stopped eating at the kitchen table was the late lamented Dinah, who always insisted on eating from my plate and would drag food off when I wasn't looking.

I have a little time before I have to begin reading for The Best Horror of the Year, volume four, so have been picking through books I missed or that I bought (yes, Virginia, even I occasionally buy books--usually art/photography books)and haven't had the presence of mind to look through and/or read.

I just picked up Rare:Portraits of America's Endangered Species by Joel Sartore. The portraits are of animals and plants ranging from the Columbia Basin Pygmy Rabbit (the next to last was Bryn, who was photographed a few months before she died in 2008. The last of the breed, another female,died a few months later)to the Salt Creek Tiger Beetle (194 remain), the California Condor, and the Red Wolf. I read the first essay and started crying. I think this will have to be something I read in small doses.

So, on to something else. Maybe I'll return to The Gun by C.J. Chivers, about the AK-47. That'll be cheery.

Finished The Girl Who Played With Fire and am on The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest-enjoying it so far.

Watched Paul Newman, Melanie Griffith, Bruce Willis, and some other folk in Nobody's Fool, based on the novel by Richard Russo. It's about a depressed town in upstate NY. Newman is a 60 year old living alone for decades after he left his wife and son when the boy was about