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Famous first words -- Harriet Vane upon being woken by the St. Lucia maidens on December 13:

"I say, Peter, what am I to do with all these ladies?  It's one thing to be talking piffle about ancient girlfriends, but it's really a bit much to bring them all here just so I can meet them, don't you know.  After all, we have already had our honeymoon and one other holiday ruined by someone's murder ..."

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(Door 10, Task 4: Forget-me-nots and handmade medals of honor are important Russian Mothers’ Day gifts.  Create a medal of honor (with or without the image of a forget-me-not) for a favorite book character or for a family member or friend of yours that you’d like to pay respect to.

Door 15, Task 3: Nominate a (fictional) character from one of the books you read this year for a Nobel Prize – regardless which one – or for a similarly important prize (e.g., the Fields Medal for mathematics) and write a brief laudation explaining your nomination.

Door 16, Task 1: Famous first words: Tradition has it that the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize are woken up by the St. Lucia maidens, as St. Lucia’s Day (Dec. 13) is just three days after the Nobel Peace Prize awards ceremony and many laureates stay long enough to be able to take in the St. Lucia festivities.

Imagine one of your favorite (fictional) characters had won that prize: How would you think (s)he would greet the maidens?  (If you’ve used the Nobel Peace Prize for Door 15, Task 3, this can be the same character, of course … or a different one, just as you wish.))

Peter Handke??? Over all the other authors in the world???

Seriously, what am I missing?

(Link to the Guardian article is in the title of this post.)

(The article begins on page 16.)

I found out about this via the Goodreads page of a children's book that's due to be published soon. A quote from the article:

"Following these common sense definitions, a meta-study untitled 'Cats are liquids' was recently published on boredpanda.com. I propose here to check if the panda’s claim that the cats are liquid is solid, by using the tools of modern rheology." (16)

And it has pictures.

Review to follow -- if I can stop myself from quoting half the book.  Gotta sort my thoughts first.

@Elentarri and Ani: 

A great summary of the background of (inter alia) the background of the Rwanda and Bosnia genocides, as well as a fascinating inside view of those conflicts from the POV of the U.N. in chapter 2, and ditto on Kosovo in chapter 3 -- great follow-up reading to Clea Koff's Bone Woman!