Are we going to set a date for finishing this book? I've been thinking that may be the best way to move forward. Especially since I just got a lovely package of Rohmer paperbacks -- thanks Brian, and your "supplier" -- and it's kind of daunting, and it occurs to me that these are the easy ones.
I also never appreciated that so many of them fit together, like Foundation crossed with "A Visit to Ottawa, Our Capitol."
One of the paperbacks has a blurb on the back from an executive at Eatons. So you know it's good.
I need to talk about the plot changing direction in Exxoneration, but I don't know where you guys are in the book. If you're still in the first part, where it's moving along so nicely, with the war and everything, before he just sort of loses interest in that, and decides it's really about PetroCanada buying Exxon. I'm not getting any sleep tonight!
I passed the halfway mark but am marking good progress as there is less hockey this weekend. I should be done in a couple of days.
ReplyDeleteThere is a point in the book where we are in the Oval Office and president is about to be told that his invasion has failed miserably, and after bios everybody in the room we pick it up after the news has hit. What is this tendency to back away from what should have been a dramatic scene? Why couldn't we be there to see the stunned reactions of the President and his staff when they got the news? Why do we pick it up a few minutes later when he's just angry and yelling at everyone?
My favourite part of the Oval Office scene is when President Blank, within a rant, compliments Canada's record in both world wars. Then it's back to criticism: "And what happened to our intelligence people? Didn't they report any troop movements?"
DeleteI was hoping that Wolf would remove his nose from between his index fingers at this point and say, "Funny, it's been hours since we've heard anything for our intelligence people."
Outside observer comment: This project is sounding like a strain already and you guys are only on Book 2! yikes.
ReplyDeleteNanuk
Hey, don't lump me in with some guy who describes himself as "the slowest reader he knows." Hell, he's the slowest reader I know.
DeleteThat's really interesting. I think this may turn out to be Rohmer's signature quirk. You're never there when anyone hears about any INCIDENT for the first time. You're always at the meeting where someone says, "As we're all aware..." The flipside is that when a big Rohmer IDEA comes up -- "let's build a pipeline wide enough to transport meetings" -- you're there for every single link in the chain of people telling each other about it. So you hear it over and over, and their reactions. "That's crazy!" "That's unbelievable!" "Why, that astonishing idea could change the face of Manitoba forever!"
ReplyDeleteNanuk -- Are you saying we're complainers? That's crazy talk!
ReplyDeleteLiquified meetings. You'd have to liquify them to transport them by pipeline. Or freeze them to put them on giant tanker planes.
ReplyDelete