We have arrived for our annual Caledonian pilgrimage. Iffy wi-fi and typing on a phone makes book reporting a little erratic. I did get a copy of The Razors Edge from the local library so soon I will read the thread and see where I should be up to. Also I looked over the natiobal Authors shelf and discovered to my surprise that Grassic Gibbon who wrote the classic Scottish novel A Sunset Song also wrote Spartacus! Who knew? So that's at the top of my tbr pile. On the plane I finished Graham Greene's Monsignor Quixote which was light and fun but not hard to leave in the seat pocket when I disrmbarked. Started Faulkner's The Reivers but was interrupted by Heathrow and may not get back to it for a while, as there is Maugham and Gibbon and a James Hogg novel at the used bookstore calling for me. Wee Girl has moved up to Advanced Enid Blyton and is reading one of her boarding school series. She is up to the second form at St Clares now. Perhaps shes getting a good education vicariously. ETA: Have to keep reminding her not to get tea or jaffa cake on the library books. Oh bliss.... ETA2: Wikipedia informs me that the movie was based on a different novel Spartacus. Too bad. Still, looking forward to the Scottish version of the Roman slave rebellion!

Finished my book of plays by Karel ÄŒapek: R.U.R., The Insect Play, The Makropulus Case, and The White Plague. Retrieved The Razor's Edge from bookstore clearance limbo but reading it will be tricky - it's all packing and traveling for the next few days.

It was at a highway access road intersection in a part of rural Texas far, far from where traffic cameras roam.

Hadn't occurred to me. I'll check.

Maybe this goes a little beyond annoyance, but ... when you run a cold red and crunch the rear corner of the minivan just clearing the intersection, it is annoying to zoom off and leave your hit -and-run victim family to pay the repair bill ($1000 deductible! Whee!). But hey, thanks for not running the red a second sooner and killing my family.

It's interesting that, though it's told in the first person by a 14-year-old girl, True Grit seems to have escaped being classed in the Young Adult quasi-genre. True Grit also reminded me of my girls' beloved late-elementary Mary Sue classic, Trail Boss in Pigtails, which was catnip to the little urban Texans terrified of actual cows. ETA: Ah, here it is: https://www.amazon.com/Trail-Pigtails-Marjorie-Filley-Stover/dp/B000GWPFJS "When her father becomes sick, a fifteen-year-old girl is responsible for leading a herd of eighty-two longhorns from Texas to Illinois." And of course the gruff and skeptical trail hands soon learn to respect the precocious young lady.

I read today, and saw performed this evening, Seneca's Phaedra, ~50 AD. The graduate student director, according to the programme, has a theory that it's not in fact unperformable (as generally thought) if it's played as a comedy. Questionable, but it was certainly successful as a Roman comedy. Now whether it was still Seneca in anything but the lines is not obvious. Speaking of silly plays, back to ÄŒapek....

Seconding the recommendation for True Grit, which I read and enjoyed earlier this year: Middle Girl read it also and loved it. Sort of a Calvinist Western, with a convincing adolescent girl protagonist. I'm using it for the husband birth year square. There are lots of good histories of the American West, if those count. For my Western, I'm planning to read Andy Adams' "Log of a Cowboy," a famous account of the great cattle trails from 1903.

Jane, I must go get a copy of the Maugham. I think I saw it on the clearance shelf even. Time to read will somehow appear. Thanks for the intro! Oh and I should read Seneca's "Phaedra" tonight before we go see it. Instead I'm watching the Pete's Dragon remake and losing brain cells.

No books finished this week. But! I got to meet JennW!!! And her lovely husband. And their adorable dog. Wee Girl was so taken with their sweet dog, she was set to hop in their car and drive off west with them. What a treat for us! Still reading Karel ÄŒapek. He is not subtle in his political allegories; but he's a lot more fun than Orwell. Packing and preparing for the Great Spring Migration leaves not enough time for reading; and while I was greatly enjoying The Birth of the Modern, it's too big to bring and too long to finish. So that will have to be my July reading.

Also it's a high-traffic part of campus. And no one's going to be able to focus. Dh is finishing some work and refusing to leave , naturally.

Let's hope. We found out because dh saw the emergency vehicles out his window. Considering where it was, half of campus must have know something was up within minutes.

The Statesman had a story on their website well before that alert even came out. What is the point of the "alert" by then???

Sorry, Texas. Too rattled to post well. ETA Middle Girl says that she was at the location, walking her bike from dh's office, right beforehand. Dang. ETA2: No, I misunderstood her: it was dh who was there with his bike shortly before.

More campus violence, at a part of campus where two of my children recently were. Dh just texted them and me frantically from different part of campus. One death so far. Local media had the story before admin even sent alert text to students. I don't have any lessons to draw from this. My kids and husband are safe, and someone else's aren't.

This week I finished Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821). Half De Quincey's autobiography, half his defensive account of his longterm and continuing opium addiction (he harps frequently on how easily one can discontinue taking opium; he knows because he's done it so many times), it's a surprisingly timely book, particularly in his discussions of how opium addiction has affected every English class on a wide scale, and how it's related to difficulties in treating chronic pain, and its role in self-medication of the poor for depression and malaise. Particularly wrenching are assertions by druggists in Manchester (interviewed by De Quincey) about opium use by the working poor: the druggists make no attempt to distinguish between recreational use and pain management, and only try to keep large quantities out of the hands of the suicidal. There's an odd disconnect between De Quincey's unrealistic claims for the benefits of opium, and his own testimony about his terrifying dreams and hallucinations, and opium's interference with his own work: there was supposed to be a Part 3 to his serialized life story, but instead he added an appendix explaining that he was simply unable to continue writing. (Warning: crocodile-as-part-of-opium-hallucination content) This week I'm starting Paul Johnson's The Birth of the Modern, his thousand-page exposition of all aspects of life in every country between the years 1815-1830, which has extensive material on De Quincey and his opium use, and might also be of interest to fans of the Aubrey/Maturin novels. Also starting a collection of four of Karel ÄŒapek's plays, including "R.U.R.," the origin of the word "robot." Hey, Eastern Europe! And the science fiction bingo square! ETA: ... and I hadn't even read down to the second post with Jane's list! Serendipitous.

Wee Girl uses them as an alternative to picking at her skin, or picking nails down to the quick. In church she fiddles with her rosary, which at least comes across as pious rather than anxious. I think they're a splendid alternative to the old method of smacking schoolkids' hands to keep them still, and the kids graduating to cigarettes or chewing tobacco in high school, which is the method I recall from my Texas childhood. But not everyone finds fiddle-things tolerable, which I understand and is one of the many reasons we homeschool her.

Great work of Scottish literature, with a pivotal scene taking place on the crest of Arthur's Seat! I loved this book. (I looked hard for a Brocken spectre [see Wikipedia] when we climbed Arthur's Seat, but there was only a group of drunken tattooed Russians.)

Group video night! Btw Grand Hotel is only going to keep round robin-ing if someone speaks up for it. Who's next?

Very much.

Oh Stacia, what a lovely kitty; how hard this must be for you. A lucky cat to have had your family's love.

Finished Grand Hotel this week; thanks, Jane! Matryoshka, were you interested in having it next, or were you looking for it auf Deutsch? Starting Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. For a two-hundred-year-old book, very relevant today. Also thinking of getting started on Paul Johnson's The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830, which would go swimmingly with De Quincey.

Congratulations Heather on 52 books!

Aha! I Think I get it now. Texas hygge: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=22-HSjMS3Ks Yep.

Agreed on the summer skinny dipping; mostly because it sounds like a good way to get severely burned in tender spots, also because our natural springs pools are really cold. Not completely clear exactly what "hygge" is (that's okay, don't send the book), but I gather it's how to deal with temperature extremes that don't permit outdoors activities in traditional ways that emphasize comfort and social bonding; is that right? So it would be what you do in July/August when it's actually dangerous to spend much time outdoors midday. In Texas through mid-century that would have included beer and cold tea, spicy food (which is cooling), loose and covering cotton clothing, ice houses, movie theatres, afternoon siestas, sleeping on the porch under mosquito netting with sheets kept in the icebox until bedtime, outings to shady swimming holes, and late-evening social events.