Also: yesterday my friend David gave me Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which has the best opening paragraph ever:

My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death cap mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.

Also, while I was at David's (whose play by the way is opening at the Cincinnati Playhouse, LOOK!), his son Morris tried out my glamorous new MONOCLE, which was gifted to me by the coolest artiste ever:



I KNOW.

By the way, David's wondrous wife Julie is starting a children's book publishing company, and is publishing MY FIRST CHILDREN'S BOOK, about an ENCHANTED TREE and an ENCHANTED GARDEN with flowers that LOOK LIKE LADIES, next year. I am pretty sure it will change your life.