etc.

The Pierre Berton reading was great, he’s a witty man, in the old-fashioned, comedy-of-manners sense of the word. No real surprise that my favourite part of the reading was the Q & A, and my favourite part of the Q & A was Berton’s response to a question from an aggressive, young, fireball of a journalist from a local TV station, who was suitably rigged in big hair and a navy blue pantsuit, trailing a camera crew. Berton was reading from his new book The Joy of Writing: A Guide for Writers, Disguised as a Literary Memoir, so obviously the questions revolved around his experiences as a writer. But our intrepid journalist kept trying to swing the conversation to the war in Iraq question, in an attempt to solicit some sort of inflammatory comment from Berton, given that he has always been a champion of peace and has argued at length about the irrationality of war as an answer to any sort of conflict, local or international. She probably got her inflammatory comment too (he said something like (and I’m paraphrasing): it has always been stupid to believe that war is the solution for peace and we can’t seem to get that into the head of his highness south of the border), and everyone else in the audience but her seemed to get the fact that Berton wasn’t there to debate politics. Still, it was a great way to spend a Monday afternoon, but I have to stop going to so many readings because my budget is suffering for all these hardcover books I can’t resist buying to have signed.

I’ve decided to retire stilllifes and bring miscellaneous daily images back to the me pages. Slightly more detailed explanation of why is here and archives will stay here.