I recommend instead The Song of Robin Hood: http://www.amazon.com/Song-Robin-Hood-Anne-Malcolmson/dp/0618071865 --compiled by Anne Malcolmson and beautifully illustrated by Virginia Lee Burton, whom you will remember from Mike Mulligan and his Steam shovel, etc. These are the original Robin Hood ballads which form the source material for the story versions of Robin Hood, with the language modernized just enough, and traditional English music provided for the ballads. (One of the tunes in fact is seventeenth-ventury recorder music composed by Samuel Pepys whose Diary I'm now reading.) Besides being More Authentic--high on the list of all WTMers, I know--the songs are a lot of fun.

I'll try to get my year's summary pulled together but time eludes me. Meanwhile I read another comedy by Terence, "The Mother-in-Law," for a total of 60 books this year unless I finish my abridged Samuel Pepys' Diary (unlikely) before the New Year. CAUTION: MAJOR TRIGGER WARNING FOR EVERYTHING. "The Mother-in-Law" may be the most culturally inaccessible thing I have ever read. The humor hangs on the plot device of a wife whose husband left her untouched for the first two months of the marriage because he was still in love with his favorite prostitute, but then he fell in love with his wife; but then she flees his family's house and won't see him or any of her in-laws, because she's PREGNANT! And the child can't be his because it was conceived at the beginning of their marriage! Ha! Because she was raped by a stranger one night and it was dark so nobody knows whose it is so her husband will have to expose the baby, but if he does that everyone will know it's NOT HIS! Disaster! Ho ho! But then through this madcap series of misadventures, his ex-prostitute figures out that it was THE HUSBAND who raped his wife while coming drunk to see his mistress one night, without knowing it was his wife! And so all's well that ends well in this rape/infanticide comedy. Oh those zany Romans. I think I will take a substantial break from Terence and go back to Pepys.

Middle Girl painted her big sister a Dr. Who variation of Van Gogh's Starry Night. You've never seen such joy from both giver and receiver.

Central Texas Besides things from the list: -Advent wreath lit in the evening with collect of the week and "O Antiphons" (source of the verses for "O Come, O Come Emmanuel) sung -Jesse Tree (children do this) -Christmas Eve fast and then meatless dinner -Trail of Lights! One of this city's most awesome things. http://austintrailoflights.org -Twelfthnight: why stop the party? -Candlemas: okay eventually the party must stop. With a groundhog. If we can, we go to the big park in the city center and watch recycled Christmas trees fed into the giant woodchipper. I can'tt ell you how pleasing this is

Merry Christmas! A brief window of time this morning, having woken up the tiniest bit hung over from perhaps too much wine and tamales, everyone else still tucked in with visions of sugarplums etc., not a creature stirring not even the cat for once, and just time enough to finish Roadside Picnic. Thanks to all who recommended it; it's been passed around the house and I'm the last to read it. It was pleasing to see from the Afterword that Jaroslav Hašek kept up the spirits of the Strugatsky brothers in their battle with the Soviet censors. May we all likewise find the necessary encouragement in the New Year, from sources literary or other, at our moments of need. Best of health for body, mind, and soul, friends; and peace on Earth to all on whom His favor rests.

Merry Christmas, O Moderators! :)

Finished 58. Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler. Recommended, but with the caveat that I would just as soon have skipped the final section, a sort of Compleat Angler II by Walton's friend Charles Cotton, which is just further instruction on fishing methods with none of the digressions, poetry, or charming observations that make Walton's book a classic. What shall be the final book(s) of the year ... hmmmm ...

I just want to say that my HEB Christmas Eve tamales are already in the fridge, so no shame from here. If you have a Central Market (possibly even an HEB+) near you, they have even fancier tamales, including two tasty vegetarian options.

It's going to be in the 80s Christmas Eve. Since the massive flooding earlier this year the mosquitoes have been unbearable, and I'm worried it won't get cold enough this winter to kill them off.

Yes please. Aragorn > Legolas Legolas is the boy who writes angsty poems and whom you don't mind dating your daughter but it would be nice if he cut his hair before he meets the more rural relatives at Thanksgiving. Aragorn is the guy who can build that cedar plank deck you've been thinking about.

I'm up for a jaunt through the Platonic realms, too. We shall go build the Universe with triangles. More Fun Fish Facts from The Compleat Angler, set to verse: And when the Salmon seeks a fresher stream to find, (which hither from the Sea comes yearly by his kind) As he towards season grows, and stems the watery tract Where Tivy falling down, makes an high cataract, Forced by the rising rocks that there her course oppose, As though within her bounds they meant her to inclose; Here when the labouring fish does at the foot arrive, And finds that by his strength he does but vainly strive, His tail takes in his mouth, and, bending like a bow That’s to ful compass drawn, aloft himself doth throw... ----------- Who knew that's how salmon swim upstream?

Stacia, virtual hugs and empathy. Sometimes it seems like the burden can't get any heavier and then it does. Jane, thank you for reading all (all!) of the Legenda Aurea, so I don't have to. The martyrdom/virginity dynamic is interesting and is much commented-upon. One understanding is that in an age when opportunity for martyrdom was scarce, virginity (also hard to pull off, but at least possible) became a substitute opportunity for physical renunciation. I am enjoying The Compleat Angler wildly despite my utter lack of interest in fishing. It is so full of gems. ---------- On carp not thriving in ponds: And the like I have known of one that has almost watched the pond, and at a like distance of time, at the fishing of a pond, found of seventy or eighty large Carps not above five or six: and that he had forborne longer to fish the said pond, but that he saw in a hot day in Summer, a large Carp swim near to the top of the water with a Frog upon his head, and that he upon that occasion caused his pond to be let dry: and I say, of seventy or eighty Carps, only found five or six in the said pond, and those very sick and lean, and with every one a Frog sticking so fast on the head of the said Carps, that the Frog would not be got off without extreme force or killing: and the Gentleman that did affirm this to me, told me he saw it, and did declare his belief to be (and I also believe the same) that he thought the other Carps that were so strangely lost, were so killed by frogs, and then devoured.

Jane's foray into trout Fishing in America reminded me that I had picked up a beautiful little edition (original cost 2 shillings!) of Izaak Walton's seventeenth-century classic The Compleat Angler, or The Contemplative Man's Recreation, which has needed reading for a long time. A quaint and entertaining work that Walton wrote and then re-wrote and expanded over the next quarter of a century, full of fishing-related poetry, folklore, tales, and advice, in the frame of a discussion between Walton's alter ego, Piscator, and various characters of the English Interregnum countryside (Walton by the way greatly disapproved of the Puritan ban on Friday fish-eating as damaging to fishermen's livelihoods). Best read, I discovered, while listening to traditional English Christmas music such as this-- http://www.amazon.com/Sing-We-Noel-Frank-Albinder/dp/B00005YKB7 --or failing that, some Purcell or Blow.

Hey, cousin! That was Gov. Bradford himself in my post above. Any chance you're descended through the Prince line?

I'm a direct descendant of the first American governor to institute a War on Christmas : ------------- One ye day called Christmas-day, ye Govr caled them out to worke, (as was used,) but ye most of this new-company excused them selves and said it wente against their consciences to work on yt day. So ye Govr tould them that if they made it mater of conscience, he would spare them till they were better informed. So he led-away ye rest and left them; but when they came home at noone from their worke, he found them in ye streete at play, openly; some pitching ye barr, & some at stoole-ball, and such like sports. So he went to them, and tooke away their implements, and tould them that was against his conscience, that they should play & others worke. If they made ye keeping of it mater of devotion, let them kepe their houses, but ther should be no gameing or revelling in ye streets. Since which time nothing hath been atempted that way, at least openly.

Johnson's most famous work, amd I think his only novel, is Rasselas. You can find collections of his contributions to various journals. But mostly he was known as a celebrity wit, and famous for being famous. Like a portly, erudite Kardashian.

Howdy Shukriyya! Stay a while. Have a tamale. Oh please do! I enjoyed it and wished I'd read it long before. It's not too long a read (and you may find there are some skimmable parts).

Now I kind of want a singing bass for Christmas. :D

I love Christmas; twelve days of relaxing, festive time with family and friends. It's Advent that is driving me to the funny farm. Aaaaaaaaaaa....

Stacia, I'm sorry. How frustrating and discouraging. :(

Book windfall! Dh, who is always joking about my disproportion of books to shelf space, just bought from a retiring colleague nearly one hundred books: all of them Loeb and Oxford Classical Texts, for under a dollar apiece. He shamelessly pushed himself to the front of the queue by pointing out that his homeschooled daughters were studying Latin and Greek. Like he doesn't want them for himself. I think these are going to have to go in his office. And this will have to be our Christmas present to each other. At least Loebs are red and green! ETA: Behold, seasonal book decorating: https://www.flickr.com/groups/loeb-library-devotees/pool/with/590664824/lightbox/

Reading Out of Africa; almost done. This was in my TBR sub-pile of "books I need to read because it would just be embarassing to die without having read it." Of course it's very good; certainly not a novel, rather a collection of short--some, very short--stories, set on or near the narrator's African coffee plantation at the beginning of the 20th century. Strikingly, the narrator's femaleness feels entirely irrelevant to the stories, to the point that the reader is through a great part of the book before she can definitely identify the narrator as female. And one must wait even longer to find out her name. This part, "The Swaheli Numeral System", is one of the few stories where one has a sense that the fact of being a woman has come into play: ------------- At the time when I was new in Africa, a shy young Swedish dairy-man was to teach me the numbers in Swaheli. As the Swaheli word for nine, to Swedish ears, has a dubious ring, he did not like to tell it to me, and when he had counted: “seven, eight,†he stopped, looked away, and said: “They have not got nine in Swaheli.†“You mean,†I said, “that they can only count as far as eight?†“Oh, no,†he said quickly. “They have got ten, eleven, twelve, and so on. But they have not got nine.†“Does that work?†I asked, wondering. “What do they do when they come to nineteen?†“They have not got nineteen either,†he said, blushing, but very firm, “nor ninety, nor nine hundredâ€â€”for these words in Swaheli are constructed out of the number nine,—“But apart from that they have got all our numbers.†The idea of this system for a long time gave me much to think of, and for some reason a great pleasure. Here, I thought, was a people who have got originality of mind, and courage to break with the pedantry of the numeral series. ... It happened that I had at that time a houseboy, Zacharia, who had lost the fourth finger of his left hand. Perhaps, I thought, this is a common thing with Natives, and is done to facilitate their arithmetic to them, when they are counting upon their fingers. When I began to develop my ideas to other people, I was stopped, and enlightened. Yet I have still got the feeling that there exists a Native system of numeral characters without the number nine in it, which to them works well and by which you can find out many things. I have, in this connection, remembered an old Danish clergyman who declared to me that he did not believe that God had created the Eighteenth Century.

Mom-Ninja, Stacia--and others of you ladies, my book-friends, whom life is running roughshod over right now, and you know who you are--your unhappiness has a place in my heart. I'm so sorry.

Very well said.

Last update. When Great Girl finished her exam she wandered over to the planned location (!!!!! foolish teenagers...) to see what was up. She reports lots of police ostentatiously present on the scene and nothing else: no demonstrators or counter-demonstrators. Nothing to see here, folks. Thank you friends, who have been supportive as the world goes mad around us all. ETA: Here's what we apparently missed: http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local-education/gun-rights-marchers-protest-near-ut-mock-shooting-/nphwD/