oh while I'm here I'll update my 50 Book Challenge for you all!

3. Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception by Eoin Colfer.
A nice, quick and enjoyable read. At first I had a hard time getting into the book. I hadn't read any Artemis Fowl in quite some time and had almost forgotten the characters and certainly what had happened in the previous books. But it didn't take me long at all to get into it and the action was quick and fun and I was able to get through the book in little less than a week.
The characters are all fun to read and I can just see it all being made into a movie. I like all the Lower Elements characters, the fairies, the pixies, dwarves, trolls and centaurs. Colfer does a great job with this series and I can't wait for my kids to enjoy them.

4. a complicated kindness by Miriam Toews.
I started reading this and couldn't stop!
Unfortunately I'm far too lazy to write down my own thoughts about the book. I'm going to take the easy way out and include the publisher's review of this book. Such a cop-out I know but I really can't do any better myself so here it is. There were lots of LOL moments and they're all tinged with such sadness. A great read, so enjoyable.

Sixteen-year-old Nomi Nickel longs to hang out with Lou Reed and Marianne Faithfull in New York City’s East Village. Instead she’s trapped in East Village, Manitoba, a small town whose population is Mennonite: “the most embarrassing sub-sect of people to belong to if you’re a teenager.” East Village is a town with no train and no bar whose job prospects consist of slaughtering chickens at the Happy Family Farms abattoir or churning butter for tourists at the pioneer village. Ministered with an iron fist by Nomi’s uncle Hans, a.k.a. The Mouth of Darkness, East Village is a town that’s tall on rules and short on fun: no dancing, drinking, rock ’n’ roll, recreational sex, swimming, make-up, jewellery, playing pool, going to cities or staying up past nine o’clock.
As the novel begins, Nomi struggles to cope with the back-to-back departures three years earlier of Tash, her beautiful and mouthy sister, and Trudie, her warm and spirited mother. She lives with her father, Ray, a sweet yet hapless schoolteacher whose love is unconditional but whose parenting skills amount to benign neglect. Father and daughter deal with their losses in very different ways. Ray, a committed elder of the church, seeks to create an artificial sense of order by reorganizing the city dump late at night. Nomi, on the other hand, favours chaos as she tries to blunt her pain through “drugs and imagination.” Together they live in a limbo of unanswered questions.
Nomi’s first person narrative shifts effortlessly between the present and the past. Within the present, Nomi goes through the motions of finishing high school while flagrantly rebelling against Mennonite tradition. She hangs out on Suicide Hill, hooks up with a boy named Travis, goes on the Pill, wanders around town, skips class and cranks Led Zeppelin. But the past is never far from her mind as she remembers happy times with her mother and sister — as well as the painful events that led them to flee town. Throughout, in a voice both defiant and vulnerable, she offers hilarious and heartbreaking reflections on life, death, family, faith and love.
Eventually Nomi’s grief — and a growing sense of hypocrisy — cause her to spiral ever downward to a climax that seems at once startling and inevitable. But even when one more loss is heaped on her piles of losses, Nomi maintains hope and finds the imagination and willingness to envision what lies beyond.
Few novels in recent years have generated as much excitement as A Complicated Kindness. Winner of the Governor General’s Award and a Giller Prize Finalist, Miriam Toews’s third novel has earned both critical acclaim and a long and steady position on our national bestseller lists. In the Globe and Mail, author Bill Richardson writes the following: “There is so much that’s accomplished and fine. The momentum of the narrative, the quality of the storytelling, the startling images, the brilliant rendering of a time and place, the observant, cataloguing eye of the writer, her great grace. But if I had to name Miriam Toews’s crowning achievement, it would be the creation of Nomi Nickel, who deserves to take her place beside Daisy Goodwill Flett, Pi Patel and Hagar Shipley as a brilliantly realized character for whom the reader comes to care, okay, comes to love.”

This town is so severe. And silent. It makes me crazy, the silence. I wonder if a person can die from it. The town office building has a giant filing cabinet full of death certificates that say choked to death on his own anger or suffocated from unexpressed feelings of unhappiness. Silentium. People here just can’t wait to die, it seems. It’s the main event. The only reason we’re not all snuffed at birth is because that would reduce our suffering by a lifetime. My guidance counsellor has suggested to me that I change my attitude about this place and learn to love it. But I do, I told her. Oh, that’s rich, she said. That’s rich. . .
We’re Mennonites. After Dukhobors who show up naked in court we are the most embarrassing sub-sect of people to belong to if you’re a teenager. Five hundred years ago in Europe a man named Menno Simons set off to do his own peculiar religious thing and he and his followers were beaten up and killed or forced to conform all over Holland, Poland, and Russia until they, at least some of them, finally landed right here where I sit. Imagine the least well-adjusted kid in your school starting a breakaway clique of people whose manifesto includes a ban on the media, dancing, smoking , temperate climates, movies, drinking, rock’n’roll, having sex for fun, swimming, makeup, jewellery, playing pool, going to cities, or staying up past nine o’clock. That was Menno all over. Thanks a lot, Menno.
—from A Complicated Kindness

From the Hardcover edition.

5. Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl.

As wary as I was to read this book, I actually enjoyed it immensely! It's a fabulous adventure story and I'm glad that hubby made me read it.
My favourite parts were the descriptions of the life they found out in the middle of the Pacific, the way they lived out on their raft and their stay with the Polynesians when they landed.

Here's some excerpts I particularly liked:

"Flying fish," he thought and felt for it in the darkness to throw it away. He caught hold of something long and wet, which wriggled like a snake, and let go as if he had burned himself. The unseen visitor twisted itself away and over to Herman, while Torstein tried to get the lamp lighted again. Herman started up, too, and this made me wake, thinking of the octopus which came up at night in these waters.
When we got the lamp lighted, Herman was sitting in triumph with his hand gripping the neck of a long thin fish which wriggled in his hands like an eel. The fish was over three feet long, as slender as a snake, with dull black eyes and a long snout with a greedy jaw full of long sharp teeth. The teeth were as sharp as knives and could be folded back into the roof of the mouth to make way for what was swallowed. Under Herman's grip a large-eyed white fish, about eight inches long, was suddenly thrown up from the stomach and out of the mouth of the predatory fish, and soon after up came another like it. These were clearly two deep-water fish, much torn by the snakefish's teeth. The snakefish's thin skin was bluish violet on the back and steel blue underneath, and it came loose in flakes when we took hold of it.
Bengt too was awakened by all the noise, and we held the lamp and the long fish under his nose. He sat up drowsily in his sleeping bag and said solemnly:
"No, fish like that don't exist."
With which he turned over quietly and fell asleep again.
Bengt was not far wrong. It appeared later that we six sitting round the lamp in the bamboo cabin were the first men to have seen this fish alive. Only the skeleton of a fish like this one had been found a few times on the coast of South America and the Galapagos Islands; ichthyologists called it Gempylus, or snake mackerel, and thought it lived at the bottom of the sea at a great depth because no one had ever seen it alive. But, if it lived at a great depth, it must have done so by day when the sun blinded its big eyes. For on dark nights Gempylus was abroad high over the surface of the sea; we on the raft had experience of that.
A week after the rare fish had landed on Torstein's sleeping bag, we had another visit. Again it was four in the morning, and the new moon had set so that it was dark but the stars were shining. The raft was steering easily, and when my watch was over I took a turn along the edge of the raft to see if everything was shipshape for the new watch. I had a rope round my waist, as the watch always had, and, with the paraffin lamp in my hand, I was walking carefully along the outermost log to get round the mast. The log was wet and slippery, and I was furious when someone quite unexpectedly caught hold of the rope behind me and jerked till I nearly lost my balance. I turned round wrathfully with the lantern, but not a soul was to be seen. There came a new tug at the rope, and I saw something shiny lying writhing on the deck. It was a fresh Gempylus, and this time it had got its teeth so deep into the rope that several of them broke before I got the rope loose. Presumably the light of the lantern had flashed along the curving white rope, and our visitor from the depths of the sea had caught hold in the hope of jumping up and snatching an extra long and tasty tidbit. It ended its days in a jar of Formalin.


When we caught them, we saw that they were little brightly shining species of shrimp. On such nights we were sometimes scared when two round shining eyes suddenly rose out of the sea right alongside the raft and glared at us with an unblinking hypnotic stare. The visitors were often big squids which came up and floated on the surface with their devilish green eyes shining in the dark like phosphorus. But sometimes the shining eyes were those of deep-water fish which came up only at night and lay staring, fascinated by the glimmer of light before them. Several times, when the sea was calm, the black water round the raft was suddenly full of round heads two or three feet in diameter, lying motionless and staring at us with great glowing eyes. On other nights balls of light three feet and more in diameter would be visible down in the water, flashing at irregular intervals like electric lights turned on for a moment.

It was impossible to say whether it was plankton shining on its body, or whether the animal itself had a phosphorescent surface, but the glimmer down in the black water gave the ghostly creature obscure, wavering outlines. Sometimes it was roundish, sometimes oval, or triangular, and suddenly it split into two parts which swam to and fro under the raft independently of each other. Finally there were three of these large shining phantoms wandering round in slow circles under us.
They were real monsters, for the visible parts alone were some five fathoms long, and we all quickly collected on deck and followed the ghost dance. It went on for hour after hour, following the course of the raft. Mysterious and noiseless, our shining companions kept a good way beneath the surface, mostly on the starboard side where the light was, but often they were right under the raft or appeared on the port side. The glimmer of light on their backs revealed that the beasts were bigger than elephants but they were not whales, for they never came up to breathe. Were they giant ray fish which changed shape when they turned over on their sides? They took no notice at all if we held the light right down on the surface to lure them up, so that we might see what kind of creatures they were. And, like all proper goblins and ghosts, they had sunk in to the depths when the dawn began to break.

It was the head of a veritable sea monster, so huge and so hideous that, if the Old Man of the Sea himself had come up, he could not have made such an impression on us. The head was broad and flat like a frog's, with two small eyes right at the sides, and a toadlike jaw which was four or five feet wide and had long fringes drooping from the corners of the mouth. Behind the head was an enourmous body ending in a long thin tail with a pointed tail fin which stood straight up and showed that this sea monster was not any kind of whale. The body looked brownish under the water, but both head and body were thickly covered with small white spots.
The monster came quietly, lazily swimming after us from astern. It grinned like a bulldog and lashed gently with its tail. The large round dorsal fin projected clear of the water and sometimes the tail fin as well, and, when the creature was in the trough of the swell, the water flowed about the broad back as though washing round a submerged reef. In front of the broad jaws swam a whole crowd of zebra-striped pilot fish in fan formation, and large remora fish and other parasites sat firmly attached to the huge body and traveled with it through the water, so that the whole thing looked like a curious zoological collection crowded round something that resembled a floating deep-water reef.
...
The monster was a whale shark, the largest shark and the largest fish known in the world today. It is exceedingly rare, but scattered specimens are observed here and there in the topical oceans. The whale shark has an average length of fifty feet, and according to zoologists it weighs fifteen tons. It is said that large specimens can attain a length of sixty feet; one harpooned baby had a liver weighing six hundred pounds and a collection of three thousand teeth in each of its broad jaws.

Now I can't explain why the fish stories fascinate me so. I'm not a water person myself and cannot fathom being on a raft in the Pacific, so close to the water. I would find it rather frightening to be in that position . But the creatures that they encountered out literally in the middle of nowhere just intrigues me to no end.
It's almost like listening to fairy tales of creatures that couldn't possibly exist and is X-Files'ish and supernatural simply because we just don't know what's out there.
And it's fascinating to think about how these guys lived out on the ocean so far away from the life of modern man. The simplicity, the solitude. And yet within that solitude the multitude of life that flourishes there. It's like the rest of the world, those on land, people, could blow themselves to kingdom come but there would be parts of the world in which living things would live on unbothered by the progressions of man, other than catastrophes caused by man such as global warming and pollution and barring natural disasters like meteor crashes.
I also liked the anthropological aspect of the raft expedition. It wasn't Heyerdahl's goal to prove that the Polynesian islands was populated by South American people. He simply wanted to prove that the South American people, before the time Polynesia was populated, had the technology and skill to cross the Pacific. Apparently the theory that Polynesians descend from South Americans has been disproved by mitochondrial DNA testing. It seems that the DNA of Polynesian people have more in common with East Asians than they do with South Americans.
However, the legends and stories that have been passed down the generations in the Polynesian islands seems to support their descent from South America. The similarities in the legends and the stories of their gods between Polynesia and South America is uncanny. And that the stories are similar from the west of South America to Easter Island to the Polynesians seems hard to refute.
And another thing that fascinated me was the existence of white man in South America before the Europeans arrived. It's said that there were fair-skinned men who used their skill and knowledge to help build the pyramids and other structures around Peru. Where did these white men come from? Were they descendants of Vikings who migrated south from North America? Could they be East Asians who migrated over the Bering Strait and down into South America? Or were they survivors of that fated island of Atlantis? hmmm... isn't that an interesting thought?
Anyway, I'm sure you can see that I found this book thoroughly enjoyable and can highly recommend it to anyone looking for an entertaining and educational read.

6. The Bartimaeus Trilogy: Book One - The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathon Stroud.

As can be seen from the books I've so far read in my 50 Book Challenge, over half of them are YA fiction.
I love YA. It's light, entertaining and so enjoyable.
I've read Amulet before but re-read it so that I could continue the other books in the trilogy.
It was much fun even the second time through. Bartimaeus slays me with his sarcasm and humour. And he made a little dig at the Harry Potter series which tickled my fancy.
How was I sure the magician in question was his master? Well, unless age-old practices were now being dropped and apprentices were being bussed off to boarding school together (hardly likely), there was no explanation.
hee...
I found so much enjoyment in his side comments.
And I like the way Stroud portrays magicians and where the "magic" comes from. Such entertainment to be found in these child books.
I did find the whole Resistance plotline a bit plodding but having continued on already, it very much plays a big role in the second book.

7. The Bartimaeus Trilogy: Book Two - The Golem's Eye by Jonathon Stroud.
Golem's Eye was just as entertaining as the first book. Great story, I could not put the book down.
As I said, the Resistance does play a huge role in this story. But it's not over yet...
One thing that I found as I was reading this second book is that none of the protagonists are wholly likable. Well, that may be a bit harsh. All the characters are likable well enough but there's just something wrong with each of the heroes.
Nathaniel/John Mandrake is a central character that at times you feel completely for, but at other times you just think he's a great big... well, dick, to be frank. His morals go astray and yet based on the context of his character it's not unexpected.
Kitty Jones is a highly moral character, but as a member of the Resistance she does things that are wrong. You feel for her and her station in life, but from Nathaniel's character's point of view, she's not very likable.
Bartimaeus, by far my favourite character, also has his unlikable character traits. He's a demon, and seems to use his slave status as an excuse not to be more morally likable.
I guess the way Stroud writes the book from different character's points of view will obviously lead to this kind of character ambiguity. It certainly doesn't take away from the story and gives it a fullness since it gives the characters dimension. I just found it interesting to bring up.
So here's couple of quotes of Bartimaeus that just cracked me up, like laugh out loud cracked me up:
"Ah yes, of course. The fragrant Ms. Whitwell. A delightful creature."
to which he footnotes:
This is called irony. Whitwell was in fact a thoroughly unpleasant specimen. Tall and bone-thin, her limbs were like long dry sticks. I was surprised she didn't catch fire when she crossed her legs.

man, it makes me laugh just to read that bit again.
and this:
The door was flung open and a tall wide-eyed man wearing a skullcap rushed out
to which he footnotes:
He didn't just have a skullcap on; he wore other clothes as well. Just in case you were getting excited. Look, I'll get to the details later; it's a narrative momentum thing.

lol the funniest thing here for me is that it came out of nowhere. the humour just blindsided me. it was hilarious!
Bartimaeus rocks!

I'm currently reading the third book of the Bartimaeus Trilogy - Ptolemy's Gate

oh boy... coming back to Blogger I feel like I have to relearn this thing all over again! I don't even remember how it is I can post but I found it!

so yeah, so much for keeping you all posted. I was reminded just last week by my oldest friend in the world that someone might still be reading this! (and by oldest, I in no way refer to her age. I've just known her the longest)

well, here's another break down of goings-on since March:

- looking back, I didn't even mention some of my New Year's resolutions. It's now mid-year and of course, most of them have gone the way of the dodo. But one of my resolutions was to learn how to play guitar! Granted, I have not practiced in a couple of months now but I've learned a few chords and can play a few simple songs. Given, I play them slow and quite choppy but my fingers have grown a bit of thick skin on the tips. And Greg has gotten back into playing again! I even bought a lovely stand for his old guitar. I really should get back to practising again...

- sadly, the Ottawa Senators made an early exit from the NHL playoffs (again) this season. I didn't go so far as to weep the misfortune but I think that's only because I refused to watch the goal that put us out. I really think I would have cried had I seen it. :(
but go Edmonton! kick Carolina's butt!
and for me, I now have FIFA World Cup to look forward to! Go Orange! Go Netherlands!

- Rich went and bought the game Dance Dance Revolution for his GameCube. It's the game with the dance mat and you step on the arrows with the beat of the songs playing in the game. It's great! So great, that I had to go out and get one for myself. I like it for the bit of exercise it provides me. Greg loves it because he feels he never needs to bring me out to dance ever again! and the kids love it too! You should see them dancing. It's a riot!


oh excuse me for a tick while I take a break from blogging to DDR...

ummm... that was a much longer break than I anticipated!

- we got all new appliances for the kitchen! new fridge, stove/oven and dishwasher.
the fridge is nice because now it's just got a freezer on top instead of being a side-by-side. greg hated the side-by-side. And it's fresh, new and clean!
I also was able to get my dishwasher with the stainless steel interior. so choice!
We also got a convection oven with a glass stovetop. Greg wasn't sure about the glasstop but it's working out pretty nicely. We also installed a new range good and that area of our kitchen has brightened up significantly! we used to have a dark brooding stove with 2 ovens that just hulked in that corner. I was a little afraid for the guys who had to bring it out. They did a great job and had some fancy method using straps for lugging the monster out. I was impressed.
I'm looking forward to replacing the floors in the kitchen (vinyl to cork) and Greg's looking forward to replacing all the cabinets (himself!). so ambitious are we...

and in the vein of home improvement, I finally got curtains for the living room to replace the broken blinds that were hanging there. They're maroon (very reminiscent of my high school colours) with white sheers. I also just recently purchased new lamps from IKEA because my black torch konked out on me. Is nice to be able to use those energy saving bulbs in the new lamps.

- I went to see Lord of the Rings the Musical.

*pause for incredulity*

yeah, it was not bad. I went because my brother was generous enough to get me two tickets for Christmas. In general it wasn't bad. The sets were stunning and the costumes amazing. To be honest though, I just didn't see the necessity of creating a musical, especially so soon after the great job Peter Jackson did with the movies. ah well, I can't complain, free tickets and the like...

- the boy's teacher suggested I have him seen by a speech therapist. Everything is developing fine but he has a slight problem with the SH and CH sounds. After seeing the therapist we were simply given some games and exercises for him to practice the sounds. I haven't gone through them yet but when I think about it and hear him saying it incorrectly I try to help him with the right sound. I used to not say anything when he pronounced things incorrectly because I wanted him just to develop on his own (and how cute is it when kids say things wrong all the time?!) but since it's affected people's understanding of the things he says sometimes I've started to correct him.


ok, that's enough for today I think. I will continue again shortly...