Amazing what you can find out in books

I'm reading the book by Dean Koontz, The Face. I haven't read one of Mr. Koontz's books in quite a while. To say it's a bit strange, I suppose would be an understatement. It's also a bit scary. Not a "horror" book like Stephen King would write, but scary as in parts of it it could happen scary. That's why I don't particularly like King's books. As scary as he wants them to be, it couldn't happen and that's why I find them not scary at all. Now Tabitha King is a different story all together, she writes stories that seem so, so real, and that does scare the living daylights out of me. The Trap comes to mind for me. I was living in Maine when that book came out, and where all the action in the novel took place. Now that book was terrifying in my eyes.

But, as usual, I'm digressing.

Anyway, the boy-character in The Face thrives on trival type of knowledge and in the beginning of the book he was discussing a place called the Tuvalu Islands and mentioned that the islands' major crops were coconuts and copra. I thought at first that this was all made up, so I got on the trusty internet, and lo and behold!! There are islands named that and copra is a real product of it.

The islands celebrated their 25th Anniversary of Independence on October 1, 2003, from, well, guess where...Great Britain! Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather with that information. I honestly wonder how many Brits even know that the Tuvalu Islands were once part of their mighty has-been empire.

Well, damn, I said to myself. If you don't learn something new everyday.