holiday lit

A significant drop in temperature and torrential rain (sounds familiar...) punctured my happy-holiday-vision of yours truly laying at the lakeside, reading. Ah well, indoor reading it shall be. I'm flexible, me. I'm halfway through Girls of Riyadh and gradually getting used to the unusual language and style of writing. I wish I knew Arabic as I'm sure it has lost some of its charm and shock-value in translation, even if the author translated it into English herself.

I've heard that Special Topics in Calamity Physics was supposed to be brilliant, so that one's next in line. Judging from the sheer bulk (736 pp) of it, I doubt I'll be able to finish it this week, but never mind.

This afternoon I bought "literature" of the self-improving kind - a manual (of the for-dummies kind) for Excel with lots of diagrams and pictures. It's probably super-embarrassing to admit this, but I'm pretty Excel-illiterate, having more or less only used it as an address database before. Now, I pretty much have to work with this wretched programme every day and keep driving my colleague mad with shouts along the lines of "Look! The engtire column has just dissapeared! I didn't do anything, honestly. How can I get it back?". Not that I'm really the handbook-reading type of learner, but I thought it was, erm...good to have at home.