Not sure if you picked up in the news about a retired Manitoba Civil Servant named Jack Dagleish spilling the beans about his life. 

A brief synopsis.  He was an accountant working for the Manitoba government in 2000 and assigned to check out a Labour sponsored venture capital fund being promoted heavily by the Provincial NDP government.  He found major issues and advised a warning to his superiors.  The government did not want to hear it and as a whistle blower he was sent off to a non job expecting he would quit but he was 4 years from retirement so he hung on.     The fund later went bankrupt with major loss but by then, the government had forgotten him.

They could not fire him but he did not have any work.  So he openly brought in books to read all day.  Over the 4 years he read many books and made a list of the top 156 books he read while waiting to be retired.  The list  is wonderful.  He did not go trivial as he had all day to read them.  It is a list of great books to read.   I will not go into it the full list as you can download it from National Post, but here are a few of the highlights to give you a flavour.

The Maltese Falcon, Lord Jim, A Passage to India, Grapes of Wrath, Satanic Verses,  All the Kings Men, The Sound and the Fury,  Wuthering Heights, Schindler’s List, Of Mice and Men, Lord of the Rings, Don Quixote,  and his personal favourite, In Cold Blood

Many of them I have read but I love his taste.  One of the books is Deliverance by James Dickey which made a great movie.

I have a copy of his list and will try to read all that I have missed.  I also keep my own list of books, but I think his has more classic popular books.

Not sure if this is how I would have liked to have spent my last 4 years in office, but maybe better than some of the trips to China I had to endure and the endless meetings.