Speaking of Peculiar, he has excellent taste in literature, as evidenced by his gift to me of Kepler's Somnium. It's the tale of Duracotus, the son of the Icelandic witch Fiolxhilde. She summons a spirit, which can only travel through shadows, but thus at a great pace, to tell him of the Moon.

The story is a thin disguise of Kepler's objective, which is a brief description of what men would see from the surface of the Moon. It's altogether lovely, and I recommend it to anyone. If what I've told you doesn't intrigue you enough to read it, perhaps his nasty little epigram regarding the anti-Copernicans will:

They were able to castrate
The bard lest he fornicate;
He survived without any testicles.
Alas, O Pythagoras,
Whose thinking wore out iron chains;
They spare you your life,
But first they get rid of your brains.

--Note 7, Kepler's Somnium, trans. Edward Rosen

He also, accurately enough, refers to central Kansas as "an anus of the universe".