Gifting Myself

Although they didn't need to do it, both my mother- and brother-in-law presented me with the gift that keeps on giving this Christmas: Cash.

In situations like these, the first thing that comes to mind is to use the money to pay down my mortgage or to fund my retirement account or something, but I know that's not in the appropriate (commercial?) spirit. So, I went over to Amazon.com and did some browsing.

Items I considered included the following:

Video:

• Rush - R30
• Strange Brew
• Spaceballs

Audio:

• Rush in Rio [LIVE]
• Tausend Sterne or Willst Du Mit Mir Gehn by Nena (but Tausend Sterne wasn't available, and the import stuff is so expensive.)
• Great White North by Bob & Doug McKenzie
• Seeing the word "Cash" above makes me thing I should have considered some of Johnny Cash's recent works (such as Unchained), but I didn't think of that until now.

But in the end, I went with a couple of Giller Prize-winning books:

• The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by M.G. Vassanji
• Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

I thought that "Vikram Lall" sounded interesting. I'm less sure about the other book, but I've been wanting to read something by Atwood for a while. Oryx and Crake seems like it might be a little odd for a first experience with an author, and my wife thought Grace might be interesting.

While I was at it, I ordered the following for my daughter's upcoming birthday. Shhh! Don't tell her!

• Crispin : The Cross of Lead by Avi
• Holes by Louis Sachar