Two Durrells

I stopped reading Lawrence Durrell's book The Greek Islands after it irritated me for fairly trivial reasons -- he called an island dear to me "a bit of a slut." So, I had felt slightly guilty for failing to sample his purported literary masterwork, the Alexandria Quartet.

Not any more!

http://www.themillions.com/2009/04/modern-library-revue-70-alexandria.html

Much as I suspected.

While elder brother Larry was launching his literary career, little brother Gerry, unwittingly anticipating the unschooling movement by several decades, was running barefoot on Corfu, working on his nature collection and, evidently, his comic prose style. (As often happens, it's the youngest sibling who gets the sense of humor.) My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell's memoir of his childhood years on Corfu, is a perfectly delicious book. I'm crossing my fingers that the two sequels are half as good.

Leaning forward into Freddy the Pig

There's enough in the Freddy the Pig series for several doctoral dissertations, but no time for that now. But Freddy cannot be resisted. We'll stall him a bit with the link for his fan club:

http://www.freddythepig.org/