of the best stories of the last few years, the Dennis/Eileen/Janice triangle, is missing. And Mavis is only in the story as a spear carrier. There is no mention of Derek or Arthur the gnome. There are also some factual errors in the book, such as Des Barnes dying of a heart attack, when he, in fact, was murdered.

Overall though, the book is a satisfying read and helps fill in some missing pieces for the new fans, as well as give the long time fan a bit of nostalia.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
I am porting some old posts from a blog I used to have to this one.

As you can see from the book cover, I have chosen to use the French title of the book so not to freak out the web sensors.

I heard about this book on the CBC Radio program "C’Est La Vie".

The book caused quite a controversy in Quebec when it was originally published in French as "Putain" (that would be the French word for Whore). And after reading it, I can see why.

Don’t read this book if you are looking for cheap dime store thrills, or bad Harlequin sex scenes. Arcan has chosen to write this book in a stream of consciousness style. It is not a plot driven novel, but more of a collection of thoughts about the main character, Cynthia’s life as a whore.

It is an interesting work though, with Cynthia’s reflection on why her clients visit her (they are all fathers who want to have sex with their daughters, but since they can’t, they hire her), why she is a whore, what lead her here, why whores will always exist, and why Cynthia can’t have a normal relationship. There are also some facinating looks at her patrons, Michael the Dog who wants to be dominated, and Mathieu, whose youth cause Cynthia to question her value in a youth based profession. There is also Michael the Jew, who is remarkable in that he stands out in a crowd that Cynthia admits is faceless and nameless, there are so many.

One of the things I find missing from this book is taking of personal responsibilityby the main character. Her entry into prositution is put on the shoulders of her parents. Her mother has apparently spent much of her life in bed, slowing spreading out. Her father, a very religious and dour man, never the less has sought comfort in the arms of other women, both paid and not. He apparently taunted his wife with this, and his wife openly discussed this with Cynthia. It is their fault, Cynthia contends, that she now is paid to have sex with men. No where is the concept of free will or personal choice adressed. Cynthia never really admits that although she may have come from a horrible background, that she made the choice to enter into this life. She does admit that she finds it hard to leave as she is addicted to the material lifestyle her career has brought her.

It is a very interesting book though. I recommend it to anyone interested in the real world of prostitution over the Julia Roberts sugar coated view. It is also wonderful for me, an English Canadian, to have access to modern, relevant literature from the other solitude.