WELL, OKAY

(This post probably won't make much sense to people who aren't from Canada. Sorry!)

My brother arrived back in town today. He's been in Newfoundland for a week or so, visiting his girlfriend's family.

Apparently the following conversation took place more than once:

"So, where're you from?"
"Fort McMurray."
"No, I mean, where are you from?"
"...Fort McMurray?"
"Yeah, but where do you live?"
"Fort McMurray."
"But where were you born?!"
"Fort. Mc. Murray. :|"

[/facepalm] Oh boy.

Yes, believe it or not, people are from here! It's not just a place that people move to in order to live in a camp at site and go to work! Imagine that.

Reading Wednesday

Finished reading: The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan. Historical fiction set in Niagara Falls during and shortly after WWI. Contains some themes of industrialization and water conservation, which I didn't expect and found rather interesting. A love story, but doesn't strictly fall into Romance Genre. Not amazing, but not bad either; worth a look if you're interested in the setting/period and don't mind romance without HEA. I will say, though, I wouldn't recommend the audiobook - the one I listened to had a reader with a painfully American accent, pronouncing things in ways that no English-speaking Canadian would. I found it very distracting!

Currently reading: Still making my way through The Supernaturals by David L Coleman. Nearly finished with it. Can't really recommend it. The plot itself has the makings of a good ghost story, and it has some other things that I love (people with paranormal abilities! Clairvoyance and so on). But the writing's a little bland. I actually wonder what it would be like as a film, or maybe a TV series. Still, this is pretty much what I expected going in, so I'm not overly disappointed. The ending hinges on a "the villain/monster is trans, how shocking!" reveal. It's been a while since I've run into something like this, and I was really unhappy to stumble across it in a book written so recently. Consider this a solid anti-rec. :|

Reading next: I have no idea! Still haven't managed to get through all of the books I took out of the library last week. ;) But maybe some poetry... I still haven't cracked open that volume of Tomas Tranströmer's work that I picked up in Victoria.

As of a couple days ago, I've read 80 books this year. :) That's more than my goal was for, and more than I was expecting. Yay!