The Physical Possibility of Springtime in the Mind of the Chronically Pissed Off

In England, there were crocuses and tonnes of little erithacus rubeculae flirting around. The trees were getting that reddish look of being thinking about bursting into leaf, there was no snow, and the sun didn't go down insultingly early. Back in Brussels, and back to absolutely shitty atmospheric conditions, but I think you can take me off of seasonal-topping-myself watch this year. I know I'm calling it early but since it is hopefully the last nordic winter (off to the Antipodean Embassy in a mo to wrap up the documentation for the fucking-off-forever visa) I am pretty damn optimistic.

And it really must be said . . . I make fun of inselaffenanity all the time because it does drive me mental . . . but England makes a lovely break from Belgium. Belgium is just too damn crowded. And now that I'm middle class I eat way better in England than I can in Belgium - oh yes I can, wipe that smirk off your face. Unless you've got a root vegetable fetish Belgium gets old because there are, to quote the sole decent line in The Witches of Eastwick, 'not enough orientals.' The feed I had in London and Oxford over the past few days - oh god, the fucking dim sum alone - will morally sustain me until such a time as I finally leave this potato-heavy porkroast of a country behind forever.

Read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on the way back at Rodelinda's suggestion. Maybe I just don't read enough modern thrillers or detective novels or something so I don't understand how relatively good it is - and I assume it is relatively awesome judging by the amount of fuss that's being made about the trilogy. It was quite likable, and it made me curious about what it would be like to have friendly, loveless sex with Swedish investigative journalists in chalets without electricity, but really - not Dorothy Sayers. Still, a healthy helping of very enjoyable revenge porn that made it more than tolerable even though I could guess the ending about 500 pages before the ending. I suppose I reccommend it if you like that sort of thing, and you're out of Dorothy Sayers.

But really - what the fuck is with Anglophone publishers, man. Changing the title from Men Who Hate Women, which makes sense - actually it's quite a good title - to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which is lame lame lame? Such an incredibly shitty titling decision makes me think that the translation of the book itself was probably completely cack-handed too.

On the way there, read Three Bags Full, at B's suggestion. I guess I was a little disappointed, because I had worked myself up to hoping I'd be reading some sort of Perfume-of-sheep-psychology tour de force and it wasn't quite that. But still very engaging, and if you're high or running a temperature, both of which I was at the time of reading, by the end of the book you can imagine what it might be like to be a clever sheep. I reccommend this one too. A little more whole-heartedly maybe. Tops points for the effort, certainly.