Twelfth century, eh? I keep meaning to read St Hildegard's Scivias, but I don't think I'd make it through in a week. Besides I'm almost done with The House of the Seven Gables. Eager to see what medieval readings others opt for!

Those are both good reasons for understanding "to Audra" as a PP rather than as an indirect object. You are right to look primarily at the structure of the sentence rather than the meaning to determine the grammar. A further reason is that, in the passive transformation Audra was given a ring by Raul. "Audra" is clearly the subject, and yet still answers the question "to/for whom?"

Last time I needed AAA, they refused to send someone for me because I wouldn't tell them where I was. My van's rear tire had disintegrated (and my spare was flat) in the anonymous wastes of West Texas, on highway 290 about 15 minutes west of Fredericksburg, which was insufficient for AAA's operator. She demanded to know, with increasing levels of exasperation, what town or city I was in (none), what the nearest building was (none), what was the nearest landmark (scrub oaks and distant cell phone tower), what address I was currently at (none). I kept explaining that the nearest town big enough to have a tow service was Fredericksburg, and that they could easily find me by DRIVING FREAKING WEST ON 290. She got angry and said that if I refused to say what city I was in, AAA couldn't help me. About then the pastor of First Baptist from the last small town I'd passed through pulled over and gave us a lift into Fredericksburg to the Wal-Mart auto center. God bless the Southern Baptists.

I try not to think about that.

Happy birthday, Rosie! Good heavens, just looked at your birth year. Are you allowed to homeschool at such a tender age?

Ooh! I think I might just see if the university library has a copy. ETA: Yes they do! Sending the request to dh....

"Of course there are some high school subjects that you obviously just CAN'T do: like chemistry. You can't have a chemistry lab in your house!" Against which I explained the setup of our home chemistry lab - metal bench desk, well-stocked locking chemical cabinet, glassware, balance, burner and ringstand, etc. - and how Grandpa who had a ph.d. and used to work at Los Alamos had been working through experiments with Great Girl. Tell me what we can't do!

2. Frederick Rolfe, Hadrian the Seventh 1. Thomas Mann, Death in Venice & Other Stories What an odd little book Hadrian the Seventh is. The story of a much-abused English Catholic convert whose vocation to the priesthood was unjustly and repeatedly denied, who finds himself elected Pope and, ultimately, ruler of the world, through a series of gasping implausibilities. Written by an English Catholic convert who considered himself unjustly denied his vocation to the priesthood. Wish-fulfillment so brazen you just have to enjoy the giddy ride. Rolfe invents his own fantasy life as a novel, his own identity (he abbreviated his name to Fr. Rolfe, and dubiously acquired the title Baron Corvo), and often enough his own English words. ---------------------- Had He been trained in boyhood at a public-school, in adolescence at a university, had His lines been cast in service, He would not have had to put so severe restraint upon Himself. The occasion would not have arisen. A simple and perhaps a stolid character would have been formed of His temper, potent and brilliant enough to distinguish Him from the mob, but incapable of hypersensation. Instead, His frightfully self-concentrated and lonely life, denied the ordinary opportunities of action, had developed this heart-rending complexity: had trained him in mental gymnastics to a degree of excellence which was inhuman, abominable (in the first intention of the words) in its facile flexible solert dexterity. He was not restrained by any sense whatever of modesty or of decorum. He had no sense of those things. He knew it; and regretted it. He was Himself, He distrusted that self, rejoiced in it, and determined to deal well and righteously with it.

Our city shelter will put a photo of a found animal on their website, even if you're keeping it in your home. You might see if yours will do that. Check Craigslist also.

Not better for your department, though. That's why chairs and deans like to keep the ones with racist or sexist opinions away from real people.

Addressing the question of why it might not be a good idea for Chua to explore the topic of traits supposedly common to certain cultural/racial/religious groups and how they relate to success of members of that group: I'd say, because she's an academic, and if the review is at all accurate, she's making huge potential trouble for herself down the road when some student makes a complaint about bias.

Dh just published a book of philosophy, but I'd hate to recommend it, as I could barely understand the first chapter, even with lots of helpful coaching from the author. Better to go for the Russell.

Oh, sorry. Dh's comments: It's hard to know what to make of a list of just philosophers. Many of them would be very hard to understand if you just leapt in and started reading the primary texts. Something like Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy might be a good introduction first. (He's also dubious about the composition of the list, finding it impressive that for a list of eighty great philosophers the compiler could come up with only three women, and Anscombe wasn't one of them.)

If you mean this list-- http://www.listchallenges.com/philosophical-books -- then dh (actual philosopher!) says they're all quite readable by nonspecialists. The most difficult would be the Aristotle, Plato, Anscombe, and Sartre; but also probably the ones most worth reading. Just get an edition with notes.

Yesterday I finished Thomas Mann's Death in Venice & Other Stories. The title story is, as far as I could tell, about a man who goes to Venice and dies there of Artistic Decadence. The other stories vary considerably, "A Man and His Dog" being a lyrical description of the narrator's life with his unpromising hunting dog; "Mario and the Magician" about the meaning of freedom of the will; and "Disorder and Early Sorrow" about the generation gap as it coincides with the demise of the middle class in post-war 1920s Germany. I found the 1905 story "The Blood of the Walsungs" disturbing in its anti-Semitic stereotypes, down to the contrast of the depraved, self-loathing, blood-tainted characters with the ideal purity of Wagner. Now I have to finish Hadrian the Seventh so I can quickly read The House of the Seven Gables, which I've *ahem* not gotten around to reading before.

Right, first thing is not to start with The Scarlet Letter. A good approach is to start by reading aloud The Wonder-Book and Tanglewood Tales to children; that will correctly calibrate your Hawthorne irono-meter. Because he has a very dry ironic wit, and generations of high school students (and too often their teachers) badly misread him as a result. Then some of his short stories. "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Maypole of Merry Mount" give Hawthorne's views on Puritans and their ideological successors, another essential aspect for The Scarlet Letter. The Blithedale Romance was my last read-aloud to Great Girl. Why don't they teach that one in high schools? That scene near the end, where Zenobia, um, turns up (don't want spoilers) was greeted by Great Girl with cries of "Awesome!" And the novel shows the reader that Hawthorne's distrust of ideology wasn't limited to the Puritans. By the way, did you know that Hawthorne's daughter, Rose, became a nun (a thing that just wasn't done in their society) and founded the first cancer hospice? We have a children's book about her that my girls really liked.

Just poking my head in to say happy new year, and many thanks to Robin for launching us into more reading. (Had to get my courage up to join in the thread, what with all the frightening '70s glam and the disturbing anti-Hawthorne vibe ;) )

Books to see out the old year (if I'd had the self-discipline to focus on just one of them, I'd've had another book for 2013): Fr. Rolfe, Hadrian the Seventh Byron, Don Juan Thomas Mann, Death in Venice & Other Stories My ambition for next year: Gibbon!

47 books! Beating my 26-book goal substantially, and nearly making it to 52! 1. Balzac, Père Goriot 2. Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, vol. 2 3. Fielding, Tom Jones 4. Thirteen Stories by Eudora Welty 5. Cdl. Newman, Historical Sketches, vol. 1 6. James, The Portrait of a Lady 7. Christopher Isherwood, Mr Norris Changes Trains 8. Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities 9. Stevenson, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde & Other Stories 10. Plato, Republic 11. Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece & Gambara 12. Carlos Fuentes, The Old Gringo 13. Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America 14. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov 15. Stevenson, The Master of Ballantrae 16. Aldous Huxley, Music at Night 17. John Prebble, The Highland Clearances 18. Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory 19. Goethe, Faust, Part II 20. Trollope, The Way We Live Now 21. Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1 22. Sigfrid Steinberg, Five Hundred Years of Printing 23. Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata & Other Stories 24. More, Utopia 25. Genet, Funeral Rites 26. Chekhov, Plays 27. Leonardo Sciascia, To Each His Own 28. Pindar, Odes 29. Hardy, Jude the Obscure 30. Henry IV, Part 2 31. A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad 32. Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of The British Working Classes 33. Gert Ledig, The Stalin Front 34. Seneca, On the Shortness of Life 35. Emerson, Essays 36. Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita 37. Shakespeare, Richard II 38. Kenneth Grahame, Dream Days 39. Dante, Inferno 40. Joyce Cary, Herself Surprised 41. Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience 42. Alexander Gilchrist, The Life of William Blake 43. Richard Burton, The Arabian Nights 44. Leonardo Sciascia, The Wine-Dark Sea 45. André Gide, The Immoralist 46. Cyprian, The Lapsed & The Unity of the Catholic Church 47. Nancy Mitford, The Sun King Favorite (not necessarily the same as the best) books: Bulgakov, Dostoevsky, Rose, Gilchrist, Balzac (Père Goriot) (I could only keep it down to five by excluding re-reads.) Least favorite: Dickens, Balzac (The Unknown Masterpiece), Fuentes, Banks I would recommend the Rose and the Bulgakov as the most likely to appeal widely to the book-lovers and classical educators around here. Personal Reading challenges! (Somewhat post hoc) Chunkster challenge: Ariosto, Fielding, Dostoevsky, Trollope, Rose, Burton I Love Poetry Challenge: Ariosto, Goethe, Pindar, Housman, Dante, Blake, Gilchrist Well That's Different Challenge: Isherwood, Brautigan, Genet, Bulgakov Scots Wha Hae Challenge: Stevenson (x2), Prebble, Banks

I've never met anyone who does that; but I'm glad your reading experiences are fruitful for you.

This one is stolen from NPR, but it's too good not to post. Amazon's proposed delivery drone service: What Could Possibly Go Wrong With That?

Lockheed Martin drones: Reach out and touch someone.

The NSA: Think globally, act locally.

Vote for Mark Foley: Promise him anything, but give him our page

Nm [Redacted for flu-induced peevishness.]