7/30: new books, fresh horizons

Some new books have found their way to me over the past 24 hours: David Petersen's Mouse Guard Winter 1152, John Barth's Chimera, Rudyard Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill, and Rosemary Sutcliff's Eagle of the Ninth. Mouse Guard was a much-appreciated gift from a friend which reminds me of my youth (when I would only borrow library books which featured mice as characters); Barth's Chimera might be an avenue for future research; and the Kipling and Sutcliff books are possibilities for a course I'm meditating on representations of Roman Britain (to be taught in Britain someday? maybe perhaps?). In any case, they all feel like breaths of fresh air.