March 10, Tuesday evening -- Reading Elizabeth Kostova

In the 5pm sunlight
Reading, The Historian, a vampire thriller by Elizabeth Kostova. It was recommended by Croatian friends of hers and she happened to have it because she'd received it as a gift a couple of years ago. She used to read a lot of Anne Rice when she was in high school.

Favorite book -- Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson. She read it because she is an artist. She was contemplating writing about the "trickster myth" and, in Snow Crash, there are elements of this myth. The trickster myth, she said, is found in many cultures. A trickster disobeys the norms of society with positive effects, like Loki in Norse mythology, who turns himself into a mare to lure an amazing work-horse stallion away from completing work that would mean a god losing his wife to a bad giant (and then then Loki gives birth to an eight-legged baby horse).

A great book from her childhood -- Rainbow Goblins, by the Italian, Count Ul de Rico.