From One Engineer to Another

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From One Engineer to Another

North Words Poster for 2012

Saturday evening the Sous Chef and I enjoyed a nice evening out at the North Words Muskoka Literary Festival Gala at Deerhurst. We had enjoyed the buffet luncheon last year at the Mill on Main when Terry Fallis entertained the standing room only crowd with his stories about the writing of his two political satire books set in the Ottawa and Parliament Hill area.

We bought tickets to the gala this year when we heard that Terry was returning. He has a new book available now and having two autographed books in our collection it was natural that we build our collection with a third book. Terry remembered our meeting last year and my mother’s 1940's Jarvis Collegiate year book with a picture of Terry’s father in it.

Terry Fallis

When preparing to sign the book he asked what we would like it to say. I suggested that it would be appropriate to inscribe it ‘From one Engineer to Another’. Terry noted that he uses that line for all the brothers and sisters who wear the iron ring. The Ottawa U Sous Chef was very pleased with her new treasure.

That was a great start to the evening and the event set-up allowed you to sit with one of the many authors who were there. As you know I read plenty of mysteries and thriller books. Last weekend I went online to track down a new mystery book and somehow in my search of the most popular mysteries I came across a book ‘Before the Poison’ by Peter Robinson.

Bay Lake's Peter Robinson

I won’t go into the details of the book but of the 50 or more books that I have read since Christmas it is the finest of the entire bunch. You can imagine my surprise when I saw there was a table with his name on it. Talk about deja vu all over again! I was even more shocked to find out that this author, whose books have been translated into more than 20 languages has a home on Bay Lake and splits his year between Toronto, England and Bay Lake. The Doyle family has owned property on Rochester Lake (take the left fork in the road to Bay Lake) for almost 60 years.

I will be starting into his Inspector Banks series of books as soon as I can. I’ll take a few on my next vacation. The insights you get from talking to writers are quite fascinating and even in reading fiction I have found that you always learn something from the writers . One nugget I learned from ‘Before the Poison’ that will be today’s trivia question. Name the only Hollywood movie without a musical soundtrack? Good Luck!

ps... Congrats to the entire team of volunteers. I'll definitely help promote the event next year.