Rivendell, WIS

O to grace how great a debtor Daily I'm constrained to be! Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, Bind my wandering heart to Thee.

Monday, March 20, 2006

The one bad thing about books?

Books give me dark circles under my eyes.

Recently tasted books:

Pride and Prejudice--I finished this Saturday. For those who may have seen one of the films without ever reading the book itself, you are missing out. You'll never fully understand how Darcy and Elizabeth fall in love without the book.

A quote: "But make a virtue of it by all means. My good qualities are under your protection, and you are to exaggerate them as much as possible..." Elizabeth to Darcy.

Precious Bane, by Mary Webb--Three daughters and I are reading this concurrently. My memories of this book persuade me that it is my favorite love story. Will my opinion stand up to a rereading?

A quote from Chapter 1, as Pru begins her book and gives glimpses of themes that will be woven within the pages: "Well, it is all gone over now, the trouble and the struggling. It be quiet weather now, like a still evening with the snow all down, and a green sky, and lambs calling. I sit here by the fire with my Bible to hand, a very old woman and a tired woman, with a task to do before she says good night to this world. When I look out of my window and see the plain and the big sky with clouds standing up on the mountains, I call to mind the thick, blotting woods of Sarn, and the crying of the mere when the ice was on it, and the way the water would come into the cupboard under the stairs when it rose at the time of the snow melting. There was but little sky to see there, saving that which was reflected in the mere; but the sky that is in the mere is not the proper heavens. You see it in a glass darkly, and the long shadows of rushes go thin and sharp across the sliding stars, and even the sun and moon might be put out down there, for, times, the moon would get lost in lily leaves, and, times, a heron might stand before the sun."

Books I'm nibbling on without necessarily planning to finish:

How the Heather Looks, by Joan Bodger--debating whether to assign this to our 14 yodd;
Arguing about Slavery: John Quincy Adams and the Great Battle in the United States Congress, by William Lee Miller--debating whether to suggest this for our 17 yo dd;
Johannes Kepler and the New Astronomy, by James R. Voelkel--trying to choose between this and a Sower Series bio of Kepler for our 12 yo dd... Looks like the Sower Series bio will work better for her. The Voelkel book is more advanced.

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