3) … over her distinguished twenty-year career. Unfortunately, this number also continues to rise, although riddled with inaccuracy. Seven years after Sabon graduated from Blythe, the author’s note read “ten.” Ten years after her graduation, the note read “fifteen.” Regardless, I’m sure Bonmot was always glad to see a mention of Blythe Academy bereft of any hint of scandal.

4) The Influence of Pig Cartels on Ambergrisian History … The most unintentionally humorous book I have ever read. At its core, Sabon’s atrocity is based on Duncan’s observation in an article for the Ambergrisians for the Original Inhabitants Society’s Real History Newsletter that Trillian the Great Banker fell from power due to his battle with the leader of a powerful pig cartel over the favors of a woman (you can’t be sure my mention sparked her book—the anecdote is, more or less, common knowledge), which prompted Sabon to devote a 175-page book to the futile task of trying to convince the reader that pig cartels have wielded immense power throughout Ambergrisian history—and all the sentences that I read at least, are as breathlessly long as this one. (I admit, the book did bewilder me, as did its popularity. But we’re all entitled to one bad book. I’m sure the pig cartels were flattered, at the very least.)

5) The Gray Caps’ Role in Modern Literature: The Dilemma of Dradin, in Love … The only dilemma, to my way of thinking, being how to dignify as “literature” such a collection of angst, stupidity, and old wives’ tales. At least Sabon left my brother out of this one.

6) Cinsorium: Rethinking the Myth of the Gray Caps … I don’t feel up to addressing this book for now. It requires more explanation than I have the strength to give it. Besides, Nativism was born from it, and that’s too horrible to contemplate at the moment.

7) At the age of 47 … Thankfully, this number also continues to rise. One day it, and she, will pass on to the Infinite. (As will we all, without a little bit of luck or planning. And then none of this will matter to anyone, not that it matters to many people at the moment, anyway.)

8) Sabon remains … “Remains” best describes the current content of her books: the remains of Duncan’s theories, devoured and spat out by Sabon. (That’s the way it often happens, although usually, I think, the author stolen from is already dead or senile. Still, the sting of it is there, I cannot deny it.)

9) … shedding light on history and her fellow historians alike … This latest addition to the Sabon Canon (or cannon) at least begins to acknowledge that most of her books feast off the carcasses of other historians.

10) This mention of Mary’s parents reminds me that I have lied a little for the sake of dramatic tension, I think. There was one time I saw Mary before she visited my gallery. I just didn’t realize it was her.