Recommendations

Things to read when it's too hot to go out:

this month's Harper's Magazine--especially the articles about the stolen Ohio election and the Right's wrong take on Christianity

ggsloth.blogspot.com

Bleak House--the summum bonum of lawyer novels, in which one of the main characters is a lawsuit. I am an unashamed Dickens freak anyway. Among other things, I love the size of his universe. Most novels these days have two or three main characters and a couple of walk-ons and that's it. The Victorians--Dickens, Tolstoy, George Eliot--create whole worlds full of characters. Even their walk-ons are three-dimensional. And (interestingly enough from the socioeconomic point of view) even the servants have servants. The other fascinating and useful thing about the Victorian novels is that they show us what a world without a safety net looks like, giving us a chance to prepare for it before the Scrooges get their chance to re-create it. Even Christmas Carol, though smaller in dimension, is helpful for that purpose. "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? Bah, humbug!"