The Captive Reader

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Heading off on my normal long-weekend commute today: straight from work to the airport and then just a quick jump over the Rockies and I’ll be in Vancouver for dinner!  When I used to do the Vancouver to Ottawa flight all the time it was such an ordeal (never mind having to bring at least two books to see me through a five hour flight) but this flight is just over an hour – magazine rather than book length.  I’m really looking forward to this weekend and will hopefully have a chance to relax a little and finally write up all the books I’ve been reading the last few weeks!  I feel I’ve been neglecting you all by not doing so and will feel much better once I’m all caught up.

Only happy stories this week!  I had some truly depressing articles saved up but I’ll hold onto them for a few more weeks.  I want to start my long weekend off on a positive note.

Not-So-Little Lamb: My favourite link this week has nothing to do with books, though it does come from the author of one of my favourite reads of 2010.  Elizabeth Bard, author of Lunch in Paris, has some amazing photos on her blog of a lamb roast in Brittany earlier this summer.  There is something about a whole animal being roasted on a spit that is just so appealing to my gastronomic soul.  A thing of beauty.

The Importance of Being Ernest:  I find I can not improve on what Alison Flood had to say about a very strange but very endearing competition:

After 11 years of toil, Charles Bicht has finally had his day. Dressed in a safari suit, the white-bearded Floridian this Saturday beat 123 other hopefuls to triumph in the annual Hemingway lookalike contest. I think this news has made me happier than almost anything else this week. I didn’t even know there was a Hemingway contest, and browsing a series of pictures of beaming bearded Papas is really the way I wish I could spend all my days.

A Boon for Book Voyeurs:  Apparently I am not the only person mesmerized by the Book Depository map.  It’s hypnotic, truly.  Haven’t you always wanted to see people in Norway buy Science Matters in real time? 

Gilded Romances of Dashing Dandies, Brooding Beaus:  Helen Simonson talks (again) about her love for Georgette Heyer’s Regency novels.  Speaking of Heyer, have you all heard about Austenprose’s month-long event “Celebrating Georgette Heyer”, beginning this Sunday and running all August?  I’ll be reviewing The Foundling as part of the festivities on August 13.