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.
📓 Recent Notes 📓
A fun, very English crime/spy thriller. Much like Rogue Male; our hero is a skilled-at-woodcraft spy, is hunted by an implacable opponent, and takes the fight to the English countryside both for its field advantages and as an honorable move to protect others. Picked this up with some other Households at an estate sale!
a note about Watcher in the Shadows
Also it keep the pattern: one book of prequel/sidequel that focuses on one Wayward Child and their portal world, then one sequential book where the Kids Do a Quest. The quest ones are the weak ones in my opinion!
a note about Through Gates of Garnet and Gold
These novellas are very short: for me the audiobook is about twice as long as it takes me to mow my lawn (and my MILs). They're a fine time-passer, but I remain increasingly frustrated by the gap between what I WANT this series to be and what it actually is. This one gathers a quest of our heroes to help restore things in The Halls of the Dead, the first portal world we heard about in the first book. It felt very by-the-numbers Scooby gang, or like a late episode of a tv series where they don't have new ideas but still like moving the pieces around the game board.
a note about Through Gates of Garnet and Gold
My dad gauges all sad things in fiction against 'Bambi's-mother-dying-sad' and 'ET-dying-sad'. For me, my benchmark is Artax-in-the-Swamp-of-Sadness-sad.
a note about The Neverending Story
It's still a bit dissonant from the movie in *vibes* but not as much as I remember. But the EVENTS of the movie happen really quickly in the book, and the entire movie's plot is accomplished halfway through the book.
a note about The Neverending Story
📖 Recent Quotes 📖
...now we find skilled lawyers all at sea as to the meaning of their own carefully-weighed phrases. A great part of the business of lawyers is to determine the meaning of words used by other lawyers. The law is what is known as “a lucrative profession.”
an excerpt from The Honeywood File
General Sir Thomas Pamellor at once reminded me of a fine, freshly caught shrimp. Not that he was small, but he sprouted hair at odd angles from eyebrows and moustache, and also his coloring was exactly the right mixture of sand and grey. Lady Pamellor was a slightly smaller shrimp, but cooked. She was bright pink and had a good deal of pink in her dress.
... [and then a page later after not mentioning shrimp again] When Lady Pamellor had swum delicately off and hidden herself beneath the rocks of the drawing room, Sir Thomas pressed cigars upon me and one of the finest brandies I have ever tasted.an excerpt from Watcher in the Shadows
It was a natural partnership. We were both survivors from another age - a couple of dinosaurs, let us say - one of an older generation than the other, but both equally successful at persuading a society of little mammals that we were perfectly adjusted to it.
an excerpt from Watcher in the Shadows
By dint of charging high prices and giving good food, - perhaps in part, also, by the quality of the education which he imparted, - his establishment had become popular and had outgrown the capacity of the parsonage. He had been enabled to purchase a field or two close abutting on the glebe' gardens, and had there built convenient premises. He now limited his number to thirty boys, for each of which he charged £200 a-year.* It was said of him by his friends that if he would only raise his price to £25o, he might double the number, and really make a fortune. In answer to this, he told his friends that he knew his own business best; - he declared that his charge was the only sum that was compatible both with regard to himself and honesty to his customers, and asserted that the labours he endured were already quite heavy enough. In fact, he recommended all those who gave him advice to mind their own business.
an excerpt from Dr. Wortle's School
And now, O kind-hearted reader, I feel myself constrained, in the telling of this little story, to depart altogether from those principles of story telling to which you probably have become accustomed, and to put the horse of my romance before the cart. There is a mystery respecting Mr and Mrs Peacocke which, according to all laws recognised in such matters, ought not to be elucidated till, let us say, the last chapter but two, so that your interest should be maintained almost to the end, - so near the end that there should be left only space for those little arrangements which are necessary for the well-being or perhaps for the evil-being, of our personages. It is my purpose to disclose the mystery at once, and to ask you to look for your interest - should you choose to go on with my chronicle, - simply in the conduct of my persons, during this disclosure, to others. You are to know it all before the Doctor or the Bishop, - before Mrs Wortle or the Hon Mrs Stantiloup, or Lady De Lawle. You are to know it all before the Peacockes become aware that it must necessarily be disclosed to any one. It may be that when I shall have once told the mystery there will no longer be any room for interest in the tale to you. That there are many such readers of novels I know. I doubt whether the greater number be not such. I am far from saying that the kind of interest of which I am speaking, - and of which I intend to deprive myself, - is not the most natural and the most eficacious. What would the Black Dwarf be if every one knew from the beginning that he was a rich man and a baronet? - or The Pirate, if all the truth abour Noma of the Fitful-head had been told in the first chapter? Therefors pur the book down if the revelation of some future secret be necessary for your enjoyment. Our mystery is going to be revealed in the next paragraph-in the next half-dozen words. [ SPOILERS ]
an excerpt from Dr. Wortle's School