Was it Number the Stars by Lois Lowry?

[or] Bernie Magruder and the Case of the Big Stink

Couldn't be either of those, since I read the book back in the late '70s, and those were both written long after that. It was more of a fluffy "kids stumble into a crime in progress and escape using their mad secret communication skillz!" plot than those titles.

Thanks for the suggestions, though!

Beats bitching about the nation's architecture and shagging Camilla Parker Bowles while you wait for your parent to shuffle off this mortal coil.

I would gasp at your outwardly, treacherous attitude toward the lovely Prince Charles, if I wasn't laughing so hard.

Sadly, that is all I can contribute to the Shakespeare conversation as my ignorance of The Bard is known throughout these parts.

Which is sad for one going to school to be a lit teacher.

Interview with the guy who wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies:

And if you read through the original book it's startling and a bit eerie how many opportunities Jane Austen left in her original work for ultra-violent zombie mayhem.

ha!

So says you!

No, I kid. For me, coming from the extreme religious backwaters of the Deep South, reading the Bible was instrumental in being able to learn to call bullshit on the excesses of religious rhetoric. And to losing my religion, because I think it's fair to say that God as a character in a story is more capricious with his rages and affections than a million Odysseuses. But it's also a fascinating source document for our culture, arguably the most important touchstone for huge unexamined aspects of secular life. The more you know...

Hey, there's a town where the streets have names from the Disc World.

We read a book called The Bible as Literature that was fairly handy for nutshell education of those of us raised in unchurched homes.

The thing I learned most from Branagh's Hamlet is that "damn, Shakespeare really does go over all the major plot points (and his favorites bits of imagery) a half dozen times."

The thing I learned most from it was, DAMN, Branagh needs someone to stage a Steadicam intervention on him.

We read a book called The Bible as Literature that was fairly handy for nutshell education of those of us raised in unchurched homes.

I think we had the same one.

The King James Bible is a magnificent piece of writing, and its phrasing was hugely influential on later works, particularly through the 19th century. It was written during Shakespeare's lifetime, and there is a (very) fringe belief that he was involved. The King James Bible and Shakespeare, combined with the rise of printing, essentially created modern English. You miss a lot of nuance without some familiarity with the King James, particularly in writers like Milton and Melville. I saw it happen in college and graduate English classes, when one or two people would ask, "But what does he mean by X?" and the rest of us would look at them like they were crazy, because it was Biblical phrasing that the rest of us had absorbed. I used to work with a woman who had pretty much been raised by wolves and who had no familiarity with the Bible, and she would change phrases like "In the beginning was the plan."

In terms of understanding Biblical references, I think one of the many "stories from the Bible" books, plus reading Genesis, Exodus, Revelation, the Psalms and the Gospels in the King James would pretty much cover it.

Yeah, I grew up with practically no religious education, but this was when we had prayer in schools (organized, mandatory, prayer in schools) and I had one of my mother's old Bible story books, which I read cover to cover. So I at least managed to get some of the better known bits. At college I took a fair amount of art history, much of which involved learning to identify saints in paintings, which was interesting. Periodically I'm surprised by people who have even less knowlege than I do about some of the basics.

I was raised as a Presbyterian, but I fear my Bible reading was one of the things that made me the atheist I am today. The story of Lot and almost anything written by Paul helped send me over the edge. If I had kids, though, I'd probably find a church with solid Sunday school program for a few years, just because I think an understanding of the Bible is so important to understanding Western culture.