Summer Reading and Murder

I move a lot, and that means that my huge collection of books is stored in a number of places on two continents. Where is Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf? Good question.


But the flip side of that coin is that sometimes I find things I wasn't even looking for.


For example:

This is the kind of book you can pick up and start reading in the middle, which is what I did as soon as I found it in a box of miscellaneous household goods. On p. 125, Crystal explains that in Anglo-Saxon society, the word murder meant any killing that was "particularly wicked or hateful." It also had to be done in secret to count as murder.

Now if only I could find Beowulf...