The last three days have been exceptionally busy ones in terms of work. (Exceptionally busy = impossible, in teacher-speak.) Simply keeping going and hoping to get through to the end of the day and sleep has been the order of things. But I did manage to finish Joan Aiken's terrifically entertaining Night Birds on Nantucket, and I'm rather pleased with myself for having the good sense to do so. I claim good sense as I've tended in the past to shut myself off from sustained reading when work gets unbearably tough on the grounds that there's no time for it, but by easing up on filling time by mulling over matters of concern at the workplace it's possible to hack out an hour here and there, and that's all you need to find the time to make real progress in fairly short texts.
The magic of Aiken's children's fiction guarantees a break from the tedium of earning a living, and life on board the Sarah Casket followed by a sojourn in Nantucket in the delightful company of the feisty Dido Twite (surely a precursor of Pullman's Lyra) proved peculiarly relaxing. In terms of plot I can't claim the novel was particularly gripping (you just can't take any of the action particularly seriously, perhaps the reason why Aiken never achieved real fame for her work in the genre) but that's not really the point. The satisfaction lies in character, situation, atmosphere, the oddly poetic quality of the splendidly mangled dialogue. And another layer of enjoyment in Night Birds lies in the sly parody of Melville's Moby Dick.
Unfortunately I've run out of children's books (I brought Night Birds back from KL, where I've still got a few titles to get through) and it looks like I'll have to address myself to something a bit more worthy in terms of so-called literary merit. It seems the vacation is over.
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