"Reading Count of Monte Cristo in One Sitting."

Its a TikTok thing. I'm seeing 12 videos in this group. Check it out. Reading "The Count of Monte Cristo" is a thing these days, but why? It's super-long, so people have been avoiding it, but word has got out that it's a very exciting, gripping read. If you like — or think you might like — video of people reading, click through. It really is people reading — reading "The Count of Monte Cristo."

By the way, I have not read "The Count of Monte Cristo." It was my father's favorite book, or so he often said, often conjoined with the opinion that he hated "The Return of the Native." I have read "The Return of the Native" and 4 other Thomas Hardy novels. My son Chris recently read "The Count of Monte Cristo," though his main reading project is biographies of U.S. Presidents.

This post was inspired by a comment from Jaq on my previous post, which is about the decline of childhood reading. Jaq wrote: "Just bought The Count of Monte Christo [sic] through your link, and there it sits, like a cinder block on my coffee table, will I finish it? Now I guess I’ll have to, but it will hardly fit in my hip pocket the way I always sported one as a teenager. You can’t blame kids though, we are the ones who invented the crack, I mean smartphones."

And here's the latest photograph from a presidential biography sent to me by Chris. The scene is JFK's reception for black leaders on the 100-year anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation:

The return of the flying creature.

At 5:18 this morning:

I believe it's the same bird observed at 5:23 on Monday morning, here. In the comments there, Quaestor and rehajm said owl. "Owl," "Yes, totally owl."

Jaq said: "I think that we are going to have to use Bayesian logic to figure out the bird, and before I zoomed in my first thought was buzzard, but after zooming in, I am betting my case of whiskey on owl," and then "Nah, I was thinking about it and I think that time of day, milieu, and the general silhouette has me changing my bet to a night heron flying home after working the night shift fishing," and then, "the tail is not right for a night heron."

Quaestor returned to say: "Night heron? Not enough beak or neck showing Furthermore, a night heron's legs trail behind the deck feathers in flight. I'm sticking with an owl, probably a great horned owl. They aren't usually associated with lake environments, but they are opportunistic hunters. This one could have spent the night hunting ducklings."

Rusty concurred: "Yeah. Goin' with owl. Good catch."