📖 Recent Quotes 📖

• Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation. As no one, who knows what he is about in good company, would venture to talk all;——so no author, who understands the just boundaries of decorum and good-breeding, would presume to think all: The truest respect which you can pay to the reader’s understanding, is to halve this matter amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in his turn, as well as yourself.
  
  For my own part, I am eternally paying him compliments of this kind, and do all that lies in my power to keep his imagination as busy as my own.

  an excerpt from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, written by Laurence Sterne in 1769

• The insolence with which they boasted of their victory, and astonishment at having put up so long with their outrages, pointed to the same conclusion. For it was the wont of the immortal gods sometimes to grant prosperity and long impunity to men who’s crimes they were minded to punish, in order that a complete reversal of fortune might make them suffer more bitterly.

  an excerpt from Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, written by Gaius Julius Caesar in -44

• [The people of Denmark are equal. But here in England....]
  With us, you see, the case is quite different; — we are all ups and downs in this matter;— you are a great genius;- - or 'tis fifty to one, Sir, you are a great dunce and a blockhead;---not that there is a total want of intermediate steps,— no, we are not so irregular as that comes to;— but the two extremes are more common, and in a greater degree in this unsettled island, where nature, in her gifts and dispositions of this kind, is most whimsical and capricious; fortune herself not being more so in the bequest of her goods and chattels than she.

  an excerpt from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, written by Laurence Sterne in 1769

📓 Recent Notes 📓

• The W. A. McDevitte translation has, from Book 2 Chapter 1:
  … others of them, from a natural instability and fickleness of disposition, were anxious for a revolution
  
  But the LibriVox recording I’m listening to is translated by Thomas Rice Holmes (1855 - 1933) has
  And it has “… while others, from instability and fickleness of temperament, hankered after a change of masters.”
  
  Like: what a turn of phrase. How condescending! Those servile people, hankering after a change of masters! I feel like it’s describing a presidential election year.

  an note about Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, written by Gaius Julius Caesar in -44

• Here's a YA book I wouldn't have taken the chance to read - but I met the author at a party and realized: shoot! Fiction author in my neighborhood? I'm sure as hell reading his books. This was great; at first a kind of 'moody teenager with too many feelings' YA school story, that was definitely just not my lane. But it takes a much weirder and more serious turn, and I was absolutely into it in the back half.

  an note about The Great Big One, written by J. C. Geiger in 2021

• I didn't love this but I definitely listened to like, twenty four hours of audiobook here. It really does mature and build on what happened in the first book.

  an note about Royal Assassin, written by Robin Hobb in 1996

Looking for more recent books? Check out the Personal Timeline.