For my lovely commenter:
On Books:
I've just finished reading Ten Thousand Lovers by Edeet Ravel and enjoyed it very much. The style is lovely and understated, and the Jewish-Palestinian conflict in Israel is described without rhetoric or dramatics. The story is simple but hard-hitting, and it contains bonus discussions of words and origins of words.
Currently reading Little Children by Tom Perrotta, which is all kinds of sad and grotesque and sublime and gripping. Since I've been leaning towards the slightly mocking and grotesque in my own tastes I've appreciated Perrotta's flawed, hopeful characters. He writes like a man in the midst of a Saturn transit, beautifully, but ultimately about facing up to the consequences of one's actions and growing the hell up.
Tried reading Until I Find You by John Irving, but never really got into it and ultimately abandoned it on the bedside table to be perused at those times when I've read everything else in the house. At the best of times I struggle with Irving (exception - The Cider House Rules); his characters and his style really wind me up (e.g. I kept wanting to punch Owen Meany in the mouth; similarly to how the only redeamable feature of Ana Karenina for me was when she chucks herslef under the train) perhaps because it is too grotesque somehow, too raw, the wrong sort of bizzarre (as opposed to the right sort of bizzarre of magical realism).
About to start The Kite Runner which everyone and their grandmother has reccomended.
On Cats:
I try not to talk too much about my cats so as not to quite reveal the degree of my obsession, but I've been dying to do it, so now I can pretend to do it because the internets want to know and not because I'm sick with love and devotion.
Sliding Slope to Being That Old Lady Presents A Hypnosis in Three Acts starring First Cat (Three thousand priors for solicitation) and Small Cat (12% Fluff, 88% Maniac, 60% RDA of cute)
ACT 1 [Lights up; Scene Left A Young Male is about to expose his privates in search of sensual gratification)
First Cat: Yo , stroke my belly! Stroke my belly I said! For I expose myself to you, because I'm A Big Whore.
ACT 2 [Lights Up; From Stage Right Small Cat trots up In The Mood For Love]
Small Cat: I am Little. And Fluffy. Admit it, my tail is the fluffiest thing you have ever seen. I could be a duster to the Queen. Do not resist me. Touch the Fluffy, Stroke the Fluffy. That Thing You Were Doing On the Computer is Uninmportant. Look into my eyes. Succumb to the Love. Don't struggle. Because dude, seriously, I.Am.That.Soft. I am soft as midnight whispers, I am fluffy like the featheriest dream of God.
Run your fingers underneath my chin, across my silky little ears. Touch my tail. Just. Touch. It.
Let us fall into one another's arms and drink Baileys.
ACT 3 - All three lie in bed watching television. The shadow in the corner of Nina's mouth suggests ice cream.