(Mind, yesterday evening I walked out in the pale blue pre-sunset and had a flashback to, I think, November of 1964: Queen's Park in fading sun, covered with fallen leaves.)
2. The things people use for bookmarks. The forgettable Caitlin Kittredge I'm reading has someone's hand-drawn half-done sudoku puzzle. White is for Witching had a pack of condoms, fortunately empty.
3. Look, Fiesta Farms. If you're charging me $1.99 a pound for kabocha squash, could you please give me kabocha squash? Here is what kabocha is not: pale yellow, watery, and tasteless. Here is what kabocha is: orange, solid, and sweet. Why you call *that* buttercup squash I could never tell why.
4. Forging on with My Name is Red, heart sinking ever lower. He's one of *those* writers. Calvino and Borges and their imitators. Clever clever chappie introducing what sounds like clever clever conceits that in the end make no sense to me. Much less here than meets the eye, is the feeling I'm getting. And not nearly enough sensaplace.
5. Also dragging feet on my other two books (the Kittredge, different series from the earlier one I read, but identical snarly heroine and macho love-interest, and the Oyeyemi, which is signalling All Will End Badly.) Kind of want to have another crack at The Silmarillion, though if I do I'm sure Kittredge and Oyeyemi will at once appear irresistible. Tolkien's Deep Time gives me the heebie-jeebies: there's just so *much* of it, and with the further antsiness of 'I'm just calling him Sam in English but his real name is Banazîr Galbasi.' To me there's quite a difference between Samwise and Banazir, even if Tolkien didn't think so.
