Robin Butterell. Miniature Railways

     Robin Butterell. Miniature Railways (n.d., between 1964 and 1967) Butterell has compiled as complete a listing as he could of all miniature railways open to the public at the time of writing. Many of the lines were privately owned and no doubt disappeared when their owners moved or died. The pictures are well done. He includes a map locating the lines in relation to major cities, but more detailed maps would have helped. An interesting record of what was. I wonder how many copies still exist, as such reference works are rarely kept once their information gets too much out of date. ** (2007)

John H Clarke on guitar

John H. Clarke plays guitar, acoustic and amped. Great stuff. Visit his website or his YouTube channel. His own compositions are strongly influenced by the Spanish music he plays. Recommended.

Centrifugal Brain Research

Ever wonder who comes up with those crazy amusement park rides? Well, wonder no more. They are of an experiment in neurology. Purpose: to explore the effects of gravity on the brain. The rides provide variable acceleration, and everybody knows that Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity proved that acceleration and gravity are the same. So the next time you ride one of those groovy monsters, you're not only scaring the hell out of yourself, you're also contributing to science. Be happy!

Death Star destruction was an inside job. Really!

The destruction of the Death Star was an inside job, part of a plot to reinstate the Skywalker family on the Imperial Throne. See this this video proof. Pretty convincing, eh?

Bill Watterson. The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book (1989)

     Bill Watterson. The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book (1989) A collection of full colour Sunday comics. Watterson uses colour as subtly and skilfully as he uses line. A wonderful commentary on childhood, adulthood, Life, the Universe, and Everything. 42! **** (2007)

Robertson Davies. The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949) & The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947)

     Robertson Davies. The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949) Davies’ wit and sharp satirical observation makes this a book to enjoy. He is practising his style. Most of these paragraphs are very well formed, with exquisite sentences. Occasionally, they end with Marchbanks’ side of the response to his comments, most of them unflattering to the ladies whom he presumably regaled with his wit. The comments provide an indirect portrait of the still stuffy and narrow views of the respectable Ontarian, on which Marchbanks honed his wit. This social conservatism has moved West. The stereotypical Albertan now espouses the morality of the mid-20th century Ontarian, and suffers from the same urge to impose it on the rest of the country. I found myself eager to read selected passages aloud, an urge that Marie accommodated with her usual good grace. She even laughed at some of Davies’ passages. This copy is a first edition, but without wrappers. ***

     Robertson Davies. The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks (1947) This volume too, is a first edition, but a second printing. In this earlier volume, Marchbanks (or Davies) restrains himself a little compared to the second one. But in both he expresses himself forcefully on the absence of a Canadian sense of pleasure. According to him, Canadians cannot abide mere fun, let alone culture (a much more strenuous pursuit). Although there have been changes for the better since the 1940s, sixty years later we still have a lingering sense that something advertised as good for you cannot be and must not be pleasurable. It was Presbyterians that set the ground-rules for social and cultural life in this country, and many of us suffer from a lingering hangover of puritan megrims. Only the terms of opprobrium have changed. The blue meanies oppose the arts not because of their putative immorality but because of their supposed impracticality. Significantly enough, the Harperites are willing to fund children’s sports via a tax break for family expenditures on hockey and other forms of mayhem, but not for music lessons. Like many money-mad people, they confuse price and value, and worse, have a very limited knowledge of the market that they profess to admire and understand. Update 2013: Families can now claim a deduction for music lessons and the like as well.
     Marchbanks’ struggles with his furnace form the leitmotif of his life as described in these diaries, and his repeated bouts of one or another kind of mild illness form the accompaniment. His casual mentions of daily triumphs and defeats remind us that in many ways our life has become much more comfortable in the last 60 years. But it hasn’t, therefore, become better. There’s more to the good life than creature comforts.
     The quotable bits in this book tend to be small paragraphs. Robertson has mastered the art of the long slow curve and the sudden break (he does not, however, use any baseball metaphors or allusions). He tends to use the semi-colon where most writers would use a period, so that his sentences appear to be lengthy to the eye, but not to the ear. (Davies writes for the ear, a rare skill and even rarer ambition). But here and there one finds a sentence that can be quoted without context. “If man has conquered the air merely to fill it with bombs and illiteracy, we might as well discount this civilisation, and try another.”  “New York, I perceive, contains almost as many rogues as Toronto.” “If we were all robbed of our wrong convictions, how empty our lives would be.” *** (2007)

Les Kozma, ed. Along These Lines (2004)

     Les Kozma, ed. Along These Lines (2004) The Canadian Northern Society has collected both oral and written history of the Edmonton - Camrose - Stettler - Calgary line, along with some of its branches. Kozma has done a nice job of arranging these. He begins with an account of how the CNoR Society came into being. We now take specialist historical societies for granted, but when they decided that they could and should preserve and recondition Meeting Creek station, such societies still had carried an aura of the quixotic and impractical.
     It’s a book to dip into, not to read, and like many such local and personal histories has more meaning for family and friends than for the casually interested rail fan. A grad student, however, could make much of the details mentioned in passing or assumed as general knowledge. The history of the railroad worker hasn’t been written. This is good documentation for such a book. The photos are reasonably well reproduced, but a few too many betray their origin as low-res scans of the originals. A map would help immensely, and its lack is the only serious fault. I detected no typos, which indicates careful editing. ** (2007)