I’ve only ever taken the one course on law, so I’m no legal eagle, but I’ve recently run afoul of some rental condition which I thought I’d been exempted from. I have a portable dishwasher which I’ve been using without any issues in the last few places I’ve rented. This place, in the heart of Vancouver, had a clause against it and I discussed it with the landlord before signing the lease, which resulted in the amendment below, placed below the requisite clause in the Tenancy Agreement

Liquid-filled items. Under no circumstances will the use of portable washing machines, dishwashers, or waterbeds be allowed. The tenant shall not bring on the premises or the Residential Property any furniture, aquariums or other chattels which can be considered to be liquid-filled without the Landlord's prior written consent. The Landlord's approval of the use of any such item may be subject to the Tenant providing the landlord with written evidence that the Tenant has in place adequate liability insurance. Any damages and subsequent costs arising from the unauthorized use of such items will be the sole responsibility of the Tenant. Any emergency restoration and repairs required will be dispatched by the Landlord at his discretion and completed to his satsifaction.

Addendum: 1 portable dishwasher ok; Tenant responsible for any incidental damages. [ Initialed by landlord and me ]

That is the agreement that we both signed in August 2011. I did not have any sort of personal liability insurance, renter’s or otherwise and informed the landlord about it. He didn’t press the issue and we went ahead and signed the agreement.

Now, in January 2012, I am being asked to produce proof of personal liability insurance or discard the dishwasher. It seems that building management has changed their mind with regards to the dishwasher. It seems as though the crux of the matter lies in the words “may be subject to”, which imply that the landlord reserves the right to make me produce proof of liability insurance at any moment during the lease.

I guess I can take the path of least resistance and just get the damn insurance and be done with it, but it’d be nice to know if this kind of about-face is legitimate, warranted or just simply ubiquitous.

This one’s light reading and constitutes a break from the classics. Clive Cussler presents a collection of vignettes about crime. Serial killers and murder abound in here. The Weapon is about a man who undergoes extraordinary rendition to prove that the policy is hugely flawed and often tortures people based on incorrect evidence. The Circle is similarly politicized and shows us how an imaginative person can easily get past any blockade, in this case, the one after the 7/7 bombings on the Tube in London. Roomful of Witnesses is a great story with a twist at the end that will make you appreciate the simian brain.

Can You Help Me Out Here? is about that most defenceless of modern creatures, the urban accountant. Yet, things are not always as they seem as his kidnappers and would-be-executioners find out only too late. What about murder and crime writers? Are they pre-disposed to violence simply by virtue of writing about it all the time? Suspension of Disbelief sheds some light on how easily words can leap from the page and become reality. The Fifth World is more fantastic than most stories and here and we leave this mortal plane to enter the dimension envisioned by the Mayans, at the turn of 2012. Killing Time is an excellent story about a man who just can’t stop killing. The nature of his obsession precludes any lengthy stay in one spot and he finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Where any of us might be helpless sheep led to the slaughter, our protagonist knows just how to exit the situation victorious. We wrap this collection up with Boldt’s Broken Angel, a story about a serial killer with mommy issues, who cross-dresses and uses extensive ligatures to satisfy his desires. A predictable end to a decent collection of stories.

ISBN: 978-0-07783-2723-3

Here’s another delightful collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury. These ones have a touch of the horrible and stray a little from his usual sci-fi oeuvre. The Dwarf is about being different and how those dreams can crush you, until you find a secret way out. It’s your little secret and keeps you warm inside until some other human extinguishes that spark as well. Truly, life is but a series of burnt out fires all the way to the grave. The Next in Line deals with uxoricide in the warm climes of Mexico, after a visit to a burial ground starts the gradual unraveling of the wife’s mind. Skeleton shows you how there’s a calcified man inside you, the skeleton that lies beneath your flesh and when it develops a mind of its own, you’d better watch out.

The Jar is classic Bradbury, with the lives and aspirations of people projected onto something truly terrible that floats in a jar. It is amorphous, nebulous, vague and it is everything to those who gaze upon it. You simply see what you fear or love the most in it and it can consume your life. The Small Assassin is perhaps the most famous story herein, about an infant who’s a bit too precocious and realizes that his only salvation lies in a quick matricide and patricide. In The Wind, we see what our end would be if the wind were truly a malevolent creature, picking us off one at a time when we realized its true nature. A gust from the Himalayas, a zephyr from the south seas, a breeze from Norway, all these added up to form a sentient being that was all around you and could strike at any time. A truly terrifying thought. The compendium ends with The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone, a surprisingly positive story without any hint of the macabre. Sometimes the only way to live fully is to be reborn, by killing off the old you, figuratively speaking, of course. Dudley knows this and is now truly alive, as he never was in his old life.

Verdict: An absolute topper, each story bears the mark of the master.

ISBN: 978-0-345-32448-1

What an absolutely smashing monster of a book. Cervantes writes Don Quixote in a literary trance from which we wish he would never awaken. Don Quixote has read too many chivalric stories and is besotted with the ideals of old. He decides to go wayfaring to recapture ancient glory, along with his hastily deputized squire, Sancho Panza. Quixote tilts at windmills, slays sheep, challenges bigger men than himself and gets thrashed within an inch of his life more than once. His luckless deputy suffers the same fate more than once as well, but along the way they have some ripping adventures.

While the prose is hilarious when taken at face value, there must be more to this work than nonsensical blunderings for it to be considered one of the best books of all time. Cervantes mixes a vile concoction of black humour, tragedy, comedy, farce, madness, delusion and foolhardiness into his protagonist, who then disassembles the world according to his code of honour. But what is the real message here? Is Don Quixote Spain in its colonial glory, recklessly challenging everyone who dares to question its supremacy as a world power, a reputation gained by edifying abstract concepts such as honour and moral codes, especially when enforced on some hapless natives in the New World? Is Sancho Panza Portugal, a former power now reduced to a shadow of Spanish glory, forever destined to dream of its own islands off the Spanish Main?

For any real classic, there are as many interpretations as there are readers and this book is no different. Panza’s wisdom when thrust into the role of governor is all the more remarkable for his buffoonery in the preceding hundreds of pages. Quixote’s self-deprecation is evident as he alternately derides and praises the author of his histories. Quixote is sane in all matters save that of chivalry, while Panza is stupid while in the company of his master but a veritable Solomon on his own. Each man has contradictions built into his very fabric, just like all of us. Finally, before death, Quixote gains lucidity and renounces his romantic madness, preferring to die as the man he once was.

What can I say? If you read this in its abridged form as a child, like me, but never read the unabridged, 1000+ page novel, you need to remedy matters immediately and read this book as soon as you can. You will not be disappointed with this tome, the “greatest book of all time”, according to the Nobel Committee.

ISBN: 978-0-014-044909-9

E. M. Forster is good at writing about the peccadilloes of the British classes. In A Room with a View, we see romantic interest clash with respectability in the upper classes as they vacation in the south of Europe. Lucy is being courted by Cecil, who is just the kind of toff mothers approve of but peers despise. Despite her misgivings she gives in to his proposal of marriage, only to realize that she is in love with the man she met while vacationing in Florence. The book has a happy ending and amor vincit omnia, which makes it one of the more romantic and positive of Forster’s works.

Forster writes in his dry style, making us privy to many small innuendoes that change the lives of people. A forelock brushed away, a hasty exclamation, an uninvited guest, these are the nuances that are present in the book and accessible to the careful reader. Final verdict: Not as sterling as some of his other work, but a good read nonetheless.

ISBN: 0-14-118329-2

E. M. Forster dissects social attitudes prevalent in the Raj during the glory days of Empire. Not the liberal attitudes of London, but the social attitudes present in far-flung colonial outposts where the iron fist must prevail. Adela Quested journeys to India to marry the magistrate of a small Indian town, a certain Ronny Heaslop. She wonders what it would be like to see the real India and Indians but the British are adamant about the colour bar, refusing to mix with the Indians socially unless absolutely necessary. Adela, of course, refuses to obey and visits the Marabar caves, a tourist attraction just outside the city. A panic attack ensues and the Indian guide, Dr. Aziz is accused of raping the Englishwoman.

Dr. Aziz is eventually acquitted but is embittered by the automatic assumption of guilt on his behalf. Adela returns to England in shame and the British try to bury the incident as a shameful episode best forgotten quickly. Forster’s prose is perfect in creating the atmosphere that surrounds such a situation. With a minimum of fuss and without a wasted word, he conveys emotions precisely and meaningfully with the right word in the right place. Contrast “muddle” with “mess”, for example and you have a glimpse of the precision that marks Forster’s oeuvre.

All in all, a great book, one that should be enjoyed thoroughly.

Robertson Davies never ceases to charm and intrigue and The Manticore adds to his substantive oeuvre. David Staunton journeys to Switzerland to undergo psychoanalysis in the place it sprung from, in order to rest the turmoil in his mind caused by the death of his father. His father, wealthy industrialist Boyd Staunton is found dead in a car with a stone in his mouth. This is unsettling enough for anyone, but especially for David, who has long doubted his patriarchal lineage, thanks to his sister. As David undergoes Jungian analysis he encounters a manticore, a mythical figure with the head of a man, the body of a lion and a tail with a spear at its end. But what does this mean? Does psychoanalysis even make sense or is it just hocus pocus like aurae and energy fields?

Staunton, a man with a rigorous mental method for establishing veracity, decides to believe in the process and bares his soul to his psychoanalyst, in the process falling in love with her. Though such a turn is what you expect in such a situation, Davies prevents it from descending into the tawdry by having the doctor profess that this is a natural occurrence with all her patients. In the end, it is a speluncar awakening that awaits David, as he finds it with a lady who closely resembles the Cro-Magnons that once painted on those walls.

Verdict: another great book by Davies, a window into the soul of an Ontarian who’s a true cosmopolitan.

ISBN: 0-14-305139-3

Cousin Bette is a book that reads like an eighteenth-century soap opera about conniving ladies who simply must climb every rung there is to be climbed. This is a tale of French concupiscence and chicanery, one that reads like a Machiavellian manual for social climbing. Cousin Bette, envious of the beauty and romance in the lives of her familial counterparts finds herself a poor Polish count to save. But the family’s reach is long and she loses her beau to her cousin, she with the greater beauty and charm. This sets off Cousin Bette, who begins plotting to destroy the entire family through her machinations.

Balzac’s prose is vivid and draws attention to the minor details that make prose believable. The larceny of age, the pomposity of doddering old men trying to impress a young mistress half their age, the confidence of suitors and the hauteur of the upper classes, all these are brought to life by Balzac’s lucid prose. Touted as Balzac’s last great work before his death, Cousin Bette is a good addition to your bibliotheque.

ISBN: 978-0-014-044160-4

This volume is a handy addition to those two tales that have immortalized Jack London: The Call of the Wild and White Fang. London revisits that hardy frontier, the Klondike, during the years of the Gold Rush. This is a collection of short stories with several characters showing up in more than one tale. They are tales that make you want to gaze into the fire and imagine the life out here on this deadly frontier, where a flask of rum can mean the difference between life and death. The Son of the Wolf shows us how love can transcend ethnic barriers, especially at gunpoint. In a Far Country is brilliant in its depiction of slow-rising madness among tenderfeet who have been voted off the sled trail. There is no mercy in the cold silence of the North, except Death. Where the Trail Forks shows us the deadly consequences of having a conscience in the wild. How many innocents pay for your heroic ideals?

Keesh, the son of Keesh shows us how far a man can be goaded to throw off the precepts of an alien culture and prove his manhood in his own, with horrifying ramifications. The League of the Old Men is about an old man with nothing to lose, who convinces other geriatrics that murderous sprees might go a small way towards restoring the balance of power on this continent. Bâtard is probably the best story of the set, about a pup who knows no love, but knows when to kill, in the most malignant way with impeccable timing. Love of Life recounts just how fragile life is, when you sprain your ankle and you are miles from the nearest settlement and then realize you are being stalked by a wolf. Finally, we round this set of adventure stories off with To Build a Fire, where London shows us how fatal it is to walk alone in -75 degree weather. The price paid for such a mistake is the ultimate one, as always.

London is superb in these stories and paints a realistic picture of a world gone by.

ISBN: 978-0-375-75685-6

Herodotus‘ tome is the volume that all future works of history are judged by. Herodotus leads us on a merry romp through the history of his time, against the backdrop of the Helleno-Persian wars. We see the rise and fall of Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius and finally Xerxes, on the Persian side of the conflict. The Greeks had Croesus and a smattering of kings ending with the famous Leonidas who led the 300 to glorious defeat at Thermopylae. The big wars aside, there are plenty of other characters whose tales will make you cringe, splattered with gore and laden with brutality as they are.

On the way, Herodotus tells us about Egypt, Libya, Scythia, India and other domains of his time. His colourful depictions are restrained by the disclaimer that he’s merely the chronicler, and is simply relating what he’s heard from the inhabitants of those countries. This lets him inject a good deal of local folklore into history, something that a much more rigorous modern historian would frown upon.

All in all, a classic you must read, by the father of history.

ISBN: 978-0-14-044908-2