Ah

Wonderful cooling off around here; during the afternoon constitutional, the big white fluffball of a cat who often joins us down on the corner was more animated than he's been due to the heat. When I teased him with a large crow feather we'd found on the sidewalk, he grabbed it away from me, sniffed it with great excitement, then picked it up in his mouth and dashed off up into the banked part of his owners' yard, looking like a bird dog with a duck. We didn't see him again.
Good climbing gym sesssion with a friend I don't see much. She apprised me of the existence of an outdoor crag which has been under development kind of on the QT, since access to it is over private property. Maybe when it's cooler we'll get out there.
I finished George Eliot's novel Middlemarch; it was excellent. Just started her last novel, Daniel Deronda, which has a very good introduction by Edmund White. In the beginning of the introduction, White writes: "There is not a page of 'Daniel Deronda' that is not marked with intelligence, and a few are as queer and perceptive as any I've read. If I use such words as 'queer' and 'strange' it is because I'm convinced tha almost all masterpieces in the English language are characterized by something preposterous, homemade, and all seem too long or too far-fetched or too narrow or too bizarre (I'm thinking of everything from 'The Faerie Queen' to 'Gravity's Rainbow', from 'Moby Dick' to 'Our Mutual Friend')."
That describes my thoughts very nicely. I esteem all those works he mentioned, and more; White is able to put into words my reactions over the years to books I've found outstanding. I would add 'Don Quixote', 'Anna Karenina', 'Independent People', and some more modern works, even if others might not deem them masterpieces.