Happy new year to everyone. I'm feeling that 2004 could hardly be worse than 2003 for most of us :-)

Life

Lucie got her second corrective surgical operation, and she's now an absolutely normal 11-month baby. Yep, yep, yep. It seems that the morphin she took at the hospital did disturb her sleep cycles though, and she can hardly fall asleep before midnight these days. I can live with that :-)

Books

Since I've been spending 3 hours a day in a train since last July, I had the time to read a lot of books lately. I have thus tried so far:

• my father's collection (espionnage, crime, sci-fi). these are mainly "best-sellers" you'll find at airports and train stations. E.g. Ludlum / Crichton / Cornwell. Most of these books are midly entertaining, predictable, and lack humor. Oh well.

• trying to ressurect my old sci-fi collection. This really means the whole works of Philip K. Dick :-) Also bought a few used books from Robert Heinlein (The Puppet Masters, and Starship Troopers). I recommend these because they're funny, and much better than the films that were written out of them.

• trying to complete my collection of beloved French authors like Pennac or Benacquista. By the way, I recommend this book to any Frenchman that reads me. It's simply hilarious

• finally, I've been hunting for new blood. I have discovered James Ellroy and fell in love with it (to the point that his books were the only thing I asked for Xmas :-). I'm currently completing my seventh book: I was expecting the novelty to wear off after some time, but I'm still stick on it.