Batgrl (Book Data Kept Elsewhere) > Recent Status Updates

Canto VIII, 21
...Let us therefore leave him on that shore,
wishing him well, but turning our eyes away
to something altogether different for
the sake of the poem. We'll go back to Scotland, say,
where Rinaldo - remember Rinaldo? - has been busy,
and ought to be doing well for himself. But is he?

- this is how the poet decides to leave off with one character's story (due to boredom) and skip to another.

Canto VII, 78
...But ask yourself how unhappy you'd be if
you hadn't learned to control your hippogryph.

Canto VII, 55
His hair is slick with pomade and it reeks
of eau de quelquechose. (It's very floral.)

Canto VII, 41
For such a knight to waste his days and years
in sluggishness and inactivity
and then - as anyone paying attention fears -
wind up as a rock or brook, or bush, or tree,
without a body or, as it appears,
even a soul would be good cause for tears.
Or would that soul survive somehow? Our poem
can't tell if it's in the xylem or the phloem.

Canto VII, 26
...To be a little coy
is not only good for him but also amusing
for her as she imagines her new boy,
his energies, his appetites, his vigor,
which, with art can be made even bigger.

Canto VII, 24 -25
...But the night
drags on as it can, with time's elasticity
being something of which we are all aware.
Moments are months. And you can hear your hair
growing on your head. How long can it take
for her to get from her room to this one?

Canto VII, 22
The game is fun, but even such delight
comes to its conclusion when the guests
disperse to their various chambers for the night
led by pages bearing torches to nests
of lively bliss. And Ruggiero is quite
delirious with all that this suggests -
he has the largest room, the softest bed,
and a mirror on the ceiling overhead.

Canto VII, 14:
"Her neck? Snow! Her cupcake breasts? Cream!"
- I may have made a snorting noise while reading this line...

Canto VII, 12: "...The design
of her nose is such that Envy itself cannot
imagine how to better the one she's got."
- this is describing the enchantress Alcina btw.

Canto VII, 11: "...Her hair is blonde and hangs in nonchalant curls." - really enjoying the word choices here.

For Wilkie Collins fans - BBC Radio 4 one hour drama: The Haunted Hotel. But the audio will only be online for a few more days, so listen to it soon.

Canto VI, 54: You think it's easy? No, it's very hard
to say nice things to a tree - about how its bark
is worse than its bite? You can't even send a card,
unless it has that recycled paper mark.
Ruggiero did what he could in that regard,
and then he asked for directions from the park
to Logistilla's realm.

Canto VI, 13:
"Having decided this, he took a new
suit of armor (does the hermit stock this?), a shield,
and a horse he rather liked and thought would do.
The shield had a yellow-green chevron on a field
sable (which is black)."
--I am really loving the comments in parentheses!

Canto VI, 6: He hauled himself out of the water and, dripping wet,
made his way inland until he arrived
at the hut of a convenient hermit. (You get
such characters when you need them.)...

Canto V, 88: ...Rinaldo's aim was to take the fellow apart
which he pretty much did, for as the two knights passed,
he skewered Polinesso with his lance,
like a shish-ka-bob. (You've had one of these, perchance?)

If the same ardor moves both men and women
to the sweetness of love, it is unfair
that women should be punished for being human
once, while men are praised as debonair
for doing it as often as they can do. Man
and woman should be treated the same.

I've been Shadow Reading this for a few days and am having SO much fun that I can't put it down. (No matter how much I mean to keep up with books I'm reading for challenges!)

Am thinking more and more that poor Phileas Fogg is a dull sort of traveler (and that Verne is having fun poking at the English): "He sat down quietly to breakfast in his cabin, never once thinking of inspecting the town, being one of those Englishmen who are wont to see foreign countries through the eyes of their domestics."

Mr. Fix: "A magnificent robbery, consul; fifty-five thousand pounds! We don't often have such windfalls. Burglars are getting to be so contemptible nowadays! A fellow gets hung for a handful of shillings!"

Lord Albemarle, an elderly paralytic gentleman, was now the only advocate of Phileas Fogg left. This noble lord, who was fastened to his chair, would have given his fortune to be able to make the tour of the world, if it took ten years; and he bet five thousand pounds on Phileas Fogg.

Everybody knows that England is the world of betting men, who are of a higher class than mere gamblers; to bet is in the English temperament. Not only the members of the Reform, but the general public, made heavy wagers for or against Phileas Fogg, who was set down in the betting books as if he were a race-horse.

Note, there's now a source for the Poe quote - thanks to info passed on by Sem in the comments - go back to my previous update and scroll down. There are even links to online reading material! (Yay!)

Something that fascinates me on GoodReads is the quote section. There're a lot of quotes that aren't proven as actually used by a famous person. Example: "I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity." - supposedly Poe, but no one can find a citation for where it was said or written by Poe. Meanwhile the GR librarians are epic at researching this sort of thing. (The forums are interesting stuff too.)

Gloria Steinem: "I still don't understand why so many, many years passed before I saw my mother as a person and before I understood that many many of the forces in her life are patterns women share. Like a lot of daughters, I suppose I couldn't afford to admit that what had happened to my mother was not all personal or accidental, and therefore could happen to me."

Gloria Steinem: "Would you say, I asked one of her doctors, that her spirit had been broken? "I guess that's as good a diagnosis as any," he said. "And it's hard to mend anything that's been broken for twenty years." "

Gloria Steinem: "Pity takes distance and a certainty of surviving."

Am now in the "Massacres in the South" section and having the hardest time running down any of the people mentioned in wikipedia. For instance, googling Guillaume Moget brings up links to Dumas and this book - not helpful. At least Nines exists...

"A flunkey handed him an uncut Times, which he proceeded to cut with a skill which betrayed familiarity with this delicate operation." - early in newspaper history the pages of some newspapers weren't cut, and readers had to do this themselves. (This was true of books too.) If I was better up on my history I'd know dates. Oddly I can't seem to find a history link...

Ok book you've been lovely and inspiring and moving, but I'm on the last chapter which is Gloria Steinem's essay about her mother - and it's a prime example of why I set books down at times, because it's supposed to be sad and personal and sometimes you just have to be in the right sort of mood for that. And yes, that last sentence does go on too long, sorry book.

Via random blog comment reading, I bumped into this GoodReads Bechdel Test Passed Shelf. Kinda cool - I'd never thought of applying it to books before. (wikipedia: Bechdel Test)