Tuesday, March 13
5:30 am
It is +5 °C, with a high forecast of +14 °C.
From the Environment Canada website:
Today A mix of sun and cloud. Wind south 30 km/h gusting to 50 becoming west 60 gusting to 80 near noon. High 14.
Tonight Partly cloudy. Becoming clear this evening. Wind west 60 km/h gusting to 80 becoming southwest 30 gusting to 50 this evening. Low minus 4.
8:00 am Musings
I am in a bit of a transitional phase with respect to technology. I am clearly moving toward the tablets rather than computers and toward apps rather than programs. It also looks like CDs and DVDs will soon disappear in favour of memory sticks, and hard drives in favour of clouds.
I am still leery of having all my personal data (e.g. photos) stored elsewhere (e.g. iCloud) and lean toward large terabyte peripheral hard drives that I possess. Books are another issue. I am in the middle (muddle?) here. I like both paper books and ebooks. But I am not sure what happens to ebooks that possess my own annotations.
I am going to shift my emphasis for awhile toward greater use of ebooks. I am delighted with the combination of two ebooks that provide both analysis and content of Shakespeare's plays. And I really like the portability of ebooks compared with real books (i.e. lack of weight and volume).
At the moment I have all of Sir Walter Scott's and Charles Dickens' books in electronic form. I also have a number of non-fiction books in ebook form. Now to set up a special reading list for these.
- Sir Walter Scott
- Ivanhoe (I remember the movie, now to read the novel)
- Rob Roy
- The Talisman (I remember this from when I was in high school)
- Charles Dickens
- Bleak House
- David Copperfield
- Great Expectations (I read this in English 210 in 1961)
- Nicholas Nickleby (I read this a few years ago, and loved it)
- Jane Austen
- Pride & Prejudice
- Robert Louis Stevenson
- Treasure Island
- Bhagavad Gita (I have begun this, but then keep forgetting it!)
And here are the non-fiction books I have on my iPad2:
- The Information (James Gleick)
- A New Culture of Learning (Douglas Thomas & John Seely Brown)
- Alone Together (Sherry Turkle)
- The Power of Pull (John Hagel III, John Seely Brown & Lang Davison)
8:10 am Literature
I am taking a break from "The Quincunx" and moving to some lighter fare that does not require detailed notes. But I will return.
I have begun reading The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott. I have a clear image of the book that I read while at my grandparent's house in Edmonton. It was a small hardcover book in dark green and was part of the Modern Library series. While I have this image, and the overall sense of having thoroughly enjoyed it, I have no memory of the detail of the story. It is time to rectify this.
The version I have is an ebook on my iPad2.
I have now read the first 4 chapters and am enjoying it. These chapters provide a delightful comparison of the views of two warriors, a Crusader and a Saracen, who begin the novel by having a fight to the death in the desert and end up having a truce and enjoying one another's company. Delightful. Quite a contrast with today's dogmatic and intransigent views.
I recall seeing a notice from amazon.com about a new collection of short stories by Guy de Maupassant being published. Many literary critics consider de Maupassant as the father of the short story. I have read a number of his stories over the years and consider them true masterpieces. Instead of buying the new collection I decided to check gutenberg.com and soon had the complete collection of short stories (13 volumes) in an ebook format.
The first story is called "Boule de Suif" and is a true classic - probably one of the best short stories ever written. I reread it tonight and it is just as good as the last time I read it. I also read the next story, "Two Friends", and marvelled at it as well. Beautiful!