I'm ba-ack!

  I just spent a wonderful week with my two nieces in Toronto and two nieces and nephew in Winnipeg.  They are all getting so big so fast (they range in age from 20 months to almost 10 years) and I love that they still enjoy doing stuff with their ol' Auntie, even if it's just hanging out and playing cribbage (my nephew just learned the game this summer and though it has been many years since I played it my memory was refreshed quickly and we played it a few times each day).

  Of course I took some time out for myself and - ahem - may have visited the bookstores.  Here is what I picked up:

  
 
  The four novels  - Practical Jean, Irma Voth, Stanley Park and Far to Go - were all on my to-read list.  Mordecai:  The Life & Times  is a biography of one of my favorite writers, Mordecai Richler; so when I saw it in the store I "had" to have it.  The last book - Defiant Spirits - is about The Group of Seven, a Canadian artist movement, which I am ashamed to say that I know very little about; however in a visit to The Art Gallery of Ontario I viewed several paintings of the Group and enjoyed them very much, and since I've read and enjoyed other books by Ross King (The Judgement of Paris and Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling) I wanted to have this book to learn more about this art.

  Sadly, though, I must return to work tomorrow and will not have time to dig into most of these right away (though I did start Practical Jean on the flight home -- a very quirky story!).  Where is that reading sabbatical when you need it?