Two Corrections

1. There are not 18 books in the Patrick O'Brian series about Aubrey and Maturin. I don't know how I got this idea. Actually there are 20, plus a 21st that was left not quite ready to go at the time of POB's unfortunate death. This means, since I have now finished the second book, that I have 18 books and change still to read. I have never been so happy to be wrong!

Monday, a dready day weatherwise, was enlivened by news from the Brooklyn Public Library that the third POB book, HMS Surprise, was waiting for me at my branch on the request shelf. I arrived there, returning Post Captain, and discovered to my surprise that it wasn't there. A mistake, the librarian said, looking into her computer. Should be here by the end of the week.

A tragic mistake. I had a long afternoon of riding the subway ahead of me -- to a meeting with my friend in the West Village, up to 116th Street to class, then back to Brooklyn to the dog, and back to work -- and the ghastly prospect of nothing to read, since I had come to the library with the hope of getting HMS Surprise, and left home with nothing but the book I had already read.

I ran upstairs in search of a quick solution, and left with Cousin Bette by Balzac. It's not bad. A famous novel I always meant to get around to reading. A logical choice in a way. Balzac, like POB, strove to create an entire world in his fiction, and to capture an age. It's amusing enough and yet it is leaving me cold, even as I read on to see what fresh mayhem Bette can wreak on the Hulots.

2. This is not really a correction. A clarification. Robin is OK. She has been having computer problems, which explains her mysterious silence. Details TK, as we say in the newspaper business.