yeah I know you did not ask!
You should so be blessed – well cursed at times actually – with a mind such as mine, making all these weird connections between my rumored neurons. Just be thankful that I do not share all of my random thoughts.
I was lying in bed the other night, the hour very late, staring at the ceiling, ruminating on mortality.
I am not particularly afraid of dying. As Mark Twain said (and so many others having expressed similar sentiments) :
“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.“
The real issue for me is getting from point A to point B. Commonly the transition to not being can be troubling, difficult, painful, unlooked-for. Hence in my late night ruminations, I said to myself that I was more afraid of not dying than dying. While I am still in reasonable health, the last year or two I have become aware of some significant bumps in my path to obscurity that could be popping up soon. It does not help that within our circle of acquaintances there have been a few lingering deaths that were traumatic on the persons and to the family. Makes you wonder why the supposed Intelligent Designer did not put an on/off switch somewhere on our bodies.
And so it goes.
I would have to call this book a two-fer. You have a historical novel, accurate in its facts about the subject, Joan of Arc, delivered by a masterful story teller, Mark Twain. It was the last book of Twain’s published while he lived, and he considered it his best work. Who am I to argue with Samuel Clemens? It is remarkable that this book is not better known. I had no idea until a few weeks ago that he had written such a book. I had bought a two volume set