I think the rise of blogs has lead alot of politicians to say 'I should have a blog' and alot of political staffers to say, 'Okay who should write it?'.

But Paul Martin has a blog... well kind of.  Check it out, its pretty funny.

Despite my talk of abandonment, I have continued reading Working Class Zero.  I haven't had a chance to pick up my next books to read at the library and I didn't want to be stuck out with nothing to read. 

The book continues in its light hearted way and we learn the troubles of Jay, a disillusioned bank employee with no university education who was once in a band.  That's right he played in a band and has known the thrill of playing in front of an audience.  The beat of the drum, slap of the bass, wank of the guitar etc. etc.

Eddie VanHalen I hope you know what you have wrought.  It seems like every novel about a guy who is going through his late-twenties crisis thinks his life would be more fulfilled if he was in a band. I would just like to read a novel in which the dream is something else.  Or do I just not get it?

What books have you abandoned reading?  Nic points out that it is the author who should feel guilty if a book is not a good read and not the reader.  The first book I abandoned was Minus Time by Catherine Bush.  Bush has great skills as a writer but I find there is something wrong with the stories she puts together. 

In Minus Time, for example, she creates tension around the idea that the character Helen Urie becomes a sudden celebrity because her mother became an astronaut and went on a mission.  She writes of how people give Helen 'looks' in the subway.  This is flawed for a book set in Toronto about a Canadian. 

I once saw the Right Honourable John Turner, former Prime Minister of Canada, jump onto the southbound train at St. George station just before the doors closed.  Though most of the seats were full with people, I think I was the only one who looked at him and smiled in a 'hey I know you way'.  I wouldn't recognize Chris Hadfield if he served me a coffee at Starbucks, let alone if his child did.

So with much regret I abandoned Minus Time.  If Catherine Bush couldn't develop her plot with the assumed fact that astronuts are not recognizable celebrities in Canada then I really couldn't go on with the book.

Bookninja, a site Nic pointed me too, has an article on it about how Catherine Bush re-wrote her latest novel between the hard cover and soft cover printing. 

I picked up 'Working Class Zero' from the Canadian shelf in my local public library.  According to the book jacket marketing, this book is a Canadian Nick Hornby or Roddy Doyle.

So far it is not living up to the Nick Hornby comparison and has just been too full of cliches and obvious office life observations such as "...this is the factory of the new millennium, the new working class, where industrious drones keep track of other people's wealth as it accumulates."

Yes, indeed.  Isn't that a little cliche though?  And if this is the new working class then what about the old working class?  The people who have no education and take jobs in factories, as maids in hotels or as janitors.  This book is intended to be a humorous take on working in a financial institution.  I have known a lot of people who have taken a job in a bank right out of university and been shocked by the realities of office life.  But I don't know if I want to read about it.

I just finished 'What the Body Remembers' by Shauna Singh Baldwin and its hard to switch from a novel which makes profound observations about ethnicity, religion, education, class and gender within the context of the Indian Independence movement and eventual partition into India and Pakistan.

Its always hard to abandon a book once you've started.  But there are so many good books out there, I've yet to read....