Sleep Spent

Months ago, I was on a reading binge. Ringworld, The Price of Loyalty, Snowcrash: I was on a roll.

Then I ran into the verbose baroque-itude that is The Count of Monte Cristo and stalled for nearly two months. In the meantime, I kept buying books and adding them to my To Read shelf, which is now full to bursting.

Instead of trying to force myself to read anymore of the wretched Count, I decided to cut my losses and move on. So on the plane I began Me Talk Pretty One Day, which didn’t last me three days. (Brilliant collection, by the way. David Sedaris is hilarious.) Having anticipated this, I was prepared with Garrison Keillor’s newest novel, Love Me. This was funny as well, but not as much. It was meant to be a more wholesome entertainment, I think. (Which is odd, because the man talks about sex literally every 10 pages.)

That book was good, but it was short too. I finished it today and would have been in trouble if I didn’t have this incredible book buying habit. I entered this country with three books, one of which was a gift. I’m going to leave it with six.

One of the books I just purchased is Northern Lights (The Golden Compass for you Americans), the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy. Apparently this series started in 1995 (!!), but I’ve only just heard about it this year.

This novel is immediately engrossing. I’m 80 pages into it and I can’t put it down.

Even better, I’m learning words and history (most of it from my own explorations on the side with Wikipedia). And best of all, it takes place in Oxford! (Well, some of it does, anyway.)

Somehow I’m going to have to stifle my excitement long enough to catch some rest, because tomorrow I’m up early to walk around in Soho. Catch you fools later.