Stephanie > Recent Status Updates

299/595 is the beginning of middle chapter (Section X) of the middle book (Book 2).

Finished Part 2. This book was difficult enough before hitting the "I am Beloved and she is mine." chapters, page 211-217. Someone is going to have to explain those to me.

I listened to the audiobook while looking for my copy. The narrator reads sentences a lot differently than I do...more poetically, perhaps? Found my book, though, and finished part 1. I've been tempted to quit reading many times due to a lot of sexual content that I don't like reading and don't want taking up space in my brain.

I actually don't know where I am in this book...when we got home from a road trip, it was brought inside late at night by someone else, and I haven't yet found it...and now I have to pivot to read "The Chosen" by Chaim Potok for bookclub next week.

Book 1: A Drop In The Immense Sea of the Divine Will
Book 2: A Drop Deeper in the Immense Sea of the Divine Will

Wit and humor and lively spirits are of no age, --and a woman who holds them all with no conscious effort is ageless.

"In the first place, everyone isn't entitled to happiness, not at the expense of someone else. Happiness gained that way ceases to be happiness."

Life does not appear to arrange itself into definite periods at the time one is living those years. It is only when a woman looks back upon it from the hilltop of maturity that she is able to say, "That was the period of my darkest sorrow," or, "Those were the years of my uncertainty."

"I am weaving at a loom with a spindle of hopes and dreams. And no matter, Mother, how lovely the pattern - no matter how many gorgeous colors I use, - always the center of it is ... you know, ... just a little house in a garden and red firelight ... and the man I love ... and children ... and happiness. For me, Mother, that's the end of all dreaming."

Many interesting places discovered by Maelbruin and Saint Brendan, but not much detail about them.

Foolishness perhaps, yet comforting, as stories are sometimes meant to be. (Dec 1)

""...you see we engineers, supposedly so hard-boiled and practical, are great dealers in dreams and visions. As much so as poets and artists. For everything we build first is only a dream - then we make the dream come true. Instead of brush and pen we do it with steel and concrete, with slide rule and tape and transit, bolts and rivets - but first was the dream." p 74

"God gave us faces so we can see each other better.". (p 410, LP edition)

Read the short story, "Logging and Pimping and "Your Pal, Jim"", which was his first published story. Not my favorite.

"[Wordsworth] once wrote that the best portion of a good person's life is 'the little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love. Tintern Abbey, yes?" (p.330 LP edition)

Had to go read it: "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798" by William Wordsworth

Quite a bit of inspiration for this book seems to have come from that poem.

I've read "A River Runs Through It" for bookclub. I haven't decided if I'm going to read the short story or the other novella in this edition. First, I will listen to the Close Reads discussion over "A River Runs Through It".

"I so love to scribble on the pages. A fresh conversation atop one long since written." (July 24). I like this quote, though I rarely write in books, myself. I have a friend who loves reading those 'fresh conversations' in used books.

Nothing is what it's supposed to be if love is not at the core. p191 LP edition (near the end of Ch 21).

Listening to this with my husband on a road trip. Somewhere in Chapter 13 I took note of a conversation between two characters in which one questioned the other: "What is your philosophy? ... If they do not know what they want how can they be so certain they are right?". I'm sure this will be discussed on the Close Reads podcast.

"Lots of people suffer for other folks' sins."

Technically I've finished the book - I had to switch to audio and plow a bit through the last third to finish in time for bookclub. I will be reading it with my eyes and taking notes...so leaving it here as 99% done until I'm finished with this edition.

I have four and a half pages of quotes so far in spite of the fact that I'm spending more time listening to an audiobook version than reading from my edition. Otherwise I will never finish the book in time for my bookclub discussion.