Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs > Recent Status Updates

Everything is falling in place now, amid the bracing fresh air of the North West, except to ascertain that the killer is who old Britisher Miss Pink thinks it is... wonderful Cozy Mystery, though crisper and far less cozy than the stay-at-home variety!

I think we have a suspect... and a motive. When Miss Pink gets that queasy feeling, you know she smells sumthin’ rotten!! Plus, it all adds up.

Who knew that evil could lurk amid the natural splendour that beautifies the Rocky Mountain foothills?
Miss Pink knew. She always knew it could lurk ANYWHERE!
This redoubtable sleuth’s eyes exude the inborn icy cold glint of pure logic...

Susan Cain notes that, in spite of all appearances that the points of confident-sounding people are the right ones, it is more often the slow and quiet people at a meeting who have the most closely reasoned arguments ...and are more likely to be right!

Anyone for a great deal on a cozy mystery (tons of 4-star Amazon reviews) set in the glittering Riviera of the Roaring Twenties?
99 cents today on Amazon!

Dream is a second life. I have not been able without trembling to penetrate those doors of ivory or horn that separate us from the invisible world... The Golden Ass of Apuleius and Dante’s Divine Comedy are the poetic models for these studies of the human soul.

After the first bend in the road, out of sight of the castle, they sat down and wept. No one could find consoling words...
- THE FACE OF MALEFICENT EVIL IN A HITHERTO IDYLLIC VILLAGE IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE. A spooky tale!

Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a sunless sea -
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in misery!

- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

-The ghost of the Saint has been helping poor John shovel earth on a fresh grave & John is awestruck...
“Did you notice anything about the grave, sir?” (John asks the presiding Minister) The Minister was quite sometime in answering....
“I shouldn’t talk - I should keep quiet!”

This little gem, hidden away in a little corner of the bestselling author’s house, was discovered after Cookson’s death. It is a masterpiece of wry irony - all about the jarring disconnect between naive innocence and the world’s bullies. John the gravedigger talks continually to the saint, and the world thinks he’s crazy!

Sharp, harrowing - but insightful. Even sleeping victims can wake up in time!

A deeply touching story about how Easily betrayal of childhood trust can bring nice, normal kids to the breaking point, throw their lives into a bitter tailspin, and make them fall through the cracks of accepted behaviour. It inspires an overwhelming sense of compassion for all the victims of such abuse - which has ruined their lives - and it shows us how, given faith, the miracle of healing can Really Happen!

I often wish Balzac’s highs hadn’t been so high - and his lows so devastatingly low! Because we are always hooked from the beginning with him, and he always takes us on such a shattering trip.

Like a madman at the controls of a rollercoaster...

When I finish one of his books I heave a sigh of relief - and thank Heaven I’m living in this modern age of mental hygiene.

FREUD: So many long-forgotten objects
Revealed by his undisclosed shining
Are returned to us and made precious again...
But he wishes us more than this. To be free
Is often to be lonely... (and he) would give back to
The son the mother’s richness of feeling.

Wow! I am impressed! I find myself struggling through this very lengthy book in sheer, unadulterated Awe of this man’s genius and ability to logically grasp the mindset of a pivotal age - for here we see the 19th century birth of 21st century democratic thought, in highly potent embryo!

Purchased in the wonderful Audible edition! 😁

Human beings cannot be happy for long; the compulsion to mar a scene of content is... sooner or later irresistible to the average observer. You may think you’re going your own way inoffensively enough... but make no mistake... Every garden has a snake.

- For us, the symbol that is Dr. Frank Prescott is the hated roadblock on the broad freeway of Liberalism. He is the Nameless, Faceless Spectre of the Other, the iron fist behind Presidential Addresses and Corporate pep talks. Auchincloss’ rare gift is making us love him. For he is so much LIKE us, it hurts!

- Dr. Frank Prescott, DD, is a man’s man. If any of you had a granddad who was of WWII vintage, you’ll understand. The lingua franca of the Greatest Generation was guy talk. In Jungian lingo, they repressed their Animas. And Frank, being a jock, knows only guy talk. But still, he’s beautiful! He never gives up!

The difference between pain and sacrifice is love. Love is the soul of sacrifice. All (the natural world knows) that love is not worth calling love unless it can dare and suffer for the one it loves.

This purports to be a modern New Zealand novel about an engaging family in crisis. The author’s first language was Maori! One of my best friends was in New Zealand in February and had nothing but great things to say about it. $1.34 ON AMAZON TODAY!

“You see what they’re trying to do to me?” Dr Prescott demanded with a wry smile. “They’re trying to bury me with praise. To mummify me with laudation. In the next months, or years if I am spared, I shall be choked with testimonials... Ugh! I may even get to like it. That’s the worst of it.”

(Frank) turned around with a smile that I can only describe as radiant. No other adjective would fit it.
“I’ve found my old Faith again. I’m going to Boston to see Phillips Brooks on Saturday. He thinks he can get me into divinity school in a month’s time.”
At this I went to the sideboard to pour myself a generous helping of whiskey. It would mean a terrible headache in the morning, but that no longer mattered.

Chapter 4: THE GOSPEL & THE NIGHT: (Barth says)”The effulgence, or the crater made at the percussion point of an exploding shell, the Void by which the point of intersection makes itself known in history, is not that other world which touches our world in Him.”

I belong to a simpler and less polluted generation. I have always gloried in my conception of friendship, and I will insist to my dying day that it has nothing of sex in it.
- Good one. HONI SOIT QUE MAL Y
PENSE! Bingo.

So good. I only wish this beautiful book could last forever. The intelligent reader’s It’s a Wonderful Life!

A quite sensitive, multi-layered delineation of the makings of character within an old New England boys’ school. Quiet and so unobtrusively subtle!

Today my GR friend Allen touted this one highly, and I ordered it. So much like like one of my perennial favourites, The Keys to the Kingdom. Anyway, before I thanked Allen... I noted today is the Feast Day of Justin Martyr - the very Justin of the title. Serendipity!

CAVEAT EMPTOR...
“My good man!” he said, “your book is worth far more than 250 francs - far more!”
“I will take 250 francs - not more.”
DON’T INSIST, POOR COLLECTOR - THIS BOOK IS HAUNTED! YIKES...

Bone-chilling story! Canon Alberic lived in the thick of Counter-Reformation France in a state of unscrupulousness... and from the sounds of the muffled cries coming from the bell tower - is quite UNDEAD.