I have officially overindulged this week

Books currently checked out from the library:

Bluebeard: the Life and Crimes of Gilles De Rais by Leonard Wolf. 259 pages.
A Plantation Mistress on the Eve of the Civil War: the Diary of Keziah Goodwyn Hopkins Brevard, 1860 – 1861, edited by John Hammond Moore. 137 pages.
The Last Jews in Berlin by Leonard Gross. 349 pages.
Herschel: The Boy Who Stated World War II by Andy Marino. 226 pages.
The Floating Brothel by Sian Rees. 236 pages.
Looking for JJ by Anne Cassidy. 319 pages.
Wicked Women: Black Widows, Child Killers, and Other Women in Crime by Betty Alt and Sandra Wells. 187 pages.
Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius by Colin Dickey. 308 pages.
Say You’re One Of Them by Uwem Akpan. 358 pages.
The Dangerous World of Butterflies by Peter Laufer. 271 pages. Renewed once.

Books I bought at the discount bookstore yesterday (and got a really good deal, $26 for all of them when the list prices totaled $87):

Catastrophes and Disasters by Roger Smith. 246 pages.
Everyday Life in Traditional Japan by Charles J. Dunn. 198 pages.
50 Really Exotic Pets by David Manning. 191 pages.
365: Your Date With World History by W. B. Marsh and Bruce Carrick. 683 pages.

Total:

3,619 pages.

Rate at which I’d have to read to have all these finished by the time I come back to the library next week hungry for different books and tired of lugging these tired old ones around:

603 pages a day.

Likelihood of this happening:

Slim. But not impossible, if I really put my mind to it and dedicate my week to it and neglect all other aspects of my life. And I am perfectly capable of doing that for books about vicious killers, prostitutes and stealing dead people’s heads.

Races Part II

I asked the lady who complained about my race classifications to give examples of ones she thought were in error. As I expected, we will have to agree to disagree. One man, for instance, whom I and law enforcement had listed as white, who is blond and blue-eyed (though the pic is not of good quality so it’s hard to tell what he looked like), she said should be listed as Hispanic. Presumably because his name sounds kind of Spanish. I wrote back explaining that I was not going to change the races from the official record (law enforcement databases, etc) just because she thought I ought to.

Teen survives 48 hours in a ravine after crashing her car

A seventeen-year-old Maine girl, Kourtney Thibeault, who was last heard from late Wednesday night and reported missing Thursday morning, was found trapped inside her wrecked SUV in a steep ravine today, Friday. She’d lost control of the car when she swerved to hit a deer, and reportedly has a broken pelvis, a broken leg and a broken jaw. A police officer who was looking for noticed a tree had been damaged, and had a close look around the area and found her. Kudos to him!

I consider this to be a minor miracle. Kourtney’s injuries don’t sound life-threatening, but Maine in late November is COLD. With her being pretty much immobile, I’m surprised she didn’t freeze to death before she was located.

Articles:

Maine Public Broadcasting Network
WCHS 6
MyFox Boston
The Nashua Telegraph

Much as I find Ohio’s flatness to be dull, dull, dull, I’m glad I don’t have any steep ravines to get caught in or cliffs to drive off of or anything. A year or two ago I was driving 55 mph on a country road and hit a patch of black ice and next thing I knew I was thirty feet off the road in the middle of a plowed-up cornfield, facing the wrong direction and wondering how I got there. I remember reflecting that a plowed-up cornfield is about the perfect place to run off the road, except an empty parking lot maybe. There’s nothing to hit. With some effort I got my car back on the road and straight to the local car wash to get rid of the mud plastering the sides, and presto, good as new.