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Location: Montreal -> CT -> MA -> Montreal -> Ottawa
17,330 posts, read 33,025,722 times
Reputation: 28903
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Marlow
I'm enjoying Come, Thou Tortoise both for the writing and because I can't wait to see where it's going. Absolutely love the 7-year-old Audrey.
YAY!!! Oh, you'll get to a place where some "Canadianisms" are used. I'll clarify:
Loonie: A one-dollar coin that's used in Canada, when the paper version went out of production in 1987.
Toonie: A two-dollar coin that's used in Canada. This was introduced in 1996, but the paper two-dollar bill went out of production long before that (maybe the 70s?).
Orange party: Canadian Democratic party
Blue party: Canadian Conservative party
Thanks for those translations! I had them marked for look-up later. Not only am I enjoying the book, I'm now thinking of adopting a tortoise! I'd have to keep the jealous dogs away from it though.
I can relate a lot to Audrey-how she got caught up on the use of the word "disappear" as a transitive verb, the sudden annoying appearance of knitting everywhere, and how she'd make these little jokes for her own benefit, that no one around her will get. I also play with words in a "punny" way and make such little jokes to myself. She also seems much more intelligent than her IQ score showed.
I still haven't found the book it reminds me of...but it does sort of remind me of my own journals!
Location: Montreal -> CT -> MA -> Montreal -> Ottawa
17,330 posts, read 33,025,722 times
Reputation: 28903
Quote:
Originally Posted by TracySam
Thanks for those translations! I had them marked for look-up later. Not only am I enjoying the book, I'm now thinking of adopting a tortoise! I'd have to keep the jealous dogs away from it though.
I can relate a lot to Audrey-how she got caught up on the use of the word "disappear" as a transitive verb, the sudden annoying appearance of knitting everywhere, and how she'd make these little jokes for her own benefit, that no one around her will get. I also play with words in a "punny" way and make such little jokes to myself. She also seems much more intelligent than her IQ score showed.
I still haven't found the book it reminds me of...but it does sort of remind me of my own journals!
HA! But I can't buy your journals on Amazon!
Oh, I bet Shermie would like having a tortoise in the house. And I'd bet money that Winnie would LOVE it. HAHAHAHA!!! God, no.
YAY!!! Oh, you'll get to a place where some "Canadianisms" are used. I'll clarify:
Loonie: A one-dollar coin that's used in Canada, when the paper version went out of production in 1987.
Toonie: A two-dollar coin that's used in Canada. This was introduced in 1996, but the paper two-dollar bill went out of production long before that (maybe the 70s?).
Orange party: Canadian Democratic party
Blue party: Canadian Conservative party
Thanks for that. I'd figured out they were coins and political parties, but not the details.
YAY!!! Oh, you'll get to a place where some "Canadianisms" are used. I'll clarify:
Loonie: A one-dollar coin that's used in Canada, when the paper version went out of production in 1987.
Toonie: A two-dollar coin that's used in Canada. This was introduced in 1996, but the paper two-dollar bill went out of production long before that (maybe the 70s?).
Orange party: Canadian Democratic party
Blue party: Canadian Conservative party
A few clarifications might be in order here.
The origin of the word "loonie" is the picture on the reverse of the Common Loon, which is the semi-official national bird of Canada. The "toonie" then was a natural monicker for the subsequent coin that was worth "two loonies".
There has never been a Democratic Party in Canada. The Orange party is the NDP, or New Democratic Party, organized in 1960 through the merger of two other pro-labor parties. The NDP is generally the third most popular party in English Canada, occasionally forming the government of western provinces, but has never seriously challenged the Progressive-Conservative and the Liberal parties for national leadership.
Location: Montreal -> CT -> MA -> Montreal -> Ottawa
17,330 posts, read 33,025,722 times
Reputation: 28903
Quote:
Originally Posted by CowanStern
A few clarifications might be in order here.
The origin of the word "loonie" is the picture on the reverse of the Common Loon, which is the semi-official national bird of Canada. The "toonie" then was a natural monicker for the subsequent coin that was worth "two loonies".
There has never been a Democratic Party in Canada. The Orange party is the NDP, or New Democratic Party, organized in 1960 through the merger of two other pro-labor parties. The NDP is generally the third most popular party in English Canada, occasionally forming the government of western provinces, but has never seriously challenged the Progressive-Conservative and the Liberal parties for national leadership.
I was born and raised in Montreal -- spent the first 40 years of my life there -- and didn't want to explain *too much* of how quirky Canada is, lest our American friends think that we're just plain nutty.
Although I read it two years ago, The Terror by Dan Simmons is still the best I've read recently. Simmons holds down a narrow niche in historical fiction; his books are all solidly grounded in historical stuff that has room for horror fiction to slip in within the narrow boundaries of the historical facts.
The Terror was an actual ship, originally a British warship that was designed as a mortar bombardment ship that bombarded Norfolk, Va. in the War of 1812. It was built so heavily and stoutly that 30 years later, it was one of the two vessels that were converted into primitive icebreakers that carried the Franklin Expedition, into the arctic in 1845, to seek the Northwest Passage. At the time, the Franklin Expedition was an enterprise of pride and great expectation for the British Empire, who used it to display the superiority of the British in all things.
Factually, the expedition was a total disaster. There were no living survivors, and the no one ever learned where, or how, many of them died. About 10 years ago, the National Geographic mounted an expedition sent into the arctic that disinterred two of the crewmen whose graves were known and mapped. Other accounts from the rescue attempt that followed, almost 5 years after the last communication from the expedition was received, mentioned other skeletal remnants and the artifacts the remains were found with. It was the first exploratory expedition to take photographs, and the first that relied on canned food stores. In it's time, it was as advanced and expensive as the moon landings were a century later.
Simmons uses all these facts to interweave a supernatural horror story within them. It's equally strong in both ways.
The novel uses actual people who were in the expedition, which were partly noblemen, military men, common seamen, some scientists, and some pilots who knew the arctic waters. His characters not only battle the elements- the ships were trapped in ice so thick it lifted them far above the surface of the water- they fight each other, and all are fighting a monster that is as elusive as a ghost, but very real in it's destruction.
It's simply amazing. I started reading it in February, and the descriptions of the cold were so vivid I had to put it up until it was warm outside before I could finish it. It literally chilled me to the bone!
I could barely wait to finish it once the weather warmed up. Even it's supernatural element was plausible in the world Simmons created. It is thrilling from first to last.
Ironically, his next book, Droog, was published later the same year, and I really looked forward to reading it. Once I got it, I simply didn't get into it at all, and finally gave up on it halfway through. As history, it was certainly as good as The Terror, but I found too much of it implausible, and never connected to it's characters as I did those in The Terror.
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