Dear friends:

I had to dress for work (from the waist up, anyway) three times this week, for Zoom interviews with Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winners Kacen Callender, Oge Mora, and Ashley Bryan. They were all great, and I’m only sorry we won’t see them in person at our traditional swanky celebration. You will see the conversations on the website next month when our virtual BGHB celebration begins on October 5th.

Lolly Robinson has written a wonderful tribute to Lee Kingman Natti, author, editor, and Friend of the Horn Book since 1929, when she was nine. I never met Lee, but her presence is everywhere in the Horn Book, where company history is everything. And as for that wild Folly Cove group Lee ran with, there’s a movie with Marcia Gay Harden’s name on it to be made.

My reading has been mostly books-for-work, although I did finish Lawrence Osborne’s The Glass Kingdom — young American woman with a suitcase full of ill-gotten cash absconding to Bangkok — which was quite heavy on the atmospherics, and I do love weather in my reading (best thing about Twilight). We’re happily watching Endeavour for the first time, having started with Inspector Lewis and skipping over Inspector Morse. It’s not as dark as Broadchurch but edgier than Foyle’s War. Livelier than Vera. Not twee like Father Brown. He’s not as good looking as — I could go on, but effin jeez, isn’t this how everybody watches British mysteries?

Love,

Roger