Ex Libris Kirkland

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 📖

  • [some secret third thing....]
    And the truth is some third thing, too tremendous to be remembered by men.

    an excerpt from The New Jerusalem, written by G. K. Chesterton in 1920

  • I DON'T WANT TO BE A SPICE STORE

    I don't want to be a spice store.
    I don't want to carry handcrafted Marseille soap,
    or tsampa and yak butter, or nine thousand varieties of wine.
    Half the shops here don't open till noon
    and even the bookstore's brined in charm.
    I want to be the one store that's open all night
    and has nothing but necessities.
    Something to get a fire going
    and something to put one out.
    A place where things stay frozen and a place where they are sweet.
    I want to hold within myself the possibility
    of plugging one's ears and easing one's eyes;
    superglue for ruptures that are,
    one would have thought, irreparable,
    a whole bevy of nontoxic solutions
    for everyday disasters. I want to wait
    brightly lit and with the patience
    I never had as a child
    for my father to find me open
    on Christmas morning in his last-ditch, lone-wolf drive
    for gifts. "Light of the World" penlight,
    bobblehead compass, fuzzy dice.
    I want to hum just a little with my own emptiness
    at 4 a.m. To have little bells above my door.
    To have a door.

    an excerpt from Survival Is a Style, written by Christian Wiman in 2020

  • 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

Recent Notes 📓

  • Wow, this was so great - du Maurier is SO good at mood and tense. This is a book that I went into cold. I've never seen the Hitchcock movie, or any adaptation. It FEELS like a ghost story, and you just have a very clear sense that something bad is going to happen or has happened - really the prototype for every version of the horror movie where Innocent Person joins a rich family and They Have Secret Trauma. But it's not trite at all; just very well done.

    an note about Rebecca, written by Daphne du Maurier in 1938

  • On the other hand, I do love the weird overlaps and coincidences that show up when you're reading more than one thing at a time. The play centers around one family coming back to the manor estate, and one of the rich male members is tormented by his wife's death by drowning. I'm ALSO reading Rebecca, which focuses on a family coming back to a manor estate, with a rich male being tormented by his wife's death by drowning.

    Actually I just looked this up, and this play was published a year after Rebecca, so maybe it's not an accident.

    an note about The Family Reunion, written by T. S. Eliot in 1939

  • A boring, unsuccessful play by Eliot. Probably a reason this is mostly forgotten, and I just came across an old printing by chance, bundled together with a play I actually liked.

    an note about The Family Reunion, written by T. S. Eliot in 1939

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



Ex Libris Kirkland is a super-self-absorbed reading journal made by Matt Kirkland. Copyright © 2001 - .
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