Frabjous Day
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.
- Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky
The shelves are invariably being renovated. Watch out for falling hammers, falling planks and books falling in my estimation.
Of course you... more »
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.
- Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky
The shelves are invariably being renovated. Watch out for falling hammers, falling planks and books falling in my estimation.
Of course you... more »
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.
- Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky
The shelves are invariably being renovated. Watch out for falling hammers, falling planks and books falling in my estimation.
Of course you may ask me whether or not you should read a book! But I'm always lying. Always. Even now.
Currently Reading:
Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen
This November:
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James ****
October:
Dracula by Bram Stoker **** (A group-read with Anglophiles Anonymous)
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens ****
Dear Brutus by J. M. Barrie ***
September:
Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy **** (A group-read with Anglophiles Anonymous)
August:
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll ***** and Though the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll ***** (a re-read with Anglophiles Anonymous)
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton *****
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome *** (A group-read with Anglophiles Anonymous)
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (A group-read with the "Brilliant Babes (and Dudes) Who Read Selectively" group)
June:
Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen ***
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare **** (A re-read with Anglophiles Anonymous)
May:
Boy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl *** (A re-read for the first time since I was nine. Lovely)
Marrying Off Mother and Other Stories by Gerald Durrell ***
The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone ***
April:
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather ***
King Lear by William Shakespeare ***** (A group-read with Anglophiles Anonymous)
The Aspern Papers by Henry James ****
When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro ***
March:
Lucia's Progress by E. F. Benson ****
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood *** (A group-read with Anglophiles Anonymous)
Mapp and Lucia by E. F. Benson *** (A group-read with Anglophiles Anonymous)
Miss Mapp by E. F. Benson ****
Queen Lucia by E. F. Benson ***
Sanditon by Jane Austen *** (How does one rate an unfinished novel? Such as it is, it's delightful.)
February:
Crooked House by Agatha Christie ***
[insert long spell of jaundice and inability to read]
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke ***
January:
The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles ***
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro *****
First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde **(and a half? It's unfair to compare fluff with Ishiguro, Fowles and Brontë.)
Villette by Charlotte Brontë ***** (A re-read with the Anglophiles Anonymous group)
Highlights of 2008:
Villette by Charlotte Brontë *****
Charlotte Brontë by Rebecca Fraser ****
Howards End by E. M. Forster *****
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh ****
Atonement by Ian McEwan ****
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins ****
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens *****
A Passage to India by E. M. Forster ****
I'm always dubious about these little blank spaces where I'm meant to say edifying things about myself. Leave a note or a calling card before we're indentured into each other's friendship, won't you? It's really to your own benefit to find out whether I make your blood boil and your hands strangle the air before you marry into my friends-list.
Now what else shall I tell you? I haunt the 19th century as if I lived in it. I'm suspicious of living writers and tend to run away screaming from ones who are still writing. Give me the dead, please. Preferably the long-dead: they are incomparably more talented. Almost all the books I particularly love were written before the Second World War. Postmodernism just seems so banal. One very silly man tried to befriend me here and inveigle me into reading things by people on our side of the grave. I told him to take a ride in a Zeppelin and poke a hole in it.
I spoke of ratings somewhere up there (there, in the land that knows the daylight above the "more" button). Well, about those ratings -- place no faith in them. That is, most of you shouldn't: I give books one star out of pique and then two more out of remorse; I lavish four stars upon others in enthusiasm and take away two once cold intellect is controlling my actions once more; I once gave Northanger Abbey the same number of stars as Sense and Sensibility so that they'd be on the same page and could "keep each other company"; and -- well, the list goes on.
Do you struggle with laughter and homicidal urges when people here talk about "Silas Mariner" or "Jane Austin"? Do you ever get messages from people saying, "Should I read the complete Calvin and Hobbes?" and reply, "Yes! Read out all the speech bubbles aloud to your kids at bedtime! Go on, finish it in one night!" ? Have you ever asked someone if they're on a morphine drip based on their comment that Pride and Prejudice was "too serious for [them]...a tearjerker"? Do you snicker at people who write laconic reviews of Uncle Tom's Cabin saying, "too thick," and tell them not to be so hard on themselves?
Well, I do.
I appear to be sneering. (It's something of an unfortunate and incurable habit) While I'm at it perhaps I should put up a
List of Things (and occasional people) at Which I Sneer
Khaled Hosseini, Richard Bach, Shelfarians with 40,000 books on their shelves who commit themselves to such inanities as,"Pride and Prejudice is such a thick book. I couldn't finish it; besides, it was too emotional,", internet and sms lingo, Ernest Hemingway, people who spout faux-scientific propoganda discrediting climate change, the cud-chewing herds of people who insist on asking me whether to read The Kite Runner and then read it regardless of my recommendations that they don't. Among others.
----------------------------------------------------------
From Lewis Carroll
"It was all very well to say 'DRINK ME,' but wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. 'No, I'll look first,' she said, 'and see whether it's marked 'poison' or not."
" 'I quite agree with you,' said the Duchess; 'and the moral of that is -- "Be what you would seem to be" --or, if you'd like it put more simply--"Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise." ' "
" 'Come, you look rather better now!' she said, after altering most of the pins. 'But really, you should have a lady's-maid!'
'I'll take you with pleasure!' the Queen said. 'Twopence a week and jam every other day.' "
" 'What sort of things do you remember best?' Alice ventured to ask.
'Oh, things that happened the week after next,' the Queen replied in a careless tone. 'For instance, now,' she went on, sticking a large piece of plaster on her finger as she spoke, 'there's the King's messenger. He's in prison now, being punished: and the trial doesn't even begin till next Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of all.'
'Suppose he never commits the crime?' said Alice.
'That would be all the better, wouldn't it?' the Queen said, as she bound the plaster round her finger with a bit of ribbon."
------------------------------------------------------------
And Jane Austen
" 'I am not going to run away, Papa,' said Kitty fretfully; 'if I should ever go to Brighton, I would behave better than Lydia.'
'You go to Brighton! - I would not trust you so near it as East Bourne, for fifty pounds! No, Kitty, I have at last learnt to be cautious, and you shall feel the effects of it. No officer is ever to enter my house again, nor even to pass through the village. Balls will be absolutely prohibited, unless you stand up with one of your sisters. And you are never to stir out of doors, until you can prove, that you have spent ten minutes of every day in a rational manner.'
Kitty, who took all these threats in a serious light, began to cry.
'Well, well,' said he,'do not make yourself unhappy. If you are a good girl for the next ten years, I will take you to a review at the end of them.' "
" 'Ah! you do not know what I suffer.'
'But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of four thousand a year come into the neighbourhood.'
'It will be no use to us, if twenty such should come since you will not visit them.'
'Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are twenty, I will visit them all.' "
" The next moment she was tapping at her husband's dressing-room door and as Anne followed her upstairs, she was in time for the whole conversation, which began with Mary saying, in a tone of great exultation,
'I mean to go with you, Charles, for I am of no more use at home than you are...' "
------------------------------------------------------------
And one from Giovanni Guareschi for good measure
" Don Camillo kept his own counsel. He continued to the rectory and, after putting the eggs in a safe place, went into the church to talk things over with Christ, as he always did in moments of perplexity.
'What should I do?' asked Don Camillo.
'Anoint your back with a little oil beaten up in water and hold your tongue,' Christ answered from the main altar."
__________________________________________________________
There was a road ran past our house
Too lovely to explore.
I asked my mother once--she said
That if you followed where it led
It brought you to the milk-man's door.
(That's why I have not traveled more.)
-- Edna St.Vincent Millay
A note to those few seraphim among you who have on divers occasions left me scornful messages about my profile, my comments and my answers to their barely-literate questions: I deleted 'em all. Check. « less
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.
- Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky
The shelves are invariably being renovated. Watch out for falling hammers, falling planks and books falling in my estimation.
Of course you may ask me whether or not you should read a book! But I'm always lying. Always. Even now.
Currently Reading:
Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen
This November:
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James ****
October:
Dracula by Bram Stoker **** (A group-read with Anglophiles Anonymous)
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens ****
Dear Brutus by J. M. Barrie ***
September:
Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy **** (A group-read with Anglophiles Anonymous)
August:
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll ***** and Though the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll ***** (a re-read with Anglophiles Anonymous)
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton *****
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome *** (A group-read with Anglophiles Anonymous)
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (A group-read with the "Brilliant Babes (and Dudes) Who Read Selectively" group)
June:
Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen ***
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare **** (A re-read with Anglophiles Anonymous)
May:
Boy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl *** (A re-read for the first time since I was nine. Lovely)
Marrying Off Mother and Other Stories by Gerald Durrell ***
The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone ***
April:
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather ***
King Lear by William Shakespeare ***** (A group-read with Anglophiles Anonymous)
The Aspern Papers by Henry James ****
When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro ***
March:
Lucia's Progress by E. F. Benson ****
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood *** (A group-read with Anglophiles Anonymous)
Mapp and Lucia by E. F. Benson *** (A group-read with Anglophiles Anonymous)
Miss Mapp by E. F. Benson ****
Queen Lucia by E. F. Benson ***
Sanditon by Jane Austen *** (How does one rate an unfinished novel? Such as it is, it's delightful.)
February:
Crooked House by Agatha Christie ***
[insert long spell of jaundice and inability to read]
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke ***
January:
The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles ***
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro *****
First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde **(and a half? It's unfair to compare fluff with Ishiguro, Fowles and Brontë.)
Villette by Charlotte Brontë ***** (A re-read with the Anglophiles Anonymous group)
Highlights of 2008:
Villette by Charlotte Brontë *****
Charlotte Brontë by Rebecca Fraser ****
Howards End by E. M. Forster *****
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh ****
Atonement by Ian McEwan ****
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins ****
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens *****
A Passage to India by E. M. Forster ****
I'm always dubious about these little blank spaces where I'm meant to say edifying things about myself. Leave a note or a calling card before we're indentured into each other's friendship, won't you? It's really to your own benefit to find out whether I make your blood boil and your hands strangle the air before you marry into my friends-list.
Now what else shall I tell you? I haunt the 19th century as if I lived in it. I'm suspicious of living writers and tend to run away screaming from ones who are still writing. Give me the dead, please. Preferably the long-dead: they are incomparably more talented. Almost all the books I particularly love were written before the Second World War. Postmodernism just seems so banal. One very silly man tried to befriend me here and inveigle me into reading things by people on our side of the grave. I told him to take a ride in a Zeppelin and poke a hole in it.
I spoke of ratings somewhere up there (there, in the land that knows the daylight above the "more" button). Well, about those ratings -- place no faith in them. That is, most of you shouldn't: I give books one star out of pique and then two more out of remorse; I lavish four stars upon others in enthusiasm and take away two once cold intellect is controlling my actions once more; I once gave Northanger Abbey the same number of stars as Sense and Sensibility so that they'd be on the same page and could "keep each other company"; and -- well, the list goes on.
Do you struggle with laughter and homicidal urges when people here talk about "Silas Mariner" or "Jane Austin"? Do you ever get messages from people saying, "Should I read the complete Calvin and Hobbes?" and reply, "Yes! Read out all the speech bubbles aloud to your kids at bedtime! Go on, finish it in one night!" ? Have you ever asked someone if they're on a morphine drip based on their comment that Pride and Prejudice was "too serious for [them]...a tearjerker"? Do you snicker at people who write laconic reviews of Uncle Tom's Cabin saying, "too thick," and tell them not to be so hard on themselves?
Well, I do.
I appear to be sneering. (It's something of an unfortunate and incurable habit) While I'm at it perhaps I should put up a
List of Things (and occasional people) at Which I Sneer
Khaled Hosseini, Richard Bach, Shelfarians with 40,000 books on their shelves who commit themselves to such inanities as,"Pride and Prejudice is such a thick book. I couldn't finish it; besides, it was too emotional,", internet and sms lingo, Ernest Hemingway, people who spout faux-scientific propoganda discrediting climate change, the cud-chewing herds of people who insist on asking me whether to read The Kite Runner and then read it regardless of my recommendations that they don't. Among others.
----------------------------------------------------------
From Lewis Carroll
"It was all very well to say 'DRINK ME,' but wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. 'No, I'll look first,' she said, 'and see whether it's marked 'poison' or not."
" 'I quite agree with you,' said the Duchess; 'and the moral of that is -- "Be what you would seem to be" --or, if you'd like it put more simply--"Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise." ' "
" 'Come, you look rather better now!' she said, after altering most of the pins. 'But really, you should have a lady's-maid!'
'I'll take you with pleasure!' the Queen said. 'Twopence a week and jam every other day.' "
" 'What sort of things do you remember best?' Alice ventured to ask.
'Oh, things that happened the week after next,' the Queen replied in a careless tone. 'For instance, now,' she went on, sticking a large piece of plaster on her finger as she spoke, 'there's the King's messenger. He's in prison now, being punished: and the trial doesn't even begin till next Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of all.'
'Suppose he never commits the crime?' said Alice.
'That would be all the better, wouldn't it?' the Queen said, as she bound the plaster round her finger with a bit of ribbon."
------------------------------------------------------------
And Jane Austen
" 'I am not going to run away, Papa,' said Kitty fretfully; 'if I should ever go to Brighton, I would behave better than Lydia.'
'You go to Brighton! - I would not trust you so near it as East Bourne, for fifty pounds! No, Kitty, I have at last learnt to be cautious, and you shall feel the effects of it. No officer is ever to enter my house again, nor even to pass through the village. Balls will be absolutely prohibited, unless you stand up with one of your sisters. And you are never to stir out of doors, until you can prove, that you have spent ten minutes of every day in a rational manner.'
Kitty, who took all these threats in a serious light, began to cry.
'Well, well,' said he,'do not make yourself unhappy. If you are a good girl for the next ten years, I will take you to a review at the end of them.' "
" 'Ah! you do not know what I suffer.'
'But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of four thousand a year come into the neighbourhood.'
'It will be no use to us, if twenty such should come since you will not visit them.'
'Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are twenty, I will visit them all.' "
" The next moment she was tapping at her husband's dressing-room door and as Anne followed her upstairs, she was in time for the whole conversation, which began with Mary saying, in a tone of great exultation,
'I mean to go with you, Charles, for I am of no more use at home than you are...' "
------------------------------------------------------------
And one from Giovanni Guareschi for good measure
" Don Camillo kept his own counsel. He continued to the rectory and, after putting the eggs in a safe place, went into the church to talk things over with Christ, as he always did in moments of perplexity.
'What should I do?' asked Don Camillo.
'Anoint your back with a little oil beaten up in water and hold your tongue,' Christ answered from the main altar."
__________________________________________________________
There was a road ran past our house
Too lovely to explore.
I asked my mother once--she said
That if you followed where it led
It brought you to the milk-man's door.
(That's why I have not traveled more.)
-- Edna St.Vincent Millay
A note to those few seraphim among you who have on divers occasions left me scornful messages about my profile, my comments and my answers to their barely-literate questions: I deleted 'em all. Check. « less
- Verdopolis, Angria
- member since November 5 2007
