My news update e-mail from The Globe & Mail newspaper landed in my e-mail box this morning with an invitation to “Watch more than 300 videos in the Globe Life how-to library“. Thinking I might find some tips on shocking the well water or even wood heat, I clicked through.

Hmmmmm…categories are Fitness, Chef, Wine & Spirits, Beauty, Hair & Fashion. If I want to know how to pair wine with take-out meals or what three coats every woman should have (definitely need that bejeweled evening number to wear to the fracking meeting), I’m set.

But since there is no take-out within 30 miles except chicken balls or donairs not worth wine, and an appropriate “investment” coat for the country is more likely to a ski jacket to be hung on a rack than a camel hair trench, I’m feeling a little out of the loop.

Not enough to move back to the city, mind. Just a little.

In the first part of this article, I discussed the cost of heating our house with wood or oil through the Maritime winter. But we have other spaces that require heating too.

When we moved here, we renovated part of the large garage/barn on our property into my husband’s home office, and a hobbies room. Both are fairly high ceilinged, and represent about 700 square feet of living space. It’s necessary to keep at least the hobby room heated at all times. Since the building is a short city block from the house, it wasn’t feasible to install a wood burning stove out there, since we wouldn’t be available every day or night to tend it, and heat needed to be constant. So we installed electric baseboard heaters.

Keeping the temperature about 65 degrees F (about 18C) costs us about $250 per month in the coldest winter months. That wouldn’t be so onerous if it was our main heating space, but add it to the cost of heating the house (and the added granny flat/visitors’ suite that is also heated with electricity) and we’re looking at a desperate situation.

What are our options?
1) Geo-thermal heating. Geothermal heat pumps use heat from the ground to heat the home. This would be the ideal system since one installation could heat both buildings at a very low cost and with almost zero impact on the environment.

However, since geothermal heat pumps are considerably more efficient than air-source heat pumps, they are also more expensive to purchase and install. To have an adequate system installed here would cost us about $30,000.

2) An outdoor wood furnace or wood boiler system.These heat water by burning wood very efficiently and can tie in to existing hot water baseboards, forced air, or in floor heating. This unit could also possibly heat both buildings and has the advantage of needing to be fed only once every 12 hours or so. In addition, the firewood pieces can be much larger than what would fit into a wood stove (or even the basement wood furnace) and would save on chopping/splitting – either in time or money.

To heat the outbuilding, though, would require installation of ducting and so the cost of installing one of these would be about $12,000.

3) An indoor wood stove on the main floor. This would seem a quick and easy solution except for the fact that we can’t use our existing chimney for it because of the oil-burning backup unit in the basement. (Insurance regulations prohibit a wood burning device above an oil-burning device on the same chimney.) We would have to install another chimney and also take down some inside walls on the main floor to allow for better heat circulation. I’m not sure of the cost of all this – renovations, installation of a hearth, the stove purchase and installation and the new chimney, but I’m sure you get the idea…and that doesn’t address heating the rooms in the barn or the suite.

Either wood-burning solution still leaves us vulnerable to the rising cost of firewood and to guilt whenever we see a clear-cut hillside.

4) Wall mounted air-exchange heat pump. Again, this doesn’t help with the heating of the granny flat or the barn, and would require renovations to the inside walls of the house for air flow. Add that to the cost of the pump and installation and we’re likely in the $10,000 range – and we’re not confident that the lay-out of the house would allow adequate heating on the second floor.

As you can see, we must spend money to save money and right now the capital for any of these isn’t available. That was definitely something we overlooked before we bought.

LEARN FROM OUR MISTAKE. Pay attention to the heating system if you’re moving outside the familiar infrastructure of a town or city. And don’t be swayed by the romance of heating with wood.

Do you have any other suggestions we might consider for heating our buildings? I’d love to hear from you.

Between 1939 and 1941, architect Frank Lloyd Wright oversaw the construction of a house in the Arizona desert for artist Rose Pauson.

In April 1943, the house burned to the ground and this marvelous example of Wright’s work was lost.

Told in the form of more than fifty previously unpublished letters written between 1938 and 1943–alongside rare site photographs and Wright’s architectural drawings–Building the Pauson House: The Letters of Frank Lloyd Wright and Rose Pauson chronicles the design and construction of the house, as well as the architect-client relationship.
Although Wright and Pauson were friends, there are plenty of disagreements about the bills, design changes, and the copious leaks that riddled the finished project, as beautiful as it may have appeared.

A lover of written correspondence (letters!), I found Building the Pauson House fascinating. Beautifully laid out, it is a feast for the eyes and will be pored over for much longer than the evening it takes to read.

Building the Pauson House: The Letters of Frank Lloyd Wright and Rose Pauson

Or better yet, buy from a independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Last week, we were on a road trip to southern Ontario where (then) it was balmy and spring-like. While we were gone, most of the snow here melted too and the first three days this week were wonderful and left me full of hope. Then I woke up this morning to this–and still snowing.

Will winter never end? It makes me so down….

In 2006, I volunteered briefly with our wonderful local reading festival Read By the Sea, which invites Canadian authors to the North Shore of Nova Scotia to read excerpts of their work to appreciative audiences. That year, my husband and I had the pleasure of accompanying the authors to lunch, and so I ate chowder in the company of Steven Heighton, Janet Lunn, Lisa Moore, Harry Thurston, Catherine Safer and Deborah Ellis.

Since that summer, I have wanted to read Lisa Moore’s Alligator: A Novel and cannot fathom why I have not done so before this. Ah well, the wait was worth it.

From the dust jacket:

Meet Colleen, a seventeen-year-old would-be eco-terrorist, who barrels down the rocky road of adolescence while her mother, Beverly, is cloaked in grief after the death of her husband. Beverly’s sister, Madeleine, is a driven, aging filmmaker who obsesses over completing her magnum opus before she dies. Frank, a benevolent young man without a family, believes that his success will come from his hog-dog stand–a business he’s desperate to protect from socio-pathic Russian sailor Valentin.

Set in modern day St. John’s, Newfoundland, the book tells its story through alternating chapters about one of the main characters mentioned. Moore’s word pictures shine. Through them, and many seamless flashbacks, she provides character development, background and plot advancement simultaneously.

There’s a housefly near the jar, bluish and iridescent, cocooned in a spider’s web and dust. The fly has been there, lying on the cracked paint of the windowsill, since Frank moved in a few months before Christmas, two days after his nineteenth birthday.

Although most of the characters are satisfactorly developed, to me, Frank was the most clearly drawn of them. Having lost his mother recently to cancer and being left truly all alone in the world at eighteen, he is a sympathetic figure. His loneliness becomes palpable when his thoughts at seeing Colleen dance in a bar emerge:

He wants to tell her about his hot-dog stand and how hard he’s worked to get it and how much money he makes. He wants to say I can make this much money in a night. He doesn’t want to say it, but he wants her to know it.
He would like to say, I don’t do drugs.
He would like to tell her about the Inuit guy who hanged himself in the apartment over his at Christmastime…
He would like to tell her, or have her intuit, how much respect he had for his mother and how empty the world is without her. He would like to explain how he feels like he has a hole in his chest. He would like her to put her hand on his chest and show him once and for all there is no hole.

More than a plot, the book holds a slice of the characters’ lives and their interactions, although there is a climatic event that affects several of them. The prose in this book sings. Moore’s writing style is fresh and seems to move swiftly.

Alligator is a Canadian best seller, winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Canadian and Caribbean region), and a Globe and Mail Book of the Year award. I look forward very much to reading Moore’s latest novel February

This is a stop on my Literary Road Trip through Atlantic Canada.

Solid four of five stars.

Links for my Canadian readers:
Alligator
February

Or better yet, buy from a independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Technorati Tags: Alligator: A novel, Lisa Moore, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Literary Road trip, Read by the Sea

Intrigued by Nicola Upson’s stylish mystery An Expert in Murder featuring Josephine Tey, and memories of reading The Daughter of Time as a teenager, I decided to give Tey’s Inspector Alan Grant series a try.

The first book in the series, Man in the Queue, also known as Killer in the Crowd, was written by Elizabeth MacKintosh (who later wrote under the names Gordon Daviot and Josephine Tey) and first published in 1929 under the name Gordon Daviot. It concerns the murder of an unknown man, apparently struck down as he stands in a ticket queue for a London musical comedy.

Inspector Grant is presented with a body that no one claims and that has no identity. From this, he builds a case, discovering who the victim was, and tracking down a prime suspect. The casework is fascinating. There are no dramatic breaks yet, bit by bit, the case comes together.

I was intrigued by how the legwork was carried out in 1929: officers reporting by telephone often using the only phone in the area–one at a post office, no squad cars-just the trains and foot, the cultural prejudices evident, and the attitude that “it isn’t any of our business to fit psychology to people or to provide motives or anything of that sort…Fit them with watertight evidence and provide them with a cell, and that’s all we have to bother about.” Not surprisingly then, the police charge the wrong person. Only a last minute confession from the real killer saves the case.

I found the pacing to be consistent throughout and, as I’ve said, the details come together smoothly as the case is steadily built. However, the plot device of the unbidden confession stretched the limits of credibility and didn’t really put Inspector Grant in the best light. Although he had a “funny feeling” that all was not right, without that confession he would have proceeded with the charge against the wrong person. I will make allowances, though, as this was Tey’s first mystery — and I will definitely continue with the series.

3.5 stars out of 5

Links for my Canadian readers:
The Man in the Queue
An Expert In Murder: A Josephine Tey Mystery
The Daughter of Time

Or better yet, buy from a independent book seller.
Buy from an independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Technorati Tags: Josephine Tey, The Man in the Queue, Alan Grant, Inspector Grant, Elizabeth MacKintosh, Gordon Daviot

Here in Atlantic Canada, winter goes on and so do the heating costs. In fact, we’ll likely be heating through the month of May. It’s a constant search for an affordable method of doing that.

In southern Ontario where we spent the first fifty years of our lives, I always lived in houses heated with natural gas. It was just always there and I admit that I didn’t give heating in Nova Scotia the thought it deserved before we moved here.

Our Nova Scotia home is a renovated, but still old and draughty farm house built in 1878. It’s heated by an old wood furnace in the basement, and backed up by an oil-burning unit down there as well. The oil furnace is necessary and kicks in when we’re away for the day–or more–, when I’m too sick to negotiate the cellar stairs to feed the wood fire, sometimes in the wee hours of very cold nights, and for heating in the shoulder season when wood is just too warm.

When we moved here in 2003, firewood was $90 a cord. Since there is no ambient heat from the furnace the way there would be with a wood stove on the main level, we found we needed eight to ten cord to get through the winter. Clear cutting is allowed here so our hillsides are quickly being denuded of their woodlots and this year the price of firewood has crept to $200 a cord. Wood heat seems worth it, though, as it is a toasty warm.

In addition to the cost, wood heat is a lot of work. The basement will hold three or four cord but first the wood has to be thrown through the basement window one junk at a time. Then, of course, it must be stacked in the cellar. The wood that’s left outside has to be stacked & covered until such time as the basement needs to be filled again and the wood restacked once more. More than once, we have been caught short with no wood in the basement and no access to the woodpile because of snow and ice.

When that happens, we fall back on oil. We have a small (half) tank that holds about 300 litres (approximately 80 gallons). At the time of last week’s fill-up, oil was $1.02 litre (about $3.85 U.S. gallon). Translated, that means that a tank of oil that costs $295. will last 7-10 days. That’s anywhere from $900 to $1,100 per month–and it’s not even a comfortable heat.

Are there alternatives? Oh yes – and other parts of the property to heat. I’ll explore that in another post.

Josephine Tey was a pseudonym used by real-life writer Elizabeth MacKintosh in the mid twentieth century. Although she also wrote books and plays under the name Gordon Daviot, it is her mystery novels–particularly The Daughter of Time–written mostly as Josephine Tey that are best remembered today. Nicola Upson has cleverly placed the real-life character of Josephine Tey in a new mystery series featuring fictional Detective Archie Penrose.

In the first book of this series, An Expert in Murder, Tey becomes involved in a murder that seems connected to her popular play, Richard of Bordeaux (which actually launched the career of young John Gielgud). Traveling to London from her home in Scotland for the last week of her play’s hit run, she befriends a young fan who is murdered shortly after the train arrives in London. Another murder within the theatre itself seems linked and the race is on to find the murderer before (s)he strikes again.

The details of 1934 England, especially the behind the scenes theatre atmosphere, are intriguing and seem true to life. The characters are engaging and the story’s pacing is even. Despite the fact that it might be a little easy to figure out who the murderer is, motive is harder to make out until it’s revealed, and this is an absorbing read.

I will definitely read more in this series – and it’s also inspired me to read through Josephine Tey’s Detective Grant mystery series, beginning with Man in the Queue. I’ll be posting a review of that later this week.

Link for my Canadian readers:
An Expert In Murder: A Josephine Tey Mystery

Or better yet, buy from a independent book seller.
Buy from an independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Technorati Tags: An Expert in Murder, Josephine Tey, Nicola Upson, Archie Penrose, John Gielgud, Richard of Bordeaux, Gordon Daviot, Elizabeth MacKintosh

We’ve had a lot of snow and ice–particularly ice–the last little while and everyone I know is ready for spring. Today is cold but SUNNY, and the forecast calls for temps above freezing tomorrow through Tuesday.

Today’s photo is really about the shadows caused by the sun as it swings to the west. You may also notice that the big evergreen tree looks a little different than last year. Nova Scotia Power was “kind” enough to send tree trimmers along our road last summer. The piece that came off the top of this tree was 10 or 12 feet high. I know the trimming is necessary to protect the wires, but I mourned this cut.

A double dose of the ‘flu and lots of snowy weather combined to give me tons of reading time last month. Here’s what I got through.

1. The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova
A psychiatrist attempts to solve the puzzle of a non-communicative patient arrested for trying to attack a painting in the National Gallery

2. Stanley Park: A Novel by Timothy Taylor
Set in Vancouver’s iconic green space, and in a trendy restaurant across town, and centred around the relationship between anthropologist father and chef son.

3. The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove by Cathy Erway
In the heart of NYC, where restaurants are ubiquitous and eating out is simply a part of the culture, Cathy Erway decided to eat at home for two years – and blog about it.

4. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
First in the Millenium series, this thriller by Swedish author Larsson has enjoyed top-seller status.

5. The Hard Detective by H. R. F. Keating
First in the Harriet Martens series by this prolific author of mysteries.

6. Holmes on the Range by Steve Hockensmith
This is the first in what promises to be a delightful series: brothers Old Red & Big Red Amlingmeyer are cowboys in the American west of the 1890s, but Old Red harbors a deep admiration for the exploits of one Sherlock Holmes.

7. Amy and Isabelle: A novel by Elizabeth Strout
In the very hot New England summer of 1969, mother and daughter learn about life, love, and each other.

8. Drawing the Line (Lina Townend Mystery) by Judith Cutler
First of the mystery series featuring twenty-something ex-troubled youth Lina Townend, a budding antique restorationist.

9. Cat on the Edge: A Joe Grey Mystery by Shirley Rousseau Murphy
First in the mystery series involving Joe Grey, a talking cat.

10. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Translated from the French, this novel about the concierge of a condo building and her interaction with her tenants is currently a bestseller.

Links for my Canadian readers:

The Swan Thieves: A Novel
Stanley Park
The Art Of Eating In
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
The Hard Detective
Holmes on the Range: A Mystery
Amy and Isabelle: A novel
Drawing The Line
Cat on the Edge
Elegance Of The Hedgehog

Or better yet, buy from a independent book seller.

Technorati Tags: The Swan Thieves, Elizabeth Kostova, Stanley Park, Timothy Taylor, The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove, Cathy Erway, NYC food blog, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson, The Hard Detective, H.R.F. Keating, Harriet Martens, Holmes on the Range, Steve Hockensmith, Old Red, Big Red, Gustav Amlingmeyer, Otto Amlingmeyer, Amy & Isabelle, Elizabeth Strout, Drawing the Line, Judith Cutler, Lina Townend, Cat on the Edge, Shirley Rousseau Murphy, Joe Grey, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery, Paloma Josse, Renee Michel

Disclaimer: All of these links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.