““How weary one gets of this constant pounding,” Theodora said ridiculously. “Next summer, I must really go somewhere else.”
“There are disadvantages everywhere,” Luke told her. “In the lake regions you get mosquitoes.””

— Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House, p. 147

A fun break, finished in a day, deserving of it’s reputation.

as the women arrive at the house I put on Portishead’s self titled, this one needs spooky music.

Runyon’s gangsters have more in common with Benya Krik than Hammett’s, who gets a cover blurb, to me, but those characters are only in the first few stories—the rest are about a jewish boy’s (the authors?) childhood in Odessa. I enjoyed them, but I’m going to put off starting the second Babel collection I’ve got for now.

I’ve got a date-night sitter booked tonight but my date is out of town so I looked at event calendars for the usual haunts and, hey neat, Robert Cherny presents "San Francisco Reds: Communists in the Bay Area, 1919 to 1958.”, 7-8:30, at Bird & Beckett ( https://birdbeckett.com, https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?mode=week&src=r5o3loovr013c5rftpv75lji18@group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/Los_Angeles).

Baring any complications (my kid has a cold that could but probably won’t escalate), I’m there.