Some of us are old people. With poor vision. :) For the first time, I find reading the boards easy.

Finished Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (York) St Ælred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship (North Yorkshire)Philip Roth, Goodbye, ColumbusWilliam Faulkner, The Wild Palms Currently reading Anonymous, Life of St Cuthbert (Durham) Geraldine Jewsbury, The Half Sisters (Tyne and Wear) Tolstoy, Essays

We couldn't take staying in town anymore and took a spontaneous Spring Break trip to Houston, so I did lots of walking and driving but not so much reading. So I'm still on my books from last week, except I did finish my East Riding of Yorkshire BritTrip book: 26. Snorri Sturlason, King Harald's Saga As we all recall, Harald Hardrada ("the Ruthless") fought and lost against King Harold at Stamford Bridge in East Riding, emboldening William the Bastard (sorry) of Normandy to invade the southern coast and leading to England and English as we know them. King Harald's Saga is part of Sturlason's Heimskringla, Icelandic sagas of the Norse kings, written in the 13th century. Currently reading the next BritTrip book, Tristram Shandy, set in York (despite Sterne's coy but not very serious attempts to disguise the location). It's improved a lot since college. Also reading various other things, including short fiction for Middle Girl. This week we read Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," which has not improved with time. Good night, I forgot how heavy-handed that story is. In my head I was hearing Dueling Banjos from Deliverance. Da-da-da-da, da-da, da-da, da... ETA: Checking in late, sorry Amy! We had a late-evening family game of charades, in which I vindicated myself by successfully pantomiming Les Fleurs du Mal (Middle Girl got it).

Breaking radio silence briefly. Friends, if you have recently sent me a book or any other package that I don't know about, please let me know now. Thanks.

So having read five counties: Gissing, New Grub Street (London) Snow, The Masters (Cambridgeshire) Eliot, Four Quartets (Huntingdonshire) Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress (Bedfordshire) Clare, Bird & Animal Poems (Northamptonshire) -- plus a First World War book (Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front) and some Wilfred Owen, and Child Ballads for Robin Hood content -- I think that covers Rebel Ranks "Wilfred Owen" and "J. K. Rowling." Onward!

This week I finished: 23. Gregor von Rezzori, An Ermine in Czernopol 24. Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front 25. Francis Child, English & Scottish Popular Ballads (Sargent/ Kittredge eds.) Currently reading, without having quite committed myself to: Snorri Sturluson, King Harald's Saga Michel Fournier, Friday Gregor von Rezzori, Memoirs of an Anti-Semite The Child Ballads are our best source for the early Robin Hood stories. The earliest mention is in the 14th-century allegory Piers Plowman (where the character Sloth disgracefully knows Robin Hood tales better than the Lord's Prayer); the extant ballads range from the lengthy 15th-century "A Gest of Robyn Hode" to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century broadsides of varying quality. Many of them recycle the moldy theme of "Robin Hood meets his match," where Robin is soundly beaten, summons his men but prevents them from taking revenge and instead offers the potter/ tinker/ tanner/ ranger a place in his company. The lowest point of ignominy comes in "Robin Hood and the Pedlars," of uncertain date, where Robin is beaten unconscious by the eponymous peddlers, is given by them medicinal balsam before they run off, and regaining consciousness, vomits the medicine all over Will Scarlett and Little John. Ho, ho. I am not making this up.

I humbly accede to the wisdom of our BritTrip Solons. Robert "Auld Reekie" Fergusson gets the nod for Northumbria, then. Robin Hood is perfect -- and works nicely for Nottinghamshire. And it doesn't take much to move me to take Owen or Sassoon off the shelf, so there we are. Here's "Anthem for Doomed Youth": I may accidentally have read more than one. :)

A question about Rebel Ranks. Five counties completed is required for Wilfrid Owen rank, but also for JK Rowling rank. How does that work? Also, JK Rowling rank requires reading a Harry Potter book, which is constitutionally impossible. Is there an alternative? Like poking myself in the eye with a stick? ETA: Also, early medieval Northumbria included Edinburgh. Any chance we can count Edinburgh? There's this book of dh's I've been waiting to read....

In honor of Northamptonshire week, here's John Clare's "Clock a Clay." While not as famous as "The Thrushes Nest" or "'I Am,'" it's the one I know best as it's included in our favorite children's poetry collection and I've read it aloud a hundred times. A clock-a-clay is a ladybird. Clock a Clay 1 In the cowslips peeps I lye Hidden from the buzzing fly While green grass beneath me lies Pearled wi’ dew like fishes eyes Here I lye a Clock a clay Waiting for the time o’ day 2 While grassy forests quake surprise And the wild wind sobs and sighs My gold home rocks as like to fall On its pillars green and tall When the pattering rain drives bye Clock a Clay keeps warm and dry 3 Day by day and night by night All the week I hide from sight In the cowslips peeps I lye In rain and dew still warm and dry Day and night and night and day Red black spotted clock a clay 4 My home it shakes in wind and showers Pale green pillar top’t wi’ flowers Bending at the wild wind’s breath Till I touch the grass beneath Here still I live lone clock a clay Watching for the time of day --------------------------------------------------- Clare wrote this while incarcerated, poor man, in the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum. If parts of the poem sound vaguely borrowed ("In the cowslips peeps I lie"), it should be remembered that Clare believed he was, or had been, Shakespeare. And Lord Byron.

Finished this week 20. Urban Holmes, Daily Living in the Twelfth Century 21. Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts - An expressionist novel from the '30s; cheerless and depressing in just the right way. 22. John Clare, Bird and Animal Poems (selections from The Rural Muse plus others) (Northamptonshire) Currently reading more Child's Ballads (Robin Hood! Nottinghamshire!), and a very strange novel by Gregor von Rezzori, An Ermine in Czernopol.

Awesome! I met a nice lady from the Lake District on an Edinburgh train. It was like meeting someone from Shangri-La. I apologized for my American fan-girl overreaction but she laughed and said it wasn't uncommon. One has to imagine meeting someone from Northamptonshire would have the same effect. Surely the locals spend all their time searching hedgerows for Clare's throstles and yellow-hammers, and lamenting land enclosure? It's what I'll do if I ever get there. (Google Willa Cather's breathless pilgrimage to Shropshire for a cautionary tale, however.)

As it happens, I read The Pilgrim's Progress (again) this week. It makes good Lenten readng. And it really is set in Bedfordshire: it begins (after the long introductory poem) Bunyan glossed "Den" as "gaol," meaning Bedfordshire County Gaol, where he famously wrote the book. It was a tricky reading week with dh gone and I only finished that and Mirador: Dreamed Memories of Irène Némirovsky by her Daughter by Elisabeth Gille, a fictionalized "memoir" of her author-mother who died in Auschwitz when Gille was only five years old. On to Northamptonshire, and with whom else than the Northamptonshire Poet, John Clare?

This week I finished 14. C. P. Snow, The Masters 15. Irène Némirovsky, Snow in Autumn 16. T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets 17. Irène Némirovsky, The Courilof Affair Currently reading Daily Life in the Twelfth Century, Based on the Observations of Alexander Neckam in London and Paris. Interesting and informative; but definitely for the general reader (not that I'm a medievalist) and frustratingly speculative or under-informative in many places. Also reading Pilgrim's Progress, for upcoming Bedfordshire, and for Lenten reading, Augustine on the Psalms. Plus my unfinished books from previous weeks. Oh why am I adding more books . Especially since reading time is compromised by Winter Olympics viewing. Though very averse to explicit sex and violence in my reading and viewing, I could not take my eyes off the street brawl that was the US vs Soviet, sorry Russian, sorry OAR, hockey game. A better person would have been reading St. Augustine. Brit tripping: London: George Gissing, New Grub Street Cambridgeshire: C. P. Snow, The Masters (Cambridge College) Huntingdonshire: T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets (Little Gidding)

Apparently someone recently wrote a sequel. The NYRB gave it a rave review. It sounded dreadful.

Inside baseball alert. Since this is Agatha Christie week, here's a bit of trivia little known outside the tiny international community of Traditionalist Catholics. Though not any variety of Catholic at all, Christie is revered as one of the signatories of a Post-Vatican 2 letter to Pope Paul VI, pleading with him to allow English Catholics to sometimes be permitted to hear the Old Mass. The story goes that Pope Paul read the petition with skepticism -- similar pleas had been disregarded -- then saw her name, exclaimed, "Ah, Agatha Christie!!" -- and granted it. The papal permission (indult) was thereafter known affectionately as the "Agatha Christie indult."

Oooo, I don't know, this is my first Snow. If you don't like the sub-genre of the academic novel, you may not find the cast of fourteen similar men and the plot of faculty politicking, with its shifting alliances and inexplicable pettinesses, terribly gripping. As the hoary saying goes, academic infighting is so bitter because the stakes are so small. But I'm enjoying it, and feel that I recognize some of the personalities.

This week I got past the first ten books for the year, efficiently getting through five (shortish, except for the just-a-chunkster Gissing) texts. 2018 1. Eugene Sue, The Wandering Jew* 2. J.-K. Huysmans, The damned (La-Bas) 3. Jeremias Gotthelf, The Black Spider 4. Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie 5. Jean Giono, The Hill 6. Abbe Theodore Ratisbonne, St. Bernard of Clairvaux* 7. Tove Jansson, The True Deceiver 8. Blaise Pascal, Pensees This week: 9. Irene Nemirovsky, David Golder 10. Dylan Thomas, Quite Early One Morning 11. George Gissing, New Grub Street* 12. Anton Chekhov, The Seagull 13. Irene Nemirovsky, The Ball It was interesting to simultaneously read New Grub Street, a novel about novels and the writing life, and The Seagull, a play about a play and the acting life (sort of). Very meta. Currently reading C. P. Snow, The Masters, a novel in the Lewis Eliot series (others of which I have not read, but The Masters stands on its own just fine) about academic politics in Cambridge before the second World War (ETA: just this novel, not the whole series). Set in Cambridgeshire, obviously. Let's get the English county sub-list going: London: George Gissing, New Grub Street Cambridgeshire: C. P. Snow, The Masters Also slowly forward in Child's Ballads, and re-re-re-reading Augustine's Confessions with Middle Girl. Or I would be if I had started it yet. I will check in early this week and then for a while just pop in on Sundays for reading updates. Apologies for radio silence. ETA: fixing ambiguity

Every time I read the title of this thread I feel simultaneously aggrieved and hungry for enchiladas mole and a Shiner.

(((Karen))) It's good to have you back.

It's an oddly persistent myth that the medievals drank alcohol instead of water because the water wasn't clean. The water generally was clean, and water was the usual drink. (Keeping in mind that "Middle Ages" covers an entire continent for a millennium, I'm sure exceptions can be found, but I'm not aware of any.) In cities, towns, villages, and rural areas, people drank from fountains, cisterns, wells, and brooks. Water cleanliness was taken seriously. Medieval fountains in town squares from Spain to Scotland can still be seen -- and some still run -- all over Europe today. In Rome, for instance, you can see people drinking from public fountains that have been there since Roman times and operated through the middle ages. Medieval London had a famous water importation system, the "Conduit."

Interesting. I gather from your posts you’re an academic. Dh is also, and has some harrowing tales of hard-drinking faculty/ grad student events in various departments in his area. Sometimes with serious negative outcomes. I suppose different fields and departments have different cultures; but I’ve been left with the impression that alcohol is a real problem in academia.

I do recommend it! (By the way you might want to add a warning that the NYT article contains a major plot spoiler at the very beginning.)

Gissing's New Grub Street is set in London and a satisfyingly page-turning read. The characters are sympathetic and multi-dimensional; no villains, just different kinds of people. And it's all about books and writing, which should give it appeal to BaW readers. Just saying.

This week I finished Pascal and am making good progress on Quite Early One Morning, Dylan Thomas' collection of short fiction and essays, which includes some marvelous thoughts on Wilfrid Owen, Welsh poets in general, Sir Philip Sidney, the prose of Walter de la Mare ("In his more mature dramatic stories about grown-up human relationships, he often used a convoluted monologue manner that occasionally suggested the ghost of a landbound Conrad talking from behind a pot of ferns"), and the reading of poetry aloud. Continuing Child's Ballads, of course. And hoping tomorrow to start on George Gissing's New Grub Street, which I gather is very much about London. Roman roads, ho! (I recommend Pascal to anyone with a vested interest in the current civil war in the Catholic Church, by the way. Startlingly on point.)

I finished Pascal's Pensées this Candlemas morning, just in time to not see my shadow. Reading faster now that dh is back home; hopefully I can finish my Welsh writer before English reading starts.