“and yet a child’s utter innocence is but its blank ignorance, and the innocence more or less wanes as intelligence waxes.”
― Billy Budd, Sailor
― Billy Budd, Sailor
“It's the journey that matters, soak it in. Learn lessons out of it. Impact positively so that if you never get to your destination, at least you'd leave a legacy to be remembered.”
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“Within the fair’s buildings visitors encountered devices and concepts new to them and to the world. They heard live music played by an orchestra in New York and transmitted to the fair by long-distance telephone. They saw the first moving pictures on Edison’s Kinetoscope, and they watched, stunned, as lightning chattered from Nikola Tesla’s body. They saw even more ungodly things—the first zipper; the first-ever all-electric kitchen, which included an automatic dishwasher; and a box purporting to contain everything a cook would need to make pancakes, under the brand name Aunt Jemima’s. They sampled a new, oddly flavored gum called Juicy Fruit, and caramel-coated popcorn called Cracker Jack. A new cereal, Shredded Wheat, seemed unlikely to succeed—“shredded doormat,” some called it—but a new beer did well, winning the exposition’s top beer award. Forever afterward, its brewer called it Pabst Blue Ribbon. Visitors also encountered the latest and arguably most important organizational invention of the century, the vertical file, created by Melvil Dewey, inventor of the Dewey Decimal System. Sprinkled among these exhibits were novelties of all kinds. A locomotive made of spooled silk. A suspension bridge built out of Kirk’s Soap. A giant map of the United States made of pickles. Prune makers sent along a full-scale knight on horseback sculpted out of prunes, and the Avery Salt Mines of Louisiana displayed a copy of the Statue of Liberty carved from a block of salt. Visitors dubbed it “Lot’s Wife.”
― The Devil in the White City
― The Devil in the White City
“We were left with nothing because of a love like acid that ate its way through our entire family.”
― The Elephant Tree
― The Elephant Tree
Fran’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Fran’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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