Looks like I will finish Umberto Eco's Island of the Day Before sometime tonight. It's been a tough, but very rewarding, read. Eco has a way of taking medieval history, philosophy, religion, science (natural philosophy) and atmosphere and tying them together in deep, intricate, multi-layered novels. As he himself has pointed out before (and in this book), novels are more real than history because in a novel, there's no question about what happened. Romeo and Juliet died. Period. Who can be that confident about facts of the sixteenth century?

Want to try some Eco? First read Name of the Rose. Or Foucault's Pendulum. Read for the reading, as you would travel for the journey and not for the destination.

Enjoy!

This is, of course, the beautiful elfin Angela, photographed in a hotel in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada, three or so weeks ago.