From a recent email exchange at an ungodly hour (slightly paraphrased from memory):

Me: I’m listening to Avril now.
Student: I like Avril’s stuff. Her music isn’t bad either.
Me: Avril has stuff?

Never did get an answer to that one…

I think I’ve given up on Empires of Light for now… maybe I will become sufficiently bored in the coming weeks to resume reading, but given that I have a few other books to read around the apartment, I probably won’t.

It may prove my geekiness that the first book I picked up was The Design and Evolution of C++, which I rediscovered while searching my shelves for books to sell on Amazon.com.