I could say the word "funerary" all day

You out-o-towners might not be aware that it's done nothing but rain here for weeks, and the sky looks gloomy and overcast again this morning. We've had maybe two days of hot sunny annoying summer in a month...and my neighbors have got the heavy-duty sprinklers going. Although they mainly seem to be painting the driveway and the cement-block walls with water, turning them a darker shade of grey.

Yesterday I had a fairly grumpy day, and it was nice to get home, even late, to my own paradisical living room. Big orange cat on lap: check. Glass of nice red wine: check. Listening to the Desperate Teenage Lovedolls soundtrack whilst reading the Funerary Violin book: double check. I just saw a book the other day on Decorating with Books, which struck me funny, because it's certainly never been a strategy of mine. That would be sort of like Breathing as a Hobby. But I have to admit that, even when they're in the kind of messy stacks one finds in a place like my living room, the presence of books is in fact comforting. It's like, I've got books here, things can't be too bad.

Anway, for the Gothier of my readers, I highly recommend Rohan Kriwaczek's book, An Incomplete History of the Art of the Funerary Violin...and not just because it coins the word "Funerarianas," which makes me swoon with mental delight. It's as absolutely straight-faced and full of historical minutiae as that nonfiction book I just bought about the Gothic influence on American church architecture. Only, of course, there never was a practice of funerary violin (a traditional of a solo violinist playing for the dead) for there to be a history of, incomplete or otherwise. Or is that just the result of the supposedly fictional "funerary purges" that destroyed the evidence? The style is so convincing, that if you didn't know, I swear you wouldn't guess this was fiction.

"What kind of crazy person," I asked out loud, looking up from the tome, "would take on a project like this?"

And then answered my own question.

"My kind of crazy person."