The Explorers Club
No. CLXV - The Pergamon Museum, Part I: The Pergamon Altar.








The Queue
Sebastian Faulks is a hack extraordinaire and Devil May Care is dreck almost beyond imagining, worse even than The Spy Who Loved Me. I pushed myself all weekend to get through it just to be done with it, to be rid of it so as never again to pollute my mind with Faulks's pap.

With Defend the Realm, originally published in the U.K. as The Defence of the Realm, I am not deviating from the espionage/counterespionage genre, simply stepping for a spell over the line into non-fiction. Fear not, plenty more spy fiction will be waiting for me when I get back.

Recently
Ian Fleming, The Man with the Golden Gun
Ian Fleming, Octopussy & The Living Daylights
Sebastian Faulks, Devil May Care

Currently
W. Somerset Maugham, Ashenden: or, The British Agent

Presently
Len Deighton, Horse Under Water
Christopher Andrew, Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5
Karen E. Olson, Pretty in Ink

The Rebel Black Dot Songs of the Day
Sonntag, 20 Juni
Elvis Costello, "Daddy Can I Turn This?" from When I Was Cruel (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: This Fathers' Day, I discovered there are precious few songs in my library about fathers and fatherhood. Not nearly so many as about mothers and motherhood, at least not by title.

Samstag, 19 Juni
"Weird Al" Yankovic, "Traffic Jam" from Alapalooza (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: Saturday afternoon, Dr. Hee Haw and I met at the Traffic Jam & Snug restaurant in downtown Detroit for a lovely, leisurely lunch. In spite of both the eatery's name and the R.B.D.S.O.T.D., the drives to and from Detroit were swift and uneventful.