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Showing posts with the label DOWN A DARK HALL

Still waiting

Our little son, whose name will be Hamish Macbeth (not really), refuses to come out of his mother.

The doctor says that if he hasn’t been born by Monday, we’ll make a “birthing plan.”

There’s little else to report. I finished reading Down a Dark Hall by Lois Duncan:


It was a slow burn, but the last pages were – as kids these days like to say – fire.

(Its cinematic adaptation, released in 2018, isn’t well regarded.)

Next, to read another boarding school classic: Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock. Copies have become readily available due to the popularity of the new miniseries. I’ve only seen the movie of 1975. It’s one of my favorites.

My niece, etc.

Ana shares this photo of David and little Ada.


What a sweetie!

Tomorrow, Karin & I will spend some time with my high school friend, Dan, and his wife and three young children. They recently moved from Vermont to southwestern Michigan.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My current reading:

(1) Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, translated by Robert Graves (1957), revised by some other dude (2007).

(2) Michael Grant, The Twelve Caesars.

“Robert Graves’ Penguin version … is entertaining, but has to be used with caution.”

Yes, I expect that Graves sneaks in a few extra poisonings.

(3) Terri Jentz, Strange Piece of Paradise.

True crime.

Vacationing from Yale, the author camps out in the Oregon desert and is mutilated by a mysterious axeman. Decades later, she returns to the scene to seek out the axeman, his motive, and cosmic meaning.

The book is highly introspective: was the author’s trauma due to herself, or to the axeman? The author writes 100+ pages before even considering the latter possibility.

Still, it isn’t bad.

(4) Lois Duncan, Down a Dark Hall, original 1974 version.

This classic gothic school novel is by the author of I Know What You Did Last Summer and Stranger with My Face.

(The 2011 update incorporates new technology – email, cell phones, etc. – NO GOOD.)

To be continued. …