Michele Jacobsen > Recent Status Updates

Utterly pretentious use of vocabulary which is ruining an otherwise delightful plot.

I had honestly forgotten how incredible this novel really is. Fascinating how time has changed my sympathies with various characters.

My first disappointment with this author….Delta does not use any A380 simulators because we do not fly that particular aircraft. And if we did, the sim would not magically appear in London.

Small mistakes are so easily avoided simply by asking (or in this case, a quick Google search). He is still a talented writer, of course.

Is it strictly necessary for me to begin a THIRD trip through this series when there are about a billion other
books threatening to topple over my TBR? Of course not. But this is, arguably, the best sci-fi series ever written and another reading cannot possibly hurt. Shout out this time to Jefferson Mays, narrator extraordinaire.

Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.

“Someone put a drop under a magnifying-glass and it was all semicolons and parentheses,” said Mrs. Cadwallader.

-regarding Mr. Casaubon’s blood

“Confound you handsome young fellows! You think of having it all your own way in the world. You don’t understand women. They don’t admire you half so much as you admire yourselves.”

- Mr. Cadwallader

To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.

Celia Brooke

…she (Dorothea) wished, poor child, to be wise herself.

Those provinces of masculine knowledge [Greek and Latin] seemed to her a standing-ground from which all truth could be seen more truly.

Mr. Casaubon…concluded that the poets had much exaggerated the force of masculine passion.

Rill = a small stream or shallow channel cut in the ground by running water.

Also spelled Rille

Irradiate = expose to radiation (to kill)

or

To illuminate something by or as if by shining light on it

Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts—not to hurt others.

“…if she had married Sir James, of becoming a sane, sensible woman. He would never have contradicted her, and when a woman is not contradicted, she has no motive for obstinacy in her absurdities.”

- Mrs. Cadwallader

Propitiation: the action of propitiating or appeasing a god, spirit, or person.

Nullifidian: a person having no faith or religious belief.

“It is painful to me to see these creatures that are bred merely as pets,” said Dorothea, whose opinion was forming itself that very moment (as opinions will) under the heat of irritation.

Souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another.

-Dorothea Brooke

Same people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.

Mr. Brooke’s conclusions were as difficult to predict as the weather: it was only safe to say that he would act with benevolent intentions, and that he would spend as little money as possible in carrying them out.

Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some long-recognizable deed.