Erin O'Riordan writes smart, whimsical erotica. Her erotic romance novel trilogy, Pagan Spirits, is now available. With her husband, she also writes crime novels. Visit her home page at ko-fi.com.
February 7, 1497: On Shrove Tuesday in Florence, followers of the monk Girolamo Savonarola burn art, books, their cosmetics, fancy clothes, playing cards, and other cultural objects they associate with sin in the so-called Bonfire of the Vanities. Sadly, irreplaceable ancient art and manuscripts were lost to this religiously-fueled war on anything that represented luxury.
Ironically, Savonarola will later be excommunicated and convicted of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church. As punishment, he is hanged and his body burned in the same plaza where the Bonfire of the Vanities occurred. It will be forbidden for any Christian to possess copies of Savonarola’s writings.
February 7, 1904: A fire in Baltimore destroys more than 1,500 buildings, costing $150 million in damage in 1904 dollars and leaving 35,000 unemployed. Fortunately, no one is reported to have died from the fire.
February 7, 2008: A dust explosion at the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Georgia, injures 36 people and kills 14.
June 1, 1981: A mob of Sinhalese people in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, burns the Jaffna Public Library. The mob formed in protest of the killing of three Sinhalese police officers the night before, at a rally held by a Tamil pro-democracy political party. The burning of the library, which destroyed an estimated 97,000 books and manuscripts, came as part of clashes between the Sinhalese, who make up about three quarters of the population of Sri Lanka, and the Tamil minority.
June 2, 2013: Grizelda Kristiņa dies at the age of 103. She was the last fluent native speaker of Livonian, a Uralic language closely related to Estonian.
June 7, 1984: On or around this date, the Indian Army burns the Sikh Reference Library building in Punjab, India, to the ground. The library held approximately 20,000 materials, including irreplaceable handwritten manuscripts. The status of these materials is unknown and considered classified by the Indian government; they may have been destroyed, sold off into private collections, or held in an undisclosed archive somewhere.
June 7, 1993: NBA player Dražen Petrović is killed in a road accident while riding on the German Autobahn highway system in Bavaria. Petrović is not wearing a safety belt and is ejected from the vehicle, which is driven by his girlfriend.
June 8, 1971: J.I. Rodale, an early advocate of sustainable and organic farming and founder of Rodale Press, appears as a guest on a pre-taped episode of The Dick Cavett Show. In his interview for the show, Rodale states that he’s never felt better and intends to live to be 100 years old. Unfortunately, he suffers a fatal heart attack at the age of 72 that evening, as he’s sitting in a chair on the Cavett Show set listening to another guest being interviewed. Rodale is pronounced dead on arrival at a local hospital; the episode is never aired.
June 9, 1865: Charles Dickens and his friend/perhaps lover Ellen Lawless Ternan are riding in a train on a voyage home from Paris. The train is near the village of Staplehurst, Kent, when it crosses a bridge. The engineer is unaware, until it's too late, that the bridge is closed for repairs and about 42 feet of track have been removed.
Dickens and Ternan, riding in the first-class car near the front of the train, are carried over the gap by the momentum of the engine. Their car lands on its side, but although they're shaken, they don’t have any serious injuries.
The center and rear cars of the train fall into the river below. Ten passengers are killed. Approximately 50 others are injured. Dickens helps render aid to the victims at the scene; some of them die in front of him. For the rest of his life he suffers flashbacks; in modern terms he could probably be said to suffer from PTSD.
June 9, 1870: Charles Dickens dies after suffering a stroke the previous day.
June 10, 1898: The last-known native speaker of the Dalmatian language, Tuone Udaina, dies. Udaina is killed in an explosion caused by road work.
June 12, 2015: Musician Dave Grohl falls from the stage, breaking his leg, while performing with the Foo Fighters in Gothenburg, Sweden.
June 14, 1949: 19-year-old typist Ruth Ann Steinhagen shoots and almost kills Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus in one of the earliest recorded cases of what comes to be known as stalking. Steinhagen, a resident of Cicero, Illinois, has been obsessed with Waitkus since she sees him playing for the Chicago Cubs in 1946. She even leaves an empty plate at the dinner table for him when eating with her family. Steinhagen was seeing a psychiatrist, but this didn’t stop her from traveling to Chicago’s Edgewater Beach Hotel, leaving a note with Waitkus’s roommate asking to meet, then shooting the baseball player with a .22 caliber rifle when he came to see her. She shot him in the chest, puncturing one of his lungs.
After shooting Waitkus, Steinhagen allegedly looked for a second bullet with which to shoot herself, but was unable to find one. Instead she called the police and told them, “I just shot a man,” allowing Waitkus to reach medical care before his injury killed him. He had to sit out the rest of the ‘49 baseball season, but returned in 1950. Eddie Waitkus developed a drinking problem and died in 1972 of esophageal cancer.
This incident was partially the inspiration for the 1952 Bernard Malamud book, then the 1984 Robert Redford film, both called The Natural. Which is partially the inspiration for the Simpsons episode “Homer at the Bat” (original air date February 20, 1992).
June 16, 1994: Kristen Pfaff, bassist for the band Hole, dies of a heroin overdose. She is 27 years old.
June 18, 1984: Jewish talk show host Alan Berg is gunned down by two members of a white supremacist terror group in Denver. He is 50 years old.
June 19, 1999: Stephen King suffers a broken leg, a broken hip, a collapsed lung, and a lacerated scalp when he’s struck and thrown 14 feet by a Dodge minivan driven by Bryan Edwin Smith. Smith, who was distracted by the movements of his unrestrained dog in the back of the vehicle, pleads guilty to a moving violation and receives a six-month suspended sentence.
June 21, 1858: Samuel “Mark Twain” Clemens’s brother Henry dies of wounds he received on June 13th as a crew member on the steamboat Pennsylvania when the boat’s boiler explodes. Mark Twain, at the time working as a crew member on the riverboat A.B. Chambers, felt guilt for the rest of his life for convincing his younger brother to work aboard a riverboat.
June 24, 2006: Three men in Pretzien, eastern Germany, burn copies of Anne Frank’s diary and the American flag in apparent support of the Nazis. The members of a far-right-wing group are charged with incitement of racial hatred.
June 24, 2023: Hikers in the San Gabriel Mountains of San Bernardino County, California, discover human remains. These turn out to be the remains of actor Julian Sands, age 65, who had been reported missing after failing to return from a hike on January 13, 2023. Winter storms, avalanches, and record snowfall in the area had hindered the search for him, although eight official searches were conducted during the five months he was missing.
June 28, 2018: A gunman attacks the offices of Annapolis, Maryland, newspaper The Capital. The assailant became enraged at the newspaper after it published a story about his arrest for harassing an acquaintance through social media. Reporter Wendi Winters, sports reporter John McNamara, columnist Gerald Fischman, editor Rob Hiaasen, and sales assistant Rebecca Smith are killed.
June 29, 1950: Ring Lardner reports to prison to begin his 1-year sentence for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He’ll serve nine months.
June 30, 1995: 45-year-old jazz singer and Broadway actress Phyllis Hyman dies in the hospital after having been found unresponsive in her home. She has overdosed on prescription barbiturate medication and alcohol.
It's been 13 years, but I have thoughts. I'll skip the characters I don't know from books I haven't read.
111. Frankenstein’s Monster (Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus). Fair, judging solely by the book. But in Maggie Gyllenhaal's forthcoming The Bride of Frankenstein retelling The Bride (2025), the Monster will be played by Christian Bale. Which bumps him up to #1. I apologize in advance for the feelings I will feel about that movie.
110. Uriah Heep (David Copperfield)
109. Casaubon (Middlemarch). If I remember Middlemarch, the main character's elderly husband looked like the philosopher John Locke, but I pictured him as Lost!John Locke. Not unhot.
108. Bradley Headstone (Our Mutual Friend)
107. Samuel Pickwick (Pickwick Papers)
106. Gussie Fink-Nottle (Right Ho, Jeeves)
105. Keith Talent (London Fields)
104. Jerry Cruncher (Tale of Two Cities). Domestic violence perpetrator; deserves to be at the bottom.
103. Hercule Poirot (The Mysterious Affair at Styles). What's wrong with Poirot? He's smart, he's Belgian, he keeps his moustache neat. In the movies he's Kenneth Branagh. What have we got against Poirot?
102. Ham Peggotty (David Copperfield)
101. Thorin Oakenshield (The Hobbit). This is just anti-dwarfish. In the movies he's Richard Armitage. That gay Brit is pretty hot. Adaptational attractiveness? Sure, but still, I think a lot of Tolkien men are ranked too low on this list.
100. Tracy Tupman (Pickwick Papers)
99. Julian Malory (Excellent Women)
98. C.J. Stryver (A Tale of Two Cities). This one is correct. Sydney Carton is the hot one at this law firm.
97. Charles Arrowby (The Sea, the Sea)
96. Dr. Watson (“A Study In Scarlet”). Wrong. Watson is a catch. He's a Victorian 10.
95. Willy Wonka (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). Ma'am, he has unlimited access to chocolate. That should bump him into the Top 50, at least.
94. Jim Dixon (Lucky Jim)
93. Edward Ferrars (Sense and Sensibility). I'm sorry, but in what universe is Edward Ferrars less bangable than George Wickham? Carrie Frye, did you read these books all the way through to the end?
92. Colonel Brandon (Sense and Sensibility). EXCUSE ME?!?
68. Peter Pan (Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up). MA'AM HE IS A LITERAL CHILD. HE SHOULD NOT BE ON THIS LIST.
67. Long John Silver (Treasure Island)
66. King Lear (King Lear)
65. Reginald Jeeves (“Extricating Young Gussie”)
64. Henry Pulling (Travels with My Aunt)
63. Romeo (Romeo and Juliet). Another literal child from the reader's pov, but pretty bangable to his age-appropriate partner, I guess?
62. Tristram Shandy (The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman)
61. Winston Smith (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
60. Roland Michell (Possession)
59. Crow (Crow)
58. Brigadier Etienne Gerard (The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard)
57. Tertius Lydgate (Middlemarch). I don't remember who this is.
56. Lord Sebastian Flyte (Brideshead Revisited)
55. Henry Crawford (Mansfield Park)
54. Frederick Wentworth (Persuasion)
53. Edward Murdstone (David Copperfield)
52. Desmond Ragwort (Thus Was Adonis Murdered)
51. Captain Hook (Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up). I feel like he should be closer to 111. Unless we're talking about that one adaptation with Jason Isaacs. I like Jason Isaacs.
50. Charles Darnay (A Tale of Two Cities). That's pretty fair. Sure, he looks exactly, weirdly like Sydney Carton, but Charles Darnay has another golden retriever personality. Pleasant, I suppose, but not sexy. Plus he's probably sad about his dead son.
45. Legolas (The Lord of the Rings). Tolkien elves are hot.
44. Robin Hood (Piers Plowman)
43. Inspector Alan Grant (The Man in the Queue)
42. George Emerson (A Room with a View)
41. Alan Breck Stewart (Kidnapped)
40. Rockingham Napier (Excellent Women)
39. Mr. Neville (Hotel du Lac)
38. St. John Rivers (Jane Eyre). Colonialist. Not sexy.
37. Remus Lupin (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)
36. Lancelot (The Once and Future King)
35. Othello (Othello, The Moor of Venice). He definitely killed his wife. We saw him do it. Therefore, unbangable.
34. Tarzan/Lord Greystoke (Tarzan of the Apes). I know he was on my Disney "would" list, but let's be honest: The real sexiness is Tony Goldwyn's.
33. Severus Snape (Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone)
32. Aslan (The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe). Ma'am, he is a literal lion. He shouldn't be on this list. I'm pretty sure he's an asexual untame talking lion.
31. Sydney Carton (A Tale of Two Cities). Should be closer to #1 OBVIOUSLY.
30. John Willoughby (Sense and Sensibility). This much higher than Edward Ferrars? Really?
29. Thomas Cromwell (Wolf Hall)
28. Maxim de Winter (Rebecca). Um, didn't he kill his wife?
27. Simon Bakerloo (The Wolves of Willoughby Chase)
26. Sirius Black (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban). Yeah. Or maybe a little higher, even. This is not an endorsement of J.K. Rowling, whose attempt to gaslight the Internet into ignoring Nazi anti-lgbtq+ violence makes me ill. If I were a billionaire writer with a huge platform, I simply would not use my huge platform to target a vulnerable minority.
25. Brian de Bois-Guilbert (Ivanhoe)
24. Adam Dalgliesh (Cover Her Face)
23. James Bond (Casino Royale). James Bond's behavior and personality are offputting. The only thing that ever makes James Bond sexy is when he's played by Daniel Craig.
22. James Steerforth (David Copperfield)
21. Tom Bombadil (The Lord of the Rings). Accurate. Tom Bombadil might not be a permanent keeper, but he does sound fun.
20. Edward Driffield (Cakes And Ale)
19. Sherlock Holmes (“A Study In Scarlet”). I never get very strong sexy vibes from book!Sherlock. Watson does more for me. But the sound of Benedict Cumberbatch's voice is an entirely different story. (Hours spent reading Johnlock fanfic? Who, me?)
18. Justin Alastair, Duke of Avon (These Old Shades)
17. Robert Frobisher (Cloud Atlas). That's about right. Sexy, but sad. Depraved bisexual trope, but sexy.
14. Algernon Moncrieff (The Importance of Being Earnest)
13. Randolph Henry Ash (Possession)
12. Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights). I have normal, proportional feelings about Heathcliff and about Ralph Fiennes playing him. I'm normal about Byronic antiheroes.
11. Maurice Bendrix (The End of the Affair)
10. Beorn (The Hobbit)
9. Orlando (Orlando: A Biography). Strongly agree. Ms. Carrie Frye and I are on the same page here.
8. Oliver Mellors (Lady Chatterley’s Lover). I get it.
7. Lord Peter Wimsey (Strong Poison)
6. Don Juan (Don Juan)
5. The Beast (“The Tiger’s Bride”)
4. Eugene Wrayburn (Our Mutual Friend)
The top three are fine. I feel like there should me more Shakespeare in here somewhere, though. I feel like the unsexy Shakespeare characters are covered better than the actually hot ones. Benedick, anyone? Dom Demetrius, afraid of yet intrigued by Helena's sub tendencies?
I don't know what this is. Maybe it was inspired by my Spotify Wrapped? I'm still not sure I'm using the word "pastiche" correctly. I pulled at a few different threads and I wove this, whatever it is.
I.
Robert Sheehan is outside my window again. Lucky for me, I'm on the 2nd floor, in my writer's studio above the corner bodega and he's standing on the sidewalk.
The window is open.
"Eileen!" he shouts up. "Come on, Eileen."
I leave my chair, push aside the pink-and-gray buffalo check curtain and peer down at him.
Putting his Irish accent on thick, he sings, "Believe me, if all those enduring young charms..."
"I'm dreaming," I say, interrupting his croon. "This is because I said you should play Kevin Rowland in a movie about Dexys Midnight Runners."
"Not a dream," he half-says, half-sings. "Don't you want to come down and go for a walk with me, just around the neighborhood?"
"No." The smell of hot tortilla chips warming in the bodega below makes my nostrils flare. I imagine the salt crystals on their flat surfaces. Craving the warmth and salt, I feel a hunger pang.
"Why not?"
"I've got things to do."
"Like what?"
I gesture at my laptop. "I have to write things. Legitimate things, fresh things, not just this Joyce Carol Oates pastiche."
"Eileen, you ain't telling the truth."
"Not my name," I remind him.
"Eileen, Erin, whatever. This is your day set aside for going for a walk with me and you know it."
I feel threatened. I close the window and go back to my laptop.
II.
I walk into the little Historic Downtown Irvington shop on Washington Street that used to be the ice cream shop that sold bubble tea. I see the new owner has rebranded it as a 1950s-themed nostalgia diner. The bubble tea options and anime keepsakes are gone, but the ice cream counter remains, as do about a dozen shiny, chrome milkshake blenders.
The brightly lit Wurlitzer jukebox in the corner plays “Drugstore Rock'N'Roll” by Janis Martin. The cheerful song paints the perfect picture of midcentury innocence.*
At one high table sits Edgar Allan Poe. His dark brown suit fits him well, although the foot that dangles from the long-legged chair has an untied shoelace. Catching me in his blue-eyed gaze, he says, “This was her favorite place.”
I’m confused. He died in the 1840s, over a century before the trope of the ‘50s malt shop emerged.
“I’m sorry?” I say. “ 'She’ is –?”
“Was,” he corrects me. “She was my Annabel Lee.”
I shake my head as I take the seat across from him. He offers me a sip of his milkshake, turning the straw toward me. I know I shouldn’t, but I indulge myself in a sweet sip of Poe’s chocolate malt.
I then continue, “This couldn’t have been her favorite place; that’s a line from that MC Lars song, 'Annabel Lee R.I.P.’”
He shrugs. Poe looks sad and beautiful but not morose. Despite his Gothic reputation, there’s nothing gloomy or goth about him. He’s every bit the Southern gentleman, gracious and effortlessly charming. I want to touch his dark hair where it starts to curl, just behind his ear.
I excuse myself to use the restroom. In the mirror, my eyes are less green and much more hazel than usual. Am I Christian Bale? No, I’m Augustus Landor. My clothes are careworn and I want to go back to my cottage.
Well, perhaps one more sip of Poe’s chocolate malt first.
*The song is about a drugstore. The former drugstore with the soda fountain, the one robbed by John Dillinger, is up the block a bit and on the other side of the street, across from the present-day library.
III.
John Legend, wearing a fashionable off-white suit, sits at his white piano, playing me a Christmas song in front of a roaring fire. Actually, he’s singing me “The Christmas Song.”
“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”
“Happy birthday,” I blurt out.
“My birthday isn’t until the 28th. I’m an after-Christmas baby.”
He laughs, and I can’t tell whether he’s more surprised or amused.
Presently the fireplace-warmed air grew hotter. This was no winter wonderland. Were we in Jerusalem? Beyond John I spot a man with copious sandy-blond hair wearing black eyeliner and a keffiyeh.
“Judas,” I say upon the appearance of Tim Minchin.
“Jesus Christ,” he says, approaching John, seemingly moving in to kiss him. They lock eyes and I feel I’m witnessing something I’m not meant to see.
“…Superstar,” I mutter to myself as I turn away to give them their privacy. I muse aloud, “I can appreciate casting Alice Cooper as King Herod; I appreciate his showmanship. You know else might have made an interesting casting choice? Murray Head, the original album-Judas Superstar, coming back to play King Herod.”
We stand before his throne now: King Murray Head.
Blame W. Somerset Maugham. He had a birthday (January 25), I remembered that his Oriental Hotel suite is name-checked in “One Night in Bangkok,” and soon I’m detecting something wistful in Murray Head ballads that speaks to me as something other than merely an ‘80s kid.
“Now see what you’ve done?” Jesus Christ Superstar admonishes me. “You chose to lean fully into your 1980s nostalgia and now I’m going to be crucified.”
Is Tim Minchin Judas wearing lip gloss? And is it a bit smudged now?
“I’m not interested in matters of Jewish law tonight,” King Murray Head says in the crispest English accent you’ve heard since Ralph Fiennes. Offering me a doubtful smile, he adds, “My dear, would you care to join me in the Somerset Maugham Suite?”
“I thought you got your kicks above the waistline, sunshine,” the saucy Aussie chimes in.
King Murray Head shrugs. “I’m only human. We can’t all be Jesus Christ Superstar.”
I’m sexualizing that old man. I desire him carnally. But will he love me tomorrow? I'm guessing no, but that's ok. Nothing lasts forever.
IV.
I’m tucked snugly, quite comfortably into my 4-post bed, the curtains drawn around me, blissfully asleep in the warm and the dark. The sound of my name awakens me.
“Who’s there?” I ask. It had better not be Robert Sheehan.
“Charles Dickens,” comes the reply. This is what I get for reading Greg Jenner’s Dead Famous before bed.
But I know that distinctive voice. I part the bed curtains. “Dan Stevens?!” I ask incredulously, laying eyes on the extremely handsome English actor in the early morning light.
“It’s Charles Dickens,” Dan Stevens insists. He’s brought a friend.
“And John Forster,” adds Justin Edwards-in-Victorian-costume.
Accepting that these British thespians are in character as their The Man Who Invented Christmas counterparts, I ask, “Are you the Ghosts of Christmas Past? Am I dreaming?
“Neither,” says John/Justin, pulling a pie sprinkled with sugar seemingly out of nowhere.
That explained nothing. I thought back to Robert Sheehan telling me his creepy Oatesian visit wasn’t a dream. I then grew distracted by the state of my bedroom, suddenly filled with evergreen trees and boughs decorated with silver baubles, iridescent glass bubbles, and magical flickering candles. I smelled cinnamon and cloves; was someone mulling red wine in my bedroom?
It was beginning to look a lot like Victorian Christmas and smell like it too. My chamber suddenly possessed a long dining table on which there lay a roasted turkey, an enormous figgy pudding, and a rapidly-multiplying host of 19th-century holiday delicacies that would have made Ichabod Crane’s head explode.
“And you’re saying you two are not the Ghosts of Christmas Past?” I asked my guests for clarification.
Seating themselves at the table, they denied being ghosts a second time as they helped themselves to a portion of the mouth-watering feast.
“Tuck in,” said Charles/Dan.
I serve myself, but soon notice how the actors favor each other’s company, eat from each other’s plates, and feed one another. They’d constructed an elaborate ritual that allowed them to touch one another without social judgment.
“What is this?” I wonder out loud.
“You could think of it as recursion,” Charles/Dan says. “Each Christmas harks back to every other Christmas. This Christmas reminds you of childhood Christmases, which in turn retains elements of Victorian Christmas past, which in turn bears marks of earlier traditions, and so on.
“One might say,” remarks John/Justin, “that, in a sense, there has only ever been one Christmas and we return to it every year. We practice the myth of eternal return when we practice Christmas.” His thumb traces a line of cream that Charles/ Dan has smeared on his cheek, then eats the errant cream.
“I still don’t understand why I’m here,” I say. “Why was it necessary for me to be the Scrooge in this drama?”
“It isn’t,” Charles/Dan says flatly. “We merely need your bed.”
With that they abandon their feast and retire to my comfy bed, drawing the curtains behind them. I politely ignore their pleasured sighs as I slice into a steaming plum pie, but internally I wish they’d gotten a different room. I knew the Somerset Maugham Suite at the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok had recently been vacated.
* * *
Author’s Note: Oliver Sacks wrote that Charles Dickens had a haunted mind, but didn’t explain that statement and then very sadly passed away. I began to understand it when I read about the railway accident he was involved in. I now believe that perhaps Dr. Sacks also meant that Dickens was haunted by his childhood poverty. This is depicted in The Man Who Invented Christmas and discussed in Dead Famous.
But then in this podcast, Helena Kelly spilled the absolute tea on Dickens and found out that he might have been lying about working in a boot blacking factory?! And he probably had syphilis, which he gave to Kate and the children - some of them may have died from it! - and maybe her sister too?! I don’t want to slut shame Charles Dickens, but I do think I understand what Dr. Sacks meant a lot more deeply now.
ICYMI, this post is the latest in a series highlighting one of my two current books in process,The Almanac of Bad Days(tentative title). Past installments:
Trigger Warnings: Antisemitism, car accidents, death, drug overdose, Nazi mention, train crash
June 7, 1984: On or around this date, the Indian Army burns the Sikh Reference Library building in Punjab, India, to the ground. The library held approximately 20,000 materials, including irreplaceable handwritten manuscripts. The status of these materials is unknown and considered classified by the Indian government; they may have been destroyed, sold off into private collections, or held in an undisclosed archive somewhere.
June 7, 1993: NBA player Dražen Petrović is killed in a road accident while riding on the German Autobahn highway system in Bavaria. Petrović is not wearing a safety belt and is ejected from the vehicle, which is driven by his girlfriend.
June 9, 1865: Charles Dickens and his friend/perhaps lover Ellen Lawless Ternan are riding in a train on a voyage home from Paris. The train is near the village of Staplehurst, Kent, when it crosses a bridge. The engineer is unaware, until it's too late, that the bridge is closed for repairs and about 42 feet of track have been removed.
Dickens and Ternan, riding in the first-class car near the front of the train, are carried over the gap by the momentum of the engine. Their car lands on its side, but although they're shaken, they don’t have any serious injuries.
The center and rear cars of the train fall into the river below. Ten passengers are killed. Approximately 50 others are injured. Dickens helps render aid to the victims at the scene; some of them die in front of him. For the rest of his life he suffers flashbacks; in modern terms he could probably be said to suffer from PTSD.
June 9, 1870: Charles Dickens dies after suffering a stroke the previous day.
June 16, 1994: Kristen Pfaff, bassist for the band Hole, dies of a heroin overdose. She is 27 years old.
June 19, 1999: Stephen King suffers a broken leg, a broken hip, a collapsed lung, and a lacerated scalp when he’s struck and thrown 14 feet by a Dodge minivan driven by Bryan Edwin Smith. Smith, who was distracted by the movements of his unrestrained dog in the back of the vehicle, pleads guilty to a moving violation and receives a six-month suspended sentence.
June 21, 1858: Samuel “Mark Twain” Clemens’s brother Henry dies of wounds he received on June 13th as a crew member on the steamboat Pennsylvania when the boat’s boiler explodes. Mark Twain, at the time working as a crew member on the riverboat A.B. Chambers, felt guilt for the rest of his life for convincing his younger brother to work aboard a riverboat.
June 24, 2006: Three men in Pretzien, eastern Germany, burn copies of Anne Frank’s diary and the American flag in apparent support of the Nazis. The members of a far-right-wing group are charged with incitement of racial hatred.
June 29, 1950: Ring Lardner reports to prison to begin his 1-year sentence for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He’ll serve nine months.
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Illustration for "The Children's Dickens: Stories selected from various tales" (1909) London: Henry Frowde and Hodder and Stoughton by Gilbert Scott Wright (24 July 1880 – 1958). This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1928.
My husband and I were lucky to see Neil Gaiman do a live reading and question-and-answer session on the Butler University campus last night. Now I feel like a Victorian lady must have felt after she saw Charles Dickens on one of his American tours. (Except Neil Gaiman is an English person who lives in the United States; I don't think Dickens ever moved here.)
Mr. Gaiman began the evening by reading a short poem about reading to children, aimed at some friends in the audience whom, he knew, had their young child with them. Secondly he read us "Chivalry," a delightful short story which you may remember from LeVar Burton Reads.
Someone asked him how he came to be so obviously fascinated by myths. He said, in a deadpan tone, "When I was four, I was bitten by a radioactive myth." I suspect the sincere answer has more to do with an autobiographical story he told later about asking his parents to leave him at the local library all day, where the librarians would treat him, a child, with respect and use inter-library loans to get him almost any book he could think of.
Later he read "Click Clack the Rattle Bag," a funny/scary horror story, and then a short story that was sort of a sequel to "Chivalry," about the woman who releases the genie from the silver lamp, but doesn't want any of his offered three wishes.
Neil Gaiman talked about his children a lot. He was quite adamant that he can't be happy unless they're happy. He especially mentioned Holly, because she was the inspiration for Coraline, and Maddy, but he also mentioned the time Michael became frustrated with him because, Michael said, "You make things up." He didn't mention Anthony by name, but again I stress, he can't be happy unless all of his children are happy.
He spoke lovingly of his Good Omens co-creator Terry Pratchett, who apparently was a wonderful friend to talk to over the phone, a bit prone to calling out of the blue. He also spoke lovingly of Stephen King, relaying an incident in which the King family offered to take Mr. Gaiman to dinner after he finished his 4 p.m. book signing. The Kings sat impatiently in their car from 7:30 to 8:30, still waiting for Gaiman to finish signing things, when Joe Hill (approximately 22 years old at the time) came in sheepishly to let him know they were going back to their hotel, where Mr. Gaiman was welcome to join them after the signing. Which he did, at 10 p.m. It was a very long book signing line.
Neil Gaiman mentioned the bucket list he wrote when he was around 10 years old, which included writing an original musical, which he still wants to do. Some of his works have been adapted for the stage, but he hasn't written anything original specifically for musical purposes yet. I had to chuckle, because Tit Elingtin and I had seen Something Rotten! at Footlite Musicals on Sunday. The plot involves an Elizabethan soothsayer predicting that musicals will be the next big thing in theater.
The presentation ended with two poems, both written collaboratively with input from the Twitterverse. The first was about how to stay warm, and was part of a project aimed at collecting money for some the world's estimated 65 million refugees, from Afghanistan and other conflict zones. The current number of refugees and internally displaced persons in the world is believed to be the highest it's been since the end of World War II.
The last poem was written expressly to be part of an unnamed person's full-back tattoo. Mr. Gaiman agreed to take part in this project not imagining that the illustrated who provided the art would also say yes to the project...but he did.
Lastly, my beloved Tit Elingtin braved the book line to get me several pre-signed copies of Neil Gaiman books. They'll be a prized part of my book collection. I'm sure they were all signed with his favorite writing instrument, the fountain pen.
With 93 episodes on Spotify as of today, you can probably find your favorite classic discussed among the episodes. The first episode is about Macbeth. More recently, Megan and RJ tackled "A Visit From St. Nicholas" and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
North Carolina writer Carla Pettigrew Hufstedler lives with multiple disabilities, and as a result her podcasting schedule isn't consistent. But no matter, because every new episode is like a shiny new gift to unwrap. She not only keeps listeners updated on her writing, knitting, drawing, and other creative pursuits, but shares ghost stories, synchronicities, folklore, and other subjects that readers and writers of speculative fiction will love. A personal favorite are Carla's Christmas episodes. In 2019, Carla introduced listeners to the tradition of Victorian Christmas ghost stories and read an early Charles Dickens tale that went on to inspire A Christmas Carol.
This is a fun nostalgia trip for Gen Xers like me. (Relevant to my '90s NBA nostalgia zine? Not directly - yet - but maybe one of these days.) Journalist Brian Raftery argued in his book Best. Movie. Year, Ever: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen that this was film history's greatest year. This podcast discusses individual films in detail, with occasional digressions into music and other 1999 topics.
Want to know exactly how Diana Wynne Jones's Howl's Moving Castle is different from the Studio Ghibli movie? Or how closely the movie Clueless mirrors Jane Austen's Emma? The two Margos will not only fill you in on how the written version translated to the big screen but also render their verdict on which one is better. It's not always the book!
Many, many podcasts will deliver a weekly dose of weirdness, but this one holds a special place in my podcast rotation. It's a comedy podcast about everything weird, from conspiracy theories to cryptids to ancient aliens to historical oddities and monsters. This is everything I liked to read about when I was a kid, in podcast form.
My cousin's husband told me several years ago that I should listen to the audio book version of this, read by Wil Wheaton.
I finally got to it since the movie is coming out and, well, because I was walking down the audio book aisle at my local public library and my gaze happened to fall upon it. I'm glad I took the time to listen to Wil Wheaton's performance, which has the perfect amount of deadpan snark, like a Charles Dickens novel.
Having grown up in the '80s, I'm familiar with many of the pop culture references, although not all of them. I never played Dungeons and Dragons, for example - much of my knowledge of D+D comes secondhand through Futurama. But like any American person who didn't live in a cave in the '80s, I watched Devo videos on MTV, played Pac-Man (at the arcade and on my dad's Atari console, which I can still recall him bringing home from Target), and ate my fair share of Cap'n Crunch cereal.
(I'm not sure I ever ate the Pac-Man cereal, but I know I ate many of those Pac-Man ghost ice pops with the gumball eyes that the ice cream truck used to peddle AND many a can of Pac-Man chicken-flavored pasta. That has to count for something.)
The point being, I connected with many of the pop culture references, but I did not feel that they got in the way of the storytelling. Wade/Parizal was a character I cared about. I wanted him to succeed and achieve his goal. I wanted his feelings for Art3mis to be returned.
XXX SPOILER AHEAD XXX
I wanted Daito to be alive, but alas, we can't have everything we want.
Despite a few tears shed, I genuinely enjoyed listening to the audio book performance of this novel. I borrowed this audiobook on CD from my local library and was not obligated in any way to review it.
Goodreads Summary: "Was Andy Warhol a hoarder? Did Einstein have autism? Was Frank Lloyd Wright a narcissist? In this surprising, inventive, and meticulously researched look at the evolution of mental health, acclaimed health and science journalist Claudia Kalb gives readers a glimpse into the lives of high-profile historic figures through the lens of modern psychology, weaving groundbreaking research into biographical narratives that are deeply embedded in our culture. From Marilyn Monroe's borderline personality disorder to Charles Darwin's anxiety, Kalb provides compelling insight into a broad range of maladies, using historical records and interviews with leading mental health experts, biographers, sociologists, and other specialists. Packed with intriguing revelations, this smart narrative brings a new perspective to one of the hottest new topics in today's cultural conversation."
I got this book free, in exchange for an honest review, from Amazon.com's Vine program. To be perfectly honest, I chose it based on a misunderstanding. It has a chapter on Charles DARWIN, but I thought there was a chapter on Charles DICKENS. Oliver Sacks wrote in Hallucinations that Dickens had "a haunted mind" and I've been meaning to find out why.
Still, maybe it's just because I was a psychology major, but I could barely put this book down. I went to bed at 10 last night, but I stayed awake reading past 11:30.
Right before I woke up this morning, I was dreaming of a version of Romeo and Juliet, in which instead of members of warring families, the issue between the couple was that she was an "ordinary" American teenager. She was 18-19 years old, like Diana Spencer was when she got engaged to Prince Charles. Princess Diana has a chapter in Andy Warhol; she was famously a victim of bulimia nervosa.
The "Romeo" in my dream was Hugh Jackman. His rather condescending, sort of Fitzwilliam Darcy-esque dialogue made reference to the fact that he was a famous, wealthy Australian used to having servants bring him alcoholic drinks, and she didn't have money, name recognition, or staff.
(A bit of Christian Grey/Ana Steele got in there, too. I'm now on disc 15 of the 16-disc audiobook Grey. The Shakespearean bit is, no doubt, because the First Folio exhibit just opened at the University of Notre Dame, next to my birthplace of South Bend, Indiana. I intend to go visit the Folio this month.)
The plot in this dream-version of the play had to do with Hugh and his love interest finding Ron Weasley, because apparently it was also a version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. J.K. Rowling isn't featured in Kalb's book, but the author has also been candid about her personal mental illness. She's a sufferer of major depressive illness, which informed her depiction of the Dementors in Harry and Ron's world.
I guess even after I put the book up and went to bed, my brain didn't want to stop reading. I wonder if my brain was clever enough to dream in accurate iambic pentameter?
