Poetry Day/World No Tobacco Day
2008-05-31 @ 7:21 p.m.

Have booked a return ticket for after my first term, even before booking the ticket to get to the UK in the first place. Kind of weird, I know, but hey, why pass up a cheap flight? Am going to be flying with Mel, who helpfully did the booking. Went to the library in Queenstown to get that introductory book on Middle English. Will try to read it at some point in the next week, especially since I've got about two weeks at a stretch this month when I won't have to work at all. Have gone back to reading Ted Dekker's Black, which is another of those books that's begging to be made into a blockbuster. Then again, the repeated transitioning from one reality to another might be a bit tricky. A cool way to work around that would be to have both storylines play out simultaneously on a split screen. Would make for pretty confusing viewing though, and the plot, believe it or not, actually does have some semblance of linearity, despite hopping back and forth in time. Am also still in the midst of The Breadmaker's Carnival, but that novel is starting to feel a bit tedious. I appreciate the constant invoking of food symbols, and the novel is not without its moments of levity, but right now, halfway through, I'm at a lost as to say where exactly the novel is going. Doesn't help that each chapter presents a different character's narrative thread, with the briefest of interconnections between them all. Will say more about it when I've finished it, as I may have cause to change my mind about the novel then. If not, this is one novel that would have fared better as a short story. Indeed, so far, it feels a lot more like a collection of short stories, whose characters make cameo appearances in each other's tales. Sort of like Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio.