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Counts- 7 books were written by Canadians, which is down from past months. Three poetry books (all Canadian).
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Yeah, I know. It's the middle of April.

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12 out of 15 books were written by Canadians
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Yeah, I know. It's almost the end of March. Well, better late than never.

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I read 12 books last month. Nine of these books were written by Canadians!
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This year, I read 192 books in total. I started and didn't finish several books, discovered several new authors (Jonathan Ames, Dan Chaon and Brad Warner), read a lot of books about food and read a lot of Canadian literature (as always). I track all of my books on goodreads. I was surprised to find that my rating system is bad. In some cases, I rate a book highly, but don't remember it later. The books that I do remember then end up ranking higher over time.


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I just got the funniest Xmas card from a friend. As most people know, I love Leonardo DiCaprio. My friend Sunni just sent me a postcard with a picture of Leo from Romeo and Juliet. On the back the card reads, "My Heart will go on at Christmas and year-round." She signed it from Leo, but I could tell that it was from her from the handwriting. It's hilarious! I laughed really hard when I saw it.

We've been living in a deep freeze here. The cold started on Saturday. I woke up and completely wimped out. I was determined to stay inside, but my friend Ben offered to pick me up and take me to the Edmonton Journal bookfair. Once I decided to go out, I was okay. I ended up bundling up and walking to the farmer's market, so I left my house even before Ben came to get me. The bookfair was a blast. We listened to some children's writers, then talked to Todd Babiak via Skype. Todd was in France, but his Internet connection died. So he ran to a bar and we could talk to him while he was in the bar, surrounded by French patrons. Then his French friend came onto the connection and talked to us for a long time. We heard some other writers read, but one of the highlights was definitely the security guard at the Journal. He is a writer and journalist who is in exile from Iraq. He has continued to write his poetry and fiction and has written a book that was copyedited by one of the Journal writers. So he read his poetry in Arabic, and then his friend read it in English. It was very cool. After this, Ben took me on a tour of the Edmonton Journal newsroom and I tried to identify various writers by their desks.

That evening, I went to a party. It was in the -40s but I walked the 10 blocks there instead of starting my car. I have a great winter system. I have a very warm parka and I wear a tuque and a face warmer. Then with my boots, mitts and cords, I'm good to go. The only exposed skin is around my eyes, and the only thing that really gets cold is the area between my boots and my parka. So basically, I had cold knees.

The party was quite fun although no one was dressed up and everyone left at about midnight, due to the cold. I ended up talking to a high school drama and dance teacher and an engineer whose wife is doing a masters' in international development. He and his wife had just done some overseas work in Zambia, and it was quite interesting to hear about.

On Sunday, I stayed home the entire day. I did not get dressed or change clothes until 8 at night, when I changed into a different set of pyjamas. I read 2 newspapers, watched two movies (The Apple and the Triplets of Belleville) and read most of "The Bishop's Man" by Linden MacIntyre. I think I'm going to have pyjama day every couple of months. It was wonderfully refreshing.

Today my brother called me at 8 a.m., wondering where our parents were. Please note that my brother lives in the same city as them, while I do not. I had talked to them on Friday, but immediately became concerned since it is so damn cold. I was imagining them stranded in a snowbank somewhere. So I called them repeatedly, and found out that they're okay and fine, although their water has been shot off for a few hours due to a water main break. The ironic thing about this is that my brother went to Calgary without telling them, and then he was concerned that they went away without telling him. Weird.
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I'm feeling much better than I did earlier this week. Last night, I went to a terrific reading/event. I generally go to these things alone, but end up knowing a few people, so I usually have people to sit with. Last night I sat with one of Mari's friends, Lisa and ended up meeting a few more neat people too.

The event was the Literary Saloon. It's a new reading series created by novelists Lynn Coady and Marina Endicott. They wanted to have a prose reading series in town and feature an out of town guest and local readers. The theme of the night was "Ink." Marina, Lynn and local novelist Greg Hollingshead read some excerpts from new work. Then Ted Bishop took the floor to talk about pens. He is currently working on a biography about the history of ink so he told us all about the history of the ball point pens and some of the incredibly weird characters involved with its design and promotion. He showed us vintage pens, pen posters and played us some old commercials including one called, "Is that a rocket in your pocket?" (The pens were called rockets and the ads were quite sexual.)

This was followed by a reading from out of town guest Annabel Lyon, who read us a passage from her award winning book, "The Golden mean."

Following this, Lynn and Marina organized a book SMELLING contest. Three volunteers from the audience were blind folded and assisted by celebrity judges. The volunteers had to identify, "Mastering the art of French cooking", "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance", "Gulliver's travels", a new book called "The Incident Report" and a book by Michael Ignatieff. The celebrity guests (Ted Bishop, Greg Hollingshead, and Annabel Lyon) were allowed to give hints as to the nature of the book. Two of the volunteers did okay, but one was absolutely amazing and he could identify the books mainly by smell. Weird, but fun.

Tomorrow I'm going to the Edmonton Journal book fair. One of the writers decided to host a fair celebrating the many published authors at the Edmonton Journal. Then I'm going to a friend's holiday party that night.

My schedule right now is nice and open, but I'm already looking at the end of January, which will be insane. I'll be going to conferences and working A LOT.
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I keep on neglecting this in favour of www.goodreads.com. However, I know that some people use my list for book recs, so I should catch up.

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More later. I'll write some more this week.
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Aah. I don't have to go to any more meetings until next week. I've been quietly working from home, which is blissful. I only have to drive to Red Deer once this month and I'm sitting on a pile of stories since I worked so much last month. It's blissful, it's great, it's all those things and I'm hoping to get some of my own writing done this month and next.

Yesterday the contenders for Canada Reads were announced. This is an annual debate contest for books, and so the literary bloggers were on fire and I was writing a bunch of posts, trying to get the books, and tweeting my head off. If you're in Canada (or want to read a bunch of Canadian books), you should participate in our Canada reads challenge at Roughing it in the books .

I have been rather stressed because I special ordered a bra for my dance recital at the end of October. The bra has still not arrived and if it doesn't arrive today, I'm going to have to go through my studio and see what else they have in stock. The bra must have gotten stalled at customs or something. This is really annoying. It rates as a two on a scale of one to 10 in terms of annoyance, but it still means I have to spend extra money. My recital is on Sunday. AAAAArgh.

Today my friend and I are going for a flu shot date. This means that I pick her up, we go for flu shots and then go for lunch. The lines for flu shots are a lot shorter and it's open to everyone now. I decided to make the date since I knew I would never get motivated to go by myself if I didn't set the date in stone and make arrangements. So there you have it.
blue_lotus13: (book)
I am still really far behind on this

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I keep on getting really far behind on this.

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You can read my review, to be published in the November issue here
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I have neglected to post about my great trip to BC. I took the sky shuttle to the Edmonton airport. Strangely, three Edmonton Eskimos were on my bus ride. You'd think that professional football players would have their own bus, but these ones didn't. They were nice, but the whole thing was very strange.

I landed at the Victoria airport and was greeted by my mom and my aunt. We then went for tea, and I went back to my aunt's house where I hung out with my uncle and my aunt and their two great dogs. We just spent a lot of time visiting and chilling. The next day, my aunt drove my mom and I to Bolen Books, where I got to meet [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] and have him sign my book :)

Mom and I then went downtown where we wandered around, shopped and went for dim sum. Later on, we went to another aunt's where we dined with three aunts, my cousin, my cousin's bf and a family friend. The next day, we did a whole lot of nothing before my mom and uncle drove me to the ferry. I took the ferry across and got to [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com]'s house at about 8 at night.

I got up early the next morning to go visit my friend's new son, Cole. Cole was an absolutely gorgeous child. He's only 3 weeks old, but was incredibly beautiful. Following this, I went to the wedding, which I'll write about in my next post.
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Man, I've just been writing away like a fiend, doing some freelance work and work related stories. Crazy stuff. And in between all that, I've been reading like a fiend. In the past 2.5 days, I've devoured three books. I mean, I normally read a lot but this has been just ridiculous.

I've also been doing things to get ready for my trip to BC and am actually going to be social this evening and go see a movie at the Edmonton Film Festival tonight with Mari and her dude.

I've got some social events lined up for when I return from BC. Being this anti-social is okay once in a while, but I can't let it rule my life. That said, I've also been to dance class and yoga this week, and walked over to my friend's to pick up a book and visited with her for about 20 minutes, so I have been leaving the house. I've just really had my nose buried in my work.
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I haven't done this since the start of August, so bear with me

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I realized a couple days ago that I have a slight feeling of inadequacy because I was never an English major. As a result, I have not studied Shakespeare or read many of the classics. This has informed my reading habits for the past few years, as I have tried to read more classics. I also got my Shakespeare on this summer by seeing three plays, which is probably a bit of a record for me.
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I need to do these more often as I'm still really far behind.

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