the Queen learns to read, and other items

Did you ever have one of those blogging days where you bookmark a ton of interesting stuff and you just know that there is no way in hell that you’re going have enough time or energy to write something worthwhile about them?

Well, that’s the kind of day it’s been, so …

I’m looking forward to reading this novel:

Mr. [Alan] Bennett poses a delicious and very funny what-if: What if Queen Elizabeth at the age of 70-something were suddenly to become a voracious reader? What if she were to become an avid fan of Proust and Balzac, Turgenev and Trollope and Hardy? And what if reading were to lead her, in turn, to becoming a writer? Mr. Bennett’s musings on these matters have produced a delightful little book that unfolds into a witty meditation on the subversive pleasures of reading.

They’ve canceled the Halloween parade in San Francisco? (Note to self: It’s still on in New York, though. Remember to be east of Sixth Avenue well before 5 o’clock tomorrow afternoon.)

Tortured about torture? It certainly won’t make you feel any better to read in the New York Times that the Bush administration”embraced harsh physical tactics.” At the same time, I’m with this guy:

In a PBS interview with Charlie Rose last week, General Hayden, the C.I.A. director, complained about negative press coverage of the agency’s interrogation practices. “What puzzles me is to why there seems to be this temptation, almost irresistible temptation, to take any story about us and move it into the darkest corner of the room,” General Hayden said.

Ahhhhhh, but a few pieces of Renaissance art from Florence have come to the Met:

Now, here’s something you don’t read about very often anymore, someone with a

deep, deep sympathy for the Israelis, not based on their political situation, but a very existential empathy for their national philosophy and their culture, which he perceives as honest and manly, really for standing for something that is good and true about the human race,

That would be Charles Hill, who’s a Yale prof and an adviser to—who else?—Rudy Giuliani.