Henryville and Homs

Te tragic is predicated on an arc of stability. My own travails mach heady allowances for such. Reports from Syria don't fail to depress me daily. My own concerns appear trivial, like my dissatisfaction with the last two books I finished. Yesterday a series of tornadoes struck near here, pelting my friend Tony Euler's house with hail but sparing him the destruction inflicted upon his neighbors.

I suppose some relief is in order. The lamented books included The house of Doctor Dee by Peter Ackroyd and William Dalrymple's From The Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium. There were redeeming aspects to both but I felt an ongoing irritation with such. Previously I had concluded a fine pair of books: Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Iain Sinclair's hulking Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire.