Too hot to read and blog - and the dentist doesnt help

Yes I know - another whole month and I haven't posted anything new.

Sorry but the high humidity and high temperatures we are getting this summer are just so draining. I am too drained to read and too tired to concentrate on what I am reading. I am still reading books, but I am reading in small bursts, and not spending 6 hours reading all the way through one entire book like I usually do.

Temperatures have been constantly around 30 degrees celcius for most of this month. This last week they have dropped and temps have been around 27 & 28 degrees, definitely cooler.

I took my son to the dentist yesterday to get a couple of baby teeth removed. They were causing problems for the adult teeth trying to come up underneath. This meant he had to have a needle to numb his gums so the baby teeth could be pulled out. The dentist tried twice, but both times my son screamed and fought and wriggled and kept his mouth firmly shut and refused to allow the needle anywhere near his mouth.

The dentist had to give up because he couldnt do anything safely. So now my son and I will have to go to another dental office for him to have a general anasthetic so that all the work that needs to be done on his mouth can be done - thats 2 baby teeth pulled and a few fillings done as well.

My son has sensory issues and a very sensitive mouth. He even hates brushing his teeth. The dentist has previously mentioned that my son will need orthodontist work done on his teeth eventually. I have no idea how my son is going to cope with braces.

I hope that my reading and blogging will go back to normal when the weather turns cooler and my son goes back to school. Having him around 24/7 uses up a lot of energy as well.

It's been very quiet - I know....

And yes I know I havent posted for an entire month. I am reading but most of my reading is from fan fictions online - specifically from some of my favourite TV shows.

I am reading books as well. Have started several (I have at least 10 books in the TBR pile all with book marks in them) but so far havent finished any.

It's summer and my son is now home all day for the next 8 weeks. It's already very hot and humid. Temperatures inside the apartment reached a high of 31 degrees celcius today. Outside the temps are holding steady at 30 degrees. It is way too hot really, to do anything.

There are wading pools for the kids to swim in, but my son does not want to go swimming.

I will try and finish some of my books and get some reviews up by the end of July and hopefully more in August. I should also be looking for a job - but it's just too hot to do that.

Canada sure does have its extremes. Minus 30 degrees celcius in the winter and plus 30 degrees in the summer.

Stones into Schools Book Review

Stones into Schools
by Greg Mortenson
Viking Books November 2009
Three Cups of Tea Review

Stones into Schools picks up where Three Cups of Tea left off in 2003. This is the continuing story of the Central Asian Institute as they build schools for children in the remote mountainous areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. This book concentrates more on northern and eastern Afghanistan including the Wakhan Corridor.

Afghanistan as a country has fascinated me ever since I first read James Micheners novel CARAVANS way back in the early 1980s. It was first published in 1963. From there I studied maps and read up about Alexander the Great and how he was prevented from reaching India because of the people of Afghanistan. I read about the Nuristan people in eastern Afghanistan, who are descendents of the Greek soldiers who settled down in that area rather than travel all the way back to Europe.

As I studied and read more about Afghanistan I also learned about the Great Game and read about Francis Younghusband who was involved in the Great Game and who travelled all over Central Asia in the 1800s.

I read about how the Afghani royal family were forced to flee Afghanistan in 1974 leaving Afghanistan open for invasion. That void was filled when Russia invaded Afghanistan in late 1979.

During all this reading, I was fascinated by the Wakhan Corridor but could never find enough information on the culture and geography of that area, to satisfy my curiosity. Now I have and most of it is to be found in this book - Stones into Schools.

The Wakhan Corridor was created as a buffer between British India and the Russian Empire as the two expanded towards each other in the nineteenth century. To the south is modern Pakistan over the Hindu Kush mountains, and on the east and north the Great Pamir and the Small Pamir mountains lead up to the borders of China (east) and Tajikistan (north - formerly of the USSR).

In the mountains the people are assumed by the government to be illiterate and dumb, and not capable of doing anything more than herding sheep, goats and cattle and being nomads, just as their ancestors had been doing for thousands of years. Also under muslim tradition, girls and women are not expected to be educated to read and write. They were taught just enough to be able to cook, sew and run a household.

In the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Greg Mortenson has discovered that there is a huge hunger for literacy and education - especially for girls education. The CAI has vowed to build secular schools for all children in the remote areas where government help usually does not go. In all of the schools, it is a requirement that at least half of all students are girls. More often than not, girls make up well over half the student body.

The school at the top of the world was built by the CAI in the village of Baza Gonbad in the far east of the Wakhan Corridor. Greg has tried to visit the village several times but has been prevented from doing so for various reasons. One reason was a major earthquake in northern Pakistan in 2005 which caused hundreds of landslides and roadblocks. Other reasons included urgent summons to Kabul to speak with various government departments. At the time of publication of this book, Greg still had not been able to visit that school, although he has seen pictures and videos of its construction and use. This photo of Mortenson was taken with students from the Sitara School in Sarhad Village in the Western Corridor.


A trek to the Wakhan Corridor is one of the most adventurous treks one can still do in this world. It takes four days to drive to the Wakhan from Kabul, and then a 10 to 12 day trek is required to reach the famed Small Pamirs where the nomadic Kyrgyz have their camping grounds.

The Wakhan is one of the last remaining locations where Siberian Ibex, Marco Polo Sheep and Snow Leopards can be found. One might also come across Brown bears, eagles, and many other forms of wildlife.

The Wakhan is surrounded by the Hindu Kush mountains in the south and the Pamir mountains in the north, and is known as the "roof of the world." At the neck of the Wakhan is Afghanistan's highest peak, Noshaq (7492 meters).

This was an excellent book. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I learnt so much about the culture, the geography and the society of Afganistan. This book shows how girls the world over (including me) have a right to an education. It also shows that there is a great hunger of education worldwide.

City College employees promote peace ‘one school at a time’
City College - San Francisco - 2009 - Three Cups of Tea

Possession at 20

Interview by Nicolas Basbanes of A.S. Byatt about her novel Possession
Possession originally published 1990
Possession reviewed on this Blog 2007

Twenty years ago, A. S. Byatt published Possession, a novel that appealed to bibliophiles as much or more than Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose had ten years earlier. Possession follows two young academics as they uncover a secret affair between two nineteenth-century poets. The novel’s main subject heading in the Library of Congress catalogue is Manuscripts—Collectors and collecting—England—Fiction, which is telling. Old letters and manuscripts are found stuck in dusty old books and mysterious old houses, as the two scholars attempt to safeguard literary history from an unscrupulous American collector.

Possession won Britain’s Booker Prize in 1990 and was wildly acclaimed as the author’s breakthrough book. It also became a New York Times bestseller. Since then, Byatt has earned an international reputation for her erudite novels, including The Biographer’s Tale, Babel Tower, and, most recently, The Children’s Book. She was appointed a DBE (dame commander of the order of the British Empire) in 1999.

Nicholas Basbanes conducted the following interview with Byatt in Boston on May 31, 1996. A full transcript is included in Basbanes’ new book, About the Author: Inside the Creative Process.

Interview Source - Fine Books and Collections June 2010
Click here for Interview

Off topic but family related

This post has nothing to do with books, although a book will be published later this year. Rather it is a very proud family related moment so I am going to mention it. Besides it's not every day that I have a family member who walks (or in this case sails) into the world record books.



For those of my readers from Australia and New Zealand, you will of course know who Jessica Watson is (see photo above). Just 2 days ago Jessica sailed into the record & history books by being the YOUNGEST person ever to sail (circumnavigate) the world (yes this entire planet) in a sail boat on her own and UNASSISTED. She is just 16 years old. Tomorrow (Australia time - May 18th) she turns 17.

BUT what none of you outside of my own family, will know, is that Jessica Watson is a distant cousin of mine. She is my second cousin once removed. Jessica's mother Julie is my second cousin. Julie's mother and my father are first cousins. And yes this is all true. This proud moment naturally fits my profile as a genealogy enthusiast (I am nuts about genealogy if you don't already know). Finally I can say that I have a famous relative!!!!

I grew up spending my summers visiting with and playing with Julie and her siblings in the 1960's and 1970's. We lost touch after 1976 when my family moved overseas. I dont recall that I personally have seen anyone from Julie's family since then. I know that my parents have seen Julie's parents regularly, and as recently as just last week right before they flew to Sydney to welcome Jessica home.

Anyway after I left home and moved to Auckland New Zealand and then later to Toronto, Canada, Julie and Roger were living in Queensland and had access to sailboats. Their 4 children grew up going out on the water on a regular basis. While I am somewhat comfortable on the water, I had very few opportunities to sail in any small sail boats as a child.

In October 2009 Jessica Watson left Sydney harbour (on her second attempt) to sail around the world with the intention of being the youngest person (as of 2010) to ever sail around the world unassisted.

UNASSISTED means a vessel may not receive any kind of outside help or take on board any supplies, materials or equipment during the attempt. Jessica can still be in radio contact with her support team every day, but she cannot stop anywhere along the way, no food is dropped to her and she has no company whatsoever. If anything breaks down, she has to fix it on her own and she carries all her food and water with her - 7 months worth of food and water.

Two days ago Jessica sailed back into Sydney harbour and was greeted by hundreds of thousands of proud Aussies as a hero. Jessica herself says she is no hero - she is just a girl who had a dream and did something about it.

Aussie's Youtube Channel

This Youtube channel has all 10 parts of the official TV program to welcome Jessica home. It was broadcast live on TV, May 15th, 2010. While the parts are not in any numerical order, they are all there.

Jessica has a book deal already in the works and the book is expected to be published before the end of 2010.

This is Jessica's Website & Blog


These are Roger and Julie Watson, Jessica's parents. (photo taken January 2010). They have 4 children - Emily, Jessica, Thomas and Hannah. Julie's maiden name was Chisholm. She is my second cousin.






Taken last year in Cromwell, New Zealand, this is Jessica Watson with her grandparents. From left to right are grandmother Margaret Chisholm, Jessica Watson, Jessica's aunt Wendy Taylor, and grandfather Gordon Chisholm. Wendy is my second cousin (as is her sister Julie). Margaret is my dad's first cousin. Margaret's dad and my grandfather were brothers. (photo source - ODT)

Daemon - Book Review

Daemon
by Daniel Suarez
Signet Books 2010
Authors website

In this modern 21st century, we frequently forget how much of our lives are tied up in computers and how much of our lives are not really as private as we like to think. Since the internet explosion in the 1990s, our individual privacy has been eroded down to almost nothing.



Thats why there is a few areas in which I choose to keep my privacy and my family's privacy. I like to keep my privacy in my movements around town, my location, in my communications and with my fake names. I value my privacy a lot.

That's why in this blog my son's name has not once been mentioned. I have to keep his privacy too. This is also why I use false names online in my blogs and on Facebook. I choose not to own a cell phone with GPS. If anyone wishes to contact us, they can leave a message on the (landline phone) answerering machine - we will get the message - eventually.

My spouse and I dont have a modern car with any GPS tracking system in it. In fact our car is older than the internet. I dont drive in Canada. I can drive - I just havent gotten around to getting a Canadian drivers license yet. Besides, whats the point of driving in heavy traffic and having to pay huge parking fees, when there is perfectly good and cheap public transit available. I use the public transit to go anywhere and everywhere - when I am not walking, that is.

As you can tell, I really do value my privacy. Anyway, back to the book.

Technology controls almost everything in our modern-day world, from remote entry on our cars to access to our homes, from the flight controls of our airplanes to the movements of the entire world economy. Thousands of autonomous computer programs, or daemons, make our networked world possible, running constantly in the background of our lives, trafficking e-mail, transferring money, and monitoring power grids. For the most part, daemons are benign, but the same can't always be said for the people who design them.

Matthew Sobol was a legendary computer game designer - the architect behind half-a-dozen popular online games. His premature death depressed both gamers and his company's stock price. But Sobol's fans aren't the only ones to note his passing. When his obituary is posted online, a previously dormant daemon activates, initiating a chain of events intended to unravel the fabric of our hyper-efficient, interconnected world. With Sobol's secrets buried along with him, and as new layers of his daemon are unleashed at every turn, it's up to an unlikely alliance to decipher his intricate plans and wrest the world from the grasp of a nameless, faceless enemy - or learn to live in a society in which we are no longer in control....

There is a sequel to this book - called Freedom - out now.

Happy Mothers Day

Happy Mothers day for those of you who are mothers.