Reading Update

OK, back to real life today -- even though I'm not sure I have much to tell you about the past few days. We'll return to the story of our Australia heroines when I post more of the pictures to Flickr, but for now, let's let them recuperate from their travels.

The day before yesterday I was walking to work when I saw a flash of bright color across Finchley Road -- a busy six-lane traffic artery that carries lots of cars and buses down into Marylebone and Westminster. I wanted to look more closely, but Finchley is not a road that anyone can readily cross because of all the congestion. So I walked to an underpass -- here known as a "subway," not to be confused with the subway in New York City, which is a train -- and used that to cross under the street.

And here's what I found, sitting on the windowsill of a closed shop. Dropped from a baby stroller, perhaps? Anyway it disappeared by the time I walked home so either its owner found it again or someone adopted it.

I have made virtually no headway in "The Old Curiosity Shop," which is so far rather plotless, and I'm about 250 pages in. I just haven't had the time to pick up a book and read. I used to read at my desk when I had downtime, which seemed especially justifiable if I was reading a library book, but my current supervisor has put a stop to that. So much for modeling the behavior we'd like to see in our students.

I should do it anyway. What are they going to do, fire me?

"Plotless" may be too strong a word -- "Curiosity Shop" has a plot, but directionless is a better way to describe it. It's just Little Nell and her gambling-addicted grandfather wandering, encountering various characters, pursued by the malevolent Quilp. I'm making it sound like there's more dramatic tension than there actually is, though I'd probably feel it more if I could read it more regularly. I think I'll have time this weekend.

I won't be reading these, that's for sure! I saw this book display in the window of a shop on Finchley Road. Three for £7.50! A bargain, if you don't mind the nightmares.

Another thing I haven't been able to read lately is The New Yorker. It's partly because of time, but I've also temporarily lost the will. Maybe it's because with Trump president, I find any political news so soul-sucking. I usually pass on my New Yorkers to a guy at work, and he asked me the other day why the flow had stopped. I confessed that they're all stacked up on my end table and I can't quite bring myself to pick them up. I took them all to him yesterday, unread by me.