(I’m writing this on the train. The sky is pink and fluffy with the sunset. The waxing moon is peeking through cotton candy clouds. I am listening to Mark Kozelek’s album of Modest Mouse covers, which is as close as I get to actually listening to Modest Mouse. I am bookless and lost in thought.)

So, I’ve finished reading YORAS. And it only took me three months and 25 days (give or take a few hours) to do it!

I’ve gone into a little bit of explanation as to why the book has taken me so long to finish—short-story-like chapters, an unfamiliar author with an unusual narrative style, the Adam Carolla Show—so I won’t go over it again.

The book was a much-needed departure from my normal fare. Beyond the narrative style, which featured ideas and abstract characterization instead of relationships and emotions, YORAS focused on the eastern world to the exclusion of everything European and North American. I’ve read a lot of historical fiction, but it’s always Europe-based, and my contemporary fiction reading lists are the same.

Before I get too carried away, I suppose I should describe the premise of this book. Basically, it’s the story of a group of souls that travel from life to life repeating (correcting, remembering, learning from, forgetting) the same mistakes in a world where the population of Europe was eradicated during the Black Death. China and Islam fight for control and the souls find themselves on every side of the battle. The story spans 700-odd years, from the time of the plague to the present.

This is definitely a guy’s book, and not just because the cover is masculinely swathed in blacks and reds. The characters felt like they were presented at arm’s length, so even though I was seeing the same souls over and over, it still took me more than half of the book to get a good read on them. Also there was a lot of talk about machines and tools and not much talk about clothing and makeup, so that’s always a good indication the book is written with men in mind. (I wish I were kidding. Ah, chicklit, what have you done to me?)

I found it interesting that Kim Stanley Robinson pretty much stuck to our timeframe for inventions and world events. China visited America around the time that the Spaniards did in real life; trains showed up at nearly the same time; the Great War took place in the equivalent to the 20th century; the modern people had e-mail.

But that got me thinking: how much of what we do is based on the individuals performing the act and how much is driven by the momentum of our collective humanity? Would there be opera if there was no Italy? Would explorers have been so quick to take to the seas if Europe was lying open to them, fertile and uninhabited? Would the people of Africa, Australia and America have lived an unmolested, happy life, unaware of the rest of the world, for centuries more than they did?

That’s it. This is too much to think about; I’m back to chicklit. I think C dropped off a book about a bachelorette party? . . .

Another busy period at the office has come to an end and I’m finding it hard to remember what a weekend without having to work feels like. I have a feeling I won’t have much time to celebrate, as two major projects are joining what is already a writing and design intensive time of year.

But at least I can work in my jammies, unlike when we’re in season.

Anyways.

Elena was giving me a hard time this morning because she had to find out from an alternate source that Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku are working together for a Fox series. (Hey, Elena, Joss also directed an episode of The Office. And it had vampires in it! And you never knew!)

She was also giving me a hard time about reading after I suggested that she take the writer’s strike (somehow this is my fault too—it turns out chimps with nicotine dependencies aren’t responsible for General Hospital) as an opportunity to read a book for a change. “Why don’t you read a book?” was her snarky reply (emphasis mine; when will Messenger create a sarcasm font?)

I am reading a book. Just really, really, ridiculously slowly.

It’s not that I’m not enjoying it, because I am. It’s just that it’s broken into about 70-page mini-stories and I’m so easily distracted. I finish a section and immediately want to start listening to one of the 10,000 albums I acquired over the past six months. And Years of Rice and Salt takes a lot of concentration, so I certainly can’t listen to Beatallica while reading. (Or ever.)

Now that it’s cold and dark again and I’ve started taking more baths and having less to look at from the train, I’ve been plowing through the book one mini-story at a time. And now that the season’s over at work a lazy Sunday morning or two should get me back on track.

P.S. Psst! Elena! Wanna watch the BSG movie? It’s been leaked! Happy torrenting!

Yes, I know I just got back from Scotland a month and a half ago, but vacations wait for no woman and I am heading back on the road to visit my Jalapeno and her new little one in B.C.

I bought about 10 dozen books while I was in Scotland, as trade paperbacks are the same price there as pocket, so even with the exchange we're looking at $15 as opposed to $25. Plus, they were buy two get one free so it was more like $10 a trade! Sweet!

My neighbour C has been showing up with chicklit books the past couple weeks, and I plan to take each one she gave me with me to B.C. there is nothing better than reading an entire book on a flight, and chicklits are wonderful for that. I will be taking Swapping Lives by Jane Green, The Bachelorette Party by Karen McCullough Lutz and Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner. The latter is the only one I've ever heard of, so I'm not sure what to expect.

I will also bring Sebastian Faulks' The Girl at the Lion D'or, a book I've been dying to read for years but have never been able to find on this side of the pond. Bless British bookstores for stocking British authors.

I am currently reading my first man-authored book since GGK's Ysabel: Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt. It's sci-fi, which I read only rarely (okay, just Douglas Adams), but it comes highly recommended and so far is pretty intriguing. Plus, hopefully I'll get a new GGK convert in the recommendation bargain. And I'm guessing Jalapeno's hubby is going to dig this one too, so I'll lend it his way once I'm done. It's like I'm arriving bearing gifts (beyond the yummy essential oil soap I picked up for my girl on Skye, that is)!

"Holy shit, is your Dan a ginger?"

(Part of a conversation between three woman in the office reading the Outlander series for the first time, in response to one's statement that she'd tried to get her boyfriend to grow out his hair and sport a kilt.)

So what started as Alan and I going for an after-work pint to kick off the long weekend and to talk about my trip turned into a bit of a drinks fest which left me walking home at midnight through some dodgy parts of town. (Seriously, who decided on orange streetlights? It's like a freaking horror movie in my neighbourhood at night!)

We went to Scotland Yard, one of the quieter pubs on The Esplanade, and sat in the library. Over the course of the evening I had a chance to explore some of the books behind me, and I happened upon The Velvet Doublet by James Street. Intrigued, I opened it to a random page and read:

"I am glad I cried. Women like tears, as I was to learn, and mine overflowed and she was pleased and hugged me, and we both cried. I wiped her tears on the soft cuff of my doublet."

Jana, we are so going to get our story published. In the very least for display in the library at Scotland Yard.

Now, If I could only remember where I left my car. . . .

(It's not my fault I haven't posted in nearly a month. Blame Facebook and too much work. Well, mostly Facebook.)

So I'm heading out to sunny, balmy Scotland (a girl can dream) in five days for a two-week car trip to the Highlands and Western Isles, with a few days in Edinburgh, Stirling and Glasgow. This is the trip I've wanted to do my entire adult life, and I can't hardly wait to get started.

I headed to the local Costco this evening to pick up some yummy treats for a couple friends of friends I will bend an elbow (of Tom Collins) with while I'm there. I didn't find what I was looking for, but instead picked up four books, three of them trade paperback, for less than $50.

I just finished read Reay Tannahill's The Seventh Son, a historical look at Richard III, my favourite of all England's kings (she doesn't think he did it either!), and had nothing on tap for my trip, so the find came at a great time. I picked up Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky, which has won all sorts of awards; The Other Boleyn Girl and The Queen's Fool by Philippa Gregory, which were $9.99 each for trade; and a Canadian chicklit called The Continuity Girl by Leah McLaren.

And which one do I want to read first? Not the harrowing Second World War epic that the National Post calls "a masterpiece on the page." Not the two prequels to The Virgin's Lover, which I finished only one week ago.

Nope. It's the chicklit.

I blame the weather. As soon as I no longer need a jacket on my morning walk to work, I lose all ability to read complex novels.

So, as you may have gathered, I am a bit of a reader. (And of female-authored books, no less! I promise there will be a man-written book on my list by September, if I have to re-read one of my James Ellroys or Sebastian Faulks to get it there!) And as a reader—and a woman, as I alluded to in the bracketed sentence above—I appreciate a well-plotted love story. It's been a pleasant surprise to find a good love story in the middle of a series of books about a telepathic barmaid in Louisiana.

I read Charlaine Harris's All Together Dead on Saturday, and as I read I realized that in between the mind reading and the blood-giving and the vampire machinations, Harris is telling one hell of a love story between Sookie, the aforementioned telepathic barmaid, and Eric, the hot Viking vampire. From the first book, readers knew there was something there, and here we are in book six still waiting for the big payoff. But unlike the will-they-won't-they dance they do on TV, Harris gives readers just enough that we feel like the story is progressing and that the characters are moving towards one hell of a romance.

I wonder if the HBO series is going to mess with that to play up Sookie's relationship with Bill. I wonder if Eric will even see the light of day (no pun intended) in the first season, beyond maybe a trip to Fangtasia. And most of all, I wonder when True Blood will air. Since I burned through this book and have to wait a year for the next one, I can't fricken wait.

So, here I am, reading A Respectable Trade, my second Philippa Gregory book (I skipped the Boleyn books and went for some re-issued non-Royalty-based historical fiction from the ‘90s), and I came across the following passage, spoken by a plantation owner in the 1780s:

“When I hear men preaching that the trade in slaves should stop I wonder how they would have me run my plantation? How else can sugar be grown?

Josiah nodded and signed to Brown to pour more wine. “It’s ignorance,” He said. “And fashion. It’ll pass. It’s a few young clergymen and a couple members of parliament trying to make their career. Methodists and radicals! It will blow over. It’s nothing more than a few grubby radicals stirring up bad feelings and signing petitions. The leaders of the country know the profits the Trade brings, and the like to take sugar in their tea. They won’t be driven by the mob.

“ . . . I don’t think that a handful of clergymen and some ignorant working men can stand against them. There’s not one member of the House of Parliament that does not have an investment to protect. They will hardly vote themselves out of business.”

When I read that, I couldn’t help but think of the dire warning the Conservative government handed down last month about the folly of trying to adhere to the Kyoto Accord. The thought gave me some hope, even as the ramifications sank in: the slave trade and subsequent colonization of Africa devastated an entire continent, which to this day still suffers from the brutality of those actions; but at the same time, they stopped the trade, something that must have cost the conspirators dearly.

So maybe, eventually, public outrage will force the government into action and we will get serious about the environment. Let’s just hope it doesn’t take more than 300 years to heal the scars left by this one.

I finished Colleen McCullough's The Thorn Birds a couple of weeks ago. My thoughts? Meh.

There were moments of greatness, and the entire buildup to Meggie and Father Ralph's doing the didgery-do (you knew that was coming!) was compelling, and I really, really liked Justine and Rainier. But overall? Everything felt more than a little contrived.

Of course there would be a drought, and of course a fire would break out on the one acre out of 250,000 that the guy was next to, and OF COURSE the wild boar would land on the guy's head during its death throes, and OF COURSE one can't go swimming in Crete without taking one's life into one's hands.

There is a difference between an epic story and one where everyone dies. And as much as I wanted this story to be epic, it just wasn't. Death after death, tragedy after tragedy after tragedy. I just didn't feel it. (And I get misty-eyed during Survivor family visits.)

Perhaps if the characters had had any control over their lives I would have felt more invested. But everything happened to them—the letter from the estranged sister and her subsequent will; the lightning; the abandonment in Queensland; the war. The characters all stood by and let life bitch slap them for 600 pages.

I'm glad I read it, and I did enjoy it despite everything that I found annoying. I suppose it was the "classic" label that made me expect more. Had it just been another novel, I would have been fine with it.

I was hoping to find a new author to soak up, but no such luck. Maybe I'll try again if I find her at a second-hand store.

Anna Paquin is playing Sookie in the HBO version of the Southern Vampire novels!

. . . holy crap, holy crap, holy crap. . . .

I was doing crowd control at a work event yesterday, when I noticed that one of the people in line was holding Ysabel, Guy Gavriel Kay’s latest book. I finished instructing the crowd, and ended my speech with: “And great book, by the way.” She thanked me, and I went on to do something else.

A short while later I was back by her, and we got to talking about the book. She told me that she’d only read the prologue so far. I asked her if she’d read the Tapestry, and she said she hadn’t. I must have looked concerned by this, because she asked me if she should read it first. I told her it wasn’t necessary but that there’d be a few things that would make more sense to her once she had.

It was so wonderful to be able to talk to someone just discovering my favourite author. She seemed really interested in my GGK stories (how reading one of his books in Grade 11 turned me into a reader and contributed greatly to my decision to go to journalism school and to become a writer; how he e-mailed me once when I wrote a short blog about A Song for Arbonne in a book feature I edited back in the day over at Moxie.ca). She said her best friend was a huge fan. I suggested to her that Arbonne and Ysabel were perhaps the least intense of his books, and that if she wanted an emotional rollercoaster she should borrow her friend’s copy of Tigana.

I hope she comes to the spring event so I can see if she followed my advice.

So I'm moseying along on the train this morning, reading the latest Guy Gavriel Kay I'd picked up on New Year's Eve. I'm well into it by now—100 pages, or one-quarter—and then all of a sudden, my growing suspicions are confirmed with five simple words:

"Dave is north of Darfur."

And all of a sudden, this book becomes something quite different.

Wow. I never saw this coming.

I was right. It was a sobber. I had to stop reading on the train when my chin started wobbling and I started sniffling and my eyes blurred up. I had to take several deep breaths and stop reading and think of other things.

I don't think it helped that I was listening to Richard Hawley's Coles Corner (which I will point out is an album Alan gave me months ago and that I hadn't listened to even once before yesterday) as I read. When I hit the climax of the book, this was the song playing:

Don't look for me in fields of clover; I won't be there I won't get older. I must wait here holed up in my time. Don't search for me in fields of green; I'm not there, I won't be seen. I'm wading through the waters of my time Don't look for me in lands of gold; I won't be there, I won't get old. I'll hover like a frozen bird in time. Don't reach for me, the stars are cold; My race is run, my stories told. I'm wading through the waters of my time Don't search for me in lands of gold; I won't be there, I can't get old. Don't hope for me, the stars have died; I've slipped into the past. 'Cause I'm wading through the waters of my time.

Read the book. Trust me, this album plays like a soundtrack.

Before I left for B.C., I hit the bookstore for some reading material. I picked up two books: The Fool's Tale, of which I've written about already, and Audrey Niffenegger's (horrible link, I'm sorry, but it was the best I could find) The Time Traveler's Wife. I started to read it while I was out there, but I am so over reading first-person narratives, so I gave up on it and played solitaire on my laptop before bed instead.

Fast-forward to Monday. I had finished Something Blue at the beginning of the weekend, and nothing else was suiting my fancy. I knew that if I could just get one solid hour of reading, I would be interested enough to continue the book. I did the crossword on the train ride in, so there was no choice but to restart the book on the way home.

I read about 50 pages. It was interesting.

On Tuesday, I had the book sitting on my desk at work. My colleague A came into my office to talk about web stuff. When she saw the book, she launched herself at it.

"Are you reading this?" she asked.

"Yep," I replied. "I'm about 100 pages in."

"Oh my God, I love this book! It's one of my all-time favourites! I sometimes wish I could erase my memory so I could go back and read it for the first time all over again!"

She then went on to wonder about casting (putting her friend in as the male lead) and talking about how dreamy Henry was when he went to the clubs in the '80s. She has it bad for this book.

It's two days later and I'm starting to see where she's coming from. I dreamt about Clare and Henry last night—dreams that woke me up and made me restless. And I'm starting to dread the last 150 pages of the book. I cried through the 50 pages I’ve read since dinner, and I am now worried I'll make an ass of myself on the train tomorrow. I'm wondering if it's better to leave them happy where they are now, or continue on to the end, which is shaping up to be quite a sobber.

I think I'm done for the evening. I'll take tomorrow one page at a time.

On a positive note, after hearing A's spontaneous love song to the book, I recognized a kindred spirit. Today I brought her Diana Gabaldon's Outlander. She's going to start it tonight.

I’m watching: Starting in September, a whole bunch of reruns. TV Land Canada starts 21 Jump Street, which I was just a bit too young for when it first aired, on Sept. 1, while Space is starting The Hilarious House of Frightenstein on Sept. 4. Scrubs starts in syndication that day as well. Very cool.

Yes, it's been a while. But in my defense, I got home from B.C. about three hours before liquids were banned from airplanes, and have spent the last week trying to figure out how many times worse my 15-hour commute back across the Canadian west (Cranbrook to Calgary, two-hour layover, Calgary to Regina, four-hour layover, Regina to Toronto) would have been had I not been able to drink anything for that whole time.

But that was then and this is now, and I've finished three books since I started my way home last week. I read Nicole Galland's The Fool's Tale, a story abut a 12th-century Welsh king and his Norman wife. The story is complete fiction (no historical), but it was still a decent read. Then I picked up Edeet Ravel's Ten Thousand Lovers a book about a Canadian woman in love with an Israeli military interrogator during the '70s. It's a very thoughtful look at the politics of Israel and the struggle to hold fast to their land in first few decades of the country's existence. I read it from Cranbrook to Regina.

By the time I left Regina, I was on to Sarah Dunant's In the Company of the Courtesan, a book about a 15th-century courtesan and her business-manager dwarf. It was quite good and I would have cried at the end had I not been on the train when I finished it. And finally, for the last two days I've been reading Emily Giffin's Something Borrowed a complete departure from the rest of the books I've read this month, as it a chicklit book, through and through. I had issues with the dialogue (Giffin's not quite sure how to end a scene with anything punchy to say), but overall I enjoyed the characters. I'll start Something Blue, the follow-up, tomorrow on the train.

I was in a meeting yesterday where someone mentioned that book publishers consider someone who reads five books a month an "avid reader." I am quite happy to be categorized in that way.

So I've been on vacation for two days now (officially; with stat holidays I've been off since Tuesday), and instead of getting back to my blog with a vengeance, I've gone the opposite way and spurned technology altogether. Though it's not for lack of inspiration, or from no desire. In fact, for the past three weeks or so, my hands and arms have been tingling. Never a god sign when work is slowly crippling you.

My neighbour C and I went to see The Devil Wears Prada on Friday night. She's a big fan of the popular chicklits, like the Shopaholic series and books like that; ones that I avoid like they are on fire. (I'll read the genre, but only stuff that other people don't. Even in chicklit, I'm a snob.) So when C and I saw a five-minute preview for Prada when we were at The Break Up, I was intrigued and she was excited. She lent me the book immediately after, but I was too busy reading MaryJanice Davidson's latest Undead books (one of which can only be described as werewolf porn. Though, to be fair, her porn is much, much less vulgar than Laurell K. Hamilton's), so I didn't get around to it before we saw the movie.

The flick was great. I really like Anne Hathaway (especially that she's a dark-eyed brunette. I spent more than half the movie checking out what colour eye shadow she was wearing so that I could emulate the look), and Meryl Streep was wonderful. The story held together, and then ending, though very chicklit in nature, was satisfying. (C pointed out that Anne isn’t in for much of a career if she gets a makeover in every movie she’s in.)

I started the book (compare and contrast, class) on Saturday morning and finished it last night. It was better than the movie. The ending was much more satisfying, and the out-of-character things Andy did in the movie weren't even in the book. I was pretty surprised to discover that some of the popular books have more going for them than "girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy back." This one had "girl meets boy, girl treats boy like shit even though it's not her fault and really what could she do differently, girl and boy try to stay friends." Neat.

Wow, one blog entry done and my rambling is more pronounced than ever. I blame it on my numb arms and fingers.

P.S. How thrilled was I to hear Bitter:Sweet in the flick? I've been rocking to them on my Pandora stations since I heard them on Morning Becomes Eclectic three months ago. Good on them!

Oh! Holy crap! I almost forgot! I got an e-mail from the host of the official Guy Gavriel Kay website.

(Those of you who know me in real life know that GGK is who made me a reader. I read The Summer Tree in Grade 11, and it opened my eyes to books. It's also probably what led me to go to journalism school and become a writer.)

GGK has a new book coming out in January! Here are the details:

"Ysabel takes place in the world of today: in a modern springtime, in and around the celebrated city of Aix-en-Provence near Marseilles. Dangerous, mythic figures from the Celtic and Roman conflicts of the past erupt into the present, claiming and changing lives."(Read the complete intro here.)

I'm drooling in my naughty places waiting for this book. Damn, GGK can tell a story.

I have to say, this is going to go down as one of the worst months for updating my blog.

While I'm rocking on the weather, which has managed to get my condo above 20 degrees for the first time since September 2005, I am not happy with how much I've worked this month. I have been in at least one day every weekend, and this coming weekend I will be working both days from 9 to 5. Yummy. At least I have a week-long vacation starting in nine days. Then I can get reacquainted with my old friend MediaHoard.

I'm listening to: A whole bunch of new stuff; most notably Camera Obscura's Let's Get Out of This Country and Gotan Project's Lunático.

I had a party the weekend before last. A couple friends came into town and ran an evening 5k race, and then I made them dinner. I put together quite an extensive soundtrack for the evening. I love introducing people to new music, and it was such a subtle way to do it, over drinks and dinner. I didn't have to go all fan-girl on anyone.

I'm reading: I finished reading MaryJanice Davidson's latest Undead book, Undead and Unpopular. It was cute, as usual. I read it in an evening, as usual, and I spent way too much money on the hardcover, as usual.

I'm watching: E at work lent me the first two seasons of Scrubs on DVD, so pretty much just that. When I haven't been at work, I've been watching JD and the gang. It's probably why I haven't updated my blog in more than two weeks.

Hmm. . . .

The month is slipping away from me. I've been on vacation since Wednesday, and have been keeping blissfully away from my computer. But since it's 10 degrees out there today (on Victoria Day, natch), I suppose I have time to get back online and tell y'all what I've been up to.

Flash back two weeks to Saturday the 6th. I told you I was going to watch Akeelah and the Bee with Elena. We did not. Instead, we got Dairy Queen and rented Derailed. It was terrible. We turned it off after about an hour, and in doing so, missed the shocking twist. I was okay with that.

I haven't watched the entire Gilmore Girls season finale yet. I was so unimpressed with the 20 minutes I did see that I can't bring myself to watch the rest. I can't wait to see what the new regime does to this show, because the last two years haven't really been worth watching.

I am thrilled that Veronica Mars made it to the CW Network. Hopefuly Gilmore Girls hasn't alienated too many of its fans, so that Veronica and Company will pickup on some of its lead-in audience.

I finished reading Charlaine Harris's latest two Southern Vampire books. They were good reads, but quick, quick, quick. Only one complaint about the last book, Definitely Dead. Did I miss a novella where Sookie's cousin Hadley died? Because I can't believe that Harris wouldn't write the scenes where Sookie met the Queen of Louisiana for the first time, especially if they took place in the manner described in this book. Very strange.

I've been listening to The Leaves's Angela Test a tonne lately. They sound like the Icelandic version of Coldplay, but that really hasn't stopped me from digging on them a bunch.

And that, pretty much, is that.

Just a quick post today before I head out for the weekend. I finished Marian Keyes' Anybody Out There? and Kelley Armstrong's Broken. Both good reads and both worth shelving Possession for. I think I'm done with that one for the time being.

A couple weeks ago, I watched Happy Endings. I loved it. It made me cry and gave me such a headache that I had to go to bed at 8 p.m. that night. Tonight, Elena and I are going to see Akeelah and the Bee. I'm hoping for good things, even though it's rated G. At least there shouldn't be any teenagers in the theatre to talk through the movie. I hate those meddling kids!

I have decided that I really like The Rosebuds' Birds Make Good Neighbours. I picked up the album a couple months ago, but only recently put it into full rotation. I think "Boxcar" may make my Best Of CD this year.

Wow. I really did have nothing to say. Have a good weekend!