It was only a matter of time

Note to self: It's not a great idea to stay up until almost 3:00 AM when you're getting up at 6:30. Just a thought.

I snagged a copy of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell at work today. It seems like tons of people on every single message board I visit LOVE this book, and I saw it there on the shelf saying in a little British accent, "Please take me home with you. I have ever so many pages." Seriously, you could club somebody with this thing. I read quickly, and I love big books that take more than a couple of days to get through. Remember back in school, when you'd get an assignment to read a chapter or two of whatever book, and the teacher would specifically say "Don't read ahead"? I was the kid that warning was meant for; I have a tendency to devour books (no, not literally).

Funny story, vaguely related. In 12th grade, we were getting ready to start our Beowulf unit, and our teacher asked if we had studied poetry in any of our previous courses. This one moron ass-kisser girl who had NO BUSINESS being in an AP English class piped up, "Oh, yes, we had a wonderful poetry unit in 10th grade, I feel really comfortable with reading poetry, etc." Basically, she considered herself a poetry genius. So, our assignment that night was to read the first however-many lines. The next day, the teacher asks for any thoughts that we have, and Poetry Genius Girl says, "I had some trouble understanding it. I think it would be clearer if it wasn't written as a poem." So help me. As you can imagine, a lot of people spent a lot of time wanting to chloroform this girl into blissful silence, except that we would have missed out on so many comments like that one. "I'm really good with poetry, but I'm having trouble with this... because it's a poem." Ten years later, it still makes me chuckle.