Journal
I finished reading The Constant Gardener. I found myself getting impatient with this one, as it drags a bit around the halfway mark, and I suppose I have read too many John le Carré books in the past few years. I sniffed odds and ends of A Small Town in Germany, The Night Manager, Absolute Friends and The Mission Song (the last two having been published a bit later). Maybe I am being unfair.
I picked up some more books:
- H. B. Broome: Gunfighters
- Michael Cadnum: The Book of the Lion
- Lewis Carroll:
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
- Through the Looking-Glass
- Michael Crichton: Sphere
- Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol
- Jeff Kinney:
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck (#8)
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth (#5)
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Double Down (#11)
- Rudyard Kipling: The City of the Dreadful Night and Other Stories
- Louis L'Amour:
- Lando
- Mustang Man
- The Quick and the Dead
- The Sackett Brand
- Sackett's Land
- John le Carré: The Naive and Sentimental Lover
- Arthur Machen: The Great God Pan & Other Classic Horror Stories
- Michael MacKenzie: Waves of Recollections
- Bernice Morgan: Random Passage
- Mark Morris: The Deluge
- T. Gilbert Pearson (Editor-in-Chief): Birds of America
- Stuart Ross: You Exist. Details Follow. (poetry)
- J. R. R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings (omnibus)
My box set of The Lord of the Rings is in poor condition, so I'm glad I came across an omnibus. I think I mistook Diary of a Wimpy Kid for Adrian Mole. The guy who sold me Random Passage said that it's about Newfoundland and that he loves Newfoundland; I appreciate his enthusiasm.
If the year were, say, 2015, I would agree that this is getting out of hand. Right now, second hand books from thrift stores and yard sales are quite affordable when compared to, well, everything else, and I am comforted by the thought of having a stockpile of them to work through.
Speaking of costs: I have had two SSDs of the same make and model die on me this year. The first time, I sent it in for warranty support, and because the service centre was in California and That Guy delights in antagonizing Canada, it cost more than it should have. When the second drive broke, I just threw it in the to-be-recycled pile, and resolved to never, ever buy from that brand again.