Almost a week ago, I noted a blog post by Ana Ulin: . Ana added a section to the front matter of her book posts that contains information about the book in question, including her rating. She was kind enough to share her example and the partial template that displays the information on her site. Because I use Grav rather than Hugo as my CMS I couldn’t just steal Ana's template, but I was more than happy to base my front matter directly on her’s.
There isn’t much I can say about this luminous book that has not already been said by people far more accomplished than me. I found it a spell-binding read; the different points of view, the empathy for Marie-Laure and Werner, the timeline weaving back and forth, here and there.
How I came to read...
Many people have recently shared The Worst Animal in the World, the story of how we unwittingly domesticated Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and helped them to take over the world. I enjoyed reading it and learned a lot but alas, not about the .
[T]he paras...
Last week we went out of town to meet friends from the UK for lunch, and I ate the most superb galletto alla diavolo I’ve had in a long time.
A book I am reading made passing reference to Oliver Cromwell’s refusal to take quinine for his malaria. The history of quinine is tangled and uncertain, but a few things are constant. Jesuit missionaries learned from Amerindians that the bark of the Cinchona tree could cure fever.1 It was taken up by Pope Urban VIII and spread through much of Europe as Jesuit’s bark or Jesuit’s powder.
Cromwell, of course was having none of that. He died in 1658, probably of malaria, convinced, like many of his countrymen, that the popish powder was a plot to undermine the Anglican church.
