Somehow I never pictured Hypatia like this…

I’m so tired I can hardly focus but I’ve had this sitting on my computer for a couple days and it’s time to clear the desk.

First confounded then allured by pre-Raphaelite art…

…I have just wasted some time trying to read Charles Kingsley’s Hypatia, upon which this painting of the pagan, Greek philosopher, by Charles Williams Mitchell, is said to be based. She in nubile form (though she was probably murdered in her sixties, but what fun is that) about to be be torn apart by a Christian mob, having just herself apparently been converted to Christianity. So goes Charles Kingsley’s story and yes I spy a sardonic moral there (maybe) but I’ve read the book is supposed to be in parts humorous, and if it’s black humor it is so soppy with overwrought flesh and spirituality that it’s difficult to detect, unless it’s very very very black humor, and the determined manner of overwroughtness has me thinking this isn’t the case.

Anyone have good words to say about this book before I put it down?