Ex Libris Kirkland is my entirely self-centered way to keep track of what I read, what I enjoy, and what I want to remember.
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Gory and violent, and I think the shock value of SO MUCH violence and gore sets me on an emotional edge that made me⌠more receptive? Maybe this is why people like horror movies? I donât know.
Lovely and charming it is not - but I also feel fairly positively about this. âLife-affirmingâ? Maybe.
a note about Angel Down
Ok, rare book that really was all it was advertised. Gripping, propulsive, beautiful, harrowing. I repeatedly caught myself holding my breath, or gasping, or saying âwowâ out loud. And not because of the story itself, but because of the sheer audacity and bravura of the writing itself. Tour-de-force is warranted here.
a note about Angel Down
I was very, very dubious about this book: itâs literally one long run-on sentence. Every paragraph starts with a lowercase âandâ and ends with a comma. Itâs a WWI trench novel. I was very ready to turn my nose up here. And it took a lot of concentration to get momentum reading this - itâs not for the ten-pages-at-a-time-before-bed, or at least wasnât at first. But it didnât take long to convince me; by 10% of the way thru I was IN. I really enjoyed reading this and binged the rest.
a note about Angel Down
I asked Claude to recommend me some books based on my history here; Gaskell came up as a peer to Trollope that I'd never read.
a note about Wives and Daughters
I've never read Browning really. I mean I've given it a spin before, but the stuffiness of it never felt enjoyable. But I read Andrea del Sarto to make myself finally learn the context of the 'man's reach should exceed his grasp' famous line that I reference all the time. And I found I enjoy these, if I can bring enough attention to them. They take a steady effort, though!
a note about Selected Poetry of Robert Browning
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Towards four o'clock coffee was brought round; and this was a signal of the approaching carriage that was to take them back to their own homes; whither they returned with the happy consciousness of a well-spent day, but with some fatigue at the long-continued exertion of behaving their best, and talking on stilts for so many hours. Nor were Lady Cumnor and her daughters free from something of the same self-approbation, and something, too, of the same fatigue; the fatigue that always follows on conscious efforts to behave as will best please the society you are in.
an excerpt from Wives and Daughters
He was a tall ungainly man, considered to be as proud as his mother, the countess; but, in fact, he was only shy, and slow at making commonplace speeches. He did not know what to say to people whose daily habits and interests were not the same as his; he would have been very thankful for a handbook of small-talk, and would have learnt off his sentences with good-humoured diligence. He often envied the fluency of his garrulous father, who delighted in talking to everybody, and was perfectly unconscious of the incoherence of his conversation.
an excerpt from Wives and Daughters
From Andrea Del Sarto:
I, painting from myself and to myself,
Know what I do, am unmoved by menâs blame
Or their praise either.
âŚ
Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?
Ah, but a manâs reach should exceed his grasp,
Or whatâs a heaven for?an excerpt from Selected Poetry of Robert Browning
From Transcendentalism:
But why such long prolusion and display,
Such turning and adjustment of the harp,
And taking it upon your breast, at length,
Only to speak dry words across its strings?an excerpt from Selected Poetry of Robert Browning
From A Death in the Desert:
Is it for nothing we grow old and weak,
We whom God loves? When pain ends, gain ends too.an excerpt from Selected Poetry of Robert Browning