I am enjoying Guy Gavriel Kay's All the Seas of the World. I especially like his female characters: strong, bold, clever, and dangerous, who rule or kill when necessary. There's always a female assassin plotting somewhere in his books: "Lenia decided, standing above him, that she could call this man another Asharite she'd killed. Her knife had gone in first, hadn't it?"

I am starting to look forward to my trip to Dublin this week. Not, obviously, looking forward to the talk I have to give at a gallery on Friday, as I hate public speaking. But I am looking forward to seeing friends, walking around the city anonymously, checking out the Turner exhibition at the National Gallery of Ireland. Maybe it's this day, bright even balmy, that inspires optimism, a rare feeling or sense of the world, turning toward possibilities of the near future, like a flower towards the sun.

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