Mash! Mash!

My Inner Minstrel's penchant for creating mash-ups of different singers has gone too far this time.

I'm currently being earwormed by a mash-up of "Feed the Birds" (a cheery song from the Andrews/Van Dyke "Mary Poppins") with "Patches" (a Bobby Vinton weeper about an ill-fated love affair, which ended in the suicide of one and a declaration of intent to suicide by the other).

This is no good. This is beyond the pale. IM, *SHUT UP*!

Zafon? Zo Fine!

Some years back I read Carlos Ruiz Zafon's novel, "The Shadow of the Wind". I loved it; it's an rethinking of traditional Gothic, with the elements of the old genre updated to modern equivalents.

I have now discovered that it's the first part of a four-book series, all of which have been translated. [I really should try to read them in the original Spanish, but my energies for that kind of work are being absorbed by "Les Miserables".]

Well, there's one entry in each of my next few Amazon expeditions.