I have lived in Alberta for over 25 years.  I enjoy being outdoors, hiking, cycling, camping, and canoeing, mostly in the foothills and the Rockies (and occasionally other places such as northern Ontario). I ride a bike to work; but I walk when it’s below -20. I also dabble with watercolour paints and read fiction when I can find the time.

Here is a list of some non-technical books that I have enjoyed (alphabetically by author):

• Austen, Jane. “Emma”
• Bradbury, Ray. “The Martian Chronicles” and “Fahrenheit 451”
• Card, Orson Scott. “Ender’s Game”
• Clarke, Arthur C. “Childhood’s End” and “2001: A Space Odyssey”
• Curtis, Charles, and Greenslet, Ferris. “The Practical Cogitator”
• Dick, Philip K. “Ubik” and “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”
• Golding, William “Lord of the Flies”
• Heinlein, Robert. “Stranger in a Strange Land”
• Helprin, Mark. “Winter’s Tale”
• Hemingway, Ernest “For Whom The Bell Tolls” and “The Complete Short Stories”
• Huxley, Aldous. “Brave New World”
• Lem, Stanislaw. “The Cyberiad”
• Melville, Herman. “Moby Dick”
• Miller, Walter M. (Jr) “A Canticle for Leibowitz”
• O’Brian, Patrick “Master and Commander” (all twenty books in the series – really)
• Orwell, George. “Animal Farm” and “Nineteen Eighty-Four”
• Pirsig, Robert. “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”
• Thoreau, Henry David. “Walden”
• Tolstoy, Leo. “War and Peace”
• Weir, Andy. “The Martian”

Here are a few more technical ones (of a really long list):

• Abramowitz & Stegun. “Handbook of Mathematical Functions”
• Box, Jenkins, Reinsel. “Time Series Analysis”
• Crandall, Stephen. “Engineering Analysis”
• de Bono, Edward. “How to Have a Beautiful Mind”
• Mandelbrot, Benoit. “The Fractal Geometry of Nature”
• Norman, Don. “The Design of Everyday Things”
• Petroski, Henry. “To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design”
• Sagan, Carl. “Cosmos”
• Strunk & White. “The Elements of Style”
• Tufte, Edward. “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information”
• The Machinery’s Handbook

What I’m reading right now: the short stories of Alice Major, and The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. I subscribe to The Economist, The New York Times, and the Marginalian newsletter (amongst others).