This is some good stuff! I'm learning that I don't enjoy Daniel's long winded and unpredictable sense of humor (tho I laughed at the sock dryer gnome), but I dip into this book as I need to learn bits of Clojure. Learned refs last night!

I keep returning to this book because (1) the Persians were so awesome, and (2) because Vidal didn't set off a boom in historical autobiographical apocrypha that so richly deserved to have happened, and which would have been such a boon to many readers.

For whatever reason, I easily fall in love with places I've never been. In this case, the Lake District in England. And this book is viscerally pleasant, from the geography to the sailing technicalities to this idea that siblings in a large family somehow can function like a complete family.