I didn’t really get this book. Written in the heart of the Victorian period but not published until after Samuel Butler’s death, the author considered it too scathing a criticism of society in general and his own family in particular. I appreciated, from an intellectual standpoint, that its hero is an atheist (something modern American society continues to find distasteful) but I didn’t get in to the rhythm of its rambling pan-generational format and the references to the various factions of 19th century Christianity were lost on me.

I did get why he might not have wanted to publish it during his lifetime, though:

“Why,” he exclaimed, with all the arrogance of youth, “they put a gipsy or fortune-teller into prison for getting money out of silly people who think they have supernatural power; why should they not put a clergyman in prison for pretending that he can absolve sins, or turn bread and wine into the flesh and blood of One who died two thousand years ago?”

And if not for that, then for this, as Butler was rumored to be gay and desperately afraid of being “Wilded”:

Towneley belonged to one of the most exclusive sets in Cambridge, and was perhaps the most popular man among the whole number of undergraduates. He was big and very handsome–as it seemed to Ernest the handsomest man whom he ever had seen or ever could see, for it was impossible to imagine a more lively and agreeable countenance. [...] He liked looking at him if he got a chance, and was very much ashamed of himself for doing so, but there the matter ended.

Hot Victorian guy-on-guy action. Take that Sarah Waters.

Last night I saw the Battlestar Galactica (2003) miniseries for the first time and thought it was really excellent. We got the DVD from Netflix and had already decided that if we liked the miniseries we’d just buy the first season outright rather than filling up the Netflix queue.

After we finished it I said to Dan, “I’m going to order this on Amazon right now so it gets shipped out as early as possible on Saturday.”

“OK,” he said. “Or we could just go to Newbury Comics and pick it up.”

Sometimes I forget that there are still stores.