Dear friends: 

Lori-from-New-York was visiting this week and we got to talk about prime numbers! (She’s a math teacher.) When I asked her if all the primes were odd numbers she replied, “We don’t know.” Chills! Prime numbers are my next-favorite thing to talk about after diegetic music. We can discuss that next week if you all prepare by watching the movie Cabaret. 

I hope that you by now have finally received your July/August Horn Book Magazine in the mail. If you haven’t, contact the wonderful Kristy South, ksouth@juniorlibraryguild.com, who will cheerfully help you. (And if anyone wants to purchase a single copy of this or any other issue, Kristy can help you with that as well.) And don’t forget that the July/August issue can be read in its entirety, for free, in our digital edition. 

The September/October starred review list is out. Sometimes I fantasize that my retirement gift to myself will be banishing the star system from the Horn Book. No shortcuts! Read the review! But I fear my retirement would be short as the company would put out a hit on me. And the only point of publishing the star list in advance is buzz. To paraphrase Lou Grant, “I hate buzz.” 

I really did have another go at Kristin Lavransdatter, but she’s at this endless dinner (about a third of the way into volume two, The Wife) where they are endlessly discussing politics and alliances and hot Erlend is being his dopey self. So I have moved on to The Day of the Jackal, which is far better than the potboiler I was expecting. It’s very nouvelle roman, even if you can’t tell whether Frederick Forsyth was doing that on purpose. And inspired by Barbara Bader (and Bertha Mahony), I’m reading Christopher Morley’s Book Caravan, a “charmer” (BB’s word) in the lineage of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Cozy books about people who love to read. My favorite in this genre is Alan Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader; what’s yours? 

Love,   

Roger