Bookish

I finally finished reading Hokkaido Highway Blues. It was a long book, but I guess it couldn't have been edited down much because Japan is a long country, and if you're going to hitch from one end to the other you can't really leave any parts out. Although I'm sure there were a few parts the writer would have liked to forget altogether. It was an entertaining yet sad book, the author's grim outlook seemed to sour the entire excursion. The writer could never shake his feelings of loneliness, which he seemed to feel was somehow caused by Japan's culture and its attitude towards outsiders, instead of acknowledging that travelling alone is an inherently lonely business. I would still recommend the book, as it contains interesting facts about Japanese culture, history and geography, but I would only recommend it to people who don't get turned off by a curmudgeon of a host. The book can be genuinely laugh out loud funny at times too, which makes up for its otherwise sour tone.

So now I have picked up two little novels, Hitting the Groove by Phil Hogan and the The Restraint of Beasts by Magnus Mills. I inherited both of these from Christian, since he abandoned his post in London and hightailed it back to the best place on earth. I say this because I don't think I would have necessarily chosen these titles from a shop. So far "beasts" is hilarious and the other is boringly London and English centric, its like watching a combination of that horrible BBC show "the office", with a few Nick Hornby cliché's thrown in, along with a hugh grant movie or two. The last thing I want to read is something that pats me on the back for being a Londoner. I will finish it anyway, just out of some kind of spite.

I am trying to get together a reading group, but so far I only have one other person interested. (yay, this one person! If you're reading this, You rock!) I've never been involved with a reading group before. I don't really know what you are supposed to do, other than read the book and show up once a week and drink tea or wine or whatever. I am starting with William Gibson's new novel Pattern Recognition, because I want to read it, and I figured it might be something a few other people would be interested in as well. I figured I could find people on the new *London* Craigslist, but so far the list has been awash with people from SF looking for someone to show them around town on their vacation.

Over the years Craigslist was a humongous help to me living in San Francisco. I found all of my jobs on it, and all of my freelance jobs as well. I sold tons of stuff through it too. I have this bad feeling that it won't be embraced here at all. For one thing I have yet to encounter any kind of true online community like there is in SF in London, or in the UK in general. There are a few "blogs" here and there, but those are generally not community oriented, (the very opposite actually, blogs are places were single personalities go to spew their own individuality) people are tied to more traditional forms of community, more traditional media. There will always be exceptions of course, you can find computer geek type of people in any area, but the embracing of online stuff just hasn't hit the general populace. I wish Craigslist would prove me wrong with this, I really do.

I better get up and take the dog out. Today I look forward to drinking lots of coffee, watching the latest pirated episode of 24 (President Palmer better be vindicated!), running a few miles and maybe mopping the kitchen floor. (such a charmed life!) I must also get around to updating the links on this page.