We’re finally home!  I  have to say, I’m so happy to be back.  I know I raved about how excited I was to be going, but I was homesick by the time we arrived and am now thrilled to be here again.  We did the drive from Winnipeg in two days, with one stop in Calgary for sleep.  Husband did all the driving!  This means we got home a lot faster than if I were driving, but also that my sphincter is tight as a drum and I may never poop again.  Actually, I will - I’m eating cherries by the pound.  It’s only a matter of time.

So, I will give you all the gory tales of the holiday - most particularly my rationale for declaring Saskatchewan the new anus of Canada (displacing the former title holder, New Brunswick) - but for now, I’m too tired.  Also, I’m realizing how much time I waste online.  While on holiday, I read three and a half books, even though we were busy and out and about quite a lot.  (I left all school reading behind and only took fiction - science fiction, at that.)  How did I do it?  Easy.  I didn’t watch TV or go online.  Amazing - when you don’t waste all your time, you have lots of it to actually do things, like read.  I have decided to do more living and less wasting.   I’ll still blog but need to keep the other internet fiddling down to a dull roar.

I read two great books and one mediocre one.  The mediocre one was The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams.  It was okay.  I loved Watership Down and also others of his books, and this one just didn’t stand up.  I give it a “meh.”

One of the great books was A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter Miller.  It’s basically about proto-Catholics who emerge after a nuclear holocaust.  The story takes place in three different times, and tells a sort of morality tale about human nature.  It’s a classic of the post-apocalyptic genre, and could be considered horribly cliched unless you realize it was published in 1956, and therefore predates most other post-apocalyptic fiction.  I thought it was interesting and well written.  There’s a smattering of thought provoking philosophy, but it’s not preachy at all.  And it has nuclear mutants.  What more do you want?

I also read Riddley Walker, by Russell Hoban.  What can I say about this book?  It’s one of the most engrossing, challenging, amazing books I’ve read in ages.  Maybe years.  It blew me away.  Here’s what the New York Times had to say about it, and I totally agree: “Stunning, delicious designed to prevent the modern reader from becoming stupid.”

Riddley Walker is also a post-apocalyptic story, but very different.  It’s Riddley’s own story, covering his beginnings in an iron-age society, his change of position in that society, and the crazy shit that ensues.  I don’t even know how to describe the story - there is a surface story but it doesn’t really represent very fully what’s going on in the book.  It’s written in its own language - a sort of demotic English created by the author.  This sounds like a lame device (Trainspotting, anyone?), but it’s not.  The language is hard to get through, and this slows the reader down to Riddley’s pace of comprehension.  The words were also chosen, intentionally, to house as many meaning as possible.  This makes the text rich and deep and excellent for mulling over and pondering.  It keeps you thinking and on your toes.

It’s not an easy read.  The book is short, about 210 pages, and it took me probably ten hours or so to get through it.  I did a lot of flipping back and forth as I would suddenly figure out the meaning of a word or phrase that had previously eluded me, and had to go back to see its original context.  I had to read parts aloud to get the meanings, because phonetically spelled English can be hard to decipher.  There are multiple layers of meaning, and several themes at play to think about.  But it’s a rewarding read.  I know I’ll read this one again, probably soon, before I forget the words I’ve learned.  There’s just so much packed into this book.  Love it!

Now I’m reading Evolution for Everyone by David Sloan Wilson, and have I Am A Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstaedter next in line.  No more time for the internet, have to go read now.