Happy February 29th, everyone! It's a day that comes just once every four years, so I hope you make the best of it. I, for once, rose early and raring to go, ready to seize the day, blaze new trails, explore the undiscovered country. Then I looked out the window and saw that even the sun had decided to sleep in, so I did the same.
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| Life among the clouds. |
It is seriously foggy today, and hovering in the mid-fifties. Actually, it has been rainy and gray for a couple weeks now. The humidity is so bad that condensation has been forming on the walls, floor, and ceiling. My laundry refuses to dry and smells musty when it does. Our wooden spoon in the kitchen bloomed green mold before it could dry. Yesterday I bough a bunch of dehumidifiers (little plastic boxes with a layer of water-absorbing chemicals) and seeded them around the apartment. Hopefully that will help.
So all in all, I'm not exactly inspired to leave the apartment. Plus, I have a lot of incentive to stay in. Yesterday I restocked on milk and tea, so I'm set for an endless supply of cocoa, tea, and milk tea. Best of all, there's a pile of new reading material!
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| Books! Books! Books! |
I mentioned in last week's post that I had gotten some new books while in Hong Kong. They are
Songs of Love and Death,
The Mao Case, and
February Flowers. The latter two I got at the
Book Attic, a second-hand bookshop, which took a little effort to find, but was worth it to get books a little closer to their actual cover price (as about to 33%-50% more). I've read another book by Qiu Xiaolong,
A Loyal Character Dancer, which I got in a library discard sale... Bath's, I think, a couple of years ago. They are police procedural mysteries set in modern Shanghai.
February Flowers was rather an impulse purchase. Considering it's February and the book is set in modern Guangzhou, I couldn't resist. It seems to be a memoir/fiction based on reality. I'll tell you when I get there.
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| February flowers, on a sunny dry day (come back, I miss you) |
I started with
Songs of Love and Death because it is a book of short stories and I cannot resist a short story. There's something about the idea that you can start and finish a whole, complete work in one go, without kicking yourself for accidentally staying up until 3am reading (that's what happens when you go "well, just one more short story" a few too many times). Anyway, I'm 384 pages in, so clearly I'm enjoying it. Except last night, I read one story before bed. Going in to it, I was thrilled. Post-apocalypse! Zombies! Vampires! Farming communities! A no-nonsense, kick-ass female protagonist with a shotgun! Everything was going so well, too, until we got to the sentient bloodthirsty trees. You think I'm kidding, don't you.
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| TREES! my zombie survival plan now has a "Zombie Trees" contingency |
Be prepared, friends. The Great North Woods might be out to get you.
It's really nice to have books to read. I do a lot of reading on the internet, and I do love the available variety, endless supply, and instantaneous gratification. But, there is just something immeasurably wonderful about the smell of a paperback, or the crack of a hardcover's spine being opened for the first time. I like to look at the cover art. I like to be able to fling my book across the room if it makes me angry or otherwise overly emotional. I like to leave them lying around so that others can discover them serendipitously. Now, I've been thinking about eReaders and I know a lot of people who have them and are very happy with them. I don't know. Then where would I put my cool new bookmark?
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| Bookmarks make me feel smart. Why is that? |
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