Kelly > Recent Status Updates

I finished Castle of Wolfenbach by Eliza Parsons last week and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Lots of murder, treachery, escapes, hidden identities... the kind of thing that initially made me groan until a pair of characters mentioned knights errant and Don Quixote, which reminded me what kind of story I was in: a medieval Romance, only set in roughly "present day" Europe. Looking forward to Udolpho next.

The floor gave Unwin pause. It was his personal curse that his shoes squeaked on polished floors. The type of shoes he wore made no difference, nor did it matter whether the soles were wet or dry. If the shoes contained Unwin's feet and were directed along well-polished routes, they would without fail sound their joyless noise for all to hear.

He was by nature a meticulous dreamer

Love, love, love this book.

'It is an honorable service.' // 'King James's?' he sneered. // 'England's,' she corrected him in reproof. 'The country is all, sir; the sovereign naught. King James will pass; others will come and pass; England remains, to be honorably served by her sons, whatever rancor they may hold against the man who rules her in their time.'

I'm reading this aloud to my kids which is the BEST way to read TWITW, but it's so hard to read when you're weeping.

Just finished chapter 53 of 117. I'm amazed at Dumas' ability to keep introducing new sub-plots, new characters and their backstories, and to weave it all together so wonderfully.

What followed... was the death of the polis. Physically, some Greek cities endured a thousand years longer--but reduced to the condition of municipalities merely, no longer independent cities and virtually autonomous cultures... In the Hellenistic world, everthing depended upon central authority; in the earlier Hellenic world, everything had depended upon humane scale and local affections.

Question for those of you who've read THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, I think my Kindle version might be missing some pages. In the chapter where Albert & Franz are talking with the countess in her box at the opera, with no mention of Albert, Franz suddenly takes the countess home before the show is over then returns to his hotel where Albert says, "You're back early." Is that author error or do I have a faulty book?

Just read chapter 33 about the bandit. The bandit with a history. The bandit with a history that has a backstory.
:-p

Dr Taylor assigned this for the poetry class, but I'm reading it aloud to the children -- we all love it so much.

Artos on horseback was beautiful with the beauty that comes of a thing's absolute fitness for the purpose for which it was created: a longship at sea, a bird in flight, Artos on horseback.

His harp was carved and cunning, / His sword prompt and sharp, / And he was gay when he held the sword, / Sad when he held the harp. // For the great Gaels of Ireland / Are the men that God made mad, / For all their wars are merry, / And all their songs are sad.

"Speaking for myself," Eugenus said after a moment, "I think that I might die for a dead cause, but I do not think, I really do _not_ think, my young friend, that I could bring myself to ride up and down the world on anything so uncomfortable as a mule, in its service."

Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all.

I tell you, Sally, these are the last days of honest eating. I wasn't going to mention this till after dinner, but tonight you're going to be invited into the resistance movement. This may look like nothing more than a few people coming to a dinner party, but actually it's a _cell_ of the heavy cream underground.

”Let us record, by the way, that the Baron de Chantal fell in this combat, leaving an orphan daughter, a little girl, eighteen months old. This little girl was afterwards Madame de Sévigné.” Looking her up was a fun rabbit trail.

In the years from 1941 to that time, I had done most of my typing in the family garages... because we were poor.... I was driven out of my garage by my loving children, who insisted on coming around to the rear window and singing and tapping on the panes. Father had to choose between finishing a story or playing with the girls. I chose to play, of course, which endangered the family income.

[T]he teacher's duty may be said to consist, in large measure, in the correcting of the pupils' mistakes and in the dispelling of their illusions, but it does not follow, on this account, that the teacher is to play iconoclast and spend his time in endeavoring to make young children see the truth through adult eyes.

Took a look at the "3rd Annual Goodread Choice Awards" poll, but can't vote in it -- I haven't read a single book that was published this year!

Their labor-saving devices multiply drudgery… their amusements bore them; their rapid production of food leaves half of them starving, and their devices for saving time have banished leisure from their country…. Consider how quickly all machines are broken and obliterated. The black solitudes will some day be green again, and of all cities that I have seen these iron cities will break most suddenly.

It is like a thorn in your fingerm, sir. You know when you set about taking it out yourself--you mean to get it out--you know it will hurt--and it does hurt--but somehow it is not very serious business--well, I suppose, because you feel that you always COULD stop. But it is a very different thing to hold your hand out to a surgeon to be hurt as much as HE thinks fit. And at HIS speed.

Just got a new book in the mail -- The Bible and Task of Teaching, recommended by Cindy. Must. Not. Open. Till I've finished some of the ones I've already started.