Batgrl (Book Data Kept Elsewhere) > Recent Status Updates

Now wondering if the Count and Sir P are playing at Good Cop/Bad Cop. Except I'd think Sir P is too stupid to carry that off.

The Count: "He sat by the piano, with his watch-chain resting in folds, like a golden serpent, on the sea-green protuberance of his waistcoat."

A sudden long walk is sinister! Author now killing me with foreshadowing and secrets and argh, I am SO impatient! Tell me The Secret already!!!

Marian: "...say nothing to any one of what we have heard and seen. ...Because silence is safe, and we have need of safety in this house."

And after a grim description of the torture of poor Beatrice, Franceso's daughter, setting this aside - while I'm at jury duty anyway. Was way too grim/gross to read and be able to sit still. (I'm kind of a wimp in reading that sort of thing, if its too detailed.)

So no one should be surprised that various family members murder Francesco. Its annoying - after all that Francesco got away with - that his killers are caught.

Francesco invites his 13 yr old daughter Beatrice to an orgy. And has her share the same bed with her stepmother (whom she'd rarely seen before). And convinces her that saints were offspring of fathers and daughters - since she's been secluded all her life she has no idea what reality is. Stepmother threatened with death if she tells daughter there's anything wrong with this.

Francesco Cenci is current villain, who was apparently good at bribing himself out of jail when charged with "abominable crimes" - still haven't gotten to what the crimes are...

Someone online said it was Hug Your Librarian Day - is that really a day? My only quibble would be that Thank Your Librarian would be a better name, but then we in the US seem to like the hug-thing.

"Crimes for the moment disappeared, to give place to vices; but to charming vices, vices in good taste, such as those indulged in by Alcibiades and sung by Catullus." - and this sort of 'go research me' sentences are another thing that makes for slow reading progress.

"But the deep sounds of the bell were much stronger; soon it seemed to him as if an organ played an accompaniment - the sound came from the left, from the side where the heart is." -The Bell

When 4 or 5 children (who've just been confirmed in church that day) set out into the woods to find out where a bell's sound comes from - well, it's Andersen so they may never come back. So there's a bit more suspense.

Sir P to Laura: "Scruples!" he repeated. "YOUR scruples! It is rather late in the day for you to be scrupulous. I should have thought you had got over all weakness of that sort, when you made a virtue of necessity by marrying me."

Marian: "I started to my feet as suddenly as if he had struck me. If I had been a man, I would have knocked him down on the threshold of his own door, and have left his house, never on any earthly consideration to enter it again. But I was only a woman—and I loved his wife so dearly!" - As much as I like this character, I get tired of the "only a woman" bit.

The Count: "The fool's crime is the crime that is found out, and the wise man's crime is the crime that is NOT found out. If I could give you an instance, it would not be the instance of a wise man."

Ah ha, Sir Percival mentions murder: ""My good Percival," remonstrated the Count. "What is your solid English sense thinking of? The water is too shallow to hide the body, and there is sand everywhere to print off the murderer's footsteps. It is, upon the whole, the very worst place for a murder that I ever set my eyes on." "

The Count's pet mice: "They are pretty, innocent-looking little creatures, but the sight of them creeping about a man's body is for some reason not pleasant to me. It excites a strange responsive creeping in my own nerves, and suggests hideous ideas of men dying in prison with the crawling creatures of the dungeon preying on them undisturbed."

Mrs. Catherick's dog is shot and dies, Sir Percival beats his dogs, but we still haven't heard what happened to Laura's dog from back before the wedding. Hmmm.

Marian on the Count: "He flatters my vanity by talking to me as seriously and sensibly as if I was a man."

Marian on the Count: "The man has interested me, has attracted me, has forced me to like him. ...and how he hwas worked the miracle is more than I can tell." - now that I did not see coming.

Laura to Marian: "Promise you will never marry, and leave me. It is selfish to say so, but you are so much better off as a single woman - unless - unless you are very fond of your husband - but you won't be very fond of anybody but me, will you?"

"Perhaps I read her letters wrongly in the past, and am now reading her face wrongly in the present?" - neat turn of phrase, that.

And I'm back to loving Miss Holcombe again for wanting to burn all of the hideous family portraits.

"The main body of the building is of the time of that highly-overrated woman, Queen Elizabeth." - again, Miss Holcombe isn't high on praise for women. Though this seems odd because Elizabeth took on and handled many events as well as any male ruler.

Miss Halcomb is so well informed on what married women are like that I keep wondering how she acquired this knowledge, and also how has Laura remained so uninformed.

"Being, however, nothing but a woman, condemned to patience, propriety, and petticoats for life, I must respect the house-keeper's opinions, and try to compose myself in some feeble and feminine way." - Miss Holcomb repeatedly makes me intensely happy to live in the present century.

So the marriage has taken place and it's interesting how there's been no word on what's happening with Laura's pet dog that disliked Sir Percival.

So glad that Miss Halcombe is back to hating Sir Percival instead of trying to like him. Much easier when he's the villain, otherwise all the time is spent with many questions and no answers.

So the part where Brynhild goes from loving Sigurd to angry that there's been a marriage mix-up to wanting to kill Sigurd - yeah, that's kind of a leap of craziness. Getting someone else to do it via poisoned wolf flesh is an example of the crazy. Proper way - put on your big girl armor and kill him yourself.

So Sigurd marries the wrong person, and helps someone else cheat and marry Brynhild, and only later does the forgetfulness spell wear off but then he does the Suffering Silently Thing. I'd like him a lot better if he'd complain a little. Oh and everyone gets a Curse thanks to the gold, or the ring, or both. This is why this is the stuff of opera.