I'm back from a pretty low-key family Thanksgiving: me, my folks, my Dayton relatives who are in state this year (meaning Uncle Greg, Aunt Peg and my cousin Cindy, who's in her mid-20s and coaches high school basketball). Big excitement was stuff like taking an actual bath in an actual bathtub and getting properly introduced to Downton Abbey, which my dad's a fan of. I've now seen the show's first two episodes, thanks to an OPB marathon. Now I get it.
Though I noticed a left-handed character (Daisy's boss) in one scene and thought That wasn't likely in 1912. People tried to train left-handedness out of people back then; they assumed something was wrong about you. My Grandpa Irv was probably naturally left-handed but had it trained away. Supposedly even Tom Cruise as a kid was left-handed and had it trained out of him, and Cruise was a kid not that long ago, really.
This is the sort of stuff I notice. (Left-handed pride! It's the good kind of sinister!)
Because my parents' house is full of books, it's a good lending library. (Every Harry Potter novel except the last one, I borrowed from them; I bought my own copy of Death Hallows because I didn't want to wait to read it.) I'm going to try something a little different for me and read Ken Follett's The Key to Rebecca. I rarely read political thrillers, but Dad reads a lot of them. I want to stretch what I read; this is why I'm now working on Faulkner for the first time. Years ago I'd glommed onto a copy of The Sound and the Fury, but the first time I tried to read it I slammed headlong into the style. I'm working on it more concertedly now, but I also went online quickly to check why the book's written the way it is. Okay, it's not necessarily comprehension-failure on my end, I can think...but I might need to double-check other online notes after I've finished reading it to see what I missed. Maybe it's not the best choice for my first Faulkner, but I'll never know until I try.
OK, about to head out. I'm meeting Mom again plus my cousin Steph, her husband Paul and their daughter Eloisa for brunch up in NE...