So my mouth watered when I started reading "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" yesterday. Literally. At first I thought it was the Yellow Cab Pizza brochure that did it but when I started whispering the opening lines, I knew it was the fact that I haven't read because-I-wanted-to in a long while. Well, okay, so I just finished "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius." It doesn't matter. Great weather is meant for reading because-you-want-to. Not for deciphering Gayatri Spivak. Not for transcribing 8 pages worth of quotes. Not for strategizing how to write about Linda Ty-Casper who bores me to tears and about whom no information on the Internet can be found, save for one interview and a pretentious (for me) essay about how writing is a way of serving the country. I don't see how "Awaiting Trespass" served the Philippines in any way. It's not *that* bad, but it's not good either. I mean, what's the point.

Anyway, I finished "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" and I loved it. It didn't make me cry like a friend said it would, but it was beautiful. It smelled as it should, too - like how I imagine Peru might have smelled the day the bridge fell.