Favorite Quotes...

Top Ten Tuesday is a fun weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's theme is Inspirational or Thought-Provoking Book Quotes. Which is a good one for me, because I've been collecting favorite quotes for years. I have a notebook full of them. The hardest part? Choosing just ten for this list. But I did my best.
Here they are:

"That was another of our fears: that Life 

wouldn't turn out to be like Literature."

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

"One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings; it is out of books one learns about love and pain at secondhand. Even if we have the happy chance to fall in love, it is because we have been conditioned by what we have read, and if I had never known love at all, perhaps it was because my father's library had not contained the right books."

Graham Greene, Travels With My Aunt

"What if 'someday' is today?"

Wendy Welch, The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap

"The biggest jolt in growing up was to discover that you didn't like 

what others liked and they thought you were crazy to like what you liked." 

Dawn Powell, My Home Is Far Away

"Perhaps all dragons in our lives are really princesses

waiting to see us just once being beautiful and courageous."

Rainer Marie Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

"It is a good thing to turn your mind upside down

now and then, like an hour-glass, to let the

particles run the other way."

Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop

"The problem with anger against God is that 

it's impossible to go higher in the system to complain."

Peter Hoeg, The Quiet Girl

"Once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you 

managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. 

But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be 

the same person who walked in. That's what the storm is all about."

Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

"I knew that if I allowed my fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me. ... I simply did not let myself become afraid. Fear begets fear. Power begets power. I willed myself to beget power. And it wasn't long before I actually wasn't afraid."

Cheryl Strayed, Wild

"...nothing is more unlike a novel than real life."

 Maria Edgeworth, Belinda

Happy Reading!

A British Crime Classic...

Title & Author:  Seven Dead by J. Jefferson Farjeon
Genre:  Classic British Mystery
First line:  This is not Ted Lyte's story. He merely had the excessive misfortune to come into it, and to remain in it longer than he wanted.

Plot summary:  When six men and one woman are found dead at Haven House, it appears to be a mass suicide. Only the shuttered room where they were found was locked from the outside. And there's a portrait of a young girl in the dining room that's been shot through the heart. Who are these seven strangers? And what happened to Mr. Fenner and Dora, his niece, the owners of Haven House? Detective-Inspector Kendall and freelance journalist, Thomas Hazeldean, suspect there's something much more sinister going on, and they're determined to find out the truth.

My thoughts:  I like how these classic British mysteries are more about piecing together a bunch of seemingly random clues than about shocking crime scenes or dark plot twists. It's refreshing. I also really liked Hazeldean's brash optimism and cheerful confidence. His over-protectivness of Dora, and her 'feminine' fearfulness was a bit of a cliche, but then this book was written in 1939. As the mystery proceeds, Detective-Inspector Kendall ends up doing a lot of explaining as to his theories of what really happened, but I loved his understated British humor so much I didn't mind. I hope he's in Farjeon's other books. And even though the mystery itself got a bit fantastical towards the end, I still thought this one was a lot of fun.

Happy Reading!

Another British Crime Classic to check out:

Death on the Cherwell by Mavis Doriel Hay

Cool bookish tees...

Because who doesn't love a good Albus Dumbledore quote?

(Find it here.)

I also love this one!

(Find it here)

And this one is just so true!

(Find it here)

And now you know my weekend plans!

(Find it here)

Happy Reading!

Frightening fun!

Welcome to the First Annual Haunted Forest Halloween Tour!

"Nobody has ever been eaten on one of our tours, and nobody ever will!"

Four years ago, an entire forest sprouted up out of nowhere, engulfing the town of Cromay, New Mexico, and killing hundreds of people. Rescue teams went into the forest to search for survivors and never returned. What lives in the forest now is an array of fanged and fierce nightmares come to life, the kind of creatures cryptozoologists love to study and crazy tourists love to view. That's why H.F. Enterprises installed a track and built reinforced trams to transport tourists of all ages through the monster-filled forest. And their safety record is impeccable. Until the first Halloween tour enters the forest. That's when everything goes horribly wrong.

This horror novel has everything you could possible want:  freakshow monsters that want to chomp everyone in sight, characters to root for...and against, a dark and eerie forest, explosions, bloody battles, that timeless fight of good vs. evil, supernatural suspense, and some great one-liners. Great literature it's not, but it is entertaining and scary good fun. (Good nightmare material, too.) 

Happy Reading!

Randomness....

I love this clock:

(Does your day ever feel like this, or is it just me?)

I recently read a new favorite character in a new favorite series:

(I'm looking forward to reading the rest of Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs' mysteries some time in the near future. Or at least some time this year. Or next.)

I checked out some fun books from the library yesterday:

The Wild Lands by Paul Greci

Gone Too Deep by Katie Ruggle

Lost Girls by Merrie Destefano

Time to Die by Caroline Mitchell

Woman 99 by Greer Macallister

Seven Dead by J. Jefferson Farjeon

But I think I'm most excited to read this one: 

(Because I've heard it's really good.)

And last, but certainly not least....

Happy Easter!!

A Classic Play...

For several years now, I've been working my way through Shakespeare's plays, trying to read each and every one. (Boy are there a lot of them!) I'm getting close; I only have seven more to go. And one of those is Cymbeline. Which is why I picked it to read for Karen's Back to the Classics Challenge. It's not one of Shakespeare's plays that I was very familiar with, but after reading it, I think they should change the name of the play to Imogen, because I felt like it was more her story than her father's.

.....Alas, poor princess,

Thou divine Imogen, what thou endur'st.--

Betwixt a father by thy stepdame govern'd:

A mother hourly coining plots; a wooer

More hateful than the foul expulsion is

Of thy dear husband ... The heavens hold firm

The walls of thy dear honour; keep unshak'd

That temple, thy fair mind; that thou mayest stand

To enjoy thy banish'd lord and this great land.

So, here's my attempt at explaining the plot of this play. Be forewarned...it gets a little complicated. 

Cymbeline is the king of Britain. His two oldest sons were stolen away in their infancy, leaving him with Imogen, his only daughter, as his sole heir. He wants her to marry Cloten, the son of his second wife, who's now the queen. (And a very conniving one at that.) Instead, Imogen marries Posthumous Leonatus, a noble Roman soldier. Before the marriage is consummated, the king banishes Posthumous from Britain. Before Posthumous leaves, he gives Imogen a bracelet as a token of his love and she gives him a ring, promising to be faithful to him. 

Back in Rome, Posthumous brags about his beautiful and virtuous wife, so much so that his friend, Iachimo, bets him that he can easily seduce her. Posthumous agrees to the bet and off Iachimo goes to Britain to woo Imogen. But the princess refuses his advances. (Just as she's been refusing Cloten's.) Not wanting to lose his bet, Iachimo sneaks into Imogen's rooms at night and steals the bracelet from her arm as proof of her infidelity. When he sees the bracelet, Posthumous believes Iachimo's lies, gets all mad, and sends a letter to his servant, Pisano, ordering him to kill his wife. Pisano helps Imogen escape to Wales instead. There, she disguises herself as a boy named Fidele. While in disguise, she meets her two older brothers who don't know who she is....or that they are actually Cymbeline's sons. (It's another miraculous Shakespearean coincidence!)

Meanwhile, Cloten comes to Wales determined to kill Posthumous, have his way with Imogen, and then bring her back to Britain. Happily, he fails. Imogen never encounters him, but she does drink a potion which causes everyone around her to think she's dead even though she's not. Complicated, right? While all of this is happening, Rome prepares to invade Britain over unpaid tributes. This leads to war, which everyone participates in. In the end, Imogen's two brothers and her husband help Cymbeline defeat the Romans; Cloten is killed; Jupiter makes a brief appearance; Cymbeline and his two sons are brought back together; Iachimo is captured and admits his deceit; and Imogen's honor is restored and she and her penitent husband are reunited at last. Whew. What a play! 

Despite it's convoluted plot, I actually ended up liking this one. And if they ever perform it on a stage near me, I'm definitely going. And congrats if you actually made it to the end of this post!

Happy Reading!

Bookshelf envy...

I wish my house had this many bookshelves...

Or a windowseat as lovely as this....

I'd even settle for a bedroom like this....

Happy Reading...and bookshelf dreaming!