Read. Watch. Listen. introduces you to the personal side of our faculty, staff and alumni. Participants are asked to answer three simple questions about their reading, viewing and listening habits – what one book or newspaper/magazine article is grabbing your attention; what one movie or television show has caught your eye; and what album/song, podcast or radio show are you lending an ear to.
Liz Sutherland is a GIS Technical Specialist in the Map & Data Centre.
Today, she takes a turn on Read. Watch. Listen.
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Having recently started a part-time graduate degree on top of working full-time (with a couple part-time jobs), I’ve ‘read, watched and listened’ to a lot less than I used to. This means that I try to think more about my choices, because I can’t read everything anymore. It’s incredibly important, no matter how busy I am, to take time to do something that takes my mind off work, school, life and all the messy stuff in between.
Read.
In light of the recent G.O.A.T Jeopardy! tournament, and my general interest in trivia and geography, I’ve picked up (again) the book Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks, written by none other than THE Ken Jennings.
His witty, conversational writing style is perfect for the casual perusal or for the quick digestion. A book not just for the geography obsessive, but for anybody keen to learn more about the people who have: visited every country in the world; climbed every continents tallest mountains; or memorized every capital by age 11.
The book also taught me that there was at least one other person (Ken Jennings) that slept with an atlas under his pillow. This types of books always help me re-invigorate my passion for GIS and digital mapping to work on projects such as the new London Air Photo App.
Watch.
I may have only started watching the series Safe because it starred Michael C. Hall. Which in turn caused the Netflix algorithm to recommend The Stranger to me a couple weeks ago. Both series were developed by mystery novelist Harlan Coben and left me asking, at the end of every single episode “What the heck is going on?”
Listen.
I love seeing how the bands I love develop from album to album, and how their sound and style matures. Take my favourite band Pearl Jam as an example.
The first single off their new album Gigaton, called Dance of the Clairvoyants, is different, harder-hitter, more exciting, and nostalgic all at once. They’ve managed to create something new without straying too far away from the grunge we fell in love with. Not to mention the music video is a montage of breathtaking landscapes and intense weather events – a geographer’s dream.
The cherry on top is that new PJ means new tour dates (finally!). I can’t wait to listen to the whole album live!
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If you have a suggestion for someone you would like to see in Read. Watch. Listen., or would like to participate yourself, drop a line to inside.western@uwo.ca.
