At the moment I am reading a tome called Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. It was a hit a few years back, but as is typical for my life, I was too busy doing a phd in literature to read books. Anyway - now I am reading it and can see why it is popular. Imagine Alain De Boton's popularising philosophy efforts put into an epistolary novel.

I am currently around the middle of the book and we are discussing Spinoza. We have whipped through Western thought from the pre-Socratics onwards and it is a stimulating ride. It is reminding me of the courses I did in second year with a fantastic lecturer called Michael Janover where we roamed freely over the relationship between city states, aqueducts, furniture design, Beethoven and Talking Heads, the relations between the sexes, marriage laws and political philosophy, among many other things. But I digress, as usual.

Sophie's World is a book that takes a while to read because you keep looking up, out the window, towards the budding trees of spring and musing. I like this and spend far too many hours of my spare time this way - much to the chagrin of my beloved when we need to get somewhere in a hurry.

This also reminds me of my grade prep report which said that 'Fleur is a dreamy child.' I remember a man from outside the school gave us tests in prep with questions about general knowledge. One of the questions asked how many days were in a week. I didn't know. It was all just alternating periods of school and weekend as far as I was concerned. That much has not changed for me and my perception of time.

Strange sub-note: Sophie's World was shelved and catalogued as 'juvenile lliterature' in the Education Faculty library. Give it to a child and see what happens??