Brief re-encounters. And a great book.

Break, /breik/, English noun, singular; this is what happens when Blogging fangirls take some time off their Blog to induldge in other activities, like neglected university stuff, homework, term papers and copying lecture notes from genuinely good study friends. 'Nuff said. I've been so busy these days, you wouldn't imagine, and most of the business is purely self-inflicted. Had a long and lovely illness-affected, slack, last week and had to catch up a bit in the latter days - and hence, little blog-writing. In fact, little non-scholarly writing at all. No films, no late night music and red wine joy, no fiction books, just working. Well, not really. But pretty close. Indeed, I am a bit upset about the whole situation. I like to be able to organize my duties in a manner that allows a moment's relaxation now and then. The possibility to treat myself to a rest and an escape from reality. Then again, it should feel more right and well-earnt, when such a treat follows after a tightly scheduled week with inhumane lots of obligations. Anyways, (and, yes, I'm sure that fact is true for me as well) apart from the obvious devotedness, what's been going on in my life lately? Let's do a short round of summing up here: Monday; lectures, lunches and revising philosophy, plus something else and quite important, which I will come back to in another post, Tuesday; watching "Heroes", which was extremely exciting and beginning the builing-up to the imminent appearance of a certain 9th Doc, visiting auntie and having a gourmet dinner of outer worldly dimensions, lovely, working even more, Wednesday; lectures and seminars, working, having lunch with friends, eating world's greatest chocolate cake (the doubledecker), doing homework, visiting grandparents, lovely, reading a bit, and today; well, I just got out of bed. Admittedly. Tired as an old dog, sleeping in 'till ten, not fulfilling commitments which I had intended and imposed upon myself that I should be done with by noon. I started writing this instead. Which, all in all, is a good thing - in my opinion. And yes, apart from all the brief and rather dull events of my rather normal, not-so-exciting everyday life, I eventually managed to commence a new novel of long-awaited proportions; Sue Monk Kidd's wonderful The Mermaid Chair; in Norwegian, though, but still as spectacularly superb as the first novel of hers which I instantly fell in love with; Secret life of bees. I never learn my lesson though, and taking to read the first chapters of a Kidd book before going to bed is never a good idea. Simply because I can't stop. That being said, I read the whole SLoB in one evening, accompanied by loads of snacks and a bottle of wine, some Saturday quite a while ago, which is one of my favourite ways of spending a weekend afternoon, solely in the company of myself although transported to a universe of fictional friends, and I have been longing to get my hands on the sequel for ages. No, it isn't a real sequel, it's a very different kind of story, but it offers many of the same themes, characters and twists - and the atmosphere is, fortunately, of a similar kind. I adore the woman's style of writing; these illustrious landscapes, lands and houses she depicts so acutely. With such tenderness and warmth, you can almost feel the sun of the Californian lowlands on your skin and hear the seagulls cry over the sound of the flickering pages turning. Will write more about this later on, when I've finished more chapters, but what I can say after satying up way to late and racing through the firsty 100 pages, is that the novel is an excellent story, excellently written with an excellent heroine - and I need to get hold of her other works ASAP. Highly recommended to everyone who likes a good read, albeit at times when they have the opportunity of setting aside an unlimited amount of hours to the task, and shouldn't be doing something else entirely.