It's all about the shiny

Package from Amazon.Com arrived yesterday with two lovely books: Ship by Brian Lavery and The History of the Ship: The Comprehensive Story of Seafaring from the Earliest Times to the Present Day by Richard Woodman.

The Ship book was on sale, and it's just what I hoped for, full of lovely pictures. And as long as I was ordering, I picked up the Richard Woodman title. I'd already borrowed it a couple of times from the local library, so I knew I wanted it.

Mmmm. Shiny new reference books. Happiness.

Let's set aside the fact that I have at least eight other naval history titles, including two already bought for the current series I'm working on. The point of this is that most of my books were related to the era of Nelson's Navy (late eighteenth/early nineteenth centuries) so it was a perfect excuse to buy more.

Did I mention that research books were tax deductible? It's right up there on my top 10 list of good things about being an author.

Like a lemming

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones:
So let it be with Caesar.

From Julius Caesar (Act III, scene ii)

If you see this, post a quote from Shakespeare in your journal...

I've a particular fondness for this speech, since the time I helped organize my fellow English students to perform selected scenes from Julius Caesar. I was Caesar, and I also directed, which may explain why my castmates' favorite scene was my death. As the performances went on, they wielded the foil-covered cardboard daggers with increasing glee.

The girl who played Mark Antony was a good friend, but could never memorize her speech. So we had a secretary type it up in large type, and then it was carefully taped to the inside of my toga. As my lifeless body was positioned on the table that served as the funeral bier, the last act was to undo the top fold of the toga so she could read the speech. None of the audience, including our teachers, ever caught on.

I, of course, had memorized the speech by this time, but then I had nothing better to do while I lay there playing dead.