July 7th

Today I finished Kim, which I liked. I wish I'd read it before the last Mary Russell novel, The Game, since the latter was an homage to it. (I wonder when the next Mary Russell novel comes out? Whoa, two weeks ago!) I also got two soups from the vendor reputed to have the best soup in Eugene. They weren't. They were okay. One had some grit in it. My favorite soup in Eugene is the tomato lentil soup at Holy Cow. My all-time favorite was Peking noodle soup from Shin-Shin on Solano in Berkeley.

When I picked up The Gardens of Light at the UO library, I discovered other interesting-looking books by the same author, Amin Maalouf. I looked him up on-line and found that he's a Lebanese Catholic Arab who lives in Paris, and his novels tend to be historical fiction with fantasy and philosophical elements. So that could be fun... (Bio of Maalouf; Maalouf's Website)

Tomorrow starts our vacation -- R's best friend DH is coming for three nights, and then fractal9091 for a week. I wish the timing were a bit better, but we will be glad to see our friends.