Lucia Oddo

“Because loyalty is a superpower.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends

“Castle Rannoch is not the most delightful spot at the best of times. It lies beneath an impressive black crag, at the head of a black loch, protected from the worst of gales by a stand of dark and gloomy pine forest. Even the poet Wordsworth, invited here during his ramblings, could find nothing to say about it, except for a couplet scribbled on a sheet of paper found in the wastepaper basket. From dreadful heights to lakeside drear
Abandon hope all ye who enter here And this was not the best of times. It was April and the rest of the world was full of daffodils, blossoms, and Easter bonnets. At Castle Rannoch it was snowing—not that delightful powdery stuff you get in Switzerland but wet, heavy, slushy snow that sticks to the clothing and freezes one in seconds. I hadn’t been out for days. My brother, Binky, having been conditioned to do so at school, insisted on taking his morning walks around the estate and arrived home looking like the abominable snowman—sending his son Hector, affectionately known as Podge, screaming for Nanny.”
― Rhys Bowen, Her Royal Spyness

“Grandmother walked up over the bare granite and thought about birds in general. It seemed to her no other creature had the same dramatic capacity to underline and perfect events—the shifts in the seasons and the weather, the changes that run through people themselves.”
― Tove Jansson, The Summer Book

“It was the sort of weather for curling up with a good book beside a roaring fire. Unfortunately my sister-in-law, Hilda, usually known as Fig, was trying to economize and only allowed one log on the fire at a time. This was surely a false economy, as I had pointed out on several occasions. Trees were being felled by gales on a daily basis. But Fig had a bee in her bonnet about economizing. Times were hard everywhere and we had to set a good example to the lower classes. This example included porridge for breakfast instead of bacon and eggs and even baked beans as the savory after dinner one night. Life is drear, I wrote in my diary.”
― Rhys Bowen, Her Royal Spyness