camwyn | Nov. 6th, 2003

Went poring through one of the used bookstores here in SD the other night. No Biggles books, alas. This is the States. Bought two books anyway. One of them was The Grey King, by Susan Cooper. Out of the five The Dark is Rising books, that was the one I've read least often; in fact, it was the one I read last. (The well-meaning nun who gave me The Belgariad box set when I was in fourth grade, Dune when I was in fifth, and The Mists of Avalon when I was in sixth bought me Silver on the Tree as a gift... but none of the others, so I had to read what I could find in whatever order I found them.)

The other one? Courtship, Love and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century English Canada, by Peter Ward, a professor in the University of British Columbia's history department.

I started reading it while I was waiting for my appetizer (tofu tod) to arrive at the eeeebitty Thai restaurant I found for dinner last night. I'm only up to page sixty, but when you're trying to eat a really nice beef masaman curry and jasmine rice and, yes, the fried tofu with the spicy sweet-and-sour peanutty dipping sauce, that slows you down. So far it's been rather fascinating. I'm going to have to tweak a few things in Saul Preston's background, but mostly they're relatively minor. The biggest thing I need to do is explain his divorce, as I wasn't aware that up until quite recently indeed divorces had to be granted by Parliament... I think I can manage that, though.

As I said, a bit of a hopeless case, me. Oh well. Tonight is going to involve Bubba Ho-Tep if I can manage it at all, and then when I get home from the movie I am going to do my every-two-days duty by the November bargain.