Alexandra > Recent Status Updates

GR is amazingly glitchy at the moment! Grrr. It looks like I cannot ”like” anything at the moment unless I open it in a new tab and refresh the page a couple of times. Well, that’s annoying 🤬🤬🤬

"Bunter, get the car out. And what do you make of this?"
"Of this, my lord? I should say that it was written by a person of no inconsiderate literary ability, who had studied the works of Sheridan Lefanu and was, if I may be permitted the expression, bats in the belfry, my lord."

”Five minutes’ practice before the glass every day, and you will soon acquire that vacant look so desirable for all rogues, detectives and Government officials.”

GR is acting up and malfunctioning like there is no tomorrow. I’ll be at other book sites (such as LibraryThing) then, until this improves. Grrrrrrrrr

"My lords, things will have come to a sorry pass when we can no longer joke with one another at the court of the King of France."

💪

Dunnett, you are breaking my heart. Again.

”Debts and misguided patriotism, between them, would always talk louder than God.”

”They’re not fools: they need to sound out the enemy, otherwise they’ll never know when to change sides.”

”As sins go, it makes a significant peak. But then, I never thought you would be satisfied by a little cheating, or a few simple betrayals and murders.”

”Courage is different from hope and intermediate between despair and presumption.”

”Don’t you understand a categorical refusal?”
”No. And you can’t even spell it.”

😆

"Bestow a little thought on what must be arranged for these plays? [...] Sodom and Gomorrah one could run for a month, except that more wish to take part than to watch."

"You'll notice that I am not appealing to your better nature, not being sure that you have more than one."

"The frog looked, in a bad light, like Sigismund, Duke of the Tyrol."

😆

”During the days that followed, the act of watching Nicholas van der Poele became a popular Venetian pastime. Among the watchers, no doubt, were those who wished him no particular good. The remainder were divided among those who were captivated by his energy, his person, or his habit of making himself the center of a welter of bloodshed.”

"...they were chilled with weariness, and grim and lewd by turns in the raw, brittle moods that went before battle."

"Everyone fleeing from the infidels bought their way into a pension and grace by purveying holy bones of some sort. Cathedrals all over the west were filling up with apostolic skulls..."

"He is wholly innocent of most things, including charity."

"But there is no man firmer in his opinion than the man who has changed it."

This fantasy door stopper is not exactly rocking my boat ;) My boat is hardly moving! The setting is so cool, but the rest is... generic. I think parallel reads are in order. And then again, who knows? It might get better.

Merry whatever you are celebrating! Happy holidays, friends! ✨✨✨

"He then made bold to inquire what business brought him there.

'Your welfare! said the Ghost.

Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but could not help thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have been more conducive to that end."

😆

”What game? What prank? his mind was asking itself. Life was for having adventures. Life was for taking chances, accepting offers, making profits.”

👌😁

"And next to the felt caps and decent hoods there would brush past a griffin, a jester, an eagle. A unicorn would turn to look at a pretty ankle, or a ship in full sale pass by laughing, or a goat or a Charlemagne pause to toss a coin and pick up a sweetmeat."

And this is how you write a Carnival! :)

Today is a very fitting day for this update - it's Finland's Independence Day! Congratulations, Finland!

Anyway, Tuonela is the kingdom of the dead in Finnish mythology. This book is quite dark at times, but then there is this:

"Does Tuonela have a sauna?"
She signs in annoyance, setting her shuttle down. "We're not animals, Aina. Of course we have a sauna."

This one is excellent! I am stuck in a very exciting moment, though, too worried about the characters to go on 😉 A short break, perhaps? I have a buddy read to start, anyway 😁

"the sense of security of being in a space surrounded by books"

🫶🫶🫶

"Jacques' outlook betrayed a certain narrowness and obstinacy that is too often observed among inquisitors. If words should in principle be like muscle, disciplined by the whip of reason, those of Jacques, influenced by emotion, had idly put on fat in some areas, and were sorely lacking in balance."

“He says the best theatre isn’t about showing something but finding it. Certainty is the way of cowards and fools, and Euripides is neither.”