August 12, 2008

I'm back

Yesterday I got back to work after four weeks of vacation. We spent three fairly soggy weeks at a cottage just north of Ste-Agathe, Quebec, about 1.5 hours north of Montreal. Although the lake we're on is perfectly beautiful, we didn't take as much advantage as we normally do because of the weather. BBQing was also highly curtailed. We've rented this particular cottage a number of times over the years.

We also spent a few soggy days in Montreal visiting with family and friends; we were back in Toronto last Wednesday to get the boys ready for two weeks of summer camp. They left on Friday. The last few Toronto days of vacation were also fairly soggy (and explosive, too)

Movie-wise, we saw the The Dark Knight in Montreal and Hellboy 2 in Kingston. My wife and I finally got around to seeing Get Smart this past kid-free Saturday.

Rain means more reading, course, and I certainly did a fair bit of it. Here's the tally of books that I've read in the last four weeks. I've noted the ones that are in progress. Three out of the four of us read Heart-Shaped Box and we all enjoyed it. The Ruins and Triptych were both read by two of us (with me still in progress on Triptych).

  • The sum of all Fears by Tom Clancy
  • End of the Beginning by Harry Turtledove
  • Eric Clapton: The Autobiography by Eric Clapton
  • The Ruins by Scott Smith
  • Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
  • Comrades of War by Sven Hassel
  • Solomon's Vineyard by Jonathan Latimer
  • Triptych by Karen Slaughter (in progress)
  • Pursuit of genius: Flexner, Einstein and the early faculty at the Institute for Advanced Studies by Steve Batterson
  • Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of science and the great minds behind them by Clifford Pickover
  • The Wraparound Universe by Jean-Pierre Luminet (in progress)

The science ones I'll be reviewing here fairly soon, I hope.

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