Today from a distance …

… Reading lessons of a religious upbringing without modern books | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

One beloved novel was Bulwer-Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii – I had no idea no one reads him now, or that he's accused of being the worst novelist to ever have disgraced the page. I simply was content to dwell in his Victorian ideal of a mythic past, safe at a double distance from the confusion of the world outside my door.