Someties I don’t write this blog because I’m backed up with work, and sometimes I don’t write it because I don’t seem to have something to say. But today, I have so much to say, and it’s so difficult to organize, that I barely know where to start. Let me put aside a few issues…

So, to start–although not the main point, exactly–John says he can’t see spending $25,000 to $40,000 a year to develop “taste” or  “critical judgment” in literature and the arts.  I  deplore the vocabulary, and  I think Scruton concentrates far too myopically on only one corner of the Humanities, but if I could actually find somebody…

So the book is almost done, so close I  can see it, but it ISN’T done, and today I’ve got the dentist appointment from hell, so I’m a little scattered. But I thought that this http://spectator.org/archives/2009/06/05/farewell-to-judgment might be interesting. If you watch Arts and Letters Daily, it’s up there as a link this morning, but…

First, let me post the names and authors of the series I was talking about yesterday, since I’ve managed to beat a copy of each out of Matt. The dragons at the Napoleonic Wars are, as someone mentioned, from the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik. The witches at the American Revolution are from a series that…

Okay, what I’m asking about here is something I do not know first hand.  I’ve never read any of these books.  I have no idea how good they are in any technical sense.  I just don’t know what to think of them. My son came home from college with a collection of paperbacks from two…

First, I’d like to say I agree with Cheryl–I’m perfectly willing to believe that Robert’s experience with English teachers was what he says it was, but it was nothing like mine, nor is it anything like what my sons have experienced.   I do think, though, that she’s misunderstood the difference between Approved and  Unapproved Literature.  …

John wanted to know, bac there somewhere, why, if I really hate a book I’m reading, I don’t just stop reading it.  The short answer is that I just can’t.  It drives me nearly crazy to leave anything I  start undone.  I’ve written entire novels just to tear them up and refuse to let anyone…

So I’ll start out agreeing with Lee again–if the main character is lame, there’s nothing that will really make up for it.  I tend to read, most of the time, for character, and as I’ve said before, a book where the characters are good and full and vivid is better for me than a book…

Well, of course, with Lee,  I had no interest at all in being thrown off a boat or rescued by a dolphin. But I did have an interest in going to Corfu, and to Crete–and both those places really existed, and going there was something  I was really able to do, eventually if not right…

So, here’s the thing.  I’e been thinking, and what I’ve realized is that there really was a time in my life when I approached fiction looking for “exotic” settings.  I still wasn’t into historical novels.  I read plenty of fiction set in times other than my own, but those books tended to be Victorian novels…