Page Turners

Several things:

My friend/next door office neighbour left Friday for a 2-month hiatus from work. She was feted and wined and dined all week by friends here. She came into my office at the end of the day on Friday and said, "Here: you can look after this while I'm gone" and she gave me her desk calendar entitled George W. Bushisms: The Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President by Jacob Weisberg (not sure if that's a fake author's name or not - I didn't really know that calendars had authors but...the author's name seems apt). She gave me the box for the calendar too and said I should put the old pages into the box to reuse as scrap paper.

So for Friday May 12:
"One of my hardest parts of my job is to console the family members who have lost their life."
Saturday & Sunday May 13/14:
"So thank you for reminding me about the importance of being a good mom and a great volunteer as well."
Monday May 15:
"The best way to find these terrorists who hide in holes is to get people coming forth to describe the location of the hole, is to give clues and data."

(My only comment is that I'm really glad that no one is going around writing down everything I say.)

I don't know if I actually like this calendar. But it's a page turner...It's a ripper...

As is Ivanhoe. No wonder that guy spoke so highly of it...Indeed, it may be better than the Bible (at least in the sense that it's fast-paced and fairly predictable - I mean, I know who the Disinherited Knight really is, don't you?). I'm certainly getting through the book quickly. (And it's a good thing too since I just got my hold from the library. It's called Seven Types of Ambiguity by Eliot Perlman and it's a thicky - much larger than I expected it to be in these spare, ironic times - or maybe spare, ironic was so five-years ago - not sure). For now, though, Ivanhoe has everything: there are beautiful women (Rowena, Rebecca, Alicia - one to be crowned Queen of Love and Beauty), dangerous and mysterious knights, a 'pretender' to the throne, ethnic tensions (Norman, Saxon, Jewish), money, sport and horses. Not to mention, disguise. I wasn't particularly scared when Gurth had his 'nocturnal adventures' and "found himself in a deep lane, running between two banks overgrown with hazel and holly, while here and there a dwarf oak flung its arms altogether across the path". I knew he'd get captured by robbers. I knew the trees wouldn't talk. I hoped that he'd get to keep some of his money because he'd talked about 'buying his freedom' at the end of the previous chapter and I'm all for that. And he did despite the 'profession' of the robbers. I like how each chapter is a little nugget. By the end of the robbery chapter, Gurth, back with the Disinherited Knight, "laid himself across the opening of the tent, so that no one could enter without awakening him". On the facing page, it's already morning and the tournament is about to begin again.


No rest for the reader...