Early stage renal disease but not so bad as was originally told me.  Que notre joie demeure.

I have been reading literature my whole life, literature, not fiction, though I read that too.  I read with a Patreon group called the Hardcore Literature Book Club.  We are currently in the middle of Homer’s Odyssey,  having just finished Dumas’ Three Musketeers.

HLBC has a staggering back catalog of lectures, under each which is a members’ discussion forum that is a sheer joy.  Sometimes months or years later someone will go in there and reply to a post you wrote, which brings back lovely memories.  

About George Eliot’s Middlemarch I had written that I think it is the finest English novel ever written, slightly edging Dickens and Austen.  In particular I noted the last line.  So often we discuss famous first lines - Anna Karenina, A Tale of Two Cities - but neve