📖 Recent Quotes 📖

• [raiding the pantry for a midnight adventure] Finally they seized an enormous box of chocolate biscuits. "They must be Miss Gozzling's," said Emma, giggling. "She never gives any to us. We'd better call her Miss Guzzling!" and these they removed without conscience or care, though before they had tried not to make their taking too obvious. But Charlotte had a faint twinge of shame about Miss Gozzling, thinking how kind she could be and how terrible to have so many chins.

  an excerpt from The Summer Birds, written by Penelope Farmer in 1939

• The popular conception of the ancient architects as intellectual supermen has to be considerably modified when an unprejudiced study is made of their works. Amazing as it may seem, no advance was made in their mechanical methods from the IVth dynasty onwards, and it is difficult to determine what was the factor which enabled them to make their early pro-gress. The Egyptian mind was not, in matters unconnected with religion, speculative. His mathematics were so cumbersome as to be inadequate for any really refined calculation, and were rigidly practical. He could use primitive appliances with an almost incredible refinement and was a superb organizer of labour-therein lay his genius. The more, however, his constructional methods are studied, the more one is convinced that if any detail in a piece of work has to be explained by an apparatus of any com-plication, then that explanation is certainly wrong.

  an excerpt from Ancient Egyptian Construction and Architecture, written by Somers Clarke in 1930

• Sometimes, I think I’m merely a shadow. When I feel that way, I get this restless feeling, like I’m simply tracing an outline of myself, cleverly pretending to be me.

  an excerpt from The City and Its Uncertain Walls:, written by Haruki Murakami in 2025

📓 Recent Notes 📓

• The endless, mindless repetitions and equivocations are so incredibly frustrating. Is this book bad? I think it's bad!
  
  This must be an aesthetic choice and it does add to the feeling of being trapped in a dream that might be meaningless. But dang, I’ve rarely rolled my eyes so much. Give Murakami-san an editor and this could be a tight novella.

  an note about The City and Its Uncertain Walls:, written by Haruki Murakami in 2025

• What a lovely book; it has its own internal child logic like a Greek myth or a Ronald Dahl, but without any of the nastiness. And a melancholy end. Maybe ‘poignant’ is the word? Two girls meet a mysterious boy that teaches them to fly... and then their entire village school.

  an note about The Summer Birds, written by Penelope Farmer in 1939

• Really great, slightly off-putting illustrations by Spanfeller here. The reveal of Grandfather Elijah's one lock of hair made me gasp. Love these.

  an note about The Summer Birds, written by Penelope Farmer in 1939

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