American Gods

American Gods by Neil Gaiman


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
It's all a metaphor, from the beginning to the end.

The old gods are the ones brought to the North American continent by travellers, migrants and immigrants, long before the continent was even called America. They feed on worship and thrive on sacrifices of their followers, but they don't do well in America, because people don't worship them, are forgetting them, and the old gods grow older and die forgotten. The main character, Shadow, is actually human, hired by one of the old gods, who calls himself Wednesday, to help recruit the old gods against the "modern gods" that people worship nowadays: Internet, cars, credit cards, computers, TV, phones and everything symbolizing modern times. The conflict seems inevitable...With all the gods marching through the pages of the book, it's natural to think that it's all about religion. It isn't. And you don't need to be an immigrant to grasp the ever-present conflict between old and new, past and future. I just never came across such a neatly woven allegory.There is a huge amount of mythology, legends, fairy tales and bonfire stories told masterfully through a cast of unlikely heroes. If the idea of aging gods scheming and scamming through life to scrape for a meager existence isn't attractive by itself to make you read it, there is fantastic dialogue to amuse the reader as well as many clever and funny twists. For someone who likes long tales like myself, this book is a gold mine. At the end, all the stories seemingly not connected throughout the novel, finally come together.There could have been a touch more romance, earthly or divine, I don't really care, but even without it, I thoroughly enjoyed the American Gods.Subnote: I read this book as a part of "1 Book 1 Twitter" book club (though I'm not certain if it can be called a book club, but it made me and about 50,000 others read it at the same time). Looking forward to the next one. You can join it on twitter by following @1b1t

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Old City Hall: A Novel

Old City Hall: A Novel by Robert Rotenberg


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Rotenberg is a lawyer first, novelist second, and unfortunately it shows in the novel. It's a story about a fictional Canadian radio morning-show host, whose wife is found dead in the bathtub. He confesses to his newspaper delivery man that he killed her, and surrenders to the police. But, despite his confession, the things are not as straight forward as they seem.Oh, don't worry, I'm not throwing spoilers, this all happens in the first 20 pages of the book. After that, we are introduced to a long list of characters, mostly well developed, but by following so many threads at once, the story doesn't move anywhere for the next 200 pages. Then, as if the author realized the he should move the plot toward conclusion, things start happening all at once, without a hint beforehand. And, as a result, there is no real conclusion.What I like about the story is location - it's happening in Toronto, where I live. It gives the book an intimate feel. I am not quite sure how would a non-Torontonian like it. The legal process is described well, but the police investigation is a bit shallow and less believable. Oh, and Toronto Maple Leafs winning the Stanley cup is a pure fantasy, cute, but utterly impossible.What I don't like is too many characters, and at the same time lack of the main character. Too much legal and law stuff and too little investigation, clues, mystery and problem solving. The pace is way too slow. Finally, the thing I really hate is when the ending doesn't offer closure.

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I Ran Boston Marathon (part 1)

April 17-18, 2010

I tried to write the whole account of my Boston experience in one go, but I couldn't. Let's just say there never was enough time. Finally, I'm getting worried that the memories and impressions are slowly fading, and decided to write this entry in installments. Please, check back for the updates--I will be adding them into this entry.


Why is Boston marathon so important?

The answer to that question lays in the two and a half years that led me to Boston. From the moment when I set the goal to try to qualify for Boston, through the training for the Mississauga marathon where I qualified, finally to registering and training for the world oldest and most prestigious marathon. It's a long commitment which requires a lot of running.

I was fairly excited preparing for the trip, this also being my first marathon outside Canada, but the immensity of it didn't register until I took the subway to downtown Boston with my entourage of Meg and my mom in tow. On Sunday, the day before the race, we were going to the runners expo, which precedes every marathon. That's where the runners pick the official race kits with their numbers and spend hundreds of $$$ on things related to running. As the train approached the downtown, on each station more and more people came in, wearing Boston marathon official jackets, all models from two decades ago until this year's. It was as if, for the weekend, there were no one else in Boston but runners.

The crowds of runners were converging on the Hynes Convention Center, where the expo was held, from all sides, like ants. Though I usually can't stand overcrowded places, now I couldn't stop smiling. I am not sure how to describe the feeling: I felt at the same time small and insignificant as an individual, and extremely powerful and proud to be a part of that mass of runners which took over the town.

The expo was huge and you could find there anything your runner's mind ever imagined, and more. First, of course, I picked up my race bib number and the kit containing the timing chip, which this year we can keep as a souvenir. In the kit was also a blue-and-yellow Adidas technical shirt with long sleeves. Naturally, I had to buy the official jacket -- also Adidas -- for which I had to spring $90. No regrets, the jacket is nice and the Boston 2010 logo on the back is priceless.

Now we could start browsing, though the longer we stayed, the more crowded the Center got. I managed to see the second half of the video showing the course, and we shopped mostly for the souvenirs. Mom was fairly impressed with the whole atmosphere, but thought everything too expensive. It was her first close look at the running world, and the first time in the States, so she was as excited as me, though for different reasons.

Finally, some time after 3 PM, it became almost impossible to move around without locking shoulders with people. Our legs were heavy and I suddenly remembered that I should rest for
the big race the next day. We squeezed out and walked toward the subway in a current of people all carrying yellow Adidas bags with the race kits. The air was filled with nervous but positive energy. Walking in that mass of people who were all here for the same reason, I felt the excitement rising and knotting in the pit of my stomach.

The traditional pasta dinner was provided in the downtown for participants, but our hotel was away, near the airport, so we opted for the pasta dinner near the hotel. Loaded with carbs, I went to bed, expecting that I won't be able to sleep from excitement. Before every marathon, I usually spend a fitful night tossing, turning and waking up constantly. Not this time -- I slept like a baby and woke up at the sound of the alarm clock.

Continues at Part Two

Driving is making me sick

It's not a joke! I notice that the longer my commute is to work (or anywhere else in and around Toronto), the more nervous I get behind the wheel. In the morning I'm a pussycat, usually in a good mood, after a few sips of morning coffee. Then Meg and I sit in the car and head to work. A block from home we merge onto a main(ish) street, which means encountering the traffic. It's still early (around 7 AM), the speed limit is 60 km, and there aren't many cars on the roads. Still, like on cue, I'll see the head-lights from behind fast approaching, and soon I can count the facial acne of the driver behind me in the rear-view mirror. As soon as he swings into the next lane, revving the engine to overtake us, another one takes his place.

That's when my foot grows heavier on the accelerator, driving almost to the bumper of the car in front, so the jerk from behind, who is now beside, has no room to squeeze between. And so we race, without noticing when the race have started, and if the traffic in front of me stops, I have to brake hard and endure Meg's reproaching gaze. But, when we move again, the tide of nervous, speeding, jerky drivers takes me in and carries me along. In our little car, we are like a tiny blue blood-cell injected into the bloodstream of extremely high blood-pressure environment. The other metal cells run unruly around us, until the force of the current takes us in this mad whirlpool of twisting, turning, spinning, squeezing, passing, and jamming.

When I finally leave the car at the parking lot behind my workplace, my legs shake on the walk to my office. My thumping heart slows down to normal rate only half an hour later. I wish I could turn the streets into rivers and cars into rubber dinghies. Then, if someone bumps into us, I could simply cool his overheated head with a spray of water...

5 days to Boston Marathon

I don't know how the parents do it. It seems that all my free time vanished, used up by running and tending to my mother. I can't even imagine what it would be like if we had a kid, or two. I can't even find enough peace and quiet to blog a few lines, let alone do something useful.

Boston marathon organizers help with the excitement by sending email updates with useful and useless tips for the marathon. At first it was one email a month, then one a week, and for the last week or so I'm receiving one every day. And each time I see the sender's name "BAA" in the inbox, I feel the pang of anxiety in the pit of my stomach. But, all the preparations are done, the training is over to the best of my very limited ability this time, the leg is recovering, so in a way, I can say I'm ready. Packing it up for Saturday's drive to Boston.

US military murders two war photographers and bystanders in cold blood!

US military helicopters kill a bunch of civilians and reporters in Iraq, then laugh about it. Later, the military machine tried to cover up this cold-blooded murder.

This video is so shocking that no comment on my side can convey the outrage I feel. Please, take time and watch it till the end.

Update Apr 7:
BBC: US military 'trying to retrieve' Iraq killings video

The nest

Two small birds--I can't tell what kind, I'm bad with birds' names--built a nest in the rain duct on our porch. We saw them flying around and chirping loudly, before we realized they made our home their home too. At first I was going to take the nest down, then one of the birds landed on the roof near it, with a straw in it's little beak, and looked at us nervously. All it would take is for me to get a stick, and all their effort in homemaking would be destroyed. I thought how excited we were when we moved into the house and thought that, maybe, they feel the bird's equivalent of that excitement. So, we decided to let them be. But, only until Fall.

Mom

I left mom's home over 20 years ago. I left her town—and her continent—13 years ago. We don't see each other often. True, we talk on the phone and we exchange emails. Sometimes we send photographs, but we age separately, each bent at the altar of time in our separate corners of the world.

Each time we meet, there's another part of her melted away. Each time she is smaller, gnarlier, wrinklier, slower. Almost as if life hurries to leave its many marks on her, cutting and carving her viciously.

It took me a long time to realize that she's not going to be around forever. Though we all know the ways of Mother Nature, we somehow perceive our mothers as immortals. And we are shocked when, one day, a veil falls from our eyes, and we see the diminished, bent and wrinkled creature which towered over our childhoods so mighty and strong.

Mom's set in her sometimes annoying ways: she snores, she smacks while eating (bad dentures), she talks a mile and never stops, she knows everything best and she's never wrong. But, if I look carefully, I can see a fear in her eyes—a fear of time slipping away, of missing the last few life's gifts, of what's to come and of facing it alone. There's such tremendous fragility in her, that I want to scoop her like an old and peckish little bird exhausted with a long flight, and give her comfort, like she used to give me when I was a boy. I want to tell her that everything will be fine, even when we both know it won't. I'd like to reassure her, but I don't know how. The time had bent us the opposite ways.

Blue Heron Casino

Mother arrived on Thursday--April Fool's Day--and it seems like she hasn't stopped talking since. Maybe she's only making up for all the time we haven't seen each other, but it is a bit tiring constantly trying to focus on what she's saying. Sometimes I let my mind wander and I miss a question she asks, other times she wants me to translate what she's saying to Meg, or she wants me to translate something from English. I expected this, it has always been that way with her--although she's almost 72, my mom is a dynamo, always moving and always asking questions--but I am really exhausted by the nightfall.

We went for a short trip to Port Perry today, the weather was warm and mostly sunny and we enjoyed the short drive through the farmland and browsing the souvenirs shops of Port Perry. Before heading back, we stopped at the Blue Heron casino to take a peek inside and wet our mouth with a pint of beer. The casino is on the Indian reserve land (talking about the "feather" Indians, not the "dot" ones) and all the profit goes to the band which owns the land. Surprisingly, there were very few Indians working inside. The casino doesn't have any of the glamour of the bigger casinos, the atmosphere inside was almost solemn. There was an extremely obese young woman on a slot machine, playing without displaying any emotion. She moved like a robot, almost like she was there against her own will. I also noticed a woman hooked to the oxygen tank, who was pulling a little cart with her o2 bottle from one slot machine to another. There were quite a few very old people, some of them had their walkers parked next to the chairs, pressing the buttons with their gnarled fingers deformed by arthritis. It was a sad display of desperate characters who believed they could turn their lives around, or add a few years at the end of the road, with a big win. The thought of it soured my beer. By the time we left the casino, none of them had his fortune (nor life) turned around.

Meg sniffed loudly on the way back, but not from emotions--her allergies are back. She drugged herself with some anti-allergy pills and was knocked out on a sofa for most of the evening, leaving me to handle endless stream of questions from my mom.

"Under the Dome," a novel

by Stephen King

What an interesting concept: what would happen if a small town gets completely isolated from the outside world with a sort of dome-like cover? Speaking about living in a glass cage... I guess it's only natural for Stephen King to bring out the worst in people in such circumstances. Although it's very believable and superbly written, my own experience of the areas under the siege in the war circumstances taught me that people mostly don't react the way King made them behave in the book. Usually, living under the siege brings out the camaraderie and charitable nature of people—they help each other and cope together. Even the bad guys, while trying to take advantage of the situation to advance their self-interests, will still work with the others.

Still, King's cast of characters works well for the plot, and the power struggle in the little town under the dome is both conceivable and entertaining. The long list of characters is given thoroughly, with their virtues and flaws, and are either really likable or dislikable in a very real way. To really get us to know them all, King spun his tale over a thousand pages. The only thing I have problem digesting is the nature of the dome itself. I was so inclined to accept any wild scientific explanation rather than the extra-terrestrial one! All in all, an entertaining read. Slow at the beginning, but ending with a bang, fire and smoke! Literally!