Miscellaneous

A New Look and A New Engine

August Leave a Comment

Hello folks, and welcome to the new version of vestige.org. After more than a decade using a content management system called Movable Type I’ve determined that it’s no longer able to let me do the things I want to do easily, so I’ve decided to switch to WordPress instead. Half the world runs on WordPress these days, so this will also be an excuse to learn how it works. For right now I’ll be using a modified off-the-shelf theme rather than designing my own. Things will look a little rough for a while, as importing my data has left some images looking weird, and so on. I’ll be trouble-shooting and tweaking all my old posts on an ongoing basis to get it looking as right as possible on this new system. I’d appreciate it if you’d forgive a little weirdness on older posts over the next few weeks or months.… Continue Reading →

Reading Breakdown for 2015

August 1 Comment

I hope to get back to reviewing books again in the next couple of months, but as I didn’t get much of that done at all in 2015, I thought I’d do another breakdown of my year in reading. This year I did not read to a program as I did in 2014. I decided to just let my spur-of-the-moment impulses guide my reading, and see how things compared to last year. I read a total of 78 books in 2015, up by 6 from 72. Unfortunately, some of my other statistics, specifically those showing writer diversity, did not improve. In fact, they generally got worse: 51 books/65% by men, up from 30 books/42% in 2014 25 books/32% by women, down from 39 books/54% in 2014 2 books/3% by both men and women, down from 3 books/4% in 2014 4 books/5% by people of colour, down from 7 books/10% in… Continue Reading →

Reading Breakdown for 2014

August 1 Comment

So apparently my only blog post for all of 2014 was a breakdown of my reading statistics for 2013 and a plan for how I was going to improve those statistics (specifically in terms of gender) for 2014. I had planned to write a few reviews—and those reviews will still be written and posted—but when you work between 70 and 90 hours a week thousands of kilometres from home, things like that fall by the wayside. I did, however, actually follow through with the changes to my reading program. Specifically, I tried to reach gender parity in my reading for 2014 after realizing that I wasn’t as close as I thought I was when I looked at what I’d read in 2013. I thought I was pretty close to 50/50 men/women, but it turns out I was more like 63/37, and my numbers on writers of colour were even worse.… Continue Reading →

2013 Reading Summary and the Plan for 2014

August 1 Comment

I don’t generally keep track of my reading on any sort of statistical level. I read what I read for reasons that are as much about the mood I’m in when it comes time to start a new book as anything else (probably more than any other reason, to be honest). This means that my reading choices over the course of a year tend to be not particularly considered. But this year everything I read got logged into Goodreads, and for the first time in a while I wasn’t actually paid to read anything, so I thought I’d take a look at what I read in the absence of any direction (beyond a handful of books that were for my steampunk book club). Here’s the breakdown: I read 65 books in 2013; 39 of them were written or edited* by men, 24 were written or edited by women, and 2… Continue Reading →

A Bit of News

August Leave a Comment

It’s been a long time since I’ve updated. Some things have happened that have kept this blog a low priority: I did some freelance work, switched jobs a couple of times, and have gone through some personal issues. I’ve taken on a new job in northern Saskatchewan, where I will potentially be without regular Internet access three weeks out of every month, for non-business related things, anyway. The job is set to last about two years, so vestige.org will be quiet for most of that time. I’m going to try and update once a month or so, mostly with quick personal notes or nature photos and stuff (there will be lots of nature to photograph), just to let everyone know I’m alive and still reading, but the silence that has become usual around these parts is probably going to continue. The job is a good opportunity, for a whole bunch… Continue Reading →

Music to Read By

August 2 Comments

So last night’s post about the blues was sort of accidental. I had intended to write about what I listen to when I read. For years I was the sort of person who could read anywhere, regardless of what was going on around me. In university, when reading suddenly became important to my future (in terms of my career, I mean; I’m a book critic—as in, reviewer—now, but I once wanted to teach university-level English Literature and work as an academic critic/theorist), I lost the ability to read in the same room as someone watching television. And then I couldn’t read while listening to music with lyrics. And then I couldn’t read while listening to any sort of music. Most of that has passed, and I can once again listen to music while I read, although anything too heavy or uptempo, or with complicated lyrics I like to get lost… Continue Reading →

Looking Ahead to 2012

August Leave a Comment

I don’t do resolutions. Not because it’s a cliché; I sometimes think those are all right. Rather it’s because I just don’t ever stick to them. Things happen, blah blah blah. I could give you excuses, but that’s how things wind up going. So, inspired by Adrienne’s post (and obviously aping her post title) I’m going to say a few words about what I hope the new year has in store. First of all, I’m going to get a new job. This really isn’t optional, since I’ve just been freelancing since August (and I’m definitely going to be doing more of that; I’ve already been doing some freelance editing this year, and I’ve been back from the holidays for less than a week), but at this point anyway, it’s not paying the bills. I’m trying to keep optimistic, but this is honestly going to be simultaneously the hardest and the… Continue Reading →

Recent Events

August 3 Comments

After a spurt of activity, vestige.org may be going dark again for a few weeks, and I thought I’d tell you why. First, there are health issues, and then there are job issues. Let’s start with the health issues. For years now I’ve been sick with a disease that I thought was Ulcerative Colitis. Recently I started seeing a new doctor who believes I have something far less severe. He ran some blood tests and scheduled some other things. So far all I’ve got are the results of the blood test, but he determined that I’ve had a severe vitamin B12 deficiency, probably for the better part of a decade, and that judging from my symptoms it’s been getting worse recently. The side-effects of this deficiency include: severe fatigue, severe depression, forgetfullness, difficulty sleeping and focusing, and a bunch of similar things that have made doing anything other than my… Continue Reading →

Is It Better to Be Dumped?

August 1 Comment

Kelli Korducki recently posted an interesting essay on Thought Catalog, in which she opined if a relationship has to end, she would rather be the one dumped than be the one who ends it. Her chief argument seems to be that the person who ends it is deliberately taking on the role of the Bad Guy, which is the harder role to play because, in the absence of mitigating factors like abuse or deceit or what have you, it comes with no sympathy, no legitimate period of mourning, no way to acknowledge that it too might be painful. That got me thinking about how my own relationships have ended, and while I agree with some of her points, I think fundamentally her thesis is wrong. Before I get to that, there are two minor quibbles I’d like to deal with. First, there’s this paragraph about people behaving poorly when they… Continue Reading →