Hmmm

I love book lists and finding out what books are favorites among different readers. I don't know, however, quite what to make of this factoid (Harper's magazine, Index, March 2000)

Number of Playboy centerfold models since 1959 whose bios claimed their favorite book was by Ayn Rand: 12

Home is the sailor, home from the sea

A collection of literary and historical epitaphs.

Farewell Bruce Alexander

Laid up as I am with a broken knee, completely immobile for some weeks, I am making rapid progress through not only my routine backlog of reading but also some of those books that I set aside to be read in the future that I know I will like.

Yesterday, I dispatched the final book in Bruce Alexander's Sir John Fielding series. There are eleven books in the series starting with Blind Justice and ending, as I did yesterday, with Rules of Engagement.

An excellent series of mysteries set in Georgian London in the mid-1700's, it is based on the framework of the life of one of those early practical reformers with which England was so rich, in this instance, Sir John Fielding, "The Blind Beak" of Bow Street. There is a brief biographical entry of Sir John over at Wikipedia.

I discovered Alexander's series late, after seven or eight of the books had been published, started at the beginning with Blind Justice, worked my way forwards and then watched for new books as they were published every couple of years or so. Then, as seems to happen so distressingly often with newly discovered authors of series one really likes, Bruce Alexander passed away in 2003 with a final novel nearly finished. The story was completed by John Shannon and Alexander's wife, Judith Alexander based on notes he had left behind.

The whole series is an excellent view into the city and social structure of a London that was not at that time much more than a conglomeration of villages and yet populated with a most amazing portfolio of characters. The books are appropriate for highschoolers interested in history, mysteries or England.

What's that? cum grano salis

cum grano salis: from Dot Wordsworth's column in the December 19-26, 2009, Spectator. Additional background here.

cum grano salis: with a grain of salt

Define: Feuilleton

Feuilleton from an article (Found in Translation, The New Yorker, January 18, 2010).

The Arab reading public, although avid for all sorts of fiction, in a plethora of newspapers and cheap feuilletons, has (for evident economic reasons) not fully embraced the novel as a published book. Few Arabic novels sell enough copies to earn their authors anything like a living income; even Mahfouz kept a civil-service job until he was sixty.

Merriam-Webster:

Main Entry: feuil·le·ton
Pronunciation: \ˌfə-yə-ˈtōⁿ, ˌfər- ˌfoe-\
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from feuillet sheet of paper, from Old French foillet, diminutive of foille leaf — more at foil
Date: 1845
1 : a part of a European newspaper or magazine devoted to material designed to entertain the general reader
2 : something (as an installment of a novel) printed in a feuilleton
3 a : a novel printed in installments b : a work of fiction catering to popular taste
4 : a short literary composition often having a familiar tone and reminiscent content

I am the captain of my soul

See background.

Invictus
by W.E. Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Dissipation

Haven't read the play but this quote caught my eye.

a character in Tracy Letts's 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, August: Osage County, says, "Dissipation is actually much worse than cataclysm."

From an essay by Christopher Hayes, System Failure, The Nation January 14, 2010.

The world is too much with us . . .

The World is Too Much With Us
by William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Give a man a book he can read . . .

Gifts
by James Thompson

GIVE a man a horse he can ride,
Give a man a boat he can sail;
And his rank and wealth, his strength and health,
On sea nor shore shall fail.

Give a man a pipe he can smoke,
Give a man a book he can read:
And his home is bright with a calm delight,
Though the room be poor indeed.

Give a man a girl he can love,
As I, O my love, love thee;
And his heart is great with the pulse of Fate,
At home, on land, on sea.

So simple . . .

and so beautiful. An adaption by Twain of a much longer poem by the Australian poet Robert Richardson. The story and original poem is here.

Epitaph of Olivia Susan Clemens (1866-1890)
by Robert Richardson and adapted by Mark Twain

Warm summer sun,
shine kindly here;
Warm southern wind,
blow softly here;

Green sod above,
lie light, lie light --
Good-night, dear heart,
good-night, good-night.