Two weeks ago or so my 97 year old aunt had what looked like a stroke, even though the wonders of modern medicine could find no proof of it. But inability to move one side of the body, speak, or swallow looks enough like a duck that we'll call it that. She regained a little movement in hospital but mostly spent her time sleeping. I was waiting for my cough to get better before going to visit her- *I* know it's allergies but hospitals aren't so forgiving- and had intended to do it Monday afternoon, which I theoretically had off except then I was feeling the daycare fever coming on me. So fine, maybe Wednesday. But Monday night my cousin emailed us all to say a room had miraculously opened up in a terminal care facility in the town where she lives, 40 miles away, and Aunt Margie was whisked away by ambulance Tuesday morning. So somehow I need to get to St Catharines, but does the GO system give me schedules? No, they want to tell me the next three buses leaving at the time I choose, but not what runs when through the day. They're giving my aunt 'weeks or months' so I need to do this soon.

Finished?
Snuff, domestic Sam and Sybil, even though I still don't know why it's called Snuff. Also am still blinkety-blink that one goblin's sweet music could change the attitude of people worldwide. Paul Robeson sang like an angel and black people were still lynched. Wishful thinking, Sir Terry.

The Postern of Fate
-- because Sunday was a washout and I wanted a Christie cozy. Should have remembered she couldn't do spies and international intrigue ever, which is what Tommy and Tuppence are about, and her later works were baggy beyond belief. A pity, because it started so promising with that schoolboy's cypher.

Now?
Aside from the perennials- though I might drop Underground because Murakami has stopped quoting people's accounts and started analyzing the Japanese psyche-

Power, Medieval People
-- a classic of social history, from 95 years ago, and not nearly as oogey in its attitudes as one might expect from that period. From my mother's library, a frail paperback but light in the backpack.

Emmerich and Matsunaga, Read real Japanese fiction: short stories by contemporary writers
-- an easy way to brush up on my Japanese, I thought, and easier than I thought, because it has facing-page notes that basically translate everything. This is more instructive as a primer in what's allowed in translating, and I find it a bit intrusive ie instead of puzzling a sentence out or looking up vocab in the dictionary in back, I read the notes. Bad me. Its main draw is a story by Kawakami Hiromi, as odd as promised. The library has some of her other work translated but they all seem to be about the woman and her highschool teacher, which no. I'd rather read about walking with bears.

Next?
-- Zen Cho's should be out soon, and the next Hyakku Yakki as well.