Fred Jenkins > Recent Status Updates

Utque in corporibus sic in imperio gravissimus est morbus, qui in capite diffunditur.

Part 2 focused on Roman roads and the Crusades. Now onto Part 3, Renaissance and age of the Grand Tour.

The first three chapters cover antiquity to the cusp of the middle ages.

'There are always a dozen reasons for doing nothing,' Anne liked to say--it was a favorite apologia, indeed, for her many misdemeanours--'there is only one reason for doing something. And that's because you want to.'

"You never remember entirely, never really; you reconstruct, with time, the memories in your mind.

"It was, she reflected, a threshold; and it made her ponder, not for the first time here in the islands, on the frailty of civilization and our craven. dependence on its trappings."

No doubt the trappings are Margaret's wine, whiskey, and smokes. But if I were living on a haunted island, I would probably want the first two, anyway.

"He had forgotten to bring a book. He had not anticipated having to endure leisure."

A book! Better than a Walther PPK or an Aston Martin!

"It dawned on him gradually that he had entered middle age without ever having been young."

"That's one of the other reasons the St. Jacques are booksellers. Or mostly booksellers. Books help us anchor our souls. Or re-anchor them."

"Stories aren't always merely stories, you know."

One of the best descriptions of a character that I have seen in quite a while:

"The silver hue of her chin-length bob combined with the impeccable lines of her black blazer and pencil skirt gave her the air of a retired fashion model, or perhaps assassin."

"The pleasures derived from the use of a paper knife are tactile, auditory, visual, and especially mental."

I have a Japanese paper knife on my desk, which I use to cut pages in French and Italian books. Tend to forget about it most of the time.

"This is a dead department of a dead literature in a dead language."

Been there, done that.

make that p. 168! Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

I have spent too much time on Matthew's Latin (p. 68): Christ Jesu, filia mea custodiat. If vocative, it should be Christe Jesu, filiam meam custodias ("Christ Jesus, may you watch over my daughter", which the subjunctive suggests). Or nominative: Christus Jesus filiam meam custodiat ("May Christ Jesus watch over my daughter"). On the face of it, the Latin as printed is somewhere between awkward and wrong.