"The Cat's Table" by Michael Ondaatje

This is an odd little book that I enjoyed reading. In the note at the end, the author says it is not autobiographical, but it certainly feels that way. It is a diary-like account of 3 basically unsupervised Sri Lankan boys traveling by boat to India, and includes passages about their futures. I suppose you could call the ship ride a rite of passage.

"Close Range" by Annie Proulx

I finally finished this very depressing set of short stories about Wyoming. Just to show you how long I've been at it, I read the Brokeback Mountain short story during the Academy Awards when Brokeback Mountain lost out to Crash. From this book I learned that Wyoming is a very depressing place for its long term residents. It seems to consist of difficult ranch work, bars,  abuse of women and various other totally depressing miseries. I think this is the last book I will read by Proulx.

"Red Planet Blues" by Robert J. Sawyer

This book had interesting ideas about transferring to artificial bodies, and about fossils on Mars. But the plot loses itself halfway through the book, and becomes a bit too convoluted for pleasure. And Robert Sawyer definitely does not do 'personality' very well.

"Nikolski" by Nicolas Dickner translated by Lazer Lederhendler

I picked this book up because the title was Slavic and because the book takes place mostly in Montreal. It was written by a French Canadian.

It was a nice light and intelligent read, having to do with three loosely connected narrators, and including a Nikolski compass, Nikolski being the name of a remote northern community on the west coast. There was nothing Slavic about the book, but I did enjoy the references to Montreal. My heart will always be there, I think, no matter how long I live in Ottawa.

The book highlighted for me the numerous options there are for living a life, which can include travelling the roads in a trailer, or enjoying life rather than working away at degrees and professional advancement. Life is an adventure to be explored, and society a sea to travel through.

"Leacock's Montreal" by Stephen Leacock

This book briefly excited me about history. It was fun reading about life along a route that I now take to drive to New Brunswick. But soon enough, the details about life in Montreal became boring to me, and I gave up on the book.

I picked up the book while I was volunteering for FOPLA. 

"The Luminaries" by Eleanor Catton

Eva gave me her copy of the book because she was disgusted by the ending. I agree with her. I was enjoying it tremendously, and then the last 30 pages or so were suddenly very sparse, and I'm not sure I even understood the correct ending. Ah well, now I now about the New Zealand gold rush.By the by, this book was very long.

"Dead Beat" by Jim Butcher

A typical Dresden novel. The animated dinasour was a bit much.