Frazz by Jef Mallett for August 31, 2022

Moby Dick has several chapters that are half a page or so.

Lewis Carrol got it down to one sentence.

At a chapter a mile, Caulfield would win this one with that chapter. Doubt she’s doing better than a 2.5 mph pace, so I wonder if he might be challenged to find a chapter that would last for at least 20 or so minutes, just to make it a real race.

“Moby Dick” was the shortest book I’ve read: “Call me Ishmael zzzzzzzzzzzzz”

I read and walk more than that every week. I don’t understand this “competition”

Caulfield is too young to be reading that. Adult language and situations.

If the trail is mostly downhill, doesn’t getting back to the start require going mostly uphill?

The downhill grade matters of course, but I find downhill walking uncomfortable and harder on the knees.

“— and it really was a kitten, after all.”

That’s why the “contest” isn’t fair. A mile is a mile. A chapter can be anything. I just read “Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch.” The chapters take 5 minutes and the whole book takes an hour. Dante is in Cantos. Shakespeare is in scenes. Is Psalm 117 a Chapter?

WAIT! I thought it was one chapter = 1/2 mile. Check Aug 18th strip…

The sprint to the tape. Now, momentum is in your favor. Don’t waste it.

Cats Cradle is replete with short chapters, one is just a sentence (IIRC).

FWIW, the shortest verse in the Bible is “Jesus wept.”

Go, Chief! Go!

Where is this MC Escher park of which she speaks?

Does Mrs Olsen realize that it’s uphill to get back to her car?

There’s a one-sentence chapter in “Something Wicked This Way Comes.”

All that walking you would think Mrs. Olsen would lose a pound or 2!

In William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, one chapter is just the sentence: “My mother is a fish.”

William Faulkner has it beat, Caldwell: there’s one chapter in As I Lay Dying that’s 5 words long.

The Mahābhārata has 100,000 stanzas.

The Mahābhārata (/məˌhɑːˈbɑːrətə, ˌmɑːhə-/ mə-HAH-BAR-ə-tə, MAH-hə-;1234 Sanskrit: महाभारतम्, Mahābhāratam, pronounced [mɐɦaːˈbʱaːrɐt̪ɐm]) is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the Rāmāyaṇa.5 It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the Kurukshetra War and the fates of the Kaurava and the Pāṇḍava princes and their successors.

Bhagavad Gita has just 700 verses within the Mahābhārata epic.

There are English translations if our gifted child hasn’t learned Sanskrit.

NOT a dead heat! The deal was 1/2 for each chapter. Caulfield loses big-time. For 27 miles (54 half miles), he should have read 54 chapters. I think Jef forgot what he set up.