All in all, quite a tail- uh, tale...

March 1 is World Book Day. The Telegraph considers some of the planet's most expensive tomes (illustrated).


From the manuscript of Alice in Wonderland (1865)

Miss Marple moving, from St. Mary Mead to Sun City

An American corporation has acquired the rights to Agatha Christie's novels and plays.

They can travel through cable wires, you know, and just bust right out in your living room

    Charleston Daily Photo's proprietress, Joan Perry, spends time among the Low Country's zombie denizens, but just in case that makes you chary of everyone's natural desire to meet her if they are ever in Charleston, she insists she isn't one- yet.
     Still, just out of caution- and since The Walking Dead returns tonight, Waldo has been keeping an eye out for zombie news and events for some time, just as an FYI for his blogfriend and anyone else who may, from time to time, be beset by zombie issues or concerns (for a past set of FYIs/ updates, click here. And this.)
     So here's the latest if they show up in your neighborhood: The CDC recommends quarantine (or, as the old administration would have said, "enhanced movement restriction"). For a more granular analysis, read this.

-and then came The Tonight Show

BBC Magazine:

"Associations with night before the 17th Century were not good," he says. The night was a place populated by people of disrepute - criminals, prostitutes and drunks.


"Even the wealthy, who could afford candlelight, had better things to spend their money on. There was no prestige or social value associated with staying up all night."

That changed in the wake of the Reformation and the counter-Reformation. Protestants and Catholics became accustomed to holding secret services at night, during periods of persecution. If earlier the night had belonged to reprobates, now respectable people became accustomed to exploiting the hours of darkness.

This trend migrated to the social sphere too, but only for those who could afford to live by candlelight. With the advent of street lighting, however, socialising at night began to filter down through the classes.

In 1667, Paris became the first city in the world to light its streets, using wax candles in glass lamps. It was followed by Lille in the same year and Amsterdam two years later, where a much more efficient oil-powered lamp was developed.

London didn't join their ranks until 1684 but by the end of the century, more than 50 of Europe's major towns and cities were lit at night.
Night became fashionable and spending hours lying in bed was considered a waste of time.

Persuasion

     Here's an excerpt of a book review that makes me want to go out and get the book:

          What makes this book feel essential is not the admirably unobtrusive writing, nor any particular originality. Mr. Press, a journalist for The Nation and other magazines, propounds no new theories, relying on thinkers from Adam Smith to the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, who argues that what made the Holocaust possible was the rise of bureaucracy: when everybody is at a desk doing a discreet task, it is easy to disclaim responsibility for the policy carried out. If one follows Mr. Bauman’s thinking, brave people are often those who have resisted being colonized by bureaucracy.


          No, what makes you eager to push this book into the hands of the next person you meet are the small, still moments, epics captured in miniature, like the lonely man with his cider and peanuts.


          Mr. Press’s case studies — there’s also a Serbian soldier who rescued Croatians about to be sent to detention, an elite Israeli officer who refused to serve in the West Bank, and a financial adviser who blew the whistle on her corrupt Texas firm — capture how the price of moral courage is often not dramatic condemnation, not the martyr’s posthumous exaltation, but a lifelong sentence to sit apart, with no chance for appeal. For example the Israeli soldier, Avner Wishnitzer, helped to spark a national debate about when it is appropriate to defy military orders, but for Mr. Press the more interesting fact is that the soldier’s own mother, even as she defended his choices, was a little embarrassed by him.
          Because most of us are not beautiful souls, we are made uncomfortable by those who are (even when they are our children). They stand as living rebukes to our cowardice. Mr. Press wants to discover what kind of person risks that kind of aloneness.

Anniversaires d'aujourd'hui

     Today's birthday honors: George Washington, Arthur Schopenhauer, and the sublime Edna St. Vincent Millay.



Apparently no literacy classes on offer there, though

     Savant and actress Vanessa Hudgens reveals a tawdry time in her past:

          "For Gimme Shelter, my character ends up at this pregnant, homeless teen shelter that's actually ran in New Jersey by a woman and I actually went and stayed in the shelter for two weeks before I started filming, so I mean like, I lived there with all the girls, with all the kids, so I think that it's really interesting because you find so much more about yourself," Vanessa explains to [ daytime talk host] Rachael [Ray].

          Vanessa ditched her usual glam look for the film, and reveals that she even snipped her own coiffe for the role. "I actually cut my own hair for this movie, I did that to myself, yes I did," she tells Rachael, adding that she and co-star Rosario Dawson "both look so messed up in this movie."

All this aside, we coulda conquered the world, don't you know

     From The Irish Times, Frank McNally's.....(drumroll):

A HISTORY of Ireland in 100 Excuses.

1. Original sin.

2. The weather.
3. The 800 years of oppression.
4. A shortage of natural resources.
5. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak
6. Red hair.
7. The Celtic temperament.
8. He stole Trevelyan's corn/So the young might see the morn.

9. It was taught badly in schools.

10. The Modh Coinníollach.

11. Peig.
12. The questions didn't suit you.
13. No-one shouted stop.
14. Johnny made me do it.
15. Oh no! 'Twas the truth in her eyes ever dawning/That made me love Mary the Rose of Tralee.
16. That fella has a bad drop in him.

17. Her father didn't like me anyway.

18. I have to see a man about a dog.
19. Don't mind me - I haven't been myself lately.
20. And then he lost the head altogether.
21. Lehman Brothers.
22. The Christian Brothers.
23. Biddy Early.
24. Benchmarking.
25. We only did it for the crack.

26. April Fool's Day.

27. Halloween.
28. Stag parties.

29. The stony grey soil of Monaghan.

30. The rocks of Bawn.

31. The hungry grass.

32. The pipes (the pipes) were calling.

33. And that's the cruel reason why I left old Skibbereen.

34. Come all ye young rebels, and list while I sing/For the love of one's country is a terrible thing/It banishes fear with the speed of a flame/And it makes us all part of the patriot game.

35. He must have got it from his father's side - it couldn't have been from us.


43 - 48. See 42, excuses relating to drunken nights two to seven, inclusive.

49. I can resist anything except temptation.

50. The Old Lady Says 'No!'

     For the second fifty, and some hilarious reader additions, here's the link.

Mr. Pickwick's best friend celebrates a birthday

The Dickens Bicentenary is upon us, and the British actor and writer Simon Callow has a characteristically eloquent and heartfelt appreciation of The Master, ending with this:

      The reason I love him so deeply is that, having experienced the lower depths, he never ceased, till the day he died, to commit himself, both in his work and in his life, to trying to right the wrongs inflicted by society, above all, perhaps by giving the dispossessed a voice. From the moment he started to write, he spoke for the people, and the people loved him for it, as do I.