Late chiming in. We are in the throes of preparation for the annual Shift to dh's other job location. Experience has taught me to pick a couple of battered, browning paperbacks for the travel which I can discard as I finish. So that will dictate the airplane books; meanwhile I'm cruising steadily through David Copperfield for the sake of others, but not finding it half so annoying as Tale of Two Cities. Probably not finishable before we leave, and my hardcover is too heavy to lug along; but I suspect Dickens may be available in libraries outside Texas.

The first time Great Girl went to a classroom for her education, she was auditing an English course at the university, and this happened: http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/09/28/texas.university.shooting/ I was waiting for her at the corner to pick her up for a dentist's appointment when everyone started to go berserk and the Univ PD ordered me to drive on as campus was in lockdown. The SWAT van went by me as I pulled away. It was hours before I could contact her and come get her. It was many hours more before I could contact dh, who was in a building near the library (where the tragedy centered) and, due to false reports of a second shooter, was being detained with everyone else and searched. He said there's nothing quite like having police run in, guns drawn, and order everyone to put your hands up and line up against the wall. Homeschooling is no protection against gun violence in our society. May the soul of that poor boy find rest.

Dh and I were very interested in theories of education (me) and theory of mind and child learning (dh) when Great Girl was born, and we concluded that individual tutoring was evidently the superior method of childhood education. Since we couldn't hire a tutor, we figured we'd tutor her ourselves, at least in the early years, and see how it worked out; and later we'd hire tutors for specific subjects. It didn't occur to us that (a) someone had already invented this and called it "homeschooling"--if I had ever heard homeschooling mentioned, I didn't connect it to what we were considering--or (b) there might be legal issues regarding teaching her ourselves. Did I mention we were clueless? And at the time living in New York state. Fortunately we soon moved back home to Texas, where the head of dh's department turned out to be homeschooling his children, for the same reasons. We still think of it more as "tutoring" than "homeschooling": we don't do co-ops, and we pay or barter for tutoring for several subjects. Wee Girl got an extra reason. Our pediatrician, after reviewing her evaluation and diagnosis, said she'd had two other such patients in her years of practice, and that school was a disaster for them: "And since you homeschool anyway that won't be a problem for you, right?" This, from a doctor who didn't approve of homeschooling in general, made a strong impression on me.

Atlantic article on Herman Wouk's war novels. I haven't (yet) read The Caine Mutiny. http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/05/herman-wouk-at-100-one-of-the-greatest-american-war-novelists/393203/

True. I'd expect those to be have been Mario or Marius; but it's just as likely the name was miscopied or misread. Basically the problem is handwritten records. I actually know a tiny Marius, who goes by "Mars," which is adorable.

Stacia, I've never heard of Basile. Keep us informed. Better soon I hope, RunningMom and NoseInABook!

I remember reading that the very old records have a lot of that kind of error. Sometimes the wrong gender is indicated on the record, and if the name was common enough, the gender report errors would be accordingly more numerous. Thus for instance a lot of male "Mary"s on the old records.

Another Zoe here. Great Girl, whose name was well below the top 100 when dh picked it and seemed rare and startling but has been sitting in the top 3 for five years now (because we have our finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist!), would today be "Quinn." I don't think so.

On re-reading my above post, it sounds as if The Other House is a bad novel. To the contrary, it's quite good, if fairly unlike his later work. It's just strangely stagey in the first half.

Hugs and condolences to you and your clan, Nan. Finished Henry James, The Other House. The first book James wrote after his disastrous and personally humiliating failure at writing for the stage, the first half of The Other House really does read as if it were a script rewritten in novel form. Too much exterior, not enough interior. One can see why James would have been a terrible playwright: his characters gasp, or glance quickly at others, or just stand silently, in ways loaded with significance and unspoken mutual understandings crucial to following the action. He really needs the paragraph of allusive explication after each pregnant darted look. Thomas Hardy special: courtesy of the sidebar of the Lost in Wessex blog, the Thomas Hardy Plot generator. http://lostinwessex.blogspot.com Now I should resume Dante, but homeschooling duty summons me to Dickens, alas. ETA: No aspersions meant to be cast on engineers! It takes all types to make a world.

Wee Girl had hair loss in clumps, with crusty patches on the scalp and a lot of irritation. I tried everything; the pediatrician thought it was just bad cradle cap; I was convinced it was an effect of her severe anxieties. It turned out to be a fungal infection, and two weeks of shampooing with Nizoral cured it.

My parents were engineers and didn't read to children, or indeed to themselves outside of reports and trade journals. I think I've over-compensated. :)

Checking in quick: big day today, Wee Girl's First Communion! A/k/a "the day I get to whear a pretty white dress and veil and everyone will be paying attention to me but not expecting me to say anything." Then cake and champagne and barbecue. And it looks like the rain's stopped and the sun is out. Almost done with Sayers' Inferno. Middle Girl is finishing up Sayers' Purgatorio so that next.

I like your thinking. I'm taking notes on your eastern European books, too. Maybe some time you can give us a list of Jane's Recommended Reads from eastern Europe.

Oh! I picked up a lovely old Roderick Random with Cruikshank illustrations! Are we reading PP? Though I'm pretty sure dh has it in his office somewhere.... ETA: Maybe we should read both.

Time for some Fitzgerald, then!

Or rattlesnakes? :D

Middle Girl finished the Tom Phillips Inferno with the weird illustrations today and is looking around for the Purgatorio, though she suspects, with some justification, that the Saved will be much less interesting than the Damned. I got to spend the day in bed with Wee Girl, both of us napping off a stomach virus, and while she caught up on Magic Schoolbus episodes I read The Vet's Daughter (1959) by Barbara Comyns. I don't even know what to say about this book, so here's the NYRB review: http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/the-vets-daughter/ Money quote: "like an unexpected cross between Flannery O’Connor and Stephen King." Which I can't say made for a happy marriage. Comyns' writing is not bad, even rising to quite good in places, but her persistent failure of characterization is the novel's undoing. The cartoonishly evil father in particular spoils the first half.

I couldn't help smiling. It's like the opening sentences of a werewolf steampunk novel.

Not paying any attention to the disrespect for Henry James' masterpiece on this thread. La la la la la.... Finished 23. Hilaire Belloc, A Conversation With an Angel & Other Essays (1929). The best piece is "On Translation," in which Belloc takes up two of his favorite themes, the translation of books and European unity and disunity. But my favorite was "On Not Reading Books," in which Belloc, after commencing with an unsurprising confession of disdaining modern novels, particularly romances, suddenly and endearingly confesses to a weakness for science fiction: "If any book deal with a journey to the planets, no matter how badly it be written, no matter what a goat the writer may be, what abominable sentiment he breaks into during his narration, no matter what the padding of pseudo-science, no matter what the strange style, I am on. I am afraid I have missed a few, but I honestly believe I have read more than half of those that have appeared in the English tongue during the last thirty years. And as with the planets, so with Atlantis. I can eat Atlantis. No man can give me enough of Atlantis." I've resumed reading an old Pelican paperback on opera--Middle Girl and I just enjoyed Don Giovanni--and should start Sayers' Dante. But I kind of want to read some more James now.

Jane, I'm sorry. Blessed are those who mourn.

Middle Girl was a biter. She bit when she got over-excited when playing, like a puppy. No cure but watching for signs of Too Much Fun and swooping in for the grab before she could nip her playmates.

Lots of good suggestions. I would add that the involvement of an older sibling who can swim has been very useful. Older Sister strikes just the right balance of tender encouragement and refusal to coddle. From parents, "I'm tired of helping you now; I'm going to swim by myself until you're ready to let go of the side" would trigger abandonment anxiety. But from Sister it doesn't and it encourages her to take the next step out of her comfort zone.

I vote July, if that works for you.

Part way into A Conversation With an Angel and Other Essays* and intrigued to find that Belloc knew about flame wars and trolling back in the 1920's. ----------- Then, somewhere about the third or fourth letter or controversial article, fermentation begins, and with it the fun. One of them accuses the other of lying, or ignorance, or both. The other answers by marvelling how any human being could be so stupid as to have misunderstood his simple phrase, or so bestially blind to the texts. In a little while they are hurling insults at each other as violently as if each had murdered the other's child. Then there comes the stage when the anger is speechless, 'too full for sound or foam.' The average honest man coming across controversies of this kind is bewildered; the very good man is saddened. As for me, I am enormously amused. ... Just before the antagonists get to the speechless stage, barge in with some grossly ignorant suggestion; the sort of thing which you might get out of a popular Universal History of the World. It is wise to do this under an assumed name.... Then the two boxing men will forget their quarrel in order to throw off their gloves, and turn upon you and rend you with their views. It is no bad fun, after you have led them on a little, to admit you know nothing about it, and that you were only joining in the game because it seemed so exciting. "On Academic Hate" -------------- *No, not that kind of book; the imagined conversation is with a clueless statue of an angel that works days as a sundial. It is a strange essay. ETA: Jane, wasn't there something we were both going to read? Was it Smollett?