a small selection of books on my bookshelf that mock me with their unreadness

david foster wallace
the broom of the system

a.s. byatt
angels and insects

charles frazier
cold mountain

stewart o'nan
the speed queen

donna j. haraway
simians, cyborgs, and women

mark poster
the mode of information

Been home with a cold today. I've laid in bed most of the day reading. In about five hours of reading I finished a wonderful book, "The Perfect Storm" by Sebastian Junger.

It's sort of a documentary type book about a storm that hit over New England on Thanksgiving 1991. It was, apparently, a one-in-a-hundred-years storm. The book focuses on a swordfishing boat, the Andrea Gail, that was lost in the storm with all six crew dying.

Junger writes with absolute authenticity about fishing off New England, about the town of Gloucester Massachusetts, about meteorology, about sea rescue and about human relationships. Do read this book if you're at all interested in the sea, or in how people face death.

My Dad's been at sea all his life. He never wanted to do anything else. He left school at 15 as an office cadet and started sailing around the world. And his Dad, although he never went to sea, that was what he wanted to do as well. His parents wouldn't give him permission.

But I've never wanted to do that. Well, aside from a brief, romantic vision of myself at sea when I was around 10. I'm colour-blind as well, which means I could never pass the exams to become an officer or anything, so it's never been a realistic possibility, but, deep-down, it's not something I've wanted to do. I think you are born with a hankering to go to sea and there's probably not a lot you can do about it.

I've never had a hankering to anything in my life career wise. I've never sat down and said, "yes, this is what I want to do", or "I want to be here in five years, therefore I need to do this and this and this to achieve it". Mum always thought that when I reached 30 I would know what I wanted to do.

Well, I'm 36.

And for all that the world is changing, and in these post-modern times change is the only constant, and all the gurus say you need a portfolio of work/life options, I do sometimes wish I'd wanted to go to sea at 15 and done it.