Tag Archives: thursday quotables

Thursday Quotables: The Witch of Blackbird Pond

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Witch of Blackbird Pond

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
(published 1958)

Making me miss my home state right now:

After the keen still days of September, the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth. Before Kit’s eyes a miracle took place, for which she was totally unprepared. She stood in the doorway of her uncle’s house and held her breath with wonder. The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch. The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze. The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels, emerald and topaz and garnet. Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her. The dried brown leaves crackled beneath her feet and gave off a delicious smoky fragrance. No one had ever told her about autumn in New England.

autumn_at_connecticut

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: The Call of the Wild

Posted in Thursday Quotables by

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Call of the Wild

The Call of the Wild by Jack London
(originally published 1903)

I’m on a classics roll! I needed a new audiobook this week, and The Call of the Wild happened to be an Audible daily special. I can’t believe I’ve never read a Jack London book before. Simply listening to his story makes me feel all rugged and outdoorsy! It’s a quick listen, but I’m really enjoying the descriptions of life in the Yukon, as seen through the doggy eyes of Buck.

Buck’s feet sank into a white mushy something very like mud. He sprang back with a snort. More of this white stuff was falling through the air. He shook himself, but more of it fell upon him. He sniffed it curiously, then licked some up on his tongue. It bit like fire, and the next instant was gone. This puzzled him. He tried it again, with the same result. The onlookers laughed uproariously, and he felt ashamed, he knew not why, for it was his first snow.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Posted in Thursday Quotables by

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

P&P&Z

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
(published 2009)

I was a little stuck for a Thursday Quotables book this week. I’ve barely touched a book for the past 10 days, after a whirlwind family celebration (and plenty of houseguests). I’m listening to the audiobook version of Pride and Prejudice, and was happy to remember that I had this zombified version sitting on my shelf.

The classic opening, with a twist:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. Never was this truth more plain that during the recent attacks at Netherfield Park, in which a household of eighteen was slaughtered and consumed by a horde of the living dead.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: Sense & Sensibility by Joanna Trollope

Posted in Thursday Quotables by

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Sense & Sensibility_TAP

Sense & Sensibility by Joanna Trollope
(published October 29, 2013)

This is not your mother’s Jane Austen:

Marianne was crying again. She was the only person Elinor had ever encountered who could cry and still look ravishing. Her nose never seemed to swell or redden, and she appeared able just to let huge tears slide slowly down her face in a way that one ex-boyfriend had said wistfully simply made him want to lick them off her jawline.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: Northanger Abbey (by Val McDermid)

Posted in Thursday Quotables by

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Northanger Abbey 3

Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid
(published March 27, 2014)

This modern retelling of Jane Austen’s first novel is pretty adorable, reimagining Catherine Morland as 17-year-old Cat, a teen girl with an overactive imagination thanks to her obsessive reading of Twilight and other vampire- and beasty-themed YA novels. Upon first view of Northanger:

“OMG,” Cat breathed. The abbey was vampire heaven.

Is it any wonder that she overreacts?

Before she could open the book, there was a clap of thunder so loud and close that Cat cried out in terror. The room was abruptly plunged into darkness and a second deafening thunderclap vibrated through the air. Cat curled into a ball and moaned softly. What terrible powers had her discovery unleashed?

The story is all quite cute, even in the quieter interludes, such as this one hanging out in the younger Tilneys’ rec room:

Cat pushed the door open and Henry looked up from a somewhat battered old guitar. He gave her a welcoming smile. “You found us. Ellie was afraid she hadn’t give you clear enough directions. Come in and join us. We like to think of this as the Slytherin common room.”

“Hardly,” Ellie said, rising from the comfy chintz sofa where she was sprawled. “When you’re around, it’s more like Hufflepuff. Typical lawyer, all hot air and bluster.”

This book is light and fluffy, and perfectly suits my short attention span right now.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: Dead in the Water

Posted in Thursday Quotables by

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Dead in the Water

Dead in the Water by Dana Stabenow
(published 1993)

I’m three books into the Kate Shugak series by Dana Stabenow, and I’m completely hooked! These mysteries, set in Alaska, have a terrific main character, and always manage to evoke the essence of life in the bush or wherever Kate may roam. In Dead in the Water, she’s working on a fishing boat in the Bering Sea while investigating a suspicious disappearance. The writing makes me damned sure that I never, ever, ever want to experience life on a boat like that!

The temperature had dropped as the weather worsened, and in the time it took the salt spray to fly through the air and hit the deck it had frozen into a multitude of tiny pellets that skipped and crackled across the deck, sounding like Rice Krispies after pouring the milk in. The spray froze to everything it touched, to the deck itself, to the pots stacked on that deck, to the mast and boom, to the rigging attached to the mast and boom, to the superstructure of the Avilda’s cabin. Every inch of the surface of the boat that was above water was encased in a sheet of ice. It was already inches thick on the bow and mast, and thickening rapidly everywhere else.

Brrrrrr. And to keep from freezing so much that the boat either capsizes or sinks from the weight of the accumulating ice, the crew has to get out on deck and attack it:

The bat rose and fell, rose and fell. Ice shattered and broke and as quickly froze over again. The Avilda groaned through the waves, creaking all the way down her hull under the strain. Kate groaned through the swing of the bat, her shoulders creaking beneath the weight, the strain. This wasn’t work, this wasn’t making a buck, this was survival, plain and simple.

I just finished this audiobook a couple of days ago, and I’m already dying for the next one in the series!

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: The Hummingbird

Posted in Thursday Quotables by

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

The Hummingbird

The Hummingbird by Stephen P. Kiernan
(released September 8, 2015)

This powerful books looks at people wounded by life and wounded by war, as well as providing a portrait of the people who care for them. Here’s part of a harsh but emotional exchange between one war veteran and the wife of another:

Joel held his arms wide. “Oh beautiful for spacious skies. Another believer in the innocence of noncombatants.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh yeah… You have no complicity in warfare at all. You are sweet and clean and would never hurt a flea.”

“What are you trying to — ”

“But us soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines, we must be the Other, the stranger, the odd thing that people maybe thank or maybe hate, but either way we are something different and weird and scary and not at all like you good, nice civilized folk.”

I’m getting close to the end of The Hummingbird, and I’m finding the writing and the characters so incredibly moving. I’ll be sharing my thoughts next week when I participate in the blog tour for this book.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: A Curious Beginning

Posted in Thursday Quotables by

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Curious Beginning

A Curious Beginning by Deanna Raybourn
(released September 1, 2015)

I’ve just started this new book by Deanna Raybourn, and I’m pretty amused so far. Set in Victorian England, A Curious Beginning centers on Veronica Speedwell, an assertive, independent young woman (and a successful lepidopterist), whose mysterious past seems to be catching up with her. Her tart statements and unwillingness to be pushed around remind me a lot of Alexia Tarabotti of The Parasol Protectorate, and that’s very good indeed.

He shook his head. “I cannot seem to formulate a clear thought in the face of such original thinking, Miss Speedwell. You have a high opinion of your sex.”

I pursed my lips. “Not all of it. We are, as a gender, undereducated and infantalized to the point of idiocy. but those of us who have been given the benefit of learning and useful occupation, well, we are proof that the traditional notions of feminine delicacy and helplessness are the purest poppycock.”

A little confidence goes a long way:

“The moonlight has addled your brain, Miss Speedwell. I have no intention of arming you, much less facing off in a duel.”

I did not take the opportunity to instruct him on the lethal properties of a cunningly wielded hatpin.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: Another Day

Posted in Thursday Quotables by

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

another day

Another Day by David Levithan
(released August 25, 2015)

This lovely book is a companion to Every Day, and offers a peek inside the head of a thoughtful teen girl who finds herself in a unique situation.

Contemplating how much of self is defined by the body:

If I were a stranger in my body, what would I think of it? I open my eyes and I’m not sure. A stranger wouldn’t know any of the stories behind any of the small scars — the tricycle fall, the lightbulb smash. A stranger might not care if my boobs aren’t identical, or if the mole on my arm has more hair than the rest of my arm. Why bother judging if you’re a stranger in a body? It’s almost like driving a car. Yes, you don’t want the car to be a shitheap, but pretty much a car is a car. It doesn’t matter what it looks like as long as it gets you where you need to go.

I know I am not a car. But as I walk through school, I imagine this smaller Rhiannon driving my body. She is my real self. The body is just a car. And I wonder. When Preston talks to me, it feel like he’s talking to the driver. But when a guy I don’t know looks at me in the hall, he’s staring at the car. When my teacher looks out at the class as he’s droning on about history, he’s not seeing the drivers, he’s seeing the parked cars. And when Justin kisses me — I don’t know. Sometimes it feels like he’s trying to kiss the driver. Other times, he’s just kissing the car.

I love David Levithan’s writing and how he captures the meaning in small moments:

There are still people looking at us. Imagining we’re having a fight. Or imagining we’re a couple. Or imagining this is a first date that’s been a total bust.

Fact: It is none of these things.

Feeling: It is all of these things.

I really enjoyed this book… and plan to write up a review as soon as I have time to sit down for more than 10 minutes at a time.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: Stardust

Posted in Thursday Quotables by

quotation-marks4

Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Stardust

Stardust by Neil Gaiman
(published 1999 )

I’m listening to the audiobook of Stardust, narrated by Neil Himself, and it’s just a delight. It’s been many years since I first read Stardust, and I’d forgotten how sweet and funny and sly it can be — and also eerie and moody and dangerous. Here are but a few little selections that either gave me the chills or made me chuckle. And they all just sound so good when read out loud:

He summoned his children to his bedside and they came, the living and the dead of them, and they shivered in the cold granite halls. They gathered about his bed and waited respectfully, the living to his right side, the dead on his left.

Or for a lighter mood:

“I knowed a man in Paphlagonia who’d swallow a live snake every morning, when he got up. He used to say, he was certain of one thing, that nothing worse would happen to him all day. ‘Course they made him eat a bowlful of hairy centipedes before they hung him, so maybe that claim was a bit presumptive.”

One more bit of conversation:

Tristran thought for some moments, and then he said, “I come from the village of Wall, where there lives a young lady named Victoria Forester, who is without peer among women, and it is to her, and to her alone, that I have given my heart. Her face is– ”

“Usual complement of bits?” asked the little creature. “Eyes? Nose? Teeth? All the usual?”

“Of course.”

“Well then, you can skip that stuff,” said the little hairy man.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!