That's appalling -- and yet intriguing. The first sentence of Milton's Paradise Lost: the first half dozen lines, plus the 26th line, at least -- to the tune of "The Flintstones." Of Man's first - dis-obedience - and the fruit of that forbidden tree-- Whose mortal - ta-aste brought death - into the world, and all our woe. With loss of - E-den till one greater man Restore us - and regain that blissful seat-- Sing, Muse - heav-enly Muse - a-and justify the ways of-- -tify the ways of-- - the ways of God to Man!

Finished last night (instead of sleeping; how I love middle age!) my Baudelaire. Much of it consists of a section called "My Heart Laid Bare," full of opinionated and often cryptic thoughts that passed through his head. One must read these keeping in mind that he was in his early 20s and French. If his calling it "My Heart Laid Bare" hadn't already told you that. Baudelaire really had it in for Belgians. Also for George Sand: (I swear when I first read that, I read "telegraph" as "twitter.") Having finished my private Lemony Snicket mini-challenge consisting of Baudelaire and Oliver Twist (Wee Girl has been watching the new season of Unfortunate Events), I need to get reading on the Ovid I'm supposed to be doing with Middle Girl, and fit in Far From the Madding Crowd. Maybe in that lovely 2 to 4 a.m. slot again. Chiguirre, Is the title of Can It Happen Here? derived from Sinclair Lewis' novel, It Can't Happen Here? I gather there was a little renaissance in sales for that Sinclair recently.

Finished last night (instead of sleeping; how I love middle age!) Charles Baudelaire's Intimate Journals, a posthumously published collection of his papers. Much of this consists of a section called "My Heart Laid Bare," full of opinionated and often cryptic thoughts that passed through his head. One must read these keeping in mind that he was in his early 20s and French. Baudelaire really had it in for Belgians. Also for George Sand: (I swear when I first read that, I read "telegraph" as "twitter.") Having finished my private little "Lemony Snicket" mini-challenge, I need to get reading on the Ovid I'm supposed to be doing with Middle Girl, and fit in Far From the Madding Crowd. Maybe in that lovely 2 to 4 a.m. slot again.

Yes.

"Revolution confirms Superstition, by offering sacrifice." - Baudelaire, Journaux Intimes

I've read Mérimée's collected stories, which included both; "Carmen" is the only one of them I really remember.

This afternoon I finished Oliver Twist, removing it at last from my Shame List. Even reading it quickly, there was time for two people to express their disbelief that I'd never read it before. Full of course of famous literary moments: "Please sir, I want some more"; the description of Smithfield on a market morning; "The law is a ass"; the Artful Dodger, Fagin, Bill Sikes. It was strange reading a book I'd never read but knowing so much of it. Anyway while this is an out-of-order reading, it's going to count for London next time the BritTrip bus heads that way. Time to move on to Dorset. Why, hello Mr. Hardy...!

Welcome back, Shukriyya. It's good to see you here.

Feeling a little guilty at not having really noticed the Great Board Change. Holy Week and the Easter Octave were super-busy, and Lent and Easter have been terribly overshadowed by our city's domestic terror bombings and the trial of the man who killed a person who was important to me, which just ended with a mistrial. The latter is not something btw that I'm in any place to discuss right now. I have been reading and running as physical/mental alternatives to crying. ... and so let's push that all out of the way to make room for books. I don't remember what I had read last time I posted to the LH, but my recent finished books were Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy St. Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship Philip Roth, Goodbye, Columbus William Faulkner, The Wild Palms Geraldine Jewsbury, The Half Sisters James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice [Anonymous], Life of St Cuthbert Bede, Life of St Cuthbert Horace McCoy, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Robert Fergusson, Selected Poems John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids Currently reading: Oliver Twist and Baudelaire's Journaux Intimes (translated by Christopher Isherwood!) (Anybody know how to make lists single-spaced?)

Oddly, Charles Baudelaire bore a strong resemblance to Neil Patrick' Harris's Count Olaf. Speaking of resemblances, I'm told that the speed zombie movie 28 Days Later was based on Day of the Triffids.

I loved it, but decided a "palate cleanser" was in order, so I started reading Three Men in a Boat! Getting a start on Berkshire already, then? Your Chilean noir sounds intriguing. I'll have to keep my eyes open for it.

Exactly so. What, did her critics also think she should be writing her dialogue using the thorn, eth, and yogh letters?

This week I finished 35. Horace McCoy, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? -- experimental crime fiction from the Great Depression, about a young man and woman who enter a marathon dance competition, at the end of which she asks him to kill her and he complies. Which isn't a spoiler as you learn all that right at the beginning; the story describes the violence, sexual acting-out, and general strangeness that marks the dancers' slow descent into a sort of temporary madness induced by exhaustion and sleep deprivation. A classic for a reason. 36. Robert Fergusson, Selected Poems. There's Northumbria done, with Edinburgh, a/k/a "Auld Reikie." 37. John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids And when the green meteor-shower blinds all humanity, leaving them easy prey for ten-foot tall carnivorous plants, where do you flee from the triffid apocalypse? To the Isle of Wight, naturally! Before continuing on the Ichnield Way, however, I'm taking a break for some other reading. Wee Girl has been binge-watching the new season of A Series of Unfortunate Events, which has unaccountably inspired me this week to read Baudelaire's Journaux Intimes and Dickens' Oliver Twist.

I think it's more likely to have been their fur that did them in; certainly the Scottish Presbyterians weren't hunting them down for Lenten fare when they vanished from the Highlands (the beavers, not the Presbyterians). ETA: Google says they've been reintroduced to the UK! Great news.

1. Not kosher; though they have fins and scales, the more general principle is No Weird Fish. But you’d have to get your rabbi’s ruling. 2. Acceptable on days of abstinence; marine creatures, and certainly as fishy as muskrats and alligators, which count as fish. But you’d have to get your bishop’s ruling.

At the Seder I went to this Passover we had a spirited ecumenical discussion over whether mermaids were kosher (only the bottom half?) and whether Catholics could eat them on Fridays.

National poetry month! Yes! Which moves us up to the furthest corner of early medieval Northumbria: Edinburgh, and the poet of "Auld Reikie," Robert Fergusson. Born in Edinburgh in 1750, Fergusson died, mad and destitute, at the age of 24, leaving a remarkable body of some of the best Scots poetry ever written. On the way to Tyne & Wear and Edinburgh, I passed through Durham with two lives of St. Cuthbert: the "Anonymous Life" (700) and Bede's "Prose Life" (721), based on the already-popular anonymous Life of St. Cuthbert. Now it's iffy, I admit, arguing that these are set in Durham when Durham really only exists as an entity because that's where St. Cuthbert's relics ended up (having been moved from place to place in Northumbria - then stretching from the Humber to Edinburgh - to keep them away from marauding Vikings). Durham was a desolate wasteland at the mouth of the Wear in the seventh century. But one of his miracles is in fact set at the mouth of the River Wear: he's traveling between monasteries and his horse miraculously fetches him fresh bread and meat in the middle of uninhabited nowhere, i.e. someday-Durham. And furthermore, my edition of Two Lives of St. Cuthbert was translated and edited from the original manuscripts by a Reader in English at the University of Durham. So I'm going to count it. From Bede's Life of St. Cuthbert, here's an endearing part that should be familiar to anyone who read Ring of Bright Water: (I'd like to point out that my cat is performing this very miracle right now.) And ... I believe the Anonymous Life of St. Cuthbert gets the "one book published anonymously" requirement for the "Jane Austen" level of the Rebel Rank.

1. Drank coffee. 2. Ate oatmeal. 3. Put on running clothes. 4. Drove downtown. 5. Stood on Congress Ave. with 23,000 other people and some dogs. 6. Ran 10k in 70 min. 7. Took selfie with dh in front of Stevie Ray Vaughn statue. 8. Drove home. 9. Ate breakfast taco. 10. Drank coffee.

No worries.

Don’t shoot the messenger.

You've probably figured it out by now, but there's a "eulogies during masses: yes or no?" landmine in the American Catholic culture wars. It's like vaccinations or cupcakes in certain other cultural contexts. Like others have said, talk to the priest; it's the only safe thing.

Wikipedia says a book called The Dress Lodger is set in Sunderland, if that helps. Oh, for bonus local points, a minor character in The Half Sisters tries to drown herself in the Tyne.

This morning I finished James M. Cain's 1930s noir classic, The Postman Always Rings Twice. After years of believing I disliked all forms of genre fiction, I discovered - being reduced, having nothing else at all available, to reading The Big Sleep - that I like crime fiction, at least of a noirish cast. Cain didn't disappoint. Soon I need to read They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Classic first line: "They threw me off the hay truck about noon." Last week I read Faulkner's Wild Palms, actually two distinct novellas, alternating chapters, with absolutely nothing in common (time, place, style, themes). The eponymous novella is pretty noirish for Faulkner, and while the other one (Old Man) is the one that gets anthologized, I think Wild Palms is underappreciated. Also finished the Victorian feminist novel The Half Sisters, by Geraldine Jewsbury, which was readable but could have been improved by not having the characters pontificate lengthily at each other quite so much. Such are the perils of Message literature. Anyhow the first five chapters, and the last, are set in a town just outside Newcastle, so that's good enough for Tyne and Wear, I trust.

14 out of my 30 books to date were by new-to-me writers. Eugène Sue, Jeremias Gottholf, Muriel Spark, Jean Giono, Abbé Théodore Ratisbonne, Tove Jansson, Irène Nemirovsky, George Gissing, C. P. Snow, Elisabeth Gille, Urban Holmes, Nathanael West, Gregor von Rezzori, and Erich Maria Remarque. This is what happens when you set literary foot out of the anglosphere.

I'm sorry; how stressful. I hope you have more sympathetic support available.