Work and play

Strange as it might seem, September is closing in on its halfway mark. Could the time go any faster? Meanwhile, I've done a lot of reading over the last few days. I started reading Dave Duncan's 'Great Game' series, I finished reading 'Jude the Obscure' (heart-rendingly sad at the end) and I'm reading more Atwood. Her book 'Survival', which is an eye-opener. Is Canada truly a nation of victims? That's what Atwood seems to suggest. Victims of nature, of each other, and of the world beyond our victimized borders. She found a quote that really impressed me, however. "It is meaningless to call anyone a foreigner in this country. We are all foreigners here." (J. Marlyn). R.E.M. paraphrased this quote rather nicely with their line "Everybody here comes from somewhere." Yeah, this probably wasn't what they were talking about at all, but it makes for a good connection. Canada, from its earliest Aborigninal peoples to the newest refugee seeking a safer life, is a nation of immigrants and foreigners. That is a fact. It would be better not to point fingers at each other and say 'Go back to where you came from!' If we all did that, Canada would be empty before long.
On the work front, I visited a really awesome French bookstore in St. Boniface on Saturday. Came back with half a dozen catalogues full of books from Quebec and France. A nice haul. I've already started work on a spreadsheet of books I want to buy from these catalogues. One drawback about getting books from France is that the prices are in euros. The guy suggested that the euro is like the pound (twice the amount in dollars). I just have to send him the list and the prices in euros and he'll tell me what the price is in dollars. All part of a rather busy weekend. Now I'm back to work and the classes are starting to come for library. I'm excited and hoping the books I ordered in June come in soon so I can get them on the shelves. I'm going to order as many French books as possible so I can get weeding and knocking that collection into order. And that's the plan on the work front.
Time I got back to 'Survival'. BYE.