As always, remember to check out The Ark on Fridays and the Carnival of the Cats on Sundays for a round up of the best and latest pet blogging photos.
I was not aware of the fact that Geraldine Brooks has been undergoing treatment for breast cancer. This interview with Brooks contains more info on her experiences as a Middle East correspondent and her views on what's happening in Iraq than about her books.
Nextbook has an essay on the historical Sol Star and his portrayal on HBO's Deadwood: "Sol's storyline stands as one of the show's most remarkable revolutions, though it's least remarked upon. Sol may not be the first Jewish character to appear in a Western, but his bold, matter-of-fact portrayal, played neither for laughs nor morality lessons, is pioneering."
Hey, Sol's my favorite character!
Not really Deadwood-related but Bill Bryson mentions a Thomas Nuttall (Nuttall owned the saloon where Wild Bill Hickock was gunned down): a botanist, Nuttall named a climbing shrub, spelled wistaria by purists, for Caspar Wistar. Wistar, of course, failed to recognize the significance of an enormous thighbone found in a creek bank in New Jersey thereby missing his chance to be known as the discoverer of dinosaurs. A Short History of Nearly Everything contains lots of tidbits like that.
Via Magnificient Octopus, an interview with Umberto Eco that makes me think I ought to hurry up and read Foucault's Pendulum so I can move on to his latest, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. He owns 50,000 books! (And a jar containing a pair of dog's testicles! And a banjo.)
And last, but certainly not least: I'm spending the afternoon with Carol Peters. I can't think of anything that'd be better than that.
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