About stories of all kinds
“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”
“[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”
Wamba the Fool is pretty much my favourite character in Ivanhoe. He just gets to put everyone else and their idiocy on blast with complete immunity himself.
The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher MorleyMy rating: 4 of 5 starsI really loved this book on first read—the atmospheric bookshop, the eccentric proprietor, the silly love-story, and the espionage plot shoe-horned in throughout. What’s not to like? Recently when I was skimming through it in search of a quotation, I got caught on so many… Continue reading Judging Spies by Their Covers: The Haunted Bookshop Review
Therefore, if we built splendid castles... and pictured beautiful scenes, among the fervid coals of the hearth round which we were clustering, and if all went to rack with the crumbling embers, and have never since arisen out of the ashes, let us take to ourselves no shame. In my own behalf, I rejoice that… Continue reading ‘Let us take to ourselves no shame’
For the first time in months he was in reach of a real library, just the kind of scholarly yet miscellaneous library that his restless and impatient spirit craved. He was aware that the books he read... were merely a form of anaesthetic... But they were beginning to produce in him a moral languor that… Continue reading ‘Merely a form of anaesthetic’
The wrong words. They were true a hundred times over, yet they sounded like a lie. Hadn’t he always known it? Words were useless. At times they might sound wonderful, but they let you down the moment you really needed them. You could never find the right words, never, and where would you look for… Continue reading The Wrong Words
The Big Sleep by Raymond ChandlerMy rating: 4 of 5 starsEver since I saw the murky, black-and-white film noir (a dizzying merry-go-round of murders and mayhem with a new character and a new accusation every five minutes that was Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in a classic gumshoe and siren routine), I've been wanting to… Continue reading Don’t Sleep on Raymond Chandler: The Big Sleep Book Review
Besides, you are bound to bear yourself as agreeably as you can toward those whom nature or chance or your own choice has made the companions of your life. Utopia by Sir Thomas More The world’s still not utopian, and neither are the people within it perfect—including myself. Others put up with me as much… Continue reading ‘Nature or chance or your own choice’
As a book person, I have created various iterations of “my favourite books” lists over the years. A favourite book had to be somehow incredible: it had to make me actually cry, or laugh out loud consistently, or wow me with its whole tone and writing, in addition to being a good story with some… Continue reading Fallen Favourites: when a book you loved becomes a book that’s “meh”
Fictitiously Yours 