Survivor

Last night I finished reading the book Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk. Published in 1999, the novel opens with a young man named Tender Branson who has hijacked a plane at gunpoint, let off the passengers and crew, and is planning to crash the plane into the middle of the Australian Outback, on his way he tells his life story to the plane's flight recorder. Raised in a repressive religious cult called the Creedish, Branson, like most Creedish members is hired out as a domestic servant in the outside world. However, most of the Creedish commited mass suicide ten years earlier, and the few surviving members of the cult have also been killing themselves, leaving Tender the sole survivor, and pretty soon he becomes a huge media celebrity, and the only person he feels he can rely on is a firl named Fertility Hollis who has dreams which predict the future. The first page in the book is numbered as 289 and the page number decreases as the novel goes along, thesame thing applies to the chapter numbers. The novel is intelligent, suspenseful, bizarre and frequently hilarious.

At work today almost as soon as I had set up, the boss came over and asked for a word. I was pretty nervous, expecting that I was going to get fired or something. Instead he was asking if I wanted to go on a training course that starts next week for two weeks. I was happy enough to agree to it. When I come back off the course I'll only have two more days of work before going on a three day break for my book festival events. So that works out well. The computer systems crashed this afternoon, so I spent a little time numbering up some deeds with my friend Joe before heading back.

Of course, I'll be off work tomorrow due to the strike, so that should be good.