Gleanings from My Readings

From Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey:

"Dear creature! How much I am obliged to you; and when you have finished Udolpho, we will read the Italian together; and I have made out a list of ten or twelve more of the same kind for you."

"Have you, indeed! How glad I am! What are they all?"

"I will read you their names directly; here they are, in my pocketbook. Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont, Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell, Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries. Those will last us some time."

"Yes, pretty well; but are they all horrid, are you sure they are all horrid?"

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“Take — An old castle, half of it ruinous.
A long gallery, with a great many doors, some secret ones.
Three murdered bodies, quite fresh.
As many skeletons, in chests and presses . . .
Mix them together, in the form of three volumes, to be taken at any
of the watering-places before going to bed.”
---Anonymous, from the essay “Terrorist Novel Writing” (1797)

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Newsweek columnist David Gates about the celebration of Banned Books Week:

“So many transgressive pleasures, so little time.”

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“Here are the two best prayers I know: “Help me, help me, help me,” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
--Anne Lamott, from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

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A Late Fragment from Raymond Carver:

“And did you get what
You wanted from this life even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
Beloved on the earth.”

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From Shara McCallum’s poem “What the Stories Teach”:

“Skipping and singing into the silent sea,
the last head descends into the water
the way an apple vanishes
beneath the caramel glaze.” (8-11)

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Happy Reading!