Luke > Recent Status Updates

'Even the mothers are here too?' one youth wailed, tears streaming down his face. 'What crime have they committed?'

Write me a novel that perfectly embodies Trentemøller's remix of Trentemøller's "Moan", and I'll worship you forever.

I wish I could say I'm surprised by the number of people who stumble upon my profile and, in the midst of this site devoted to books, refuse to read.

You should listen to those whose voices remain unheard although the wisdom they carry is shaped by their closeness to the earth. No refined language but the pace of life at a gallop refashiones outmoded images, well-worn phrases, and ways of thinking that are out of date.

I need this to be a movie or a mini-series or something pretty pretty please.

I don't know what kind of tree is just beyond my apartment window, but the fact that the bees love it makes me love it too.

I wish more works followed this one's footsteps in treating settings like living entities.

You want me to tell you about these dead kids, professor? Like felled trees, lying in such an unnaturally straight line.
What right do you have to demand that of me?

She was quite intent, holding them apart, then moving the fingers in a gesture so quick it seemed as if a dancer had made them, the half-finished mudra cut by an instant of hesitation, the sign of the lotus or the bee in flight trapped in incompletion as the audience hung on her grace, waiting.

Adulthood is planning to devote an entire evening to reading and pudding and instead falling down a rabbit hole of tax returns. Ugh.

Here only one sound had an identity. The lord of all sounds—and that was the sound of the bell tower ringing. It overrides all the other sounds and voices, which form a bed of echoes reverberating through the night. The echoes are the finest strokes of a huge painting that constitutes the deep thought of the night. This sound has a buoyancy that lifts you up and knocks you around as if you were riding on a bed of...

THE FIRST DAY OF SPRING 2016 GOOGLE DOODLE IS SO CUTE.

That was when they heard it, heard the great eerie sound, the frightening loud shrill of crickets, it had to be, a song so loud and resonant it was heavy as water around them, and it contained the night in its shriek.

Finishing the rest of this off in verse translation rather than Middle English spring break. There's academic integrity, and then there's blowhard masochism. I've read enough of the original to justify devoting my vacation to the former.

I love editions that advertise their publisher's back catalogue, especially the type that includes exciting stuff like The Sing-Song Girls of Shanghai. I'm going to have to remember to come back to this Weatherhead Books on Asia business.

No one had ever taught me how to address a person's soul.

It turns out I'm super thick when it comes to hints at a surprise visit from the best sister ever.

I'd end up quoting this entire thing if I tried to pick and choose just now.

Know why this is like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? It's cause legal guardians are the devil's backbone.

It's a testament to the quality of authors such as Austen and Shakespeare and Eliot/Evans and Chaucer that I can spend ten whole overloaded weeks simultaneously on them and still miss them when they're gone.

For every 10-20 people who leave the 500 GBBW group over the daily messages, I get one who puts them to good use. Good thing I'm more concerned about readers than a maximum consumer base.

Studying for finals is hard when things like the 2004 North & South miniseries and available library copies of Human Acts exist.

I was trying to decide between this and Mean Spirit, but the decision proved impossible to make. Good thing I haven't yet hit my lit multitasking limit.

There was no harmony in a world where one could jump in a five-hour journey from abject misery to excess.

I don't know why Goodreads is showing me ads for the National Bank of Egypt, but they're severely overestimating my ability to read Arabic.



At least, I sure hope that's Arabic.

God am I going to be glad when I can leave off rereading my 140+ pages of notes and start in on some fresh literary blood.

For God's sake don't pile difference upon difference. It's not safe.

Dealing with hit and runs is really fucking hard when kids these days are trained to blame themselves when they're out following all the bike rules and get hit by a car running a stop sign for their pains. Gets even better when academic authority is so ingrained that the legal system isn't seen as an option due to upcoming finals.

In February the National Crusade for Literacy began; it was the most amazing and moving patriotic enterprise I was fortunate to witness. Thousands of teenagers, between twelve and eighteen years old, left the comfort of their homes, their beds, and the security of their families, and scattered out all over the country to teach Nicaraguans, 70 percent of whom were illiterate, how to read.

Slowly but surely my completed reading challenges are being whittled down by Goodreads losing its shit when confronted with rereads. Sigh.