Holidaze

This is how we’re spending our first couple weeks in Berlin. From Dec. 15 - 26 we rented this nice little loft in the area of Berlin known as Kreuzberg. We’re laying low, but we emerge in the last few hours of daylight (2-4pm) to find food and buy a mobile phone that we can’t figure out how to use until we repossess our German-English Dictionary - I realize how sad that last part is.

I’ve just finished Tree of Smoke by Daniel Johnson which gave me a few nightmares (not difficult, nightmares and anxiety dreams comprise 80+% of my unconscious life) and wasn’t brilliant, but pretty darn good. It won the National Book Award last year, but - and I’ve gotten this off my chest to Aidan so I won’t bother you with my full review - I think it only did so because it filled a void/shoved down the already overflowing gullet in North America's obsession with war, and only superficially at that, but enough to win.

Next up, I’m reading Gustave Flaubert’s Sentimental Education a recommendation from years ago and when I finally found it at The Strand, the clerk told me that it was waaay better than Madame Bovary. Having read neither, I took his word for it. I’ll let you know.