On the subject of reading, and this is a serious question — is anyone able to explain to me, a moderate enjoyer of Neil Gaiman's other books and of dark fantasy in general, why everyone seems to think Stardust is so great? (Yes, I have read it. At a sitting. Then went "eh".)

In other news, I got over my skin-crawling horror of the unaccompanied spoken voice sufficiently to be able to listen to podcasts, so I have acquired some mp3s with the explicit intention of getting my languages usable again. *eyes Der Zauberhut and several native Astérix titles on bookcase at home*

This should be good, if I can stick at it. I've basically not used any of them, except in the ordinary day-to-day way, since GCSE — before that, in Latin's case — and while in the modern languages' case I'd passed the fabled little click point at which they say one irrevocably gets the hang of them, my vocabulary's withered and I haven't spoken them aloud in all that time. (Also have a diaphragm-clenching horror of speaking aloud to native speakers, so this little exercise is of necessity purely for myself.)