That's a great quote I didn't know. Thanks!

Agree that it's a mistake to call books "scary" just because you dislike them.

It's just hard for me to use the same word for Dahl and, say, what was done to Solzhenitsyn in the old Soviet Union, or what's happening today under authoritarian regimes. So many countries have used the pandemic to crack down on books or other media they dislike, and I'm grateful to the historians and political scientists who have documented it.

Hope your book club is going well. I wasn't wild about "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow," but I loved that Knopf designed a playable online Emily Dickinson video game to promote it. That might be just what's needed to lure some readers back to the classics.

P.S. If you want to write about books, the FanFare pub here (for which I write a column) is an excellent place to do it. @EricPierce is one of the best editors I've worked with on Medium