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Actually, the things I'm mourning are large-format, well-illustrated  glossy books, the sort of things that e-readers cannot represent.  Five of them, laying flat, took nearly two feet of shelf space, but still ... .

I've got lots of other cleaning.  I've also got books that I may have to chuck, including about twelve shelf-feet of Star Trek novel.  There are twenty or so I might like to keep; the rest have little commercial value and I probably can't find anyone to take them.

I'm willing to get my possibly-complete set of Ngaio Marsh go, keeping only three duplicates so I can study her technique.  Likewise mysteries by a number of lesser authors.  Marsh's are good technically but I don't really enjoy them.

One book I thought I'd have to give away got me a dollar from a mid-range but selective store (a boutique store, if you like).  It was an odd-format (maybe ten by maybe 4+1/2) hardcover with a title something like "(Images of) Asia", four or five hundred pages of well-executed pen-and-ink drawings of art and architecture from central, east, and south (east-west-central) Asia, with text.  Not quite scholarly, not eye-catching and pretty, but maybe of interest to architects and scholars.

I have that near-mint turntable, but I'm not going to find a buyer who'll pay what it's really worth.  (The cartridge has less than five hours of playing on it, and a replacement for that cartridge starts at $300.)  BUT it's a moving-magnet cartridge, so I need a head amp ... anyway, I've got the original type transistors and they work a little better than the ones I have.  The thing is quite sensitive to the battery voltage, not in the main circuit but in the bias network, and I want to put pilot LEDs in series with the circuit.  This may mean a tiny bit more noise, but it means that the ratio of fresh-battery voltage to worn-battery voltage will be greater.  (I have some nice red LED's that light adequately on 140 microamps--These, I think.)  This means that I'll need to stabilize the bias voltages, requiring another transistor and two resistors, and splitting the outer bias resistors (1MOhm in the original design.)  And, in the hope of reducing any shot noise I introduce, another 47 trillionths of a Farad of capacitance in just the right place.

I've got a layout that is, like all the others, too damn tight.  I'll try it when I get home.

I suppose the right test for the noise introduced is The Dark Side of the Moon: "I've been mad for ++++ing years, absolutlely ... .", which is audible in vinyl with a good-enough turntable.

Now to reviewing.  Amy's story first.

Waiting for it.

Six is okay.  You can tile a plane with hexagons.  But not any more-sided convex polygon, so we're at the limit.

As Morticia Addams said of the furniture in the family mansion, most of it's not even electrified.

I'll fit it in in the next 30 hours.

No.  A wand recognizes its master, but 'brother' wands only react if you try to use them against each other.  And it's not the wand but the magical core: unicorn hair-tail, dragon heartstring, pheonix feather, etc.

X is the first of two X's in Foxx
Who was right behind Ruth with his powerful Soxx
                   ------Ogden Nash, Lineup for Yesteryear

Or maybe from 'how do I see the socks in the pile?' to 'how do I make the pile so the reader finds these sock pairs?'

When the semicolon is well used it should not be noticed.

Actually, if it weren't for A. Manuttsio, we would all write like Gertude Stein.  He saved us all from a truly wlatsome fate, for not only would we have to write like the decomma'd wonder-woman, we would have to read the results if we wanted to read at all.

And if we didn't want to read, think of the stories that would never have been written, from The Moonstone and Wuthering Heights to A Christmas Carol and LotR.  We would never have met Prof. A.S.F.X van Duzen or Alan Quartermain.  Don Quixote would be a mere poet's nightmare, and Dr. Zhivago would never have seen the light of day (and what of Maurice Jarre?).  No Albus Dumbledore, no Gideon Fell or Henry Merrivale, no Foundation or Hezekiah Bailey, no Valentine Michael Smith or Lazerus Long, no Miss Marple or Peter Wimsey.  No Montegue Egg of Plummet and Rose, no Cowardly Lion or Mr. Tock.

I took time to do a very little of my work, revising Chapter 54 of Book 1.  There's a new version out there with some different shadings.  I'd be grateful for any thoughts you have on it.

The formatting is nice and the font is good to read.  There are tweaks I could wish for, but I'll wait until someone else asks for them.