Music & Books

This weekend at my church, the topic for the three services was "An Encounter with God," based on Isaiah 6. At the end of the service, we gave people a chance to stay and pray for a while, which is not too common for us due to time constraints between services. I got to play percussion to accompany the piano keyboard and I sang back up for the after service worship. I tells ya, doing something like that is a real highlight for my day. It's just various people praying for each other and a half hour of free flow, Spirit-led songs. I loved it back in the day at FCCC when I got to lead the after service music ministry and I still look for any chance I can get to do that.

Speaking of which, I have an opportunity coming up in August to visit a women's prison in Kitchener to do some worship ministry. Unfortunately, I missed the last trip that we did in April because I was helping my grandparents move but at least I can look forward to this next one. Did I mention that I love doing this kind of thing?

Since my service ended rather late today, I didn't get the chance to hook up with anyone at Open Door. Instead, I hit a few stores to do some necessary shopping. While I was at Chapters, I found a bunch of books that were on sale so I picked up a stack that interested me. Just for fun, here's the list of my new books:
1) Crack of Noon - A treasury-sized book of Zits comic strips to complete my collection.
2) Wizard - The latest issue of the comics magazine that I have been buying on a monthly basis for more than ten years now.
3) Serenity - Comic that fills in a missing story from the Firefly television series and the Serenity movie, written by Joss Whedon himself.
4) Manifold: Space by Stephen Baxter - Excellent sci-fi novel that I've already read but that I wanted to add to my permanent collection. I like most of the novels in this "Manifold" series.
5) The Preservationist by David Maine - Somewhat humerous look at what Noah's life might have been like as he built the ark. The twist on the Noah concept made me check it out and the humour of it made me buy it.
6) The Aerialist by Richard Schmitt - A fictional look into the daily life of a circus performer. Each chapter is like a self-contained mini-story.
7) Oscar Peterson by Alex Barris - Biography of the icon. I love to read bios of famous musicians, sports stars and Hollywood celebrities.
8) The Great Pulp Heroes by Don Hutchison - Non-fiction history of the characters from the old pulp magazines and novels. Comics are my hobby and pulp fiction shares a lot in common with them but I wanted to learn more about this era than the bits I already know.
9) Best Stories from the Indian Classics by V.S.Naravane - Short collection of old classics from "Sanskrit fiction" from ancient India. Fun to learn about another culture through story telling, plus the Blacks are Indian so I was curious.
10) Worlds by Joe Haldeman - Some sort of sci-novel with a concept I liked and some major author I've never heard of. Plus, it was a cheap sci-fi novel and I'm always on the look out for those.
11) Son of Man by Robert Silverberg - 'Nother sci-fi novel, picked for the same reasons as "Worlds" but the premise is cooler since it's about how mankind has evolved in the far-flung future.
12) Funnymen by Ted Heller - Fictional story about two social misfits that hit the big time as a comedy due back in the day. Obviously a play on famous pairs such as Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.
13) Max and the Cats by Moacyr Scliar - The novella that inspired the recent bestseller Life of Pi. Fanciful story about a kid that gets stranded on a boat in the middle of an ocean with just a tiger to keep him company.
14) Relational Enterprise by Kenneth Cooper Carlton - This is a book about managing business relationships and it's what I was actually looking for originally. Despite the fact that the internet said it was available in several locations in London, the book wasn't in the store so I still need to find this one.
15) Programming the Universe by Seth Lloyd - I didn't buy this one today. It's actually a book that I picked up this weekend from the library so it's on my current reading list. It's a non-fiction book about quantum computers and quantum theory as it applies to some of the big questions about our universe. Quantum physics and computers are tough concepts that I like to toy with and they frequently show up in the sci-fi novels I read so often.

Ah, so much reading to do and so many worlds to explore. Hmm, I may need to tone down the geek factor here by a notch or three... Plus, I just spent forty-five minutes writing this blog post and providing links to each book, which probably doesn't help my persona much. Heh.