Now If Only My Eyelids Would Stay Up...

The cats were more than usually obnoxious and unsettled last night. So there was not a lot of sleep going on chez Les Pointy Sticks.

Currently Reading

I guess, since I am on page 107, I have to admit that I am reading Ian Sansom's The Case of the Missing Books (which is billed as "A Mobile Library Mystery" - which I suppose means that there will be more of them). (Oh, look...there already is.)

It purports to be a comic mystery about Israel Armstrong, half Irish-half Jewish, who has come to Tumdrum to be the librarian, only to discover that the library is closed and that he will actually be in charge of (and driving) the mobile library. As soon as they find it, that is. And as soon as he recovers all the library's books from their various hiding places.

And it's mildy amusing, I suppose, though there is, so far, a little too much reliance on chicken shit as a comedic device. I'm sure chicken shit is a riot, but after about the sixth mention of it, it's about as funny as the Three Stooges. As is getting humorously sprayed by a hose and having one's pants set on fire.

And it's rather laborously written...an example:

Then he rubbed his eyes and glanced around and behind him, to see if it was for real, this grim, godforsaken place, to see if he'd made some terrible, simple, idiotic mistake, had come to the wrong library maybe, or the wrong town, too tired after his long journey to be able to see that people were in fact flocking into some secret, fabulous library entrance, some little tunnel or nook, some rabbity-hole known only to the locals.

They were not.

No one was approaching with armfuls of books or tickets in their hands; there were no sour and pear-shaped OAPs; no straggle-haired young mums at their wits' end with smeary, miserable children dragging along for story-time; no one clutching important-looking unimportant documents to be photocopied in triplicate for their solicitor or the DSS; no wrinkled, stubby, fragrant winos; no schoolkids half-heartedly working on projects about ancient civilizations on the second World War or the processes of human digestion. No madmen. No one. None of them. The building was empty. The carpark was deserted. The library was shut.

Gee, do you think maybe the library was closed?

But you know, I've now invested 107 pages worth of my time. I guess I'll be sticking it out until the bitter end, being one who has a difficult time abandoning books mid-stream. But boy, I wish I could stay awake!