Eggp > Recent Status Updates

18. Bram Stoker - Dracula's Guest, 2 stars. Know-it-all goes for a spooky walk before snowstorm.
19. Henry James - The Romance of Certain Old Clothes, 3 stars. Jealous sister marries dead sister's husband.
20. Anton Chekhov - A Bad Business, 2 stars. Watchman finds man wandering around cemetery in the dark.
22. Thomas Hardy - The Withered Arm, 3 stars. Blameless new wife cursed by husband's former lover.

01. The Fifth Head of Cerberus, 4 stars. Unethical scientist father conducts disturbing experiments on sons.
02. "A Story," by John V. Marsch, 3 stars. Twin brothers are separated into different tribes/religions, meet under unfortunate circumstances in adulthood.
03. V.R.T., 4 stars. Earth anthropologist (maybe) goes looking for aboriginal folk, commits unknown crime (maybe), is imprisoned seemingly indefinitely.

14. Mark Twain - Cannibalism in the Cars, 3 stars. Man recounts how he survived a blizzard.
15. Sheridan Le Fanu - Madam Crowl's Ghost, 4 stars. Crazy old lady scares young servant.
16. Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Bobok: From Somebody's Diary, 2 stars. Eavesdropping on the dead.
17. Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam - The Very Image, 1 star. Guy judges businessmen.

09. Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Minister's Black Veil, 3 stars. Preacher gives everyone the creeps by hiding his face.
11. Charles Dickens - Christmas Ghosts, 2 stars. Various types of ghosts are listed.
12. Wilkie Collins - A Terribly Strange Bed, 3 stars. Winning/gambling in France might get you murdered.
13. Elizabeth Gaskell - The Old Nurse's Story, 4 stars. Spooky mansion has a vengeful ghost lurking outside.

Word: "I suffer for all humiliations. Yet I am also ruthless, marmoreal. I do not see how you can say that it is fortunate to have lived."

1. of, relating to, or suggestive of marble or a marble statue especially in coldness or aloofness

Accidental haiku in the wild:

‘I burn, I shiver,’
said Jinny, ‘out of this sun,
into this shadow.’

Wiki: "In the meantime the statue, which was that of Marshal Foch on his horse, stood high up among those trees, stiller than any of them."

Wiki: "All modern champions are of this breed, and all are descendants of a certain brilliant animal, named Old Hemp, who was born in Northumberland in 1893."

Wiki: "Ordering the ship to overlay its long-range visuals, she runs her fingers across the holoed image of ice rills, sestrugi dunes, and glacial crevasses."

Wiki: "...had squandered a decade of gray life on an erudite work dealing with a forgotten group of unnecessary poetasters, and kept a detailed diary, in cryptogrammed verse, which he hoped posterity would someday decipher and, in sober backcast, proclaim the greatest literary achievement of our time..."

Wiki: "...his striking resemblance, somewhat en jeune, to Jan van Eyck’s ample-jowled, fluff-haloed Canon van der Paele, seized by a fit of abstraction in the presence of the puzzled Virgin to whom a super, rigged up as St. George, is directing the good Canon’s attention."

Wiki: "The living room was scantily and dingily furnished, but had a rather attractive bay harboring a huge old globe, where Russia was painted a pale blue, with a discolored or scrabbled patch all over Poland."

Art: "Methodically Pnin inspected Hoecker’s “Girl with a Cat” above the bed, and Hunt’s “The Belated Kid” above the bookshelf."

Word: "Whereas the degree in sociology and political economy that Pnin had obtained with some pomp at the University of Prague around 1925 had become by mid-century a doctorate in desuetude, he was not altogether miscast as a teacher of Russian."

1. Disuse, obsolescence (for example, the state of a custom that is no longer observed nor practised).

Wiki: "Duré had been resurrected carrying Father Hoyt’s cruciform as well as his own, and had then returned during the chaos of the Fall to become the first antipope in modern history."

DNF.

Wiki: "...only, if you get close enough, inside what’s called the ergosphere, it isn’t black. You probably could see something."

16. The Sorrows of Tweetyman (1895), 4 stars. Marian is an ambitious and conniving wife.
17. The Dromios (1900), 3 stars. Brothers meet a pimp & friends.
18. A Forsyte Encounters the People (1917), 4 stars. Eustace shelters with the common folk.
19. Soames and the Flag (1914-1918), 4 stars. Watching WWI from the sidelines.

11. Midsummer Madness (1880), 3 stars. George lusts after a married woman.
12. The Hondekoeter (1880), 4 stars. James buys a giant chicken.
13. Cry of Peacock (1883), 3 stars. Oblivious Soames can't sleep.
14. Francie's Fourpenny Foreigner (1888), 4 stars. Buying off an unsuitable boyfriend.
15. Four-In-Hand Forsyte (1890), 4 stars. Swithin disapproves of bicycles.

Wiki: "June arriving, and the weather turning hot, Major Basset, “that poopstick” as George now called him in thought, went into camp with his Militia."

06. Nicholas Rex (1864), 3 stars. Wife runs off to get what's hers.
07. A Sad Affair (1867), 3 stars. Young Jolyon tries to be one of the cool kids.
08. Revolt at Roger's (1870), 3 stars. Kids protest butler's firing.
09. June's First Lame Duck (1876), 3 stars. Fattening up an ugly girl to amuse herself.
10. Dog at Timothy's (1878), 4 stars. Aunt Juley finds a puppy.

01. The Buckles of Superior Dosset (1821-1863), 3 stars. Aunt Ann parts with a family heirloom.
02. Sands of Time (1821-1863), 4 stars. Old Jolyon remembers his mother.
03. Hester's Little Tour (1845), 4 stars. Hidden pages reveal a wild side.
04. Timothy's Narrow Squeak (1851), 4 stars. Soames looks into an aborted proposal.
05. Aunt Juley's Courtship (1855), 4 stars. Ladies love a fine beard.

Word: "Timothy cannot bear anyone to see him affected in any way, it puts him into a perfect fantod."


1. A state of worry or nervous anxiety, irritability
2. An irritable outburst

Wiki: "Juley and I played bézique for some time, and I got more and more anxious..."

Word: "His jovial poise had deserted him, and when the three of them were sitting before the fire in the evening, he seemed to want to get himself into the most hobbledehoy and uncomfortable positions possible."

1. An awkward adolescent boy

Word: "Luis watched them with a weather eye, noting how quick their steps were and how reluctant they were to make eye contact with anyone."

1. an eye quick to observe coming changes in the weather
2. constant and shrewd watchfulness and alertness

Wrapt up in Warm Flannel. Drunk with spirituous liquors.

Wrinkle. You have one wrinkle more in your arse; i.e. you have one piece of knowledge more than you had, every fresh piece of knowledge being supposed by the vulgar naturalists to add a wrinkle to that part.

Yankey, or Yankey Doodle. A booby or country lout; a name given to the New England men in North America.

Van-Neck. Miss or Mrs. Van-Neck; a woman with large breasts, a bushel bubby.

Vice Admiral of the Narrow Seas. A drunken man that pisses under the table into his companion shoes.

Urchin. A child, a little fellow; also a hedgehog.

Urinal of the Planets. Ireland; so called from the frequent rains in that island.

Winter's Day. He is like a winter's day, short and dirty.

State. To lie in state; to be in bed with three harlots.

To Strum. To have carnal knowledge of a woman; also to play badly on the harpsichord, or any other stringed instrument.

Sugar Stick. The virile member.

Thief. You are a thief and a murderer, you have killed the baboon and stole his face; vulgar abuse.

Tuzzy-muzzy. The monosyllable.

Riding St. George. The woman uppermost on the amorous congress, that is, the dragon upon St. George.

Slice. To take a slice; to intrigue, particularly with a married woman, because a slice of a cut loaf is not missed.

Squirrel. A prostitute: because she, like that animal, covers her back with her tail.

Stallion. A man kept by an old lady for secret services.