Ersatz TLS discussion

From Half of a Yellow Sun to The Yellow Claw and ‘Mellow Yellow’, from Una in The Faerie Queene to Captain Underpants, from Pygmalion’s statue to a small army of golems, what a feast of brilliant responses we received to the Lazy Quiz! Prizes for everyone! The only things I can add to the first question are the song titles ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’ and ‘Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini’ and, for the U’s, Bertie Wooster's old headmaster Aubrey Upjohn. But I do seem to be acquainted with quite a few statues. There’s the Lar, or little Roman household god, who comes alive in Plautus’s Amphitryon, a whole bunch of saintly or pagan statues you probably don’t care to know about from medieval drama, the Brazen Head in Robert Greene’s 16th-century play Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Hermione’s statue-moment in Shakespeare’s The Winter's Tale, Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun, Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’ and, perhaps my favourite,

Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me.

That’s the barely veiled warning with which the sinister Duke of Ferrara ends his dramatic monologue in Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’.

Another, different sort of quiz may appear next month.

Now to our reading, from last week’s thread and the general forum, where the natural world has attracted a number of us. Pomfretian, although initially doubtful, finished Into the Tangled Bank: In Which Our Author Ventures Outdoors to Consider the British in Nature by Lev Parikian on a positive note:

The tone grew on me and I now think of it as friendly rather than blokey and jokey.

It's a great book. Parikian covers a lot of ground from spiders in the sink via storm petrels to stargazing, from Darwin via Peter Scott to volunteers at the observatory in the Northumbrian dark sky Park. He goes out and does things, experiencing his chosen bits of the natural world firsthand.

Wildwood: A Journey through Trees, by Roger Deakin, made a deep impact on Claire de la Lune:

It was so sad to turn over the final page of this much loved book.

Wildwood is a celebration of all living things, from the tiniest speck seen through a microscope to the thousand year old trees that hold tight to the ground beneath them. Roger takes the reader on his fascinating life journey with his intense curiosity of the world around him.

The journey starts at home, as many great journeys do, slowly circling outwards and then away, out across the wide world, before returning to the familiarity of his beloved Walnut Tree Farm.

Almost every page contains a surprise, a nugget of delight, a fascinating observation, a 'something' that sent me scurrying to my computer straight away to find out more. […]

If you are looking for some solace in this world, or want to be entertained by the wonder in our natural world then 'Wildwood' could be the place you escape to.

CCCubbon had mixed views on Monarchs of the Sea: The Extraordinary 500-Million-Year History of Cephalopods by Danna Staaf:

The first half which deals with the emergence of life on Earth and the evidence from fossils of cephalopod development was particularly interesting but later the book wandered into a series of names of researchers and evidence which became confusing.

I would have liked much more information about octopuses in modern times, there did seem a greater emphasis on squid.

And LLJones asks:

Eels, anyone?
The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

Though I’m not sure that she’s actually read it.

Other nonfiction included The Quest for Queen Mary by James Pope-Hennessy, ed. Hugo Vickers, and reviewed by Russell, who says:

And what a strange conception, a bunch of written-out interview notes preparatory to JPH’s actual biography of Queen Mary (1959). It was a delight. Every eccentricity of the royal circle is on view, and related with stylish humour by JPH.
Anecdotes galore, physical appearances sculpted, odd facts noted. Who would have imagined that the wife of George V liked to read The Magic Mountain and The Brothers Karamazov, or to be precise to have them read to her by a Lady in Waiting? A cream-tea of a book.

And a sombre note from Sue:

Enjoy" isn't probably a word I'd use to describe The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper [by Hallie Rubenhold] but it is excellently done. She puts a very worthwhile perspective onto the Jack The Ripper story by focusing on the victims. Highly recommended.

On the fiction side, we have Tom Mooney on Blackwood, by Michael Farris Smith:

Small town. Check.
Creepy outsiders. Check.
Clapboard House. Check.
Beat-up jalopy. Check.
Man with a violent past. Check.
Spiralling pit of violence, death and despair. Check.

This is a classy piece of southern gothic. It bears all the tropes of the genre but Farris Smith reinvents them once again, this time with the suggestion of the supernatural.

Robert considers a tricky but timely issue:

The term "terrorist" can be remarkably fluid. Sheridan Le Fanu, in his gothic mystery Wylder's Hand, refers to the villainous Captain Lake as a terrorist. Lake's actions have nothing to do with politics; rather, he uses fear for his private ends.

I have begun reading Fernando Aramburu's Homeland, which raises similar questions.
The novel is set in the Basque country. The two women who stand at the novel's center were childhood friends. Neither was a political person until one woman's son left Spain to join the Basque terrorist organization ETA in France. […] This decision puzzles both families; so does the extortion letter one husband receives from the ETA shortly after. Is this ETA a strictly political group? Their methods remind me of Captain Lake, or, for that matter, of the Mafia or Boston's Whitey Bulger. Pay up or we attack; we are willing to kill you. And, if one is tempted to ask for a favor from the extortionists, the ETA, like the Mafia, now owns a little piece of the one asking. […]

I will report more later.

The much-lauded Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray, has drawn more praise from Georg:

To kill your hero on the first pages is a bold move. To follow this drumbeat with 460 pages (of 660 in total) leading up to that pivotal point without anything remotely dramatic happening takes a confident writer. To pull it off without boring readers like me takes a fine writer.
What kept me reading was Murray’s lively writing style, and, above all, the care he takes developing his characters, the room he gives them, the subtle details he adds, incrementally. His tenderness towards them, his sensitivity. […]

There is a lot to ponder about Christian concepts in this book. Especially in the third part, after Skippy’s death, when Murray turns up the heat under the simmering broth until it starts to spit and flow over.
Sin, guilt, atonement, punishment, redemption …

And finally, a classic – Anthony Trollope’s Miss Mackenzie – has received Karen’s detailed analysis:

Like most of Trollope's novels the strength of this one is in his eye for the telling behavioural detail. The plot (basically a "rags-to-riches, riches-to-rags" tale with a few unconventional twists thrown in) is not particularly remarkable in itself, but the characters certainly are. [...] [M]y heart went out to Margaret Mackenzie and at the same time it went out to all the many, many people [...] who have "despised themselves" and thought themselves unworthy of love. It's a common-enough human phenomenon, yet not one which every nineteenth-century male novelist would think to bestow upon a female character. […]

Trollope's trademark interests are here in abundance: reprehensible "Low Church" clergymen, ponderous lawyers […] and monstrous aristocrats. There is one of those chaotic, festive events which frequently occur near the ending of Trollope's books […] a huge and rather disastrous charity bazaar where we catch glimpses of several characters that dedicated readers will have encountered elsewhere in the Trollopian universe. […]

[…] Above all, especially if you are a Trollope fan but even if you're not, it is a deeply pleasurable book to read. Highly recommended.

And, just to finish off, a reminder that it helps if you check the italicized introduction that automatically appears at the top of any reply to make sure it’s clear to whom you are replying and exactly what about. You can edit, delete and/or replace what’s there, and your fellow Ersatzians will be grateful!

Thanks Sam Justine! Lovely way to start the week.

A chilly morn in the south.....i miss the rain but dont mind the cold

In "What If The Sun", CF Ramuz explores the life of a swiss-french mountain village where the sun fails to shine. Men discuss this in the cafe, a young vintner returns from beside Lake Geneva and is puzzled that he couldnt see any peaks on his way and how grey the village looks,he laments the deep blue colours of the Lake and a hunter sets out to try and find the sun in the peaks high above the village, with his cavalry rifle...

A World Gone Mad by Astrid Lindgren is a wonderful study of wartime in a neutral state. The Swedes are letting german troops cross from norway into finland, as the war enters its third year. Swedish shipping is being sunk and Lindgren fears another cold winter. Nazi atrocities come to her through her work in the postal censors office (Norwegian civilians executed, a pole who had a relationship with a german woman shot the next day)

Lljones wrote: "Thanks Sam Justine! Lovely way to start the week."

And I assume you sorted out the duplication problem :-(
Thanks.

This post is from member @Storm (posted late last week to a separate discussion):

House-Bound by Winifred Peck, published by Persephone Press

Current events in politics and society have been making me reflect and come to conclusions and choose which side of the fence I situate myself on various matters. So I have been drifting into reading books set from the end of the 19th century to the mid 20th. A period that previously I had little interest in and even less patience. But the parallels of seismic change are resonating with me. Not the details. They are mainly different. But the upset to the social order, the overturning of long-cherished beliefs, the ground-shaking changes even to basics such as what makes a man, or a woman?
So I have found, maybe not answers as such, but solace in seeing how others have met and dealt with change and comfort in accepting that I, personally, have little agency over that change.
The book deals with an upper middle class family who lose their domestic servants due to the war. The old social order is destructing. Women are no longer prepared to slave in service for a pittance at the whims of the rich. So Rose Fairlaw, for the first time in her life, has to learn how to cook and clean. She sees for a time this drudgery as her « war work ». Not having a servant means the servants can be employed in war work, and she can learn to feed her husband and feel she is doing her bit! It is a novel of its time, and that is its fascination. How much self-restraint we have lost! Rose, exhausted with the constant sweeping, dusting, cooking, wishes her husband would, for example, when he remarks how tired she looks, clean his own shoes, fill his own hot water bottle and pour his own whisky at night. But she says and does nothing. I think about how far women have come and yet really, not that far at all. The Guardian has featured articles about the rise of domestic violence during Covid, the unlikelihood of women achieving equal pay, and I wonder if the changes have been little more than cosmetic? Too pessimistic, perhaps but my hope is that you cannot put the genie back in the bottle.
Rose is a woman of her time, but one of courage and wisdom, and I cannot dislike her for seeing the world so differently to me. Rather I sympathise and cannot expect her to suddenly hold views current in 2020. So should you read it? As a history lesson in how the upper class lived and thought at the beginning of the 1940s, yes. There were longueurs and I found the Christian spirituality uninteresting, much of the book dated, but I am glad I read it for the breadth of understanding it gave me of the time, and a little insight into my own prejudices today.

Alwynne wrote: "Is that the review of the Persephone press title..."

Yes, sorry, fixed that.

Justine's round-up of the week

Thank you - a Monday treat!

After a stressful and tiring week, I am in no mood to post my book review (yet)... this is pure digression, in response to Justine's introductory summary:

The review of Parikian's book apparently covers "spiders in the sink". Well, that's one thing - but how much more unwelcome they are, when they appear in the bath - as those of us of a certain age will recall... Flanders & Swann give the warning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z3D5...

As for Wildwood, I could not help but be reminded of the (fictional) hippie pop group, convincingly portrayed in the 'Canticle' episode of TV series Endeavour:
https://morseandlewisandendeavour.com...

Finally (sorry for being silly - put it down to lack of sleep!) - can it really be true that Skippy 'isn't any more' (as they say in French? Too, too cruel!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skippy_...

(I promise to be good next time.)

scarletnoir wrote: "After a stressful and tiring week, I am in no mood to post my book review (yet)... this is pure digression, in response to Justine's introductory summary:

The review of Parikian's book apparently ..."

hope you are ok scarlet.....

After finishing a third book that left me unimpressed (Where the Crawdads Sing) I've turned to Susan Hill's ghost story The Small Hand. With its antiquarian book dealer and its writing style it reminds me of the old Victorian tales by M.R. James, yet I think it's set in the second half of the 20th century. Regardless, the tension is building nicely.

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

I was able to read with relative ease this week as Luca has learned to both smile and pass gas without agony.

This book has been on my radar ever since I first heard it described, I thought it had the most interesting premise I could remember. Luckily, it was one of the rare books that grew well from the initial seed of thought. A hypothesis that became a successful experiment.

It tried to reconstruct the lives of the 5 canonical victims of Jack the Ripper and show how bad choices and impossible social pressures led them to the horrible end awaiting them. It's a book with a giant hole in the middle, gravitating around the violence. Rubenhold consciously constructed her narrative to recount the women and not the killer, and it was a powerful choice.

The research on display was impressive, and the amount of detail she was able to uncover on these discarded women was compelling. She writes from the viewpoint of over-turning the widely held view that all the victims were prostitutes. Which is hard enough when two of them most certainly were. But it's a hard balance to strike to refute a spurious argument without also slightly validating it. It would seem that the proper response to "but they were all prostitutes" would have been "and what difference does that make shithead?" but that would have wound up being pamphlet-sized and she had these women to put at peace.

She really manages to bring a compelling narrative to a higher place by emphasizing the social constructs that doomed these women, and millions just like them, to unhappy ends. In Victorian England, women were property to be picked up and stowed away. Infidelity was grounds for divorce, but only if committed by the woman. The ripples of these prejudices still are seen in today's justice system: the most prolific of serial killers managed to skate by preying on prostitutes because their deaths went unnoticed for so long.
A really well formed work of history that reads like the best of Wilkie Collins or Arthur Conan Doyle.


Now I'm onto my yearly Steinbeck The Wayward Bus before I tackle my year end/Christmas doorstop of a novel Life and Fate

First of all, thank you very much Justine for you review of last week's posts.

I mentioned yesterday that I had started The Domesday Book (Not That one). So far so good. It starts on the afternoon of the Battle Of Hastings, where the field is green and sparkly apart from the bits that are covered in bodies and bits of bodies! Inside Duke William's tent, there he sits eating his dinner sharing the table with a covered corpse, the cover being two feet high at the head end because nobody had thought to take the arrow out of the corpse's eye. When uncovered it turns out not to be Harold, and the duke is very angry because he needs to be able to prove he is dead to be sure of claiming the crown. Men are despatched to search the battlefield for Harold, but unfortunately this takes a while due to the number of corpses with arrows in their eyes (apparently due to them looking up as the arrows come flying). They don't find Harold, so four men, a one eyed companion of the duke, a hapless minor Norman noble, an officious, always right, always critcising, very unpopular Norman official and a very reluctant Saxon are sent off on a mission to find Harold's actual corpse.........

I Still don't know if it will get too silly for me but so far there have been quite a few laugh out loud moments.

Machenbach wrote / Alwynne wrote re Laurie Colwyn

I've read and enjoyed several of her books, including Home Cooking and a volume of short stories The Lone Pilgrim
I first heard of her in an article about insufficiently known American woman writers. Another writer mentioned was Lorrie Moore and I bought her short stories Self-Help. I read a couple of books by Laurie Colwin and then picked up a 3rd book and was thrown and perturbed by how different it was in tone. I was of course being totally inattentive and was no longer reading the work of the same writer. Subsequently, I did appreciate Lorrie Moore, too :)

Machenbach wrote: "Laurie Colwin’s Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object is a 1975 novel about love and grief. The narrator, Elizabeth ‘Olly’ Bax (the social setting of the novel should ..."

Hmm - one to consider or the 'maybe' TBR list, I guess? (As a fan of Anne Tyler.)

Machenbach wrote: "I like Lorrie Moore a lot"

Ah, I wouldn't have guessed you to be a Lorrie Moore fan..dunno why. She's got a phenomenal voice, I ought to be reading Self Help fairly soon, I broke down and ordered it from the Evil Empire

"Paul wrote: "Ah, I wouldn't have guessed you to be a Lorrie Moore fan..dunno why"
Oh yeah, big fan..."

I may be wrong, but I think you both owe me for Lorrie Moore.

Lljones wrote: "I may be wrong, but I think you both owe me for Lorrie Moore."

Yeah, me for certain. I think that was THE recommendation you made for me that led me to believe that we were on the same page, so to speak

Machenbach wrote: "Paul wrote: "The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper."
I've had my eye on this for a while and briefly enjoyed following her Twitter account whilst she fou..."

despite being a reader of many dark novels, i tend to avoid too much voyeuristi violence and sex (likewise with films). I love the idea of celebrating the lives of these poor women but sadly the Ripper remains the attraction for so many and there are many things wrong with that

Machenbach wrote: "I think I was pissing around with paper aeroplanes in the back of the lesson where everyone suddenly learnt to post images of the book covers..."

me too....i tried it and it didnt work

Machenbach wrote: "I think I was pissing around with paper aeroplanes in the back of the lesson where everyone suddenly learnt to post images of the book covers..."


When you use the add book/author link, there is a 'radio button' option and the bottom to choose between link or cover.

Machenbach wrote: "I think I was pissing around with paper aeroplanes in the back of the lesson where everyone suddenly learnt to post images of the book covers..."

This tutorial has proven helpful in at least one case.

Machenbach wrote: "Lljones wrote: ""I may be wrong, but I think you both owe me for Lorrie Moore."
Not me in this instance. I've been reading her since Birds of America came out - I bought a signed copy..."

Yeah, I corrected myself while I was walking to the latte shop just now. Remember you being in the know when Paul and I first started talking about her

Alert! Not a book, but a Zoom talk now on You Tube. If you like maps of early London and supplying ropes for shipping and Shackleton and Hilary, this video is for you. (Did you know that you had to have a really long building to make ropes for early ships?) If this link doesn't work, just ask for - Arthur Beale History on You Tube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NsW6...

like that?

AB76 wrote: "

like that?"

it worked...thats the first time it worked!
thanks LL

AB76 wrote: "

like that?"

can anyone identify the painting on the cover, its not identified in the POD version i have
It might be Vallaton or a Munch?

Machenbach wrote: "I think I was pissing around with paper aeroplanes in the back of the lesson where everyone suddenly learnt to post images of the book covers..."

Bill taught me how. When you add book/author, you'll see at the bottom of the box: Add link / cover, each with a circle that can be tapped. Choose 'cover', and hey presto: But please do also give the title in your message, as otherwise those reading them have to tap each cover to find out what the books actually are!

AB76 wrote: "AB76 wrote: "

like that?"

can anyone identify the painting on the cover, its not identified in the POD version i have
It might be Vallaton or a Munch?"

MK Alert! Not a book.....
I don’t know where you are based but if anyone would like to see rope being made you can in the Hawes Ropemakers, that’s Hawes in glorious North Yorkshire Dales.

AB76 wrote: "AB76 wrote: "

can anyone identify the painting on the cover, its not identified in the POD version i have
It might be Vallaton or a Munch?"

Munch: The Storm
https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/1...

Alwynne wrote: "short-story writers I most enjoy are from the U.S. Grace Paley, Deborah Eisenberg, Joy Williams."

Ah, that's a good recommendation. Grace Paley's Collected Stories will end up being, by very far, my favorite book read this year. I've had Joy Williams works in my shopping basket without ever buying them before. Putting her in the same line as Paley, Eisenberg and Moore makes her a must read.

Fresh from NYTimes: The 10 Best Books of 2020

Folks over at ToB are psyched about James McBride's Deacon King Kong. I've pushed it up the TBR 'cuz the synopsis makes me think of McBride's The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother, such a fine book.

@Magret will be pleased about Hamnet, me thinks.

Machenbach wrote: " Some of them suggested (and I have no idea whether they were right or wrong) that there was rather less groundbreakingly original research in the book than her publishers were suggesting, but I'm not sure that's the entire point of the book anyway."

Yeah, whether it was groundbreaking or not, I couldn't say. There are only so many police records and property registers that you can discover and at this point I imagine they've all been found already. Not having read any other works, I can't say how original her synthesis is, but it certainly is better written than any "true crime" book that I've taken up before. It's a book that leads naturally to the Gary Ridgeways and the Samuel Littles to show how little has changed when it comes to investigating the disappearance of women who operate outside of the socially accepted norms

Everyone will have to let me know if Zoom talks are not appropriate here - this from the Mysterious Bookshop in NYC

Free Virtual Event Tonight!

Join us this evening at 6 PM EST on Zoom for a conversation between two of our favorite authors, Joyce Carol Oates and Bradford Morrow, who will be discussing their newest books, Cardiff, by the Sea and The Forger's Daughter. Click below to register for the event on the EventBrite page,—just make sure you have Zoom (which is free) installed on your computer, and you'll be good to go!

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/joyce-ca...

Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "AB76 wrote: "

like that?"

can anyone identify the painting on the cover, its not identified in the POD version i have
It might be Vallaton or a..."

thanks bill....!

Lljones wrote: "Fresh from NYTimes: The 10 Best Books of 2020."

The only one I've been really interested in reading is A Children's Bible. I note that Shakespeare is represented in both the fiction and non-fiction columns.

Man, ever since it was announced the NY Times has been talking up Obama's memoir like it's the Second Coming, the Super Bowl, and a COVID vaccine all rolled into one. They make it sound like the entire book printing and -selling industry worldwide has been gearing up for months to move units into the hands of every reader on earth (and possibly the space station as well).

Bill wrote: "Lljones wrote: "Fresh from NYTimes: The 10 Best Books of 2020."

The only one I've been really interested in reading is A Children's Bible. I ..."

i havent read any of Obama's books, i like him and respect him but the coverage of his earlier books just turned me off,

AB76 wrote: "Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "AB76 wrote: "

like that?"

can anyone identify the painting on the cover, its not identified in the POD version i have
It might be ..."


Munch. 'The Storm'

oh something went wrong there. To repeat and for future reference. If you make a copy of the picture,and save it on your desk top, call up your search engine, for me Crome, and type in something like art, or medieval illuminations, for me, and click on the 'image' option, and then pick up the picture from the desk top, and drop it into the box that will appear below it, when you drop it in it will bring up a reasonable selections of where that picture has appeared before, on the internet, and often name it. Not 100% veracity however!...

Alwynne wrote: "AB76 wrote: "I read Dreams from My Father It was okay but didn't really provide anything I couldn't have gotten elsewhere, although some of the details of his early activism were interesting..."

Perhaps these sorts of political memoirs appeal to the same audience that made up the "HUGE following" (according to a reliable source) for The West Wing.

Bill wrote: "Perhaps these sorts of political memoirs appeal to the same audience that made up the "HUGE following"..."

I haven't read Dreams from My Father, nor do I plan to read his latest, but I do enjoy Obama's annual reading lists - 2020 should be out soon.

Signed,
A reliable source

Machenbach wrote: "Joy Williams is someone I haven't yet read, 'though I've had The Visiting Privilege on my shelves for ages, so I'll try to move it up the TBR pile..."

Williams is in the air (intercontinentally) today. Just got a "Have you read Joy Williams?" text from a good friend who checks in with me when she comes across new authors. I told her I've read a few collections, including TVP, and that I'm lukewarm at best about her. Some stories stood out, many didn't work for me.

Ah, CC, I had plans to visit North Yorkshire in the summer but that didn't happen -so maybe next year

AB76 wrote: "A chilly morn in the south.....i miss the rain but dont mind the cold

In "What If The Sun", CF Ramuz explores the life of a swiss-french mountain village where the sun fails to shine. Men discuss ..."

Thanks AB.
The Ramos in particular sounds interesting.

Cabbie wrote: "After finishing a third book that left me unimpressed (Where the Crawdads Sing) I've turned to Susan Hill's ghost story The Small Hand. With its antiquarian book deal..."

I really enjoyed The Small Hand. All of Hill’s ghost stories are good, I just wish she would write more of them instead of her far less interesting crime stuff.

Greenfairy. Rope making
I found the visit most interesting during our last visit. As MK mentioned a very long shed is necessary.
Hawes is one of my favourite places, wanted to live there but MrC said too cold and we settled half way. They make Wensleydale cheese there, too, not that I can eat it.
The only book that I have set nearby is James Heriot’s All creatures great and small.

Alwynne wrote: "Bill wrote: "Alwynne wrote: "AB76 wrote: "I read Dreams from My Father It was okay but didn't really provide anything I couldn't have gotten elsewhere, although some of the details o..."

Thanks Alwynne.
I haven’t read any of them yet... But I’m very keen on The Eighth Life and White Horse.
I notice Marion Brunet’s Summer of Reckoning was on the longlist. Has anyone read it?

Lljones wrote: "Williams is in the air (intercontinentally) today."

Were you aware that A. O. Scott published the third of his NY Times "The Americans" series on Joy Williams this past weekend?

On last week's Lazy quiz, one "U" character I was surprised didn't come up was Mr Underhill, the alias Frodo used while traveling from the Shire to Bree in The Fellowship of the Ring.

Bill wrote: "Lljones wrote: "Williams is in the air (intercontinentally) today."

Were you aware that A. O. Scott published the third of his NY Times "The Americans" series on Joy Williams this past weekend?"

Nope, but that's probably where my friend came across JW. She's an avid NYT reader.

CC Cubbon: Hawes
There's Dracula I suppose, Whitby isn't too far away..