The 411, and 253

I hope I'm not tempting fate in saying that life is pretty excellent right now. Work is dull mostly (except for yesterday, when your narrator bravely sampled a Ghost Pepper), and money is tight, but I've been having great fun; taking advantage of the city, partying it up with the Australians, spending lots of time with a certain boy and finally actually getting OUT of London. Hopefully I will have some time to actually write about these things; check back soon to find out about the love affair between my Australians and Rambo; how Cambridge and Oxford are basically identical; why reading is sexy, and whether you should dare to drink the spa water in Bath. And oh! I have done the impossible; found good Mexican food in London. So I'll probably be raving about that soon as well.

On the literary front; I finished a Study in Scarlet on the tube this morning. Quite a suspenseful read! I do a lot of reading during my hour long commute each morning and evening. My fellow passengers read a lot too. Although the trashy tabloid papers are ubiquitous, i see far more people reading actual books on the London Underground then I ever did on the DC Metro. Just further reinforces the stereotype that British people are smarter than Americans. Nosy girl that I am, I'm always interested to see what the people around me are reading too. I crane my next, and I read over people's shoulders and am generally obnoxious. Once, I got into an in depth conversation with the woman next to me, who also happened to have an open copy of Atonement on her lap. It's the only time I've EVER seen two strangers talk to each other during the morning rush.

It's kind of a strange irony that I'm not going to be able to read my next novel choice on the train; although the London Underground it the very subject of the book. While all my choices up to now have been fairly traditional, this piece is actually an "online novel." It's called 253 by Geoff Ryman. It's such an interesting concept, I urge you to go to the website and check it out, it explains the idea better then I possibly can.

I haven't started reading yet, but I'm definitely intrigued by this medium, I think it's an interesting experiment. In fact, since it is free and accessible by anyone, I was hoping to garner a little audience participation, an experiment of my own. I think it would be really cool if I could get a bunch of YOU people to read at least a part of this story and then email me your thoughts.

Since you guys are almost certainly reading this while you are at work, procrastinating, why not procrastinate with this? Read as much or as little as you want, then email me what you think at Stephanie.Yoder@Gmail.com. I'll post the results in a week or two.