Chapter Thirteen Witch Craft

Hey, friends, it’s your ol’ pal, Broteus, again – refreshed after the last holiday and preparing for the next gathering. I hope your Thanksgiving was pleasant. There’s wasn’t a lot going on at the Mitchell’s this year ‘cept we decided to invite my former graduate assistant, Myron, over to spend the day. He did some sort of trick to amuse the grand kids by sticking olives on the ends of his fingers. I didn’t get it. Did check out some of the Marcy’s Thanksgiving Parade, though. Anyone here remember some of the original balloons? Felix the Cat? Harold the Barrel? The two-headed pirate? Dalcy and I aren’t really up on the new characters...sort of a grand parade of lifeless product placement. (The grand kids liked this more than the olives, so they're mostly normal.) No sign of the tree, though.

All right, enough chit-chat. On to the search results. “Kevin et les magiciens” was the name of the 10-book series of Lewis Barnavelt adventures published in France between 2001 and 2006. Yeah, Lewis became Kevin. When we chatted with the illustrator, Lalex, a decade ago she said this renaming was the choice of the publisher who wanted a more American-sounding name. Whatever. Rose Rita became Emily in that series, too.

Speaking of the Pottinger girl, “who is roserita in the doom of the haunted opera”? What kind of question is this? She’s the protagonist. She’s Lewis’ friend. She’s fulfilling her role just as she has been in most of the other stories. What sort of answer were you expecting to find from this?

Here’s my favorite this round: “chapter 13 witch craft”. Sounds like some sort of bastardized bankruptcy program for your local coven. Last month it was chapter 6, this time it’s 13. I hate to break it to whoever you are but we don’t have chapter-by-chapter breakdowns of the books so that isn’t going to find you much. My only guess as to what you’re looking for lies in between the various “chapter 13 witch craft” variants and that’s the parameter “the mummy the Wiltshire crypt”. Whew! That gave me a laugh. Sorry. Gotta love typos. That’s a county over in England. Aren’t they known for cheese? Stonehenge is nearby, I believe, too. Eh, it does give the book an interesting twist, though, what with the Staunton Harold estate also being an English thing. So maybe chapter thirteen of The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt? Thumbing through the text I see this is the one with Mrs. Woodley’s witchcraft box that she uses to conjure up spooky naughtiness. Gotcha. I always thought one of those would be pretty cool to have though I don’t know if that comes with a free Guardian or not.

Someone else searched for “nimrod” – probably not the towering Biblical king of Genesis fame, but rather the nimrod pipe lighter seen in a number of Johnny Dixon adventures (mentioned no less than on five pages in Trolley). “charles coote” was Professor Childermass’ friend from New Hampshire, who popped in at the end of the books to help wrap up explanations of events. It’s also the name of some historic chap.

Finally we were asked “what type of school does Johnny go to”. Brick? St. Michael’s Catholic. It’s based on the one the author attended as a child, since demolished.

That’s all for now. I guess I’d better start in on that Christmas shopping. It’ll probably be books for everyone this year. Dalcy’s been talking about the girl with the dragon tattoo since she saw the movie (and Lisbeth Salmander is definitely an unforgettable character). Myron did say, as a joke I hope, about wanting a glass armonica. I think I’ll get him an air guitar instead. It’s cheaper and he won’t have to cough up a lot for lessons. Enjoy the rest of your year. Happy holiday and enjoy only half of what you read.