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Post by scamp on Jul 18, 2012 23:54:41 GMT -6
It is often written that a kind of medieval footstool was called a tuffet – a presumption based entirely on the venerable line “Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet.”
from At Home by Bill Bryson
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Post by Siren on Jul 19, 2012 22:30:17 GMT -6
"The Man Who Planted Trees" sounds like something I need to read, Gams. *making note*
++++++++++
Forty million Americans paid tribute every week at the box office, urged by ads that "All the adventure, all the romance, all the excitement you lack in your daily life are in - Pictures! They take you completely out of your world - Out of the cage of everyday existence! If only for an afternoon or an evening - Escape!"
~from "Hollywood Babylon", a trashy and fascinating book by Kenneth Anger
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Post by scamp on Jul 19, 2012 23:35:41 GMT -6
It has, however, but a bare and uninteresting church, built in the latest and worse style of Perpendicular, with a slate roof and no bells to speak of.
Lost Building of England, Royal Oak Society
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Post by stepper on Jul 23, 2012 21:37:46 GMT -6
Pages 56-57 are pictures so this is from page 58.
They all laughed and stamped and clapped their hands, when the dwarves (with poor Bilbo at the back and nearest to the whips) came running in, while the goblin-drivers whooped and cracked their whips behind.
The Hobbit or, There and Back Again J. R. R. Tolkein, illustrated by Michael Hague, 1984
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Post by Phalon on Jul 29, 2012 6:51:05 GMT -6
He quoted: " 'At bottom you cannot respect me, knowing, as you do, of that matter of which I am accused' - oh, it is perfectly plain, now, God help me!" ~ from the short story "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" in the book "The Celebrated Jumping Frog and Other Stories" by Mark Twain
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Post by Siren on Aug 1, 2012 21:24:42 GMT -6
"Of course, I don't expect any reply to this outburst of anger, but if one comes I certainly shall be anxious to read it and see what affect this letter had on you."
from "Since You Went Away - World War II Letters From American Women On The Home Front" by Judy Barrett Litoff and David C. Smith
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Post by Phalon on Aug 5, 2012 7:18:09 GMT -6
What a provocative sentence, Siren! I makes me wonder what angered the woman, what else she wrote in the letter, how it affected its recipient, and if she ever got a reply.
Since I had it out for the 'loop de loop' thread, here's one from "Trust Me", short stories by John Updike:
We were in our late twenties then, young at being old - the best of times. ~ from the short story "The Lovely Troubled Daughters of Our Old Crowd.
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Post by Siren on Aug 5, 2012 22:56:18 GMT -6
What gets me, Gams, is thinking of what people went through back then, waiting for letters from loved ones at war. Today, with the miracle of technology, some couples talk most every night by skype or by phone. But back then, you had to wait for letters to arrive to know if your loved one was still all right. Must have been agony.
"Young at being old" - that's very well put. I remember when someone in their late twenties was "old". Ah, to be young enough to still think that!
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Post by Phalon on Sept 14, 2012 6:16:14 GMT -6
She and her brothers represented darkness, and the other two light. ~ from "The Echoing Green" by Eleanor Estes, 1947
I haven't read this one from Mom's stash of books. The whole paragraph is intriguing, I think; it makes me want to read the book:
Sometimes Jemmie looked at herself and her brothers guiltily."We are of the back yard," she thought, "and Lorraine and Stella are of the front yard." She and her brothers represented darkness, and the other two light. "We three, the dark three, our shoes are scuffed, and we play so hard we look dirty," she thought, dissatisfied with herself. And her big sisters represented light and loveliness. They never played in the back yard; they were pretty and sweet. "We are of the back yard," thought Jemmie, longing for their front-yard lightness.
Based on the paragraph, I am of the back yard - and that's fine with me.
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Post by stepper on Sept 14, 2012 16:41:52 GMT -6
Based on the paragraph, I'm of the dark woods past the creek that runs behind the back yard. Shaded, cool, quiet like walking on 20 years of accumilated pine needles, and peaceful so that any noise gets your attention and you wonder where it came from.
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Post by Phalon on Sept 17, 2012 22:01:17 GMT -6
Stepper, it sounds like a wonderful place to be of.....although that preposition dangling there at the end of this here sentence doesn't sound so wonderful.
And depending what made the noise you wonder about, I suppose the noise might not sound so wonderful either!
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Post by stepper on Sept 18, 2012 16:35:12 GMT -6
LOL! I'm glad you're around Phalon. Keep me on the straight and narrow path, and if possible, keep me from dangling. :-)
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Post by scamp on Sept 20, 2012 20:26:40 GMT -6
"There was a leap, swifter than his unpractised [sic] sight, and the lean, yellow body disappeared for a moment out of the field of his vision."
From White Fang by Jack London,which, in my mind, contains the most sustained use of north and south as a metaphor for paternalism other than Disraeli's Sybil.
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Post by Phalon on Oct 1, 2012 6:32:41 GMT -6
They do nothing but fight when they are together and she’s had it. ~ from "Go Ask Alice" by Anonymous
The book was laying on the table yesterday; it's short so I picked it up and read. It's National Banned Book Week, and again in LX's English class she's got to read and write an essay about a banned book.
"Go Ask Alice" is a diary of a teenage girl's decent into hell: after unknowingly drinking a Coke laced with LSD, she enters into a (very short) life of a drug addiction, homelessness, gratuitous sex, rape, confinement in a mental institution, and death.
Published in 1971, it's been banned off and on in different states and counties soon after its publication and as late as 2007 due to illicit drug use, profanity, and sexual situations. To me, it seems kind of strange to ban a book warning about the dangers of drug use because it includes the dangers of drug use.
Though it's written by "Anonymous" and was originally published as a nonfiction work - a girl's diary her parents found after she died of an overdose - since the '80s it's been listed as fiction. There is still somewhat of a mystery as to who was the actual author; Beatrice Sparks, a therapist, is listed as the editor, once claiming there is an actual diary (which was never produced), but the book also contains experiences from her other teen patients. Sparks has gone on to publish many other "diaries" from troubled teenage patients - they've all been regarded as fiction.
No one has ever claimed knowing "Alice" - who btw, is not "Alice" in the book; the girl's name is never mentioned.
Regardless of the bannings and controversy over its authenticity, it is what it is, and does what it does. It's a thoroughly depressing look at what drug use can do, and I believe, would make a person want to stay as far away from them as possible, which, of course, is the book's intention. So why ban it?
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Post by Phalon on Oct 10, 2012 5:13:17 GMT -6
"It's a great improvement on the ordinary game of hide-and-seek." ~ from Smee, a short story written by A. M. Burrage, found in the book "Ghosts: A Treasury of Chilling Tales Old & New".
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Post by Phalon on Nov 2, 2012 4:48:48 GMT -6
So many things could have gone so horribly wrong. - from "Thirteen Reasons Why", best-selling novel of teen suicide by Jay Asher, soon to be released as a movie.
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Post by scamp on Jan 28, 2013 0:24:24 GMT -6
"If society was in a state of constant circulation, if everyone had an opportunity to rise to the top, all would be well."
From Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a 19th Century City by Stephen Thernstrom.
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Post by Phalon on Feb 8, 2013 7:11:18 GMT -6
With a start he drew back as his band found only emptiness. ~ a nice, short and concise sentence from "A Shine of Rainbows" by Lillain Beckwith
Looking for something to short to read last night, I pulled one of Mom's books off the shelf - one of those Reader's Digest Condensed Books things - and this story looked interesting, (and was short, condensed to only 71 pages).
I couldn't get further than the second page, though...too many sentences like this one: "Looking up, he scanned the distant outline of the road, so faintly etched against the rumpled hillside as to be barely identifiable save to the practiced observer and then only by virtue of the telegraph poles which, like marker stakes against the vast background, irregularly picked out its route.
Blah. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood to pick through the wordiness. I'll probably just rent the movie, if I can find it.
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Post by Siren on Feb 23, 2013 9:14:18 GMT -6
I have my red pen ready, if that author decides on a re-edit. I am ruthless. That 71-page story would have ended up at about 50 pages.
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Post by Siren on Apr 15, 2013 21:14:15 GMT -6
"I was still in mourning for my grandfather, and had no wish to shock people, so I bought myself a a gray coat, with shoes and toque to match."
~from "The Prime Of Life" by Simone de Beauvoir, part of "The Norton Book Of Women's Lives"
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