Book Blog

This is where I will take notes on what I am reading. May be a daily thing, or just haphazard thoughts and summaries. Spoilers will be in here.

Further information on the books themselves can be found at the Book List.

June 12th, 2026	Frankenstein	I started reading Frankenstein this week. Tuesday I read an introduction by someone, which normally I’d skip, and also an introduction by Mary Shelley. The book starts with an interesting set of letters from an Englishman writing home to his sister. At first it’s not clear how they relate to the story. He wants to charter an expedition to research/navigate to the north pole. On this trip, they are trapped in ice. They see a large man, a giant with a dog sled go by. The captain sleeps and wakes to find the sailors yelling to a man near death at the side of the ship. They convince him to come aboard and convalesce. The Englishman befriends him, and this man later tells him his story of woe. It’s then obvious they found Victor Frankenstein and I can only assume the giant is his creature. The first 50 pages or so tell of his childhood in Switzerland, how Elizabeth came to live with them as an adopted “cousin”, and the death of his mother from scarlet fever. Shortly after her death, he leaves to go to a university, I guess in some German state. He had been a student of alchemy and medieval books after his father dismissed some books he found. The his first professor mocked him for the same studies, which Victor did not like. Then he met a second professor of chemistry, who encouraged his education in all subjects, even the historical alchemists whose works led to modern chemistry. He became this man’s pupil and was an avid scientist. Through his works, he somehow became aware of how to revive dead tissue. I’m surprised how quickly in the book he comes to reviving a human creature. It’s certainly not as dramatic as in the movie, with castles and lighting and “IT”S ALIVE”. But after a rough sleep he awakes to find the creature staring at him and reaching for him. He runs away and finds his friend from home arriving in Geneva after his merchant father relented and allowed him to attend university. The friend notices Frankenstein’s emaciated and ill looking state. They return to his home and the creature is gone. Eventually, the friend nurses Frankenstein back to health and Frankenstein abandons science. He studies eastern languages with his friends while waiting to return home.
June 8th, 2026	Early Middle English Verse and Prose	The last bit is Sawles Ward, or Soul’s Guardian, another religious piece. It’s like a conversation between different concepts, like Worship and Fear and Murth all talking about religious stuff. I’ve lost interest in these types of works by now so I mostly skimmed it and didn’t look up a lot of words in the glossary. I was just too bored to care. But that’s the end, no more poems. Time to get back to modern English.
June 4th, 2026	Early Middle English Verse and Prose	I looked up what I read two days ago: the Peterborough Chronicle. This is a version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and was the only one to be continued after the Conquest. The earlier parts were copies and they can tell where “authentic” writing began. It is an interesting historical document and not too hard to read. I got tripped on a lot on spelling, like only after seeing yuel 20 times did I realize it meant evil. The excepts here talked about King Henry I making some guy Heanri a bishop or something; it seemed more personal than of historical importance, but what do I know. These monks did not like Heanri. Then it jumps some years and we get to Henry I’s death and the ascension of Steven. This is where yuel was thrown around a lot and it sounded like Stephen’s men were locking people up, torturing, and extorting for money. Then obviously it goes into Mathilda’s and Geoffrey Plantagnent’s war against Stephen and ends with Henry II’s ascension. A good historical read. Today I started reading something called Ancrene Wisse or Ancrene Riwle. It’s a guide (or rules) written by someone for anchoresses. These are hermit-like women except they are literally walled in and cannot leave. Unlike nuns they don’t have a cloister or whatever you call it and no written rules, so someone decided to write some guidelines. These women probably had lots of time to read. I’ll be honest, I’m kind of bored of religious work so I started skimming it. It’s probably a 7/10 for difficulty reading, especially with vowel choice. I don’t know what I expected from the 12th century, but I think I was hoping more like the first section of the books, some more Song of Roland or Beowulf type poems. Oh well, I think there’s 30 pages of religion left.
June 3rd, 2026	Early Middle English Verse and Prose	These last few pieces are all longish prose works. Today’s was just titled Kentish Sermons, which is a translation of a French religious piece. I’m not sure if it’s an excerpt or the entire (surviving) work. I can’t find it online. It essentially takes a short passage from the Gospel, explains what happened, explains what it means religiously, and how to act on this information. It wasn’t too hard to read but it was a bit boring. Felt like it dragged a bit, but that’s religion for you. I guess I didn’t write anything yesterday. I don’t remember what it was.
June 1st, 2026	Early Middle English Verse and Prose	I read two pieces today because the second one was so short. The main piece today was called Cursor Mundi. It work itself is a long history of the world from creation up to judgement day (I guess that’s the future). The first piece in the book was boring and I didn’t understand it. The second piece was more of a narrative. It talked about Adam at 900 years old asking Seth to go to Paradise. Seth is tasking with asking how much longer must Adam live in misery and to retrieve the oil of mercy. Seth follows the old footsteps of Adam and Eve to the gate which the angel guards and tells him of his father’s wishes. The angel opens the gate and lets Seth look in. Some of this was hard to follow 100% and I didn’t feel like looking up the words, but I got the gist of it. He looked in three times. First he saw Paradise and everything great except an old dry tree: the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Then he saw another tree and I think somehow he saw into Hell and saw the soul of Abel (though as far as I know Seth was born after Abel’s murder). Last he saw a tree with a baby at the top. He described what he saw to the angel and was told that this baby was the son of God. Seth was given the oil and told Adam would die three days after Seth’s return. He was also given three seeds (they love trinities) to put in Adam’s mouth after his death. Adam was relieved he would soon die and did indeed die three days later. After his death, the seeds grew into some cedar-hybrid tree that survived the flood and still stood in the time of Moses. What made this piece difficult (though it was not very difficult) was some unique vocabulary. According to the commentary, a lot of the vocabulary was of Norse origin and there are some words that were have only been found in Scottish works. That explains that. The second piece was an “interlude”, which may have been performed in between courses during banquets. This like a summary of Dame Sirith, in which a clerk tells an inns-woman that he is in love with her and he seeks the aid of an old woman after being turned down. This one did not have the humorous ending of DS but instead ends with the old lady scolding the clerk.
May 29th, 2026	Early Middle English Verse and Prose	I took a long Friday lunch break and read two more pieces. The first was a bestiary and was more or less simple enough to follow. It talked about eagles, ants, deer, and whales and used them as examples for a Christian life. The words for the animals themselves were tricky. The deer was a hart, which I figured out. Eagle was ern, which I can see some similarity. Whale was something like Cetegrette, which now that I know what it is, I can see a connection to Cetus. Ant was mire, which was confusing because I thought we were talking about a swamp. I looked up ant and mire, assuming ant would be an imported word that eclipsed the native mire, but the Wiktionary says no. They are both Old English descendants from different Proto-Germanic words. It seems that the modern German word is related to ant and the modern Dutch word is related to mire. I guess it’s wrong to think as Old English as one unified language; there’d were certainly different dialects descended from different Germanic tribes where one word may have been the main word. London dialect reigns supreme. The next piece was Orrmulum, a Biblical exegesis [explanation] written by a man named Orrmin. He even wrote in the preface that he wrote it instead of the usual anonymous author. His name (dragon man) is Norse, meaning he was a descendent of Danes in the Danelaw area. This excerpt is essentially a retelling of the birth of Christ which is a story familiar to all of us. The prose was pretty simple and easy to follow, since it was meant to be read to the laypeople of the church.
May 28th, 2026	Early Middle English Verse and Prose	I read 3 more pieces this week. The first was something about Cokaygne, a counterpart to the heavenly Paradise. It’s a poem about a place full of lazing and gorging on food and females. It talks about some monks, mocking real life monks, who laze all day and only come to church when a local woman is present to them. Yesterday I read Laȝamon’s Brut, Brut meaning Brit. Apparently there is a story where Britain was founded by Brutus of Troy; never heard of it. This is an excerpt of a huge poem telling the history of Britain. This section just talks about King Arthur from finding out about Mordred’s treason to their deaths in battle. It’s largely readable without reference to the glossary and was a good story. The one I read today was more difficult. Robert of Gloucester writes about some events of the Second Baron’s War against Henry III, especially at Oxford, that he may have witnessed in 1265. I had to refer to the glossary a lot. There were some strange adverbs and pronouns used, plus some of the spelling was tricky, like poer instead of power. I could sort of follow it, but in general it was difficult. I also forget a lot of the history from that era.
May 22nd, 2026	Early Middle English Verse and Prose	The next story was St. Kenelm’s Legend. I mostly understood it though I missed than an important part was a dream. I already looked into this one as it was mentioned in one of the Canterbury’s Tale. It tells the story of Kenelm, who was the 7 year old son of a king (maybe Mercia), and he had two adult sisters. Kenelm was made king after his father’s death. His one sister was outraged and plotted to have him killed by his tutor/guardian. Kenelm had a dream about some trees and one chopped his tree down. He told his nurse who knew this meant the boy would die. To summarize, he was beheaded and buried. The spot had miracles happen. A dove dropped a note to the Pope, who forwarded it to Canterbury. The body was found and properly interred. I guess the sister died. According to Wikipedia, there was a real Kenelm who was attested on some charters, but seems to have disappeared around age 37. The evil sister was really an abbess somewhere. The next two days I read the “lyrics” section. It’s 24 or so songs of various types. I could understand most of them with some help from the glossary. The first one was “Summer is Icumen in”, which was featured at the end of the original Wickerman film. There are a bunch of love songs, some serious some funny, followed by some religious ones. One love song made me laugh, maybe that was not the intent. It said “Hyre tyttes aren anunder bis as apples tuo of Parays [Paradise] – ouself ȝe mowen seo [you may see yourself]”. Later he also refers to her “apples” as “wel mad”. Now that is good poetry.
May 19th, 2026	Early Middle English Verse and Prose	I’ve already gone over a week without writing. I guess I’ve read 6 of the pieces now. Some of them are just excerpts, I’ve realized, but oh well. There’s a couple of romances that follow: King Alexander, Floris and Blancheflour, and Havelock. King Alexander is about Alexander the Great in an episode where a guy comes to him for help. The guy asks Alexander to help him reclaim his wife and his domain from a usurper. This is accomplished in a few lines. Then Alexander is invited to meet his mother and the mother traps him to try to force him to love her. It’s a weird story. Floris and Blancheflour is more romantic in “star-crossed lovers” sort of way. Blancheflour is abducted or sold to merchants and ends up in the Tower of Maidens at Babylon. In the excerpt, Floris plays chess with the guardsmen and wins him to his side. The guardsman helps him sneak in to see Blancheflour. Havelock is a bit confusing but I looked up the plot. The except was not set up well. Havelock was like a Danish prince who was supposed to be murdered was not. Instead he was raised by a fisherman named Grim. Havelock grew up to be huge and was clearly special. Grim could not feed Havelock and his family so sent Havelock to Lincoln. Then somehow it jumps and Havelock kills like 60 guys trying to break into a castle. Next is a beast epic/tale, The Wolf and the Fox. This one features a fox eating some hens and after he cannot trick the rooster into coming down he falls into a well with two buckets. A hungry wolf comes by and finds the fox, a relative. The fox tells him it is paradise down there and he must confess his sins before coming down. The weird part is the wolf says he found the fox with his wife. Why is that the wolf’s sin? Odd. Then the wolf jumps on the other bucket and goes down while the fox goes up. The wolf is found by some friars the next morning and beaten. Today I read Dame Sirith, a comic tale or fabliaux, and apparently the only fabliaux (left) in Middle English other than Chaucer’s. It was a bit hard to read and I missed a major plot point. It starts with a clerk who runs around and one day comes to an inn and asks the innkeeper’s wife to sleep with him. She rebukes him. The man is distraught and goes to Dame Sirith for help. This is where I kind of got lost. She seems to not want to help and then she does help him. Also I completely missed the part about the dog. She gives the dog some spices and mustard to make him cry, to the clerk’s surprise. She takes the dog to the wife and tells a story about her daughter. The daughter also rebuked a clerk’s advances and he turned her into a dog. Terrified, the wife agrees to do whatever the clerk wants. Cuckolding was big humor back then.
May 8th, 2026	Early Middle English Verse and Prose	The first piece is a debate poem called The Owl and the Nightingale. It’s hard to read and the book is not very helpful with vocabulary. I can deal with vowel changes (took me some time to figure out bo is be) and spelling, but I can’t image they expect me to know what wl is or svildom. It is thought that a reference to a dead Henry dates this to shortly after the death of Henry II and thus during Richard the Lionheart’s reign. Regardless of not understanding a lot of words, enough words are comprehensible that I can follow along. I read half of it so far and it’s about the titular birds arguing and insulting each other. The nightingale instigates a fight and insults the owl’s appearance and singing. The owl wants to defends herself and wants to discuss this with a scholar when the nightingale throws more insults. The owl joins the brawl and insults the nightingale’s habits and singing. It’s a good fight.
May 7th, 2026	The Canterbury Tales	I’m not dead. I haven’t been writing. I’ve spent the last 4 months reading The Canterbury Tales and that didn’t feel like something that needed note taking. Maybe I should have because I can’t remember a number of the tales, but it has been 4 months. I read the Penguins Classics version in original Middle English, though there are plenty of notes. I liked it for the most part. There were a few dull tales, but it deserves its reputation. The dialogues and monologues of the pilgrims were entertaining. It was interesting how some tales had different meters and there were even two in prose (both very preachy). There’s a lot of sexual jokes in there and even some dirty language. Plenty of spouses sneaking around. No surprise we only read the prologue in high school. At some point I was looking up rhyme royal and came to The King’s Quair, a poem that is supposed to be by James I of Scotland. I decided to read that after CT while Middle English is still fresh in my brain. It was okay, kind of boring. I guess he was trying to impress John of Gaunt’s daughter.
January 14th, 2026	Lee Harvey Oswald in Black and White	I finished the book, pretty much. There’s an appendix with some documents I’ll get to. There’s not a lot to add as everything is too muddles to get anything out of it. Maybe that’s the point. There’s a strange letter he forged, or somebody forged, saying he was moving to San Diego and had to drop out of school. Yet he returned to school a year later. It seems more credible he was at school in New Orleans while Harvey was in school in Fort Worth. At some point, the “official” addresses switch from Lee to Harvey. Harvey was not the “real” one. An interesting note is that John Hart Ely, who got all the information on Oswald’s pre-Marines life for the Warren Commission, had some of his information “adjusted” or “omitted”, while simultaneously praised for how good his information was. He was only 25, just interesting to note. The last thing is Oswald’s Marine application. He signed up in 1956 and you can see on the application is was originally typed “OSWALD, HARVEY LEE” before being whited-out and retyped. It says he’s 5’8” when his photo shows 5’9”. It also lists he was in Ft. Worth from like ’42 to ’52 when he definitely was in New Orleans for a few years. The book ends and a second volume should cover the Marines years. There is an appendix discussing the various heights of Oswald in the Warren Report, some 5’6”, 5’9”, 5’11”. I’m not sure if they’re counting possible fake Oswalds in the post-defection years. The last appendix is a bunch of official documents that say Harvey Lee Oswald in them, some have both Harvey Lee and Lee Harvey. These are government documents and other letters. I’m not sure how anyone could get his name wrong. Maybe in the first month after the assassination, but there are documents from the 70s with it wrong. One more thing, the authors about Robert Oswald. After his service, he moved to Fort Worth and lived with his mother for a bit until he got married. This would have been Harvey and false Marguerite. Robert was in on the scheme from the beginning, especially given the Bronx zoo photo, and took it to the grave. Did he have no sympathy for his brother, who we never see again, or this other kid Harvey?
January 13th, 2026	Lee Harvey Oswald in Black and White	The book doesn’t cover a whole lot of new ground. There’s a lot of conflicting information and questions and not a lot of answers. Harvey may have attended two schools in Fort Worth, as some people remember him at Striping and 2220 Thomas Place, and some people remember him at Monig Jr. High. Someone mentioned he lived on Davenport, which oddly enough is where Robert will buy a house in 1957. Is this part of an intelligence property network? All the while, Lee is now attending Beauregard and living at 126 Exchange. I don’t know how they can get away with the two boys switching places at the same school. Did nobody notice? They even had a common friend, Ed Voebel. It was, allegedly, Ed who got help when Harvey was under the piano. Ed also befriended Lee, according to him, after some boys knocked his front tooth out (Lee had his teeth fixed in the marines, the Oswald corpse had all his natural teeth). Ed would die suspiciously at age 31. Did Ed not put two and two together, or was he hiding what he knew? We’ll never know. The last bit covered was about Oswald’s employment and, as expected, it’s all over the place. I’m not even going to get into it, it’s so confusing
January 12th, 2026	Lee Harvey Oswald in Black and White	I must’ve been a year off in the previous entry. Harvey was on Exchange Place in January 1954. Lee is supposed to have left New York in January 1954, live in an unknown location until May or June 1954 when they move to a Mary St. apartment owned by Marguerite’s friend something Evans. A letter to John Pic from Marguerite dated May 1954 implies they just got back. There is a mention in Lillian Murret’s testimony of another address that John Armstrong believed to be the Evans home address. Mrs. Evans said she thought Lee was in Texas for a bit before returning to New Orleans. These other addresses have been hidden from us, if they’re correct. It’s hard to know human error, even in FBI documents, from intentional manipulation. Sometimes I think when the FBI gets an address wrong, they are just being lazy and used 1963 locations. But you can’t tell. A side note on Lillian, her testimony is all over the place. She was lying every other sentence. There is evidence of her and her daughter going to an air force base on Bermuda, and Lillian went to Havana. That’s extremely odd. Then we have Mrs. Evans saying Lee lived on Mary Street until summer 1955, but it seems not to be true. Around October 1954, Marguruite’s letters to John start having a return address of Exchange Place. They must have moved there earlier, so why is Evans giving false information, off by half a year? The upstairs neighbor at Exchange Place said Harvey (she didn’t know his name) was a polite boy who held the door open. Evans said Lee hit his mother and would scream at her when food wasn’t ready for him. Evans didn’t recognize Marguerite on TV after the assassination, calling her “haggard” instead of the “beautiful” woman she remembered. Where did Harvey go after Exchange Place? The suggestion is back to Ft. Worth, at 2220 Arthur or something similar. A vice principal at Stripling Jr. High said he was told to get records on Oswald for the FBI after the assassination. Oswald attended less than a year, he remembered seeing. A girl, interviewed by Armstrong I think, also remembered Harvey and placed him at 2220, across the street from the school. Marguerite lived here before and will live here again in 1963. Something strange about that. One more aside about John Pic. On Thanksgiving 1962, the family went to Robert’s in Fort Worth. John Pic hadn’t seen Lee in 10 years, but he did not recognize the person claiming to be Lee (who used to be Harvey). He looked different, and that’s his own brother. Sure, you can change a lot from 13 to 23, but John said he was thin, gaunt, less hair, and didn’t have a “bullneck” like Lee did in the Marines. Can you lose a bullneck in 3 years, if ever? I noticed he didn’t mention a height difference, though.
January 10th, 2026	Lee Harvey Oswald in Black and White	We discussed the frail Harvey being seen by Dr. Kurian. Soon after Lee is seen by another doctor who described a big healthy boy. There are all sorts of contradictions in this 1954 timeline where Harvey is in Youth House and Lee is out. It’s all muddled. One important thing to note is that Harvey and false Marguerite would soon escape from New York to North Dakota. This is mostly scrubbed from the record and alleged to never happened. However, there is a letter to LBJ from mother who remembered the boy her son knew. The son forgot until reminded by his mother, but he remembered a Harvey who read Marxist literature. This is the Oswald who would go to Moscow. When in Moscow he was interviewed by an American reporter and told her about discovering Das Kapital in North Dakota. The FBI published this as New Orleans, but the newspaper article still exists. The ND excursion may have been summer of ‘55. The date is important because Robert claimed he took Lee to the Bronx zoo when on leave in the summer of ‘55. John Pic did not recognize the boy in the Bronx zoo picture and said Robert was home around September or October ‘54. Robert is a liar, that’s for sure. Obviously the picture is of Harvey in early fall, as he is in ND in summer. Lee would eventually return to school and actually went but was still hounded by the truant offices. Then they would return to New Orleans, both Lee and Harvey, but the time and place is important. Harvey would go to 126 Exchange Place (Alley), a nasty part of town, in January. Lee would live with his mother’s friend around May or June. Lee is not supposed to move to Exchange Place until later that year. Robert spilled the beans accidentally and said Lee lived in Exchange Place when he should have still been in New York. John Armstrong interviewed a teacher who knew Oswald, who went by Harvey, and dropped him off at Exchange Place after a piano fell on him at school.
January 9th, 2026	Lee Harvey Oswald in Black and White	There were conflicting records of Oswald and where he was at school in New Orleans. Somehow he was at two places at once. Now we have big contradictions in New York. The official story has Lee and his mom stay with John Pic for about a month, where Lee threatens Mrs. Pic with a knife. At the same time, Pic’s in-laws say there were there for a year and John testifies his wife was fond of Lee. They wanted to take him in. There is a lot of confusion of what school Lee attended and where they were located. Some of the addresses are not in the right place. Robert says Lee went to PS 44 in Manhattan, but that does exists in the Bronx. Then Oswald gets picked up for truancy. Again we have conflicting information. Dr. Kurian says he met with Oswald, who went by Harvey, was small and scrawny, at then end of March (’53 I think). The court records show Oswald being picked up in April. Lee was one of the tallest kids in his class, so he’d never be called scrawny. One report describes a schizo, the other an intelligent boy. Harvey’s report by his probation officer has his birthday wrong and lots of details. It has his father’s name wrong, says his mother married him when she married Ed Pic, and says she had 3 sons with Oswald. These are huge errors that the false Marguerite must not have known. Is it possible Marguerite and Lee are with John Pic, while fat Marguerite and Harvey are in the Bronx? What is the relationship between Lee and Harvey?
January 8th, 2026	Ulysses	I dropped this book. It’s okay but it’s not interesting enough to be 700 pages long. I don’t have much time to read and I don’t want to force myself to read it for another month.
January 8th, 2026	Lee Harvey Oswald in Black and White	A Christmas acquisition. I enjoyed his first book on the JFK assassination. This is part of a biography on Oswald. I’m already quite a ways in so let’s see what I recall. It starts out discussing his family. His mother Marguerite Claverie was previously married to an Ed Pic. She had a son named John Pic, but this relationship did not last. She became involved with Robert E. Lee Oswald (aka Lee Oswald) and they married and had a son Robert. A couple years later she became pregnant with Lee Harvey Oswald. Robert died of a heart attack about two months before she was born. Oswald is born October 1939, though there is no birth certificate. There is a some sort of testament of birth, made days later after the birth and is different. A quick jump to post assassination, Robert Oswald was quick to sell out his brother to the media and wrote a book about how messed up his brother was. John Pic would not and his testimony leaves some speculation about the two Oswald theory. Marguerite is clearly not a good mother. Though she has some money from life insurance and rental properties, she is always acting like she is poor. Multiple times she put her children in orphanages. At some point she meets Edwin Ekdahl and marries him. He was probably linked to intelligence through his job. The FBI was denied records on him. They or she and with Harvey possibly went to New York where she was part of the Navy WAVES program during the war. It would be here should would be linked to the intelligence community. She admitted herself that she worked on a Navy base in New Orleans on the phones. Other than that she had no training and worked in retail. There’s all sorts of confusion in regards to addresses. She somehow has money to buy and sell multiple properties. At some point Lee is sent to live with his aunt and cousins, whose names I forget. The one cousin may also have been in intelligence as she travelled to many different countries by herself, strange at that time for a woman. Marguerite get divorced and buys a home on the wrong side of the tracks. The boys describe it as a hard time. John Pic is asked to drop out of school to work. At 16 or so he goes off to join the Coast Guard. Robert soon follows with the Marines. Both are desperate to get away from their mother. Lee jumps around schools, though a census document calls him Harvey Oswald. At this time there appears to be a second Marguerite Oswald. She is a nurse, short and fat, with glasses, who looks nothing like the first Marguerite. People who know the original are shocked to see her on tv after the assassination. A neighbor in Texas knows the short fat one but does not recognize the other. This may be around 1951 since I think Lee was 12. Soon after this they move to New York City to stay with John Pic and his wife. There are stories of Lee being a bad kid. Also around this time, Robert is stationed in Florida at a CIA air field. Strange. I am only rambling because it's hard to remember all the details.