Ex Libris Kirkland is my entirely self-centered way to keep track of what I read, what I like, and what I want to remember.
Recent Quotes 📖
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She had some very valuable Christian virtues, such as indiscriminate charity for the poor and indiscriminate loathing for the Prussians.
an excerpt from The New Jerusalem, written by G. K. Chesterton in 1920
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This is the epitome of the stories that seem far too ugly to be in the Bible. This is not trickery but treachery at its most abysmal. It should be said, first of all, that the Hebrew Bible does not romanticize the history of the people who create it, to whom it is addressed, and who have preserved it faithfully over millennia. It is as if America had told itself the truth about the Cherokee removal or England had confessed to the horrors of slavery in the West Indies. History is so much a matter of distortion and omission that dealing in truth feels like a breach of etiquette. However, if a people truly believed that it interacted with God the Creator, it might find every aspect of its history too significant to conceal.
an excerpt from Reading Genesis, written by Marilynne Robinson in 2024
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For Oedipus excites himself too much
at every sort of trouble, not conjecturing,
like a man of sense, what will be from what was,
but he is always at the speaker's mercyan excerpt from Oedipus the King, written by Sophocles in -426
Recent Notes 📓
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I'm generally not a fan of short stories, but these are self-sufficient in a good way; and they're long enough for me to settle in - fifty pages on average in this copy!
an note about Don't Look Now, written by Daphne du Maurier in 1971
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I knew of du Maurier from Rebecca but have never read anything - and kind of assumed she was in this midcentury New York group of writers that I never really enjoy. But a friend mentioned liking her as a writer and I picked up this collection of short stories. Within the first few pages it was clear: she's great. And by the end of the first story, which is appropriately creepy for October, I ran over to Trudy and recounted the tale like it was a campfire ghost story.
an note about Don't Look Now, written by Daphne du Maurier in 1971
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And man, what a clunky translation. I don't speak or read Greek of course, but this is just very... unpoetickal.
an note about Oedipus the King, written by Sophocles in -426
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