Welcome to the 25th installment of “It’s Monday” — a weekly meme sponsored by One Person’s Journey Through A World Of Books where I can discuss my current reads, and what I’d like to read next.

Late last night I finished reading Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner.  I’m no longer certain whether I liked his follow-up, A Thousand Splendid Suns, a little bit more or less but they are both excellent and have caused me to become rather interested in learning more of Afghani culture and history.

I read just a few pages from The Wrecker by Clive Cussler this morning.  It’s the second in his fairly new Isaac Bell series, one of the complaints of which I’ve read in reviews is that these newer co-authored adventures bear little of the classic Cussler style other than having his name on the front covers.  While I did enjoy the last few I read, this one has yet to really gel for me.  But I’ve found it difficult to concentrate on much of anything today as it’s been so darn hot — the temperature seems to have increased steadily throughout the day and now, at a quarter to nine at night, I’m sitting in my fourth floor apartment with two fans directed on me plus the window and balcony door are open trying to admit a breeze.  The sweat’s dripping off of my nose making it very difficult even to write (type), much less to sit for any length of time reading.  I’m starting to miss that rain we had on Thursday and Friday…

I picked the wrong day to stay home-bound, it would appear.  While yesterday may have been equally hot, I spent five hours of the day wandering around the historic Old Town district (the most I sweated was probably the thirty minutes or so I tried to browse the stacks at Soutwind Books).  That, and the liberation from storage of a box full of local history books and magazines, caused me to decide to stay inside today taking notes for the seeds of an idea.  Now that I live in Phuket Town and can easily walk a few minutes to the locations described in PhuketScape articles and receiveing brief but intriguing mentions in various guidebooks, I want to continue my research on the Phuket of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  This was the peak of the island’s prosperity brought about by the tin-mining industry, the era during which the rich mining barons built the elaborate row houses along the district’s roads and orante mansions on the back lots, the period in which so many firsts were established in the area — Thailand’s first foreign-owned bank, first bookstore, first Chinese school, etc.  In Thailand, it’s difficult to find historic buildings that are older than a hundred years or so — most structures older than that are invariably religious in nature — and in places such as Phuket Town where there is a larger grouping of decades- and century-old commercial and residential buildings there are a host of stories to go along with the stucco and concrete.  I want to learn some of those stories and that’s what I spent my day today perusing.  There’s a distinct possibility that some of this research may just happen to translate into a series for this blog in addition to forming a basis for a future book idea.  Stay tuned…

CURRENTLY READING:
The Wrecker by Clive Cussler

WHAT’S NEXT?
Unknown…

Daily Writing Totals:
This Article – 565 words
Total Today — 565 words