Oh, those Jinn

"I am here master! What is your will? Would you have me level a city, plow a furrow in the earth and make a river, or call up an army of slaves to serve your every whim!?"

this mock-quote of a Jinnee (as they spell it), encapsulates many of the themes that are prevalent in the Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, namely: power, unearthly feats of magic, and extreme wealth. It's a terrific read. I finished it last night. Stayed up around one or so. I can definitly say it didn't take me a thousand and one nights to read though. it flows very nicely in fact. All in all, I highly recommend it to all you amature scholars interested in the crazy particulars of the orient and beyond.

Now that I'm finished this book, I can start on a new one (or at least read some small compositions). And that's precisely what I did :). I sampled some things from my recently aquired (and enormous) anthology of Chinese literature. The first was a satiric poem about a man who can't choose between being a holy, wise man, and a rich and influential sort. Rather amusing, as he goes back and forth from the city to the secluded forest. After this I read a short story from the T'ang dynasty (somewhere around A.D. 800 I think). It was eyebrow-raisingly similar to some of the Arab tales earlier mentioned, only more sob-storyish.

In other news, a wierd old British lady came to our house tonight. She knocked on our door and asked to came in saying, "I'm so cold". She clearly was not in possession of her entire marble collection. Anyway, it turns out that she'd escaped from the rest home down the street from us, and therefore hadn't been out long, which is good :S.