Thanks for that. It’s been a great month off. A lot of us around the site have been catching up on our reading. That’s too bad as a lot of others of us decided long ago that books have been the ruin of us. I’ll go further. They’ve been a ruination and a contagion.
So who’s right? Those who would read, or those who resist? As Ford Madox Ford said via his rather stuffy narrator narrating the life of an incredibly stuffy individual in this example of the all but perfect novel— The Good Soldier—”Who the devil knows?”
Is that right? Who? The what? Never read that one. Or much of anything else. Old whisky jugs. Now that’s something to get your teeth around.
They made thousands and thousands of these things. Royal Doulton and so on. I don’t know if they gave them away with the whisky or you jolly well had to procure one at the china shop before you went to the liquor shop.
The jugs varied in size and shape but the image was always the same. The Sporting Squire. And The Sporting Squire always carried that expression on his face of being in possession of some information he’d be only so happy to pass on to you and that is that Dewars is good whisky. If you lean in he’ll whisper it to you. Amen.
It’s getting to be that time of year again. Thank you, Squire. Kidding aside I’ve been reading this rather large book. It’s big. 1500 pages of fine print. “Reclaiming History”. Vincent Bugliosi. Vince Bugliosi didn’t even know he was an historian. That’s my guess. He certainly didn’t start out that way. He was one of the elite prosecutors of his era.
I knew this book would be good because I read his true-crime epic “Helter Skelter”. It was quite by accident I read it because I saw it on our bookshelves and wasn’t sure what it was doing there. It wasn’t mine, but I’d been interested in this case too so I picked it up. It was one of those serendipitous things. There’s an elegance to Vince’s style and he’s very organized. His mastery of the facts is compelling.
“To remove the brain, Humes and Boswell use a scalpel to extend the lacerations of the scalp downward towards the ears. Normally, a saw would be used to cut the skullcap and remove the brain. Here, the damage is so devastating that the doctors can lift the brain out of the head without recourse to a saw. ”
And that’s not all.
Twilight calm on Boundary Pass courtesy CS Nicol
samoyeddogs 