I love New York City. Oh yeah! New York City!

Title's from "I Love NYC" by Andrew W.K. just so you know.

Having never been to New York City and only knowing it through The Media, I had no clear expectation of what I would find. Now though, I’ve had a brief glimpse of why people say it's the best city in the world.

My friends and I eschewed motor transportation and just hiked through Manhattan. We had 12 hours to do it in and we were determined to hit up our two desired locations: Campers (shoe store) in Soho and Central Park.

Walking down any of the 5th-8th Ave., I find myself feeling much less claustrophobic in Manhattan than say, Hong Kong, probably because it was early in the morning and with the wide sidewalks and four-five lane road, there's a greater sense of space between the towers (until you get into midtown, and well, that feeling goes out the window). It was very enjoyable actually walking through a near-empty Manhattan, since the city didn’t get going until 11AM (when we arrived, there was already a line-up of tourists itching to go up the Empire State Building). It was interesting watching the city’s residents wake up and slowly open up their shops, revving the economic engine that is Manhattan.

We walked through a bit of SoHo and Greenwich Village, but it was all too brief to really get a sense of what Jane Jacobs loved about the area. What also didn’t help was my focused pursuit of a Magnolia Bakery's cupcake, made more famous by SNL’s “Lazy Sunday” skit. And yet, I had to ask THREE different NY residents before I got an idea of where it was, the third being (I’m guessing) a transplanted Aussie who told me to just head west on Bleecker Street. Turns out, it was way the hell west (West 11th Street and Bleecker, FYI), but man, those cupcakes did have mad frosting!

We then headed up 8th Ave, which apparently was home to a gay district (if not ‘The’) as well as a weekly roving street fair on West 23rd Street. It was these impromptu non-touristy New York experiences that I enjoyed the most. But once we reached 31st Street, it was time to blend into the jam-packed crowd walking through Times Square. Pure sensory-overload, that’s how I would describe it. Everything exploded on a grand scale in neon-colour (made even more apparent in the evening). Even the blind could follow the New York Stock Exchange ticker tape. And of course, who could forget The Naked Cowboy, a Times Square staple…

Eventually we were free of the crowds and into the quieter attraction of Central Park. Time running short, we enlisted Omar and his pedicab, as he toured us through the lower half of the park. A Malian (?), a fan of the Celtics and Jay-Z, he showed us various notable landmarks (2nd oldest carousel, Central Park zoo, the fountains, Strawberry Fields, etc). You could spend an entire day in Central Park alone, but it was nice to be inside some greenery, if ever so briefly.

Best part of the trip: Manhattan’s grid system made it very easy to navigate, considering I had never been. The landmarks helped too. Runner-up was finding The Onion in newspaper format. It’s teh awesome!

Worst part of the trip: Being held up at US customs for 1-1.5 hrs because 3 of the passengers were trying to cross the border without an entry visa and with only their non-Canadian passports. Runner-up was that I couldn't bring back any Magnolia cupcakes...

Photos are all on Facebook. I’ll link them once my friends puts them up.

EDIT: oh wait, they won't let me link up...ummm...if you don't have Facebook, sorry.
EDIT2: Oh man, how could I leave out THE CUPCAKES as the best part of my trip?!

The Art of Consumption and Everyday Life

Profiled in the Toronto Star today, Photographer Chris Jordan have captured or digitally composed provocative images of the things we consume in everyday life but also statistics that we may not be able to grasp intuitively. For example, this work from his "Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait" is titled, 'Plastic Bags, 2007'.

It's description: "Depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds".

The actual print is 60 x 72". It's BIG. If you zoom in to actual size:


And if you were to take the time to count each plastic bag, you would find all 60,000.

All his images are thought-provoking, and very reminiscent of Edward Burtynksky's work, Manufactured Landscapes, creating art out of the mundane materials of western society. If I was to apply Chip and Dan Heath's principles from "Made to Stick" about how to communicate ideas effectively, Jordan's work would pass with flying colours:

Simple - The images are simple. In the "Running the Numbers" exhibit, It's one item, one number, one message.
Unexpected - The images appear abstract, until you look closer and find an everyday item.
Concrete - These aren't computer-generated products (although some are digitally composed together), but images of real things.
Credible - The numbers in his statistic has to match the numbers in the image. Otherwise, he'd lose all credibility.
Emotional - The shock is in making an abstract statistic into something tangible and can be grasped.
Story - It is a very short story about the different impacts we make collectively as a society.

As he says, he's not trying to guilt anyone, but to show what each person's everyday life looks like in aggregate. Whether we choose to do change something about it is another thing entirely. Do check out his other sets on his website, "Intolerable beauty" and "In Katrina's Wake".


Both images from http://www.chrisjordan.com

A timeline to Potter-madness

Having stood outside in the cold in January waiting in line for a Nintendo Wii for/with my friends, I thought I understood the nature of obsession.

In fact, I understood nothing. Yesterday, on July 20-21, 2007, I had finished my 9-3 AM shift for the 12:01 AM release of the final installment of the Harry Potter series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”. Here now a chronology:

11:25 AM: I’m still working my Friday 7-12pm regular shift and this is when the FIRST Harry Potter fan of the day asks where to start lining up for the book.


8:30 PM: I drive into work and already the store’s set up 2 lines for people outside, one for fans who’ve pre-ordered the book, and the other banking on getting it at one past midnight. Inside, it's filled with people loitering and as I’m fitted into my costume (I’m a Death Eater manning a booth…who says dark wizards can’t be bureaucrats?), plans are in motion to finish the last arrangements for the store. The skids of books were not to be moved to the floor until 11:50 PM.

9:30 PM: A co-worker’s cousin who has more than a passing resemblance to Daniel Ratcliffe got dressed up as Harry Potter for us…and was soon swarmed by those same girls for photos (…though since he was starting university in September, he hoped none of this ended up on YouTube).

10:00 PM – 1130 PM: We’ve finally moved the lines inside, which also meant the start of activities around the store. There are now more people than I’ve ever seen in the store, and I must admit, it feels a little bit claustrophobic. I don’t get a chance to see the buzz of activity around because my job is to pre-register people who’ve pre-ordered the book by giving out wristbands. The roaming magician we hired is a popular attraction, entertaining those in line with various card tricks.

11:00PM – By about now the girls at the front of both lines have decided to start cheers for every hour, half hour, 20 minutes, 15 minutes, 10 minutes, etc. for the countdown to the book’s release. And with each passing cheer, my tolerance for them lowers just that much more.

11:50 – 11:59 PM – The girls decide to hold a cheering contest between the pre-order and the regular sales line. By now I’ve a ringing in my ears that won’t go away and a headache. Earplugs would’ve been good right about now. Not that the timing helped, because the Skids of the much-anticipated books are now being moved out from our Receiving Area to it’s respective areas, with security guard in tow. That’s right, we hired security guards to protect books. These are pretty much J K Rowling’s Crown Jewels. Loud cheering ensues and flashes go off behind me as people photograph the boxes of books. Stop and think about what you've just read...

People are taking pictures of cardboard boxes....okay, you can resume reading now.

12:00 – 12:01 AM – People start counting down the seconds. I'm hoping that people won’t just rush us and steal the books, because really, 4 employees and a half-indifferent security guard would not be able to hold back a crazed mob. If only they authorized my Taser request…

12:01 AM – The book release arrives!

12:01 – 1ish AM – It’s a non-stop flurry of books, bags, and gift cards as my friend and I try to process people through as quickly as possible. Slight delays ensue as some people cut in lines and don’t have a wristband force me to stop the flow and check off their names. Mild irritation, granted, but we wanted these crazies out of our hair as fast as possible.

1-3 AM – The craziness is over! We actually get people out the door with their Precious in a little over an hour, which is pretty impressive. We had some stragglers left coming in to pick up pre-orders or make outright purchases, but for the most part, we could nonchalantly start cleaning up the mess customers made. And of course, it WAS a mess. But we only did a half-hearted attempt because we were tired and really didn’t care all too much. I don’t envy the people who had to come in this morning to clean up after us…I seriously think we need to shut down the store for a few days just so we could re-shelve and re-organize everything.

3 AM – We’re done, so we all get together in our costumes for some staff photos. I manage to find someone peering through our front door. It seems he’s wondering if he could still buy a copy for his little brother, whom he promised would have it by the time he wakes up. I tell him he’s about an hour too late and think, “shouldn’t have gone to the bar first and then try to buy the book…”.

3:30 AM – Finally leaving the store and I need FOOOOOOOOD! Just as we’re rolling into a McDonald’s drive through, they tell us it’s going to take 20 minutes for them before they can serve us because they’re switching over to the breakfast menu…my timing couldn’t be more terrible.

And so ends this madness. I get to sleep at 5 AM, knowing many people will still be up reading the Deathly Hallows. In fact, I’m sure some people are STILL reading as I type this. Who’s going to sleep well? JK Rowling for one, since she will probably by the end of this be double the financial worth of the Queen of England. The other is Heather Reisman, head of Chapters-Indigo, who will also have made a truckload of money.

Me? I get to eat a sandwich from Burger-King at 4 in the morning. Who’s the winner tonight, you think?

Two elephants walks down the street...

If you haven't heard this yet, this may be the funniest story to ever happen to the Town of Newmarket.

So the circus was in town (ha ha) and the electrified fence for the elephants went down and realizing this, two of them decided to play tourist. The thing is, where the circus was set up (Ray Twinney Complex, it seems), it is surrounded by suburbs. So of course, where do the elephants go but down suburban streets, surprising some night-owls while they enjoy a midnight snack of golf course and front lawn trees.

Anyways, York Regional Police was kind enough to post mp3s of a 911 call reporting this and the dispatch conversation with police officers sent to...ummm...corral these animals. The cops were definitely having fun relaying their efforts back.

Update: It seems the York Region Police have taken down the mp3s. Luckily, the good ol' CBC has a realaudio format of the initial call to police. If I find a link to the other one, I'll post that one too.

The Lack of Posts

For someone who doesn't have a full-time job, I am surprised at the sparse blogging that I've done. While the cliche is that job-hunting is a full-time job unto itself, it is not wholly to blame. There frankly hasn't been all that much of interest that I've wanted to talk about.

I've completely lost touch with the national and international political scene (what I get for not watching BBC World and reading every available news site possible) and while I had a piece to say about the fine journalism from the Toronto Sun on their coverage of the National Day of Action recently, the moment's past (it wasn't that interesting, just me being snarky at them).

But on the whole, there's nothing much to say that couldn't be said in one sentence:

- Live Earth will not have created a new environmental consciousness, but hooray for 26 hrs of mediocre music!

- Michael Bay ruined Transformers the Movie and I will NEVER see it.

- I just finished reading "Field Notes From a Catastrophe". It is very much an underrated book, if partially because "The Weather Makers" took all the hype.

- The fact that people care enough about whether a fictional character like Harry Potter lives or dies enough to create websites and petitions make me want to both laugh and cringe.

- I'm tired of most Canadian politicians claiming their city/province/Canada is at the leading edge of implementing environmental policy. We are not. Let's be honest with ourselves and admit that so we can work at becoming that leading edge instead.

Alright, that's enough for now. Hopefully, I'll get back to some semi-regular blogging soon.

The Internet may yet redeem itself

This was heralded as the End of the Internet.

This story might just save it.

Courtesy Joey Devilla and Metafilter.

The Michael Lee-Chin Crystal

I had the opportunity to visit the newly opened Michael Lee-Chin Crystal addition of the Royal Ontario Museum (the ROM) yesterday.

Most people who comment on it typically either like it or hate it. I fall in the former category. If you're far enough away on either end of Bloor, the ROM looks like either an alien spaceship has crashed into the northern end of the building or someone's chemistry experiment has gone awry (or maybe even remind someone of the crystals exploding through Metropolis in the new Superman movie...but I guess that's too pop-culturish of a simile). Either way, it's a spectacular view that grabs one's attention on the street. It'll make a great landmark and Toronto certainly needs more of it.

The ROM allowed visitors to tour the crystal without the exhibits in place, which was a great idea because it really gives you a good sense of the space itself without the exhibits as a visual distraction. As mentioned in many news items, none of the walls and such are at right angles with each other, which is both an engineering and artistic feat. There's plenty of space, though because it faces north for the most part, it lacks natural lighting into the rooms, which I would've preferred. In certain areas of the crystal, there are portions of the existing building break through the new walls, which I really liked because to me, it reminds visitors that the crystal doesn't exist in and of itself but is a part of the overall museum.

There's also a certain sense of weightlessness in the building, particularly by the windows where it hangs over the street. Not that the ROM is dark and dank, but the contemporary design of the building certainly doesn't invoke the stereotypical notion of a museum. In fact, it's more reminiscent of a modern art gallery. This is certainly the case with the Sugimoto Hiroshi Special Exhibition already installed on the 4th floor. The room feels cavernous, even with the people walking in and out and around the spartan display cases. It'll be interesting to see how the permanent exhibits are set up.

Overall, I enjoyed my tour and am very excited to see it in its completion, with the permanent exhibits, new restaurant and new public space. Toronto architecture's certainly gotten more interesting.

What I love about Summer

You know what I love about Summer? Watermelon. And fresh corn on the cob. Fresh strawberries too.

There's something about the anticipation of seasonal foods that make them that extra bit better. While it's very likely a psychosomatic effect, I definitely get added enjoyment out of the few weeks when I can, well not gorge but more feast I guess, on these delectable items. I just tend to appreciate these foods more.

It's not limited to fresh produce either. Girl Guide Cookies, Cadbury mini-eggs are both worth the wait. I somewhat wish that mini-eggs weren't also available during Christmas nowadays.

Anyways, this was mostly a post about how much I love watermelon, if only because I just had some this afternoon (though now that I think about it, the one I had probably wasn't sold in season). Hmm. Kinda throws my whole premise out the window, doesn't it?

Reflections in Edmonton

Here I am, sitting alone in my friend Tara's wonderful guest room in Calgary and I'm still thinking about Edmonton.

You know how someone had once said that we can't know or appreciate happiness unless we have sadness? While I sort of agree, I don't think anyone needed this sadness.

It's an odd and sad coincidence to be so excited for a trip to see some friends in another part of the country only to hear the night before that a friend overseas tragically lost her life a few days prior.

I only knew Emma while I was working for the Publishing and Copy Centre at Queen's University. She was the life of the party though. She was the biggest Oilers fan I knew on campus and her laugh was infectious. She had boundless energy, especially when it came to her friends. Through Facebook, I found out she had a blog. Her personality very much shines through in her writing style, and I can't help but laugh at her posts, as if she's telling the stories in person.

But others knew her much better and I'm sure they are much more devastated than I will ever be. Still, I'm shocked and saddened by this event. It definitely changed my perspective of this trip, as I imprinted my own feelings over minute details of my flight to Calgary.

Leaving Toronto on a smoggy but bright sunny day, I arrive in Edmonton, her hometown, cloudy, with scattered rays of sunlight. A bittersweet atmosphere, it seemed. There'd were streaks of rain for brief moments, which felt as if the city itself was slowly mourning her. Oddly appropriate. On the flight, I walk by a mother and her baby, and think how Emma will never become a mother. While waiting for my connecting flight, I listen to retirees meeting and talking about traveling to destinations in Greece, fulfilling their lifelong dreams. What happens to Emma's dreams now? In the gift shop, they're replaying the Stanley Cup finals between the Oilers and the Carolina Hurricanes. What will the Oilers do without their #1 fan?

I would like to think that I'm not overdramatizing what I'm feeling. I would like to think that every so often, I will think of her and what her brief friendship meant to me. I would like to think that what I'm writing now is in someway meaningful.

But right now, I just don't want to think anymore. I don't want to think about a world where there isn't an Emma around to make someone laugh.

Internerd Nostalgia-ganza!

And if you want more, there's this thread from a forum Wes showed me. From Body Break to United Furniture Warehouse to the Canadian Tire Guy, they're all here!

I don't know whether to curse him or thank him for bringing all this back...

Somebody's gotta steal this idea for Canada...

I don't know if this really is the biggest, but it's probably the coolest scavenger hunt out there. This year's list is pretty mammoth, though apparently, there've been past items that are just batshit crazy.

Clearly, this is an idea worth spreading around, since it seems it'd be really fun to partake in. And of course, I must include some youtubery of this organized chaos.

Will photos change anything?

So now we have photographic evidence that shrimp trawlers in Asia are damaging the seabed (and therefore, ocean habitats) with their clean sweeps, thus proving moreso what scientific papers have said previously.

Will this actually change those practices?


I'm not holding my breath.

How much are a pair of pants worth?

Apparently, US $65 million.

You read that right. Not $65, not $650, not even $6,500. $65,000,000. If there was ever a lawsuit that was the definition of frivolous, this would be it.



via Kottke

Euro-style communities in China

Re-creating European cities China's latest housing trend

Snarky responses:

-It's like living in Europe, but without all those damn Europeans.
-It goes to show that China is tops at refabricating ANYTHING.
-If England, England was ever made into reality, it'd totally be China, China.
-hooray for Las Vegas-esque mass production and commodification of experiences!

Thinking

It's been one of those weeks where I've been nicely distracted from the thought of my thesis defense by some big ideas being discussed. Like my moniker suggests, I've been absorbing tons of information but very little's been trickling out. Still, I've quite enjoyed being absorbed in my thinking through its implications.

1) At my friend's birthday dinner, there was a brief discussion about the wonders of Canada and the myth (in the grand story sense, not the inaccuracy that it's come to mean) of our national healthcare. This dovetailed into Andrew's post about the long wait for treatment for his friend's ACL,how unfortunate the current circumstances have dictated the long wait and what is to be done. Are we forever burdened with 'equal access to crap' as some claimed in the comments, or is it better than we think it is?

It seems like private delivery of some medical services seem not completely unreasonable, as long as those parameters are strictly defined. If however, some feel that private delivery shouldn't be based on 'medical necessity', then what exactly? Surely, a compromise can be achieved that doesn't completely undermine the public system. This also assumes that those resources freed by private delivery could be redirected elsewhere to other parts of the public system, instead of just having it shrivel away. Part of the problem is the fact that small-scale trials are nearly impossible. You can't create an industry only to destroy it completely if it doesn't meet your political objectives. So what are our options for testing private delivery? Thought exercises just aren't that convincing.

2) At the same time, I've been reading Reed Scowen's "Time to Say Goodbye", whose thesis is that Quebec and Canada should separate (for reasons explained in the book) and Canada can be the better for it. I'm only 2/3 of the way through, but I was struck by this line,

"Canada is a country of minorities"

and what he defines Canada to be:

"...we are in a state of mutual allegiance with everyone who lives within Canada's borders, not with the objective of achieving a common substantive purpose, but through loyalty to the structure that provide us with our freedom and its corresponding responsibilities, to 'the authority of certain conditions in acting'."

"A deeply felt commitment of mutual allegiance with all Canadians; a commitment to parliamentary rule; the search for fairness in our respect for basic human rights and freedoms; respect for local and regional values and priorities; above all, a respect for the Constitution itself - that's what you get from being Canadian. This is our common culture, our civil association. It may not satisfy my definition of what it is to be Canadian. Nor yours. It does not make us unique in this world. But that's all that we all agree on. And it's enough."

My first thought was, "is that enough to bind us all together"? My second thought, of course, was, "let's see Molson try to sell that.

3) The 'country of minorities' made me think of the Ontario's citizen's assembly's referendum to the Ontario public on whether to change our electoral system from a first-past-the-post to a mixed-member proportional representation (PR) system. As a symbolic thing, it seems appropriate to have a country of minorities governed by minority-based coalitions. There are much better arguments for and against switching to any type of PR, of course. I just wasn't thinking about them at the time. I have no idea how it'll turn out, and while I know what the pundits like, I'm eager to see what Ontarians' views are.

4) Finally, The provincial Liberal government has decided to follow New Jersey, Australia and others to ban 'inefficient' light bulbs by 2010. Some think this is a good idea; others, not so much. While it seems quite heavy-handed to me, I'm wondering whether energy consumption (among other things) can be decreased without such government intervention or drastic environmental degradation?

To run again

I started running again now that it's warmed up (I've a strange aversion to treadmills...)

Anyways, 5k in 27 min = a very low bar to overcome. When I used to run with Matt, we did it in 23 min. This is punishment for being a blob for 5 months...

New Layout

There wasn't a huge need to revamp the layout, but my eyes were hurting from staring at all the white, which probably means everyone else was too. I also had to update parts of my blogroll (thx Megan), which gave me the impetus to spend the last two hours doing this.

If I was better with HTML and CSS, it would've been done a lot quicker and with a bit more sophistication. But then, if you were looking for sophistication in this blog, you clearly made the wrong turn at Albequerque. Hopefully, these colour schemes will also be much easier on the eyes.

Top 5 Books (so far): a High Fidelity tribute

I've just finished reading "High Fidelity", and having been voraciously consuming books since I've been working at Chapters, it seemed like fun to write out my top 5 books I've read so far:

Top 5 Picks
1) The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan
Written like a travelogue, the author takes its readers through the different ways we grow our food, from our current industrial production system, to the 'industrial organic', the truly sustainable model and 'hunter/gatherer' systems. Along the way, he examines the implications for each of them and shows that separating ourselves from our food sources has really undermined our appreciation of the food we eat and the environment from which it is produced.

2) The Dodecahedron (or a Frames for Frames) - Paul Glennon
Imagine each of the 12 self-contained short stories as a face on a 12-sided polygon, where the vertices and edges represent the elements common to the 'adjacent' stories. Is that such a cool concept or what?

3) Stanley Park - Timothy Taylor
I think it helped that I read this immediately after The Omnivore's Dilemma, as I was still mentally engaged with issues about how we grow our food. This novel isn't just about food, but also about identity, roots and the meaning of 'home'.

4) Made to Stick - Chip and Dan Heath
On a recommendation from a co-worker, it's all about how to get people to remember your ideas after you've told it to them. It's effective because it's like the duct tape on the book jacket: easy to use, useful for almost any situation, and their ideas really stick!

5) The Road - Cormac McCarthy
I've already said my piece about it HERE. I may end up buying it at some point, especially to see if I can peel off the 'Oprah's Book Club' sticker on the trade paperback edition.

Not all my reads, however, were fantastic. While none of them were awful, there were some that didn't satisfy:

Top 5 Surprisingly Disappointing Reads

1) DeNiro's Game - Rawi Hage
A Governor General's Award and a Giller Prize nominee, I expected this book to be one of the best reads of the year. While I understand the motivations behind the main character, I couldn't sympathize with him at all. I just thought he was a giant dick for a lot of the novel.

2) Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchett
Another co-worker recommendation. It's very fantastic and well-conceived world with its own internal logic. I just didn't find the plot of the novel to go anywhere. The main characters gets thrown from one ridiculous situation to another with no logical end. Maybe that's the whole point of Discworld, but it still didn't make me like it.

3) Getting to Maybe - Frances Westley et al.
The book's premise tries to show that individuals have been and can continue to be the focal point for major social change. It tries distill those real-life experiences into general rules for how individuals might want to get involved. However, the suggestions are too vague and if the people you describe couldn't predict that they would be this focal point, how can the authors? If the authors applied the ideas from Made to Stick, maybe it would've been more effective. Or, it's just something a book can't properly describe.

4) How Happy to Be - Katrina Onstad
I read this on a recommendation by Paul Wells, who found it to be an absolutely fantastic read. I read this after Stanley Park, and while they both seemed to tackle similar issues (particularly the estrangement with one's father), I thought Stanley Park handled them much more effectively. I also found the main character of this book to be more neurotic than necessary. The not-so-subtle in-jokes and monikers like "The other Big City Lefty newspaper" (get it, it's the Toronto Star, wink wink!) and "The Annual International Film Festival" (both paraphrased, but you get the idea) made me want to scream, "EITHER USE THE REAL NAMES OR MAKE UP A NAME!"

5) Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures - Vincent Lam
It's not a bad collection of short stories. I really didn't know what to expect. It's more me than the book. I think the fact that the connections built up between the characters in the earlier stories quickly unravels in the later stories left me wanting. While I understand that this is what happens once you leave university or med school or whatever, it just left me with a neutral feeling. It does make me want to read more short story collections to see how others do it.

Honorable Mention: High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
This was entirely my own fault, having seen and loved the movie before reading the book. It's not that the book was bad, but I couldn't develop my own scenes from the descriptions in the book. Instead, all I could think about was Jack Black and John Cusack...)

Maybe I'll post again when I've found a real job and can no longer read books at the current pace and see if the list has changed any.

What Energy Savings?

I'm shocked...shocked I say, to hear that arbitrarily changing an already arbitrary method of keeping time resulted in NO energy savings.

I mean, why should we put our efforts into real energy conservation efforts when we can just keep moving time back and forth and make it look like we're trying to do something?

The Road

This is one of those few times where Oprah Winfrey's taste and mine match, if ever. On Wednesday, she picked "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, as her new Oprah Book Club pick.

I know this because it popped up on the Chapters-Indigo website last night, but also because today we had about 900 trade paperback copies in the store (ok, so I exaggerate).

Anyways, I read it in hardcover, i.e. before the force of nature that is Oprah Winfrey picked this title out of the billions found in the masses to be placed in the sales-inducing canon that she's created. It was on a lot of top ten lists for books in the US for 2006, which was one reason why I chose to read it. And I really liked the book.

The basic premise is a father and son who's on a journey to the sea in a post-apocalyptic future where nothing living remains, except for the straggling remnants of humanity here and there. It's a tale of survival, and the bond between them that makes them desperate enough to keep on living.

What makes McCarthy's setting so terrifying is not the presence of monsters or mutant zombies or what not. It's the complete absence of life. The thought that the wide, wide, world is more or less empty just chilled me to the bone. It doesn't burden the reader with words, but it's still vivid enough that you feel you are there wandering with them, hungry with them, cold with them. It was the atmosphere that made the book for me.

But while I liked it, I don't think I could read it again for a long time because it depressed the hell out of me. It's a bleak book and to me, it's not one of those novels where there are chapters that could be read and re-read all the time.

It'll be interesting to see whether the people who tend to buy books based on her recommendations will continue to do so with this title.