So I just finished reading a non-fiction piece, Edison and the Electric Chair : A Story of Light and Death
by Mark Essig. I picked the hardcover book up for quite a steal at $5.39 at the local Indigo. It’s quite an interesting read: in a style not much unlike Bill Bryson (in his famous A Short History of Nearly Everything
) Essig recounts almost laughable historic gaffs and misconceptions about electricity; he goes on to detail the great inventor Edison’s struggles in creating electric light and the difficulties in delivering this new product into the homes of the masses; finally he segues into the dangers of electricity and the development of the electric chair: a humane alternative for execution. This morbid curiosity into capital punishment was spawned recently from perusing Dead Man Eating, an addictively grotesque website archiving the last meals of inmates prior to execution.
I’m moving on to read Moon Handbook: Atlantic Canada in preparation for my jaunt in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island later this summer. As of today, travel guides from all three provinces are hurtling towards my mailbox at an accelerated pace. Had I known you can order free travel guides through their respective tourism office websites, I wouldn’t have forked out some exorbitant sum for the book.
Why Atlantic Canada? Lobsters, hiking, coastal scenery and towns, and of course, photography. The only problem is now figuring out where to go and how to spend the oh-so-valuable vacation time. Any trip suggestions from well-travelled readers?
If you’ve never been there, you should go to Las Vegas at least once in your life. Visit the off-strip sites. There’s a lot of hidden treasures that most people never find unless they live there.