My Hot, Stinging Brain!

I am up to my eyeballs in work - hard work. I haven't had to use the ol' bean this much for a long time. My last job made the think muscle all flabby. I am glad of the new challenge but it can be a slog!

Speaking of slogs, I finished Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell this past week. It took me nearly two months to get through it. The story is very charming but proceeds at a glacial pace. A plot takes shape only in the last two hundred pages. I recommend this book only to those of you who pine for a novel written in a nineteenth century style and have a lot of spare time on your hands.

In contrast, I blew through The Light in the Forest, a young adult novel about a boy raised by Indians who finds himself back in white society. The prose is simple but evocative, the plot is straight forward. I highly recommend the story to any ten year-old kid.

I have picked up David Liss' A Conspiracy of Paper for those spare moments during the holidays. It is a historical novel concerning the nascent stock market in England during the 18th century.

Speaking of kids, I am also chewing up my spare time playing World of Warcraft. My gnome mage wanders a fantasy realm righting wrongs, concocting rough dynamite and developing the skills necessary to build a mechanical squirrel. What fun!