Samaritan

Last night was pretty quiet. I finished reading the book Samaritan by Richard Price. The book is set in a tough inner-city area of New Jersey in the present day, and tells the story of Ray Mitchell, who grew up in the tough housing projects but now in his forties he is a moderately successful screenwriter on a popular TV show. Returning to the projects and with an almost coompulsive urge to do good, he decides to take a creative writing class at the local high school. However one night he is brutally beaten in his apartment and hospitalised. The only cop who is in any way interested in the case is Nerese "Tweetie" Ammons, who grew up with Ray and owes him a favour from when they were children. However Ray knows who attacked him but for some reason refuses to give a name or help in any way and Tweetie becomes determined to find the truth. It was a pretty interesting book which moves between the events leading up to the attack and the events after the attack. It's well-written, interesting and witty, however the ending is kind of spoiled when it becomes a bit preachy, but mostly it is worth reading.

Today I went to the shops to get a new battery installed in my watch, which stopped working on Christmas Eve. I also got a DVD set called Box of the Dead, which collects all five of the Dead films written and directed by George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead). I also got a couple of desk calendars one of which I was planning to put up at home and the other of which I was planning on putting up in my office at work. The calendars were called The Book-Lovers Calendar 2010 and Urban Dictionary Calendar 2010. Heading back I stopped off at Burger King and had a Whopper Meal (basically a Whopper hamburger, large fries and a large coke).

Today is really the last day of the holidays. Work starts up properly tomorrow and this evening I'll be taking down my Christmas decorations and putting them all away in storage. It's always kind of sad, but there's not really much you can do about it. One good thing is that I do have about three weeks worth of holiday days to use up before the end of March, which means that I should have another two week holiday coming up in the next three months.