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Fred Vargas’s The Three Evangelists, part of Vintage Canada’s new World of Crime imprint, is a superb little mystery. The second book in my Book A Day challenge, it tells the story of three hapless intellectuals whose neighbour goes missing after a mysterious tree is planted in her Paris garden.

Sophia, a retired opera singer, can’t get the tree out of her mind, so she asks the young men, the ‘evangelists’, Lucien (nicknamed St. Luke), Marc (St. Mark) and Mathias (St. Matthew), to do some digging, literally. They find nothing. But when Sophie disappears two weeks later everyone, including Marc’s disgraced ex-policeman godfather, is on the case.

What unfolds is a deceptively simple tale in a classic mystery fashion. The whodunit aspect consistently changes as each one of the historians uses his own methodical thinking to uncover the clues to the case. By the end, I was surprised to find out who the culprit was and sad that the book was finished. Vargas’s prose, crisp, clean and with a rich sense of French culture and lifestyle, whips you through the book at breakneck speed. It’s the perfect novel for Book A Day reading.

This “thriller” starring Jennifer Aniston and Clive Owen was so pat and predictable that I kept waiting for the obvious twist to appear so that I could feel all smarty-pants that I had it all figured out all along. Sigh. And lordy, the puns, you could have some good fun with the title, Derailed, how fitting!

The acting was good; the movie, not so much. Am I wrong to like Jennifer Aniston though? I know she’s trying desperately to act her way out of being “Rachel” for the rest of her life, but I just wish she’d pick slightly better movies.

That said, I did watch it to the end, and not just because it had a character in it with my name (and she was Clive Owen’s wife, lucky her!), but maybe simply just to avoid having to watch an entire episode of American Idol in real time.

The very first entry in my Book A Day challenge is Karen Joy Fowler’s The Jane Austen Book Club. It’s a non-starter of a little book about the lives of six people who come together to read Jane Austen’s novels. The story is told in the 3rd person but from each host’s point of view from within the month that she (or he as there’s one man) has the club to her house.

The book suffers slightly from the switching POVs, in that you don’t really get a true sense of any one character. The stories are sort of all over the place and the three most fully realized characters, Jocelyn, Sylvia and Allegra (her daughter) still feel kind of one-dimensional.

Regardless of the above, Fowler’s characters are quite interesting portraits, even if they’re not fully drawn and realized. And I quite like the ingenious idea of pulling them all together through their own readings and interpretations of Austen’s classic works. All in all, my final thoughts would have to be that the book’s narrative kind of suffers from a kind of jack of all trades, master of none sort of problem; it has lots of interesting information with no real guts to hold it all together. Oh, and I’m so tired of the meta-meta-meta pomo blah de blah crappy ‘cuteness’ that seems to plague so many books these days.

You know the moment when all the characters are at a library fundraiser and some pompous ‘writer’ of detective novels shows up and spews colloquialisms about the writing process and then steals someone else’s story? Moments like those are so done. Please stop writing them.

Despite that fact that I’m fully aware that I’m home because I need to rest and, ahem, rest assured I’m doing just that, I have made up a ‘to do’ list of projects to keep me occupied so I don’t go batty. Also, it’s all of the stuff I haven’t had any time to do because I’ve been so sick and tired that my weekends and, well, weekdays have been spent in a near comatose state.

As my RRHB said the other day, “I think the boredom’s going to kill you before the disease is.” Hallelujah and he knows me so well.

Annnywaay. In the effort of full disclosure, here is the list, in full:

• 1. Complete my own version of John Allemang’s Book A Day challenge. Follow with a Movie A Day challenge as well (the challenge here will be limiting myself to just one movie a day). I’m spending way, way too much time in front of the television.
• 2. Finish unpacking our boxes and transfer the unused contents to plastic storage bins that can go in the basement. This is so my RRHB (when he gets back from tour) can completely demolish the first floor. This is a selfish goal to some extent because I’m so sick of only living on one floor of the house that anything I can do to help the renovation along, I’m going to do.
• 3. Go through all my old writing and transfer as much as I can to the new computer. I bought a cute little clipboard from the Pottery Barn, just to hold up my pages!
• 4. Create a menu plan for the next three weeks. Then go grocery shopping.
• 5. Get groomed – essentially get my hair done. I haven’t had it cut or coloured since before the non-wedding. I’ve also made an appointment to tame my ridiculously overgrown eyebrows. They’re frightening these days.
• 6. Buy a good pair of walking sneakers for the better weather soon to arrive.
• 7. Research yoga classes for the diseased. Do such things exist?
• 8. Clean the downstairs hallway. Part of #2.
• 9. Get our taxes organized. Take everything to an accountant.
• 10. Clean out the fridge (completely, that means, like washing everything).
• 11. Clean out the car (see #10).
• 12. Clean the kitchen cupboards (see #10).
• 13. Write each day (and not just on the blog).
• 14. Finish uploading my music library back on to iTunes. Download the rest of the suggestions that friends have sent. And if you have any idea of songs I might like to write to, please send them along, I’m currently taking requests…
• 15. Write all of my non-wedding thank you notes.
• 16. See the eye doctor (appointment made), family doctor (appointment made), naturopath (appointment made) and osteopath (appointment not made yet…). This is all in the goal of spending the next 2.5 weeks getting as well as I humanly can get in the time I’ve got to myself.

Now I’ve got just under 3 weeks, and even in my weakened state, I think it’s a pretty doable list. And man, I love lists!

Well, I’m the same. Isn’t that a treat? But it’s good actually, still very anemic, still don’t know for sure if it’s disease or meds, still off work (until April 10th) and still so tired I’m actually looking forward to the rest. But at least I’m not worse, my kidneys are in good shape, my lungs are super clear and once the anemia goes away, I’ll have energy too.

I go back and see him in 10 days and that’s when he’ll start me on the new disease drugs. At least there’s an end in sight to all the crazy medical drama. At least I have to hope there is…in the mean time, I think I’ll continue my ‘old man’ exercise program and hit up the mall.

Hey, I might be chubby and puffy, but at least I’ll have some new spring clothes for when I go back to work.

In an attempt to quell my sick-time-at-home boredom, dear Kathleen forwarded the What Musical Are You Quiz over to me.

Shockingly, I’m “A Chorus Line,” whereby the fancy answer guru let’s me know that I’m “wild, kinky, and love dance. Music is my life. [I]’ve had a dramatic past, but again, who hasn’t.”

Odd how true it’s ringing right about now. Have I spent too much time inside? And more importantly, what musical are you? Inquiring minds want to know.

Can one ever get bored of watching movies? It’s not likely in my household, but after the overload I’ve subjected myself to over the past few days, it might be the case. Now that the Oscars are over, all of the nominated films from last year are making their way into the video store. Of course, with little else to do, I’ve become quite a regular at Rogers. Thrilling, I know.

This past weekend, I watched A History of Violence, which I quite liked. It was like a tidy little morality play only with more gore. The script was tight and clean, but I thought William Hurt chewed the scenery and Maria Bello was kind of miscast. I also watched Good Night, And Good Luck (man that comma bothers me), which I loved, loved, loved. It’s full of such good tension brought on by tight shots and constantly burning cigarettes, the performances are subtle yet nuanced and the script, oh, the script, so good.

Then, yesterday I went to see Capote in the theatre. Now seeing so many of the films that were nominated for Best Picture, I’m still so stunned that Crash took home the prize. All three of the films I watched over the weekend were better acted, better scripted and better shot than Crash. But whatever, it doesn’t matter.

But the one thing that drove me nuts about Capote? Philip Seymour Hoffman’s bloody dirty fingernails. You’re telling me that Capote, so obsessed with his clean cut looks, well dressed physique and impeccable grooming, would wander around Kansas with the dirtiest fingernails I’ve ever seen on film? I don’t think so. Was there no makeup person around to take a look at his hands and perhaps take a nice swipe under the nails and tidy them up? It drove me crazy. And yes, it’s probably a sign of the prednisone. Hey, at least I can recognize the OCD before it gets really bad. Heh.

You know, I always feel like Alanis when I use the word irony to describe certain aspects of my life with the disease. But I’m never sure if I’m using it properly. Funny how two degrees in English don’t make me any more confident in terms of using the tricky words.

So, one of the side effects of the prednisone is sleeplessness. So not only does the drug make you puffy and chubby (it increases your appetite and therefore you gain gobs of weight, including awful water weight), but it also keeps you awake and makes you psychotic. Both times I’ve used prednisone in the past to treat the disease, the drug has made me nuts. I call it the ‘prednisone crazies.’

The second time the disease flared when I was in my mid-twenties the drug made me so wacky that I was hearing voices and wanting to jump off high rises. It took me two years to crawl out of that depression. Luckily, I’m in a much better ‘place’ to deal with the prednisone crazies, in that I know what they are and how to recognize them before the black dogs descend and I start scrubbing the bathtub with a toothbrush and a bottle of bleach.

Annnnywwaaay. As it’s been well documented, my blood went missing a few weeks ago, and as a result, I’m severely anemic, which makes you tired. Really tired. Like so tired you can’t walk to the corner tired. Right, so the only thing you want to do is sleep, but the damn prednisone is keeping me awake. The result? I’m a bloody zombie: I can’t think, can’t remember my name most days, have trouble even writing a sentence. So I’m wandering through my days like an extra in Dawn of the Dead. I just lie in bed for hours, my braid whirring and whizzing, weight of the world on my shoulders, wishing I could sleep. But I’ll say one thing for sure, when you wake up at 6 AM every morning, you feel the full pressure of the amount of hours in a day.

Now for the big question, is that ironic? Probably not, it’s probably just my plain, damn bad luck, damn you Alanis for making me all confused.

If I was feeling up to it, I’d be out celebrating by drinking cider and Harp. But I’ll have to be content with thinking about how I was in Derry in August, enjoying a pint at an awesome pub inside the old city walls, listening to the band, chatting with a fellow that looked like that Kevin kid from American Idol, hearing the story about the notes framed and posted up behind us on the wall, thinking about the idea of freedom, and all the other good stuff from my trip last summer.

Calling all writers. The key to everlasting success in terms of keeping the creative juices flowing? Getting up really bloody early and then doing “refreshing” exercises during your peak thinking periods.

Yeah, that’ll work. Harrumph.

If I make it through the day without collapsing from exhaustion it’s a good thing. If I get two sentences that are worthy with a brain that can’t remember one thing as it travels from room to room, it’s am even better thing. But maybe I’m missing the point, maybe I need to be more disciplined…Oh, and maybe that’s where all my blood ended up. Perhaps it flowed on over to Dan Brown. Maybe after he’s done with the trial I’ll ask him to return it. Lord knows he can afford to buy some more.