“I feel very strongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of judgment. You start a question, and it’s like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the last you would… Continue reading “Like starting a stone”
Author: Fictitiously Yours, Gail
London Calling: A Darker Shade of Magic Review
Blurb for A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab Kell is one of the last Antari—magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel Londons; Red, Grey, White, and, once upon a time, Black. Kell was raised in Arnes—Red London—and officially serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador, traveling between the frequent bloody… Continue reading London Calling: A Darker Shade of Magic Review
“The importance of his public ends”
“[T]he besetting sin of a philanthropist, it appears to me, is apt to be a moral obliquity. His sense of honor ceases to be the sense of other honorable men. At some point of his course...he is tempted to palter with the right, and can scarcely forbear persuading himself that the importance of his public… Continue reading “The importance of his public ends”
La Mouette: Review of Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne du Maurier
My sister read this book before I did, and from what she told me I was expecting fluff with a blush of adventure: more or less what it promises in the first chapter, in which the mood is set for “ye olden tale of romance.” I wasn’t expecting to be quite so gutted by existential… Continue reading La Mouette: Review of Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne du Maurier
Stop Plotting Your Life Like You’re Plotting Your Novel (or alternately: Start Plotting Your Life Like You’re Plotting Your Novel)
‘Blowing in the wind’
Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with… Continue reading ‘Blowing in the wind’
The Shadow and Bone Netflix Series Helped Me Review Six of Crows
‘Even the best of us’
We are all, even the best of us, egotists and self-deceivers, and without a little comfortable make-believe to clothe us we should freeze in the outer winds. Richard Hannay in The Three Hostages The Three Hostages by John Buchan, Starbooks Classics, 2013, ebook. This reminds me of the Emperor’s new clothes. While usually the Emperor… Continue reading ‘Even the best of us’
You’re Waiting For a Train: Neverworld Wake Review
‘Have you lived always’
Have you lived always with your heart and half your mind far away?The Children of Húrin The Children of Húrin by J.R.R. Tolkien Apparently at least half my mind is far away on the regular, but it came back this evening to remind me to post this, quite literally at the eleventh hour. It’s not… Continue reading ‘Have you lived always’









