Hungover in Taipei

Unwisely, instead of staying in bed all evening and reading trashy novels, I stayed in bed until 5:30, when I finished The Serialist, which was not only terrible but referenced its own terribleness, as if knowing that it was trash made up for it being trash. It didn't. A compost heap that can speak and tell you it's a compost heap is still a mound of decaying organic material, and despite the recommendations on the cover and the fairly snide pastiche of Stephanie Meyers' Twilight novels (which seem an easy target these days), it didn't fill me with any sense of joy, excitement or interest.

I suppose this was a good thing, because it ensured that I went out to enjoy Taipei's nightlife.

Out for a duck

In times of gloom like yesterday, I reach for my copy of Brewster's Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics, a magnificent dictionary of bounders and lunatics, and seek succour amongst tales of men such as George Robert Fitzgerald, a man who trying to do "everything possible to make his father's life a misery ... [on one occasion] manacled him all day to a pet bear".  The dictionary is aided by the most heroic act of cross-referencing I've ever seen; you can happily carom through its pages all day, choosing between (on a single page chosen at random) butlers, indecently assaulted, butlers, levitating and butlers, murderous.  Its one flaw (or perhaps a virtue) is that all this cross-referencing makes for a big book; my hardback weighs three pounds, 2 ounces and thus it may not be very comfortable as bedtime reading.