Arbor Day/Zipper Day/Orthodox Holy Friday
2005-04-29 @ 11:30 p.m.

Hope the Guitar people are having as much fun as I had at the Times warehouse sale. Bought 10 books for $40, which is remarkable when you consider that $40 gets only two freaking books at Borders or Kinokuniya. I only stopped at 10 because I ran out of money, and had to abandon books like Bitch Money and Spartan, among others. All the books I bought were published by Bloomsbury, which has become my next favourite publisher after Faber & Faber. For the benefit of Claudia, the books are:

Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Le Ton Beau De Marot by Douglas R. Hofstadter
Riddley Walker by Russell Hogan
Pilgerman by Russell Hogan
The Medusa Frequency by Russell Hogan
Amaryllis Night And Day by Russell Hogan
The Bat Tattoo by Russell Hogan
The Blackboard Jungle by Evan Hunter
Don Giovanna by Amanda Prantera
Lying Awake by Mark Salzman

Why the sudden preoccupation with Hogan, you might very well ask. The answer: I don't know. I bought all my books today based on their blurbs, and Hogan just struck me as being weird in a good way, like how I feel about Italo Calvino. Today, I finished reading Edward Albee's Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? and Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. The former reminds me of Pinter's The Lovers, an opinion that Thong shares, except that he hates Pinter whereas I'm quite keen on his work. The denouement in Albee's play is quite remarkable. The dramatisation during today's tutorial was not bad, with Dan being particularly exceptional as George. The others just didn't slip into their characters in the same way. As much as we volunteered them based on what they are like in real life, the characters aren't them, so there still needs to be a perceptible submerging of the real self beneath the fictional character. That's just my two cents' worth! As for Solaris, it was one of the most novel science fiction novels I've ever read, and probably ever will read. Surpassed all my expectations for a novel that has been adapted for film by Hollywood, starring George Clooney no less. Now I have to see the film, just to get a visual impression of the book.