- Finished The Inklings by Humphrey Carpenter, still reading Midori Snyder’s The Innamorati, acquired Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. Hopefully this means that I can complete the Mythopoeic Award Reading Challenge in time.

– On the African Reading Challenge front, I still have two reviews to write and another two books to read and review. Also not sure if this can be done in time; I had to return Simi Bedford’s Not With Silver to the library because it had reach renewal limit. We will see how it goes.

– I presented a paper last Friday on Nigerian literature; I was moderately pleased with the outcome but more work needs to be done before I can submit it for peer-reviewed publication. While in Melbourne, I visited the Victoria Art Gallery and was in ecstasies over being in the same room with paintings by my favourite Impressionists and Pre-Raphaelites. I also bought 5 books in Melbourne, which is inevitable when you cannot stop yourself from entering every bookstore you see while meandering around in gleeful anticipation of getting lost.

– The occultic researcher in me was very, very happy with the discovery of the Theosophical Society Bookshop, but since it was late and raining, I could not spend much time there.

– I was also happy to discover a japanese dvd shop with a wide range of anime titles. Unfortunately, after purchasing my Macross boxed set; I was very unhappy to discover the sub-par quality of the subtitles.

– December, apart from still being dissertation-cleanup month, is also short story month as I’m trying to meet my short story submission quota for the year. Hopefully I’ll be able to submit two more pieces by year’s end so that I can consider them “out there”. Then, I can start writing new stories.