Posts filed under “Books”
Haunted
I put off reading Haunted for over a year after a friend lent it to me. Everyone told me it was horrific, disgusting. A sampling of reviews made me wonder why anyone would ever want to read it: Reading a Palahniuk novel is like getting zipped inside a boxer’s heavy bag while the author goes […]
Being Good
From The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope: The woman was affectionate, seeking good things for others rather than for herself; but she was essentially worldly, believing that good could come out of evil, that falsehood might in certain conditions be better than truth, that shams and pretenses might do the work of true […]
Being happy
From The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope: But she was not a woman to be unhappy because she was growing old. Her happiness, like that of most of us, was ever in the future, – never reached but always coming. She, however, had not looked for happiness to love and loveliness, and need […]
Journalism today / Journalism a century ago
From The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope: The ‘Evening Pulpit’ was supposed to give daily to its readers all that had been said and done up to two o’clock in the day by all the leading people in the metropolis, and to prophesy with wonderful accuracy what would be the sayings and doings […]
Traditional values
From The Truth by Terry Pratchett: He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where “traditional values” meant “hang someone.”
The sword of Damocles
From The Truth by Terry Pratchett: “We could live like kings on a dollar a day, Arnold.” “What, you mean someone’d chop our heads off?” “No, I –” “Someone’d climb up inside the privy with a red-hot poker and –” “No! I meant –” “Someone’d drown us in a butt of wine?” “No, that’s dying […]
Too much reading
From The Truth by Terry Pratchett: He was the younger son in any case, and family tradition sent youngest sons into some church or other, where they couldn’t do much harm on a physical level. But too much reading had taken its toll. William found that he now thought of prayer as a sophisticated way […]