Saturday, March 8, 2025

One of you is lying.

Oh, the woes of the bibliophile.  I am in a used book shop where the books are very cheap.  I see The Portable Dorothy Sayer.  I leaf through it quickly - a collection of her non-Wimsey writings.  Excellent.  I only moderately enjoy her mystery writing but I usually enjoy her essays.  In the stack it goes.

I get home and I sit down to sample it a bit to determine whether it goes into the "Read right now" stack or the "Soon" stack, possibly even the "Maybe in a while" stack.  

I am a page into the reasonably oblique and abstract Introduction when I begin to sense something is wrong.  The sketched life story does not match what I know of Sayer's life.  Hmm.  

Another half page and the mystery is solved.  This is the The Portable Dorothy Parker.  I would have significantly preferred Sayer but Parker, well, at a couple of bucks, I am sure I will get my money's worth.

For example:

By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing.
And he swears his passion is,
Infinite, undying - 
Lady make note of this:
One of you is lying.

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