Poor Norway! God watch over and comfort them. I just don't understand the mentality that allows people to feel as though they are justified in killing innocent, unsuspecting people. It's like a giant toddler-ish temper tantrum. "I'm upset so I'm going to hurt you." And what does it truly accomplish? Nothing good for anyone, not even the people who did it. It's just cruel lashing out.
The poor students and faculty where I work! Many of them seem to be from areas that don't get this sort of humidity. At least that's what they tell me. I'm basically stuck indoors for most of the day until 6:00 so I feel no need to complain. The air outside is smothering though; this is the only part I hate about summer. I love catching fireflies and the sound of cicadas and the green tunnel of the parkway near the river but the humidity...the humidity that fogs up my glasses as soon as I step outside and sucks the breath out of me when I get in my overheated car, that is something I could do without.
Work has mainly consisted of helping students with APA format and finding references and helping with computers and the copier/printer. Oh, and putting call numbers on books and cataloging. A lot of that. I got two orders of books in this week. I'm trying to build a slightly more diverse collection than just textbooks. The director said the acid-base, fluids, electrolytes book I asked for was too complicated for the students. I had thought that the reviews made it sounds like a good bet but even so that is why I sent the list to her and the Director of Education asking them for approval! They're the nurse and doctor! Anyway, I'll tell her to send it back and choose one of the alternatives on that subject from the list of possibilities I compiled. I also need to find good English and computer texts.
I finished City of Tiny Lights. Eh. Conspiracy theories aren't really my thing. Nor the cynical reasoning behind the "twist" at the ending of the book. Tommy was active and interesting for the first half of the book and then got pretty ineffectual and downright stupid for the second. Of course he had been hit in the head. The book was all right. I'd read another of his.
Now I'm reading Carn by Patrick McCabe and why haven't I ever heard of this author before? This book is so poetic. I bought two of his books at the library sale for fifty cents. The story is set in the small town of Carn in Ireland during the 1960s. A returning native has used the business know-how he acquired in New York to turn the place prosperous. The story is partly about the changing place as it opens up to the world and the new era of Elvis, "longhairs", bikers, and cinema. The priest who used to terrify villagers is no longer in charge and commerce reigns. The main characters are a young woman who dreams of leaving Carn for London for rockers and mod styles, a woman who escaped the stifling clutch of the nun at the orphanage at 16 and has come back home from London now that she can no longer find work, and a young man who is just discovering that the world holds more than his one small town can contain. It's beautifully written.
I am also reading Chinese Letter by Svetislav Basara. It's a short novel where the protagonist, who is also ostensibly the author, comes across as incredibly emo and also quite insane. The "I wish I didn't exist" mantra would be eye-rollingly annoying if it wasn't balanced out by his paranoia.
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