Monday, September 27, 2004

To look down on Camelot

We finished the last King Arthur book last night, bringing Camelot to a sad but satisfying conclusion. As is inevitable with tragedies, I am always left looking for the way out . . . "Why didn't Sir Bors or someone find an excuse to fight Mordred before he could cause any problems?" ("Why doesn't Cyrano just wait a decent period of time and speak for himself?" "Why didn't Romeo soliloquize a few more minutes so Juliet can wake up?")

The obvious answer is, "Because if they did, there wouldn't be any story." The less obvious reason is that's the way life is; the obvious little thing that ought to be done isn't, and everything else falls apart.

Now we've started The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton. I hope DOB likes it as much as I have represented it to him. Is it possible to oversell Chesterton? I doubt it.

One problem I've had since getting to know DOB well is it rather stymies my ability to read because if it's anything he would be interested in I feel like it's a waste of time to read it by myself; I want to wait until he can read it, too, and we can discuss it. Which is a problem since I have much more reading time (six feedings a day!) than he does. I have to start reading homeschooling books during that time or something of the sort.

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