Almost finished with RLS's Kidnapped. Like Treasure Island with Jacobites instead of pirates.

Interesting. I keep hearing that it's the greatest Italian novel ever written, too. Sounds like I shouldn't get my hopes up.

What did you think of Lampedusa? I've had that on my To Read shelf for ages.

Because nobody wants to preserve "gnarly," "no duh," or "chill pill." ;)

I knew "cuddy" and "sonsy" from Scots dialect; and the Texan "tow sack."

Prestigious indeed, but not sufficient to guarantee book quality. The author was a journalist and then worked for the Texas DPS, being involved in media relations following major events such as the Branch Davidian disaster and the Luby's massacre. But he's not a good storyteller, and struggles particularly in sustaining a book-length narrative. Still, there's lots of interesting stuff in his accounts of Texas Rangers through history. His accounts of the Bonnie and Clyde manhunt and the Texarkana Horror are gripping, and should have gotten more space than his lame retelling of an O. Henry story about a Ranger, or his musings as to why no Texas Rangers (or indeed anyone else) ate coyote meat. Also I finished Treasure Island, again. Oh how I love reading that book, snuggled up to a child; and I was feeling pretty sad as Long John Silver once again absconded with a small fortune and disappeared, taking a joy of early childhood with him. :( You know, I've never actually read Kidnapped; the girls went on to read that one to themselves. Hope everyone who's feeling bad, feels better soon. This is why we only have cats.

I'd been noticing the paucity of presidential campaign signs, too. A few here and there for the candidate of the party which this county tips heavily for. More signs than usual for third-party candidates. Same with bumper stickers. The one I've seen most is "Cthulhu 2016: Why settle for the lesser evil?" ETA: Not sure about the theory that it's due to a rethinking of the effectiveness of signs. There's a contentious city council election coming up, related to a hotly disputed development in my neighborhood, and there are forests of signs related to those.

From somewhere far away, its mom is thanking you. (I initially got as far as "I was asked to release a baby diamondback ..." and my blood froze! I didn't know there was a cute species of diamondback.)

After finishing Saramago's Blindness, I started To The Lighthouse but quickly remembered why I can never get anywhere with a Woolf novel. So I picked up my volume of poems of Matthew Arnold and am spending some more time wallowing in Victoriana. In-between Arnold's verse, I'm reading chapters from Texas Ranger Tales: Stories That Need Telling, by Mike Cox. (I assume the subtitle is a play on the Texas expression "need killing.") It was apparently the winner of the Violet Crown award for non-fiction back in 1997, so there's that.

You'll have better luck with Spanish-language searches. Here's a site with an icon of Santa Violeta, and some info on her: http://hagiopedia.blogspot.com/2013/05/otros-santos-del-dia_3.html If you like Rose but St Rose of Lima is too much for you, "Rosa Mystica" is also of course a title for the Virgin. Can't go wrong with the BVM.

You know "Violet" is a saint's name. St. Viola was a second-century martyr, and Violeta or Violet are used as a version of her name.

Violet Crown? Classical allusion....

Almost done with Saramago's Blindness. Well-written, though I keep seeing the inevitable (which I gather did occur) movie version in my mind's eye, the first post-apocalyptic casualty of which would certainly be Saramago's run-on prose. He has a tricky row to hoe, centering a novel on an event--universal blindness--so heavily symbolic that it's almost not even a metaphor anymore, without falling into triteness on the one hand or mere science fiction on the other. Dh apparently thought that I would be disturbed by the rape scene, but is happy that I like Saramago. Probably not enough to linger in my reading at the turn of the last century however. Ah, 1984. The year that quiet math-prodigy kid I knew in middle school came back to the US and started hanging out with my crowd in high school. I wonder what became of him in the end.

I finished The Prime Minister and realized I don't have the final novel in Trollope's Palliser series, The Duke's Children; so while I see about getting hold of it, I'm reading one of dh's books: Jose Saramago's Blindness, which I recall seeing discussed here. Dh assured me I wouldn't like it. Let's find out.

My condolences and prayers. I'm sorry.

Patrick McGoohan! Wee Girl has a big soft rubber therapy ball that we call "Rover." I am not a number! I am a free man!

Happy birthday, Amy! Many happy returns! Stacia, hope you're healing up. I wonder if our four-legged friends are surprised that we two-leg walkers don't tumble more often. Thanks to everyone for describing your book organization! Middle Girl and I have been imposing some order on the chaos by consolidating all the poetry; and there's a lot more of it than I realized. Next, drama. Nearing the end of The Prime Minister and Treasure Island both.

Mindful of today's canonization, some reflections of Mother Teresa of Calcutta on Confession: "And how will you find Jesus? He has made it so easy for us. 'Love one another as I loved you.' If we have gone astray, we have the beautiful sacrament of confession. We go to confession a sinner full of sin. We come from confession a sinner without sin by the greatness of the mercy of God. No need for us to despair. No need for us to be discouraged—no need, if we have understood the tenderness of God’s love. You are precious to him. He loves you, and he loves you so tenderly that he has carved you on the palm of his hand. These are God’s words written in the Scripture. Remember that when your heart feels restless, when your heart feels hurt, when your heart feels like breaking—then remember, 'I am precious to him. He loves me. He has called me by my name. I am his. He loves me. God loves me.' And to prove that love he died on the cross." (Edited for mortal typos)

We cover for that by ending with ".. for these and for all my sins, I am truly sorry." We get a lot of mileage out of boilerplate. We agree on the impossibility of confessing all one's sins (who could even remember them all and still function normally?); if there's a difference, it's that for us private confession is for confessing sins that particularly trouble God. ETA: In answer to the OP's question: yes, assent of faith to the doctrines regarding the sacraments is an integral part of being Catholic.

Bad Catholic that I am, I'm impressed and humbled that there are Catholics who have so advanced in holiness that they need not confess their sins even once a year. God knows I'm not able to go two weeks without committing a serious sin. Though on reflection, I can call to mind two or three Catholics I've known who, if I were to peer into their souls and discover that they hadn't committed a single serious sin over the course of the past year, I would not be shocked. The irony is that they go to confession frequently.

You lead me to open up the question: how do y'all organize your books? (Insofar as they're organized.) After trying various methods, dh and I found the only way that we were able to find the books we're looking for is to shelve them by publisher and binding. We're terrible at remembering where we shelved a book, but good at remembering what it looked like; so all the Norton critical editions go in one place, all the Loebs another, all the orange-cover Penguins another, etc.

Sadie--Just because I'm curious, since your family style sounds very much like mine-- Did you have an exception, especially when your kids were little, where you might require Absolute Immediate Obedience? I've always kept a "voice" in reserve which means exactly that, and is only ever used in situations of immediate physical peril where I can't reach the child in time. It's nearly always been STOP RIGHT NOW!!! --followed by a specific command as to what to do next--with an undercurrent of terror that makes it convincing. It's rare but has been useful in bee tree, rattlesnake, and traffic situations. I've always been glad afterward that I rarely raise my voice to my children, so it gets their attention when I do.

Oh well if you like Bartleby, all is definitely forgiven We used to call Middle Girl "Bartleby" in the preK years. You can doubtless figure out why.

Still reading Trollope's The Prime Minister. Hey, it's 700 densely typed pages, don't judge. Well I was going to ding you for your unfathomable (ho ho) Melville-hating, but gave you a full score for invoking Cultural Virtue Points. :D (I know everyone here knows that CVP is a facetious expression.)