Robert Graves

I have finished my assignment, which is good, and watched a total of 25 episodes of Full Metal Alchemist, which is even better (sleep, on the other hand, has been very low on the priority scale). I was slightly disturbed when I rang the bookshop today to see if they had the next DVDs in, and they said, "Is that [my name]?" before I'd even specified the DVD. The assistant assures me that this is because "ladies don't order DVDs, just the blokes", which possibly disturbs me even further, but I will at least wait until I've managed to get all the DVDs before grappling with the vexed issue of gender and assumptions about appropriate viewing material.

I thrust this book on someone else as soon as I'd finished it, so this is from memory, but the important thing is that it's very, very good. Books like this restore my faith in reading, which can get a little shaken when I stand in a mainstream bookstore and stare at the thousands of bad books there are out there. If something as good as this can just exist for over seventy years before I find it, then what else is out there?

( Goodbye to all that. Robert Graves. )