Arcania

I read last week that Yevgeny Zamyatin was working on a novel at the time of his death in exile in France; the novel concerned the time of Attila, which he found similar to the conditions of his own age.

A week of hard labor was punctuated with a trip to Cincinnati and a side effort at Ohio Books. While there, i purchased Henri Pirenne's Mohammed and Charlemagne which, strange enough, I proceeded to read in two sittings. My attractions to history have always been on its fault lines, its mutations and its enkindling of ideas and virtues. The Pirenne satisifed those criteria quite well.

I have bought nine other books this week, though Poor People by W.T. Vollmann has proved heartbreaking during the half hour i devoted to it this afternoon. I have been reading Neal Ascherson's Black Sea all day and will likely conclude such tonight. WE are having a carpenter work on our bathroom and thus any and all agendas have been duly circumscribed.