13.May.2007 jPod
Spoilers ahead. Like any good techie Vancouverite, I know my Douglas Coupland. My favourite novel remains his 2003 Hey Nostradamus! – a very human, relatively realistic novel, where the characters and relationships take priority over the cultural insights. jPod, by contrast, is Coupland at his quirktastic extreme. It’s a very dark, bleak take on humanity [...]
23.May.2006 Fictalicious
It’s been a good few months for my fiction consumption. After losing interest in science fiction after high school, and getting really into non-fiction, I haven’t really read much. Vacations are good for my intake, and so is riding transit to work. I’ve had a bit of both in 2006, and so far I’ve made [...]
20.Apr.2006 Paris 1919
I just finished Margaret McMillan’s book this week. It discusses the drafting of the Treaty of Versailles (and others) following World War I, led by Britain, France and the USA. The Austro-Hungarian empire and the Ottaman empire had both collapsed as the war ended, leaving many new ill-defined nation-states in their wake. The treaty was [...]
16.Feb.2006 The joys of tsuji-giri
There’s nothing like the strange details of a foreign language, as I discovered when I found a review of an intriguing book of world vocabulary. Who knew that tsuji-giri is a samurai-era term for “to try out a new sword on a passer-by?” And why do I wish we had a word like qiang jingtou [...]
