There is very little more entertaining in this world than having Sarah Rees Brennan relate the plot of one of her favourite books to you. It is, I’m fairly convinced, *much* better than actually reading the books, which I think cannot possibly match up to the dramatic and detailed retellings Sarah performs.
Last night during a post-dinner drink at a local pub, Sarah related the story of Flambards, to which, I assure you, the Wiki entry does no justice. Flambards is, by Sarah’s retelling, a Gothic romance sort of thing of tremendous sketchiness involving being beaten by crutches and true love killed in WW1 and replaced by stableboys and toothless husbands. We were all pretty well weeping with laughter by the time she was done, but better yet, as Sarah left the bar, apparently a man from the bar ran after her calling, “Wait! Excuse me! I have to know! What’s the book you were talking about?!”
“Man is that dude going to judge me when he amazons it…” Sarah said. :)
We had a lovely night out besides that, too. We went to the Cedar Tree, which is a stupendously good Lebanese restaurant that serves up dinner tapas-style. Sarah was late, so we only ordered for three, but as with her assistance we were barely able to finish dinner for 3 we thought it was just as well we hadn’t ordered for four. I feel that I should really not have to eat for at least six weeks.
Of course, on the way home I leapt on a bus and dug around in my purse for my wallet (enduring a snide comment from the bus driver about women and their handbags, which I did not go nuclear on him for mostly because I was starting to become alarmed that I COULD NOT FIND the wallet) so I could gt out my bus card, then had to get off the bus because I *couldn’t* find the wallet. Off the bus I took everything out of the purse and nope. No wallet. The last place I *knew* I had it was the restaurant, so I called and it was there and I went and got it (it had apparently fallen down the front of the handbag instead of going into it, and got knocked under the table) and all its contents were still in place, which was quite a relief. Whew!