Morning links.

• At the NYT: It may not have been scarlet fever that blinded Mary Ingalls.
• Introducing: Bookish.
• Scalzi is donating money to various charities every time A Certain Troll posts about him, and others have pledged to match him. Follow-up here.
• Agatha Christie was investigated by MI-5 during WWII: "Christie happened to be a close friend of Dilly Knox, one of the leading codebreakers at Bletchley Park. MI5 was concerned that the major's inside knowledge of the progress of the war was based on what the codebreakers knew about Hitler's plans. Had Christie mischievously named the character Bletchley because Knox told her what was going on there?"
• Via Biblio File, I got my first look at the cover of Golden Girl, the sequel to Dust Girl.
• At NPR: On Sendak's last book.

Comments

[dangermom]

I love the NYT story--it has a really good point. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who had a baby come down with croup and promptly thought of ipecac (or worse yet, burning sulfur!). I actually asked my 12yo daughter what she would think if she had a kid who came down with scarlet fever, and she promptly said "Do people still go blind from that?"

[Leila]

Right? I'd love to read a whole list of False Information Found In Classic Literature. :D

[dangermom]

Oh, yeah! Dorothy Sayers, I love her, but she has a lot to answer for. I totally believed that a syringe of air would kill you (or wait, that WAS Sayers right?). I also wondered very seriously whether a person whose organs are reversed has to be a twin.

[Leila]

Yes! Unnatural Death, I think!

The organ reversal thing sounds so familiar, but I can't place it... oh, I just Googled it! Looks like it was in a Sayers short story? I haven't read any of those yet, drat it.