The Alameda library has, as far as I can tell, about six books that I would ever want to read (and about eight books total). One, alas, is Thones, Dominations, Dorothy Sayers’ unfinished Wimsey/Vane mystery, now finished by a modern author.

This sort of dilemma makes me crazy. To read or not to read? I was weak and regretted it with Douglas Adams, for I could not resist picking up The Salmon of Doubt, basically a collection of rough drafts someone grabbed off his computer after he died, and it was clear his best work happened in the final drafts, not the first. I was weak and enjoyed it with Jane Austen’s two unfinished novels, The Watsons and Sanditon. Dickens’ unfinished book, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, is delightful, which made it all the more maddening when it stopped midway through, so I won and lost there. But those were all simply left unfinished, not completed by another person.

I suppose really I can’t bear the thought that another writer could flawlessly imitate a writer I love. If this other woman can write a brilliant Harriet Vane and babbling Peter Wimsey then what makes Dorothy Sayers so wonderful, exactly? Will I stop loving her quite so much?

Eventually I’ll have to read it, of course, if only because I’ll have worked through every other book in the library by the end of the year. But part of me is dreading it.

In honor of it being Monday — or for any other, better reason you can think of — here is a short list of some stuff I like:

Some Stuff I Like

• filling out forms
• touching things with my feet or hair
• taking prescription medication
• holding rocks
• pretending I am someone else and re-reading something I wrote

I have to admit, I find I can be kind of a sucker for design trends. I mean, I do think you can carry things too far.

For example, silhouettes are cool.

Custom-made silhouettes of your family members are a little over-the-top.

Custom-made silhouettes of your dog are so far over the top, it’s like they were shot from a cannon.

And then there’s the white craze. When you find a thing that has a lovely shape but ugly coloration and paint it white, that’s cute.

Painting gilt framed mirrors and metallic chandeliers white, okay, but I think you’ll regret it when the trend is over.

Painting every single thing in your house white…well, it will force you to be really clean, I guess.

And then, of course, there’s putting a bird on it, which is funny because it’s true.

So here is my secret shame: I’m planning to make my guest room all white (white walls with white patterned curtains on a white background) and decorate it with silhouettes of birds. Not just ordinary silhouettes, either: vinyl transfers, a trend which is pretty much guaranteed to look 100% cheesy and dated a year from now, assuming it doesn’t already.

Thank you for joining us for this week’s episode of Friday Secret Shame. Enjoy your weekend.

Yesterday’s post reminded me of something. A few years back, in a letter to Dan, I referred to Henry James as an old pederast. I didn’t really mean anything by it, I just quite liked the sound of the word. Dan quite rightly reprimanded me. I don’t know why I so often think back on that, except that I am so delighted to know someone who cares enough about Henry James that he will rise to defend his reputation.

“And I am actuated by positive benevolence,” I read aloud; “I have that pretension.” Gene looked at me. I glared at my book. “What does that even mean?” I burst out. “What is ‘positive benevolence’? What does it mean to be actuated by it? Why is that a pretension?” Gene looked at me. I glared at my book. “And you know, this character could mean anything by it. As far as I can tell, he just invents meanings of words to suit himself.” Gene looked at me. I glared at my book.

“No more Henry James after ten p.m.,” Gene said finally.

AGD Interactive has a new King’s Quest remake! Annnd…there goes my weekend. Happy Friday, friends.

You know how adults get all het up and worried about the negative images little girls will absorb by playing with Barbies? This article made me realize that this is all bunk, really. Because no matter how frozenly pretty they made her or how many “careers” they gave her, I never thought of Barbie as some kind of role model or image of adult womanhood. Because Barbie is, you know, a doll. The whole interesting thing about grownup women, when I was a little girl, was the wide range of stuff they were able to do, like choose their own bedtimes and drive a car and talk to strangers and manage employees and boss me around and apply eye makeup. Whereas Barbie literally could not even stand on her own because of the way her feet were made. It never occurred to me to wish I would be her or look like her when I grew up, because she was just the opposite of a grownup. Grownups are in charge of themselves and you. Dolls are not, except in some very specific childhood nightmares you might have had.

Was this not true for all of us? Did you ever play with, say, Day To Night Barbie in her cool-ass Home & Office studio apartment with the Murphy bed and think “Yeah, this, I’m gonna be and have this one day”? Or were you just like “Ooh, pink. Now I have posed you several ways and you keep falling over so I’m gonna go play on my roller skates, yet another of the several thousand things I can do which you cannot, Barbie, you poor ignorant plastic thing.”

All that said, I will admit there is more than a small resemblance between Barbie’s ‘work from home’ setup and my own home and office situation. Also, the other night I dreamed I was wearing the dress worn by my very first Barbie, Peaches ‘N Cream. So…there are two sides to this debate, I guess.

Today I returned all our downstairs curtains to the store. We had them up for a while but I finally had to admit I sort of hated them. It is funny how I need to cycle through a bunch of stuff I don’t want to figure out what I do want. I am envious of Christine and Adam, who have been in their new house for a couple of weeks, tops, and who have already nearly finished remodeling. Like Butch Cassidy, they’ve got vision and the rest of the world wears bifocals. However, we are slowly figuring things out in our own way.

Speaking of Captain Adam, I will leave you with a quotation from another captain who had a similar philosophy:

“Can we make a friend more welcome than by setting before him the best liquor in our possession?” -Journal of Captain Cook

But Adam doesn’t go around despoiling the natives and stuff, and I know, for I’ve sailed with him.

Okay, a pretty random entry today. Tomorrow: coherency! Watch for it.