Delicious Library is great software. If you use Macs and have more books, movies, albums or games than you can count on two hands, then you should look into buying it. At only $US40.00, it's a steal.

I rented X-Men Legends for GameCube a few days ago. It's a lot of fun. Video games are so much better than they were when I was a teenager.

For those who use iTunes: Falling by Bruce Guthro is a great song. Sad, but great.

Orginally published in Imprint.

McLaughlin, Ken, Stortz, Gerald and Wahl, James (C.R.). Enthusiasm for the Truth: An Illustrated History of St. Jerome's University. Waterloo: St. Jerome's University, 2002. Hardcover, 267 pages, $32.00.

Kenneth McLaughlin, Gerald Stortz, and James Wahl, C.R. carefully and insightfully describe and interpret the history of St. Jerome's University in their recently published illustrated hardcover book, Enthusiasm for the Truth: An Illustrated History of St. Jerome's University.

The 267-page history, which brings together the distinct yet related research interests of the three authors, is well-written and illustrated. It is a readable scholarly history that should be read by all people interested in St. Jerome's University, the founding of the University of Waterloo, the development of universities in Ontario, the development of post-secondary education in the Catholic church, or the history of Kitchener-Waterloo.

The opening four chapters describe the founding of St. Jerome's College in St. Agatha by Fr. Louis Funcken, its move to the village of Berlin (now known as Kitchener) in 1866, its near demise in 1876 and its growth under the leadership of its second President, Theobald Spetz. Chapters five through nine relate how St. Jerome's College changed over the first 50 years of the 20th century, particularly during the Great War and World War II. The final four chapters describe St. Jerome's central role in the founding of University of Waterloo and its development as a federated public Roman Catholic university.

» Read more: Enthusiasm for this history

At University of Waterloo, I read many books, most of which I did not read for pleasure alone. Reading, which for me was once a hobby, became an analytical technique. Of course this is just how these things go.

My mother has always recommended books to me. Her interest in books is probably the most significant influence on my own interest in books (though she has never shared my interest in Dragonlance novels!). So I did not hesitate to read The Da Vinci Code, which she enthusiastically recommended to me.

I was not disappointed.

The Da Vinci Code is an excellent, highly metafictive thriller. That is, it is a good mystery that confronts itself as artifice. It is also intensely concerned with religion, power, art, history and the relationship between men and women. Not since Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose has a thriller handled these topics so well.

To read The Da Vinci Code is to read a story of the most potent symbols of Western civilization. Such a tale could devolve into hackneyed metaphors and stifling style. But Brown keeps it fresh—makes an established genre seem new again (even to this cynical reader!). His book is a worthy descendant of Eco's. You should read it if you enjoy mystery, secrets and the search for truth. Otherwise you should probably read the newspaper.

P.S. I read this book in one sitting, cover to cover. Can't remember the previous book that I read like that.

If you enjoy difficult narration and genre-bending movies, you should watch Memento, directed by Christopher Nolan.