Krakatau might have even affected Munch!

For months [in 1883] Krakatau's aerosols spread around the globe, reflecting sunlight and creating lurid colours in the sky, just as Tambora had done. The moon appeared blue at times, as did the sun. Sunsets were a spectacular marbling of red, gold, orange and other hues. In New York and Connecticut, people called the fire department because they thought the red glow on the horizon was from a conflagration. The fantastically coloured cloud bands in Edvard Munch's famous painting The Scream might have been inspired by Krakatau-tinted skies that the artist had seen in Norway. Even Alfred Tennyson took a stab at describing the spectacle in his poem 'St. Telemachus': 'Had the fierce ashes of some fiery peak/ Been hurl'd so high they ranged about the globe?'

Alexandra Witze & Jeff Kanipe, Island on Fire: The Extraordinary Story of a Forgotten Volcano That Changed the World (New York: Island Books, 2015), ch. 3, p. 84

Downer of a Poem in the World Winter Following a Volcano

Not to be outdone [by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein], Lord Byron generated his own tale of gloom: the poem 'Darkness', which begins with these glum lines:

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went — and came, and brought not day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation.

Byron goes on to depict ships rotting at sea, famine preying upon entrails, and dogs turning upon and eating their masters. Suffice it to say, 'Darkness' is a downer. But it accurately reflects the gloom that enveloped much of the world in 1816 — perhaps because of political unrest following the Napoleonic wars, but also in part because of the obscure volcano [Tambora] that had erupted in Indonesia.

Alexandra Witze & Jeff Kanipe, Island on Fire: The Extraordinary Story of a Forgotten Volcano That Changed the World (New York: Island Books, 2015), ch. 3, p. 79, Kindle loc 906

Not until the early twentieth century did scientists finally link the year without a summer to Tambora.

Id., p. 80, loc 928

Snoring can be a lovely sound

It is not a pleasant noise in itself, and I have often complained of it at other times, but just then it was like music to hear my friends snoring together so loud and peaceful in their sleep. The sea-cry of the watch, that beautiful "All's well," never fell more reassuringly on my ear.

Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island (1883), ch. 27

(Spoiler alert: Jim was in for a nasty surprise.)

The difference between a book hoarder and the owner of a private library

I call [my father] from the car and ask him about his morning, tell him about mine.

"What kind of hoarder was she?" he asks. "Books and cats, mainly," I tell the man who loves his cats and who I know is now actively considering his extensive book collection.

"What's the difference between a private library and a book hoarder?" he wonders.

We are both silent before chuckling and answering in unison: "Feces."

But the difference is this phone call. And the others like it I could make. And how strong we are when we are loved.

Sarah Krasnostein, The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman's Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2017), p. 258, Kindle loc. 3586

I'm grateful to her too

Finally, I hope it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway: I am very grateful to Jane Austen, whose books have brought delight to many readers, including me.

Curtis Sittenfeld, Eligible (New York: Random House, 2016), p. 489