Braiding the Dough

These days have proved sparse, contending with the weight of the phlegm and the often stony burden of the workplace, there has been little time for expression. The course of reading, conversely, has sought a genre route of a few novels by Boris Akunin. It is questionable whether I benefited from reading the third novel Turkish Gambit first as it is nearly unique in its understatement, its dearth of cliche. I have to admit enjoying it. I finished the first novel Winter Queen this evening and it proved to be shit. I loathed its serial twists and its inane improvisations of contemporary surveillance through the prism of a 1870 context.

I have gathered a rasher of books for our trip and it appears to be a largely 19th Century offering. It is difficult to form expectations for this trip's reading as I don't possess a ready estimation of North Africa. The template is bare. I am sure that the rolling continuum of time spent in airports across the three continents will yield a number of novels. Certainly Stendhal and Eliot will be pursued and I am partial to taking a few Dickens and perhaps a Dreiser.