Listening to:

I blame foreign air for my body's malfunctions. Surely travel must have its downside, and perhaps this is it. My body is weary of having to adjust to foreign air, and so has decided to communicate its irritaion with my recent journeys. In phlegm form!

On the other hand, one of my favourite benefits of travelling (besides the obvious ones) is the opportunity to read for extended periods of time on trains, planes, in airports, and automobiles, entirely guilt-free. Not that I usually feel guilty about reading. I am a literature major, you know, and so naturally have to spend most of my time reading. But reading for pleasure, especially when I could be doing productive or creative and concrete things, does tend to make me feel self-indulgent. But anyway, enough digression. On to the books!

In Budapest, I sped my way through The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier And Clay, which was glorious in a way that cannot be properly described. I can only say that it made me desperately want to be either Jewish, a graphic artist, or a sexy moth-vixen-slash-librarian. Plus, it was good background information for my later trip to Prague*, where I switched gears and read The World According To Mimi Smartypants, mostly out of a need to communicate to her my appreciation for her writing, without actually emailing her or anything. That would just be scary. In any event, I'd read it all before, but I still enjoyed the reshuffling of entries. Plus, I found it fun to track the language (from "flat" to "appartment" to "house" in a matter of pages! oh my!), and the end was appropriately clinical and abrupt.

*In the Jewish quarter of Prague, they don't make nearly enough fuss over Rabbi Loew's golem. I thought that was the most exciting thing I had read about the city, and I was all a-tingle to learn more. But sadly, all that was available was a few postcards, and some shoddy miniature clay models. I understand that the story is apocryphal, but come on! It's the best story ever! Man of clay! Given life through the written word! Proto-robot! Come on now! That's awesome!

Next, on my trip to London, I read The Pleasure Of My Company, which I bought on a whim on the way to the train station. It reads mostly like a character study (which is appropriate, given the author's other work), but what I found most enjoyable was how endearing the narrator becomes, despite all his personality disorders. I must ask, though, does social awkwardness always have to have some childhood root? Did he really need to have been abused by his father to have ended up an OCD mess? I don't think that was entirely necessary, but I liked the novel nonetheless. B+.

Finally, during my trip to the Lake District and back here, I've been reading The Dante Club, which, I must say, is shaping up to be quite wonderful. I bought it in London because a friend was buying two books and needed a third to get a discount (oh, high Deity, whoever you might be, I would like to thank you for Waterstone's 3 for 2 sales; they truly are the light of my life) and it was the only book on my list that the shop both had, and had on offer, so it wasn't planned or anything. But this book, this wonderful, beautiful, yet completely disgusting and disturbing book, is a complete delight. It's a murder mystery, which is a genre I usually avoid as it is so easily made tedious and formulaic, but more in the vein of The Name Of The Rose than Ian Rankin. Plus, there's gratuitous Dante grossness (the best kind of grossness), famous pre-Civil War American poets (with whom, I must admit, I am not familiar), and loads of snooty one-liners. Hurrah for all scholars-turned-novelists!

Anyway, enough of the book-talk. I assure you all that I have not vanished, that my absence was due to being out of town for extended periods of time. Frightfully sorry, gentle readers. I shall be careful to inform you the next time I decide to disappear.

In closing, please allow me to squee with joy about the fact that my sibling will be visiting in three days. Three days! Squeeee!

Alright, away with you now. Shoo!

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