scholarly dalliance

I've finished writing that hairy book review. Over a third of it is my taking apart its mistakes about the Inklings. The other two-thirds-minus is mostly praise, actually: other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, it's a pretty good book.

This journal wants reviews in under 5000 words. How long is it? 4746. That's without the header and the Works Cited list (I'm citing 13 other items), which would put it over 5000.

We'll see how it goes over. This is a chance to deal with errors that have bothered me for years. One writer takes a leap in the dark and assigns an exact date that there isn't any warrant for to an event, and everyone else sees it, thinks they must have a reason for it, and copies them. The icing comes when somebody lines them all up to say, They all agree so they must be right.