Comments by knitandpurl

  • "Which was excellent, for they had room to spare for Hulda and her things, and room for her to wander about and sigh wistfully and be generally aoristic about her life."

    Keeper of Enchanted Rooms by Charlie N. Holmberg

    April 6, 2023

  • "She tossed her spectacles onto the bed and lit a candle. Crossed the room and opened the window as wide as it would go, beckoning in a hiemal breeze."

    Keeper of Enchanted Rooms by Charlie N. Holmberg

    April 6, 2023

  • "She hadn't put any wards in the living room or adjoining sunroom, and dark shadows roiled within, as though the house were having a tirrivee at having been forced into order."

    Keeper of Enchanted Rooms by Charlie N. Holmberg

    April 6, 2023

  • "A landsman could hardly have worn this garb and shown his face, and worn and shown them both with such a galliard air, without undergoing stern question before a magistrate, and probably incurring fine or imprisonment, or perhaps an exhibition in the stocks."

    The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne

    March 23, 2023

  • "We have had, and may still have, worse things to tell of him; but none, we apprehend, so pitiably weak; no evidence, at once so slight and so irrefragable, of a subtle disease, that had long since begun to eat into the real substance of his character."

    The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

    March 22, 2023

  • "The helpful inmate had departed, without one backward glance to gather up the meed of gratitude, if any were in the hearts of those whom she had served so zealously."

    Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

    March 20, 2023

  • "The besom of reform has swept him out of office; and a worthier successor wears his dignity and pockets his emoluments."

    -- From The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

    March 15, 2023

  • "I give him a pamphlet gladly, and he places it on a pile of other pamphlets from other companies, on the handy pamphlet table in his home's entryway, an aedicula to life's mysterious accumulation of printed collateral."

    Temporary by Hilary Leichter, p 133 of the Coffee House Press paperback

    August 15, 2021

  • "Sometimes they made islands or great mountains enclosing lakes of deep turquoise-blue, or liquid amber, or chrysoprase-green; sometimes dark headlands jutted into strange, lost seas; sometimes slender strips of wonderful lands joined other wonderful lands together."

    A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

    June 28, 2020

  • "On the way a serac falls and the waist of a glacier—a series of accumulation crevasses—crumbles."

    The Future of Ice by Gretel Ehrlich, p 33 of the Vintage paperback edition

    August 2, 2019

  • "What's left behind are new surfaces: kettle moraines, outwash plains, pingos, and scoured barren grounds."

    The Future of Ice by Gretel Ehrlich, p 33 of the Vintage paperback edition

    August 2, 2019

  • "In the mountains behind Ushuaia lived the Selk'nam (also known as Ona) Indians, guanaco-robed hunters of the harsh Fuegean mountains and plains, whom the Yamana feared."

    iThe Future of Ice by Gretel Ehrlich, p 13 of the Vintage paperback edition

    August 2, 2019

  • "I followed the orthodromic routes of migrating arctic birds, their great, arcing circles as they flew between Arctic and the icy coasts and islets of the South Atlantic Ocean: arctic terns, long-tailed skuas, jaegers, and sanderlings, among others."

    The Future of Ice by Gretel Ehrlich, p xv of the Vintage paperback edition

    August 1, 2019

  • "This took a considerable time, and Stephen looked steadily about him, examining the cabin from side to side: it was like a larger version of the Desaix's stateroom (how glad he was the Desaix was safe) and it, too, was singularly beautiful and full of light – the same range of curved stern-windows, the same inward-leaning side-walls (the ship's tumblehome, in fact) and the same close, massive white-painted beams overhead in extraordinarily long pure curves right across from one side to another: a room in which common domestic geometry had no say."

    Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 407 of the Norton paperback edition

    July 18, 2019

  • "Jack stuffed his glass into the pocket of the grego Stephen had brought him, ran up to the masthead, twined himself firmly into the rigging and trained the telescope in the direction of the pointing arm."

    Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 162 of the Norton paperback edition

    July 13, 2019

  • "The felucca was almost touching now, and a tame genet – a usual creature in Barbary craft, on account of the rats – stood on the rail, looking eagerly up, ready to spring."

    Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 156 of the Norton paperback edition

    July 13, 2019

  • "A sloop with the depth of a mere ten feet ten inches cannot rival a ship of the line for dank airless obscurity below; but the Sophie did astonishingly well, and Stephen was obliged to call for another lantern to check and lay out his instruments and the meagre store of bandages, lint, tourniquets and pledgets."

    Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 130 of the Norton paperback edition

    July 13, 2019

  • "But even so, this was a comfortable height. Eighty-seven feet less the depth of the kelson – say seventy-five."

    Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 87 of the Norton paperback edition

    July 13, 2019

  • "He took two or three turns, looking up at the yards: they were braced as sharp as the main and foremast shrouds would allow, but they were not as sharp as they might have been in an ideal world, and he made a mental note to tell the bosun to set up cross catharpings – they might gain three or four degrees."

    Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 74 of the Norton paperback edition

    July 8, 2019

  • "'Don't ee do it, sir!' he cried, covering the touch-hole with his hand. 'If you could but see her poor knees – and the spirketting started in five separate places, oh dear, oh dear.'"

    Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 70 of the Norton paperback edition

    July 8, 2019

  • "'Keep her so,' he said to the timoneer, and gave the order, the long-expected and very welcome order, to pipe to dinner."

    Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 70 of the Norton paperback edition

    July 8, 2019

  • "He showed Jack the two twelve-pounders with great good will. 'As pretty a pair as the heart of man could desire,' he said, stroking their cascabels as Jack signed for them; but after that his mood seemed to change – there were several other captains in front of Jack – fair was fair – turn and turn about – them thirty-sixes were all in the way and would have to be moved first – he was precious short of hands."

    Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 62 of the Norton paperback edition

    July 8, 2019

  • "In any case, his mind was too busy to be seeking after an elusive neume, for he was about to report to a new captain, a man upon whom his comfort and ease of mind was to depend, to say nothing of his reputation, career and prospects of advancement."

    Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 54 of the Norton paperback edition

    July 8, 2019

  • "Black wheatears that must have a brood not far: one of the smaller eagles in the sky."

    Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 53 of the Norton paperback edition

    July 8, 2019

  • "How did he manage to make a living in the sparse thin grass of that stony, sun-beaten landscape, so severe and parched, with no more cover than a few tumbles of pale stone, a few low creeping hook-thorned caper-bushes and a cistus whose name Stephen did not know?"

    Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 53 of the Norton paperback edition

    July 8, 2019

  • "And where should we be without them, God forbid: and, indeed, the skill and dispatch and dexterity with which Mr Florey at the hospital here everted Mr Browne's eparterial bronchus would have amazed and delighted you."

    Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 37 of the Norton paperback edition

    July 5, 2019

  • "My patient died at sea and we buried him up there by St. Philip's: poor fellow, he was in the last stages of phthisis."

    Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 37 of the Norton paperback edition

    July 5, 2019

  • "It was not until I had been some years in Ireland and had written my little work on the phanerogams of Upper Ossory that I came to understand how monstrously I had wasted my time."

    Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 36 of the Norton paperback edition

    July 5, 2019

  • "But I shall sleep aboard, of course; so pray be good enough to send a boat for my chest and dunnage."

    Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 32 of the Norton paperback edition

    July 5, 2019

  • "She bore as much resemblance to her ordinary self as the rigid bosun, sweating in a uniform coat that must have been shaped with an adze, did to the same man in his shirt-sleeves, puddening the topsail yard in a heavy swell; yet there was an essential relationship, and the snowy sweep of the deck, the painful brilliance of the two brass quarter-deck four-pounders, the precision of the cylinders in the cable-tier and the parade-ground neatness of the galley's pots and tubs all had a meaning."

    Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, p 30 of the Norton paperback edition

    July 5, 2019

  • Come buy, come buy:

    Our grapes fresh from the vine,

    Pomegranates full and fine

    Dates and sharp bullaces

    (from "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti)

    March 25, 2019

  • "Then again she liked the idea of herself up in the air with her compound eyes, hovering, havering, gathering data."

    Crudo by Olivia Laing, p 10

    January 13, 2019

  • ""We're not hurting anyone," Beth said, still rocking, but with a new composure, her lips wiped, her eyes miotic, blue."

    "Show Recent Some Love" by Sam Lipsyte, p 65 of the November 19, 2018 issues of the New Yorker

    January 12, 2019

  • "The book's cover features a painting by the nineteenth-century artist Jean Léone Gérôme titled The Snake Charmer. A blue-tiled wall, an audience of armed men, a fipple flute player, and a naked boy whose back is to us. A large, thick snake is coiled around the boy's muscular body."

    Too Much and Not the Mood by Durga Chew-Bose, p 34

    May 19, 2018

  • ""That excuse would do if this was an ordinary day," she replied. "But there's a bit of a shemozzle on, my children. As you may have heard.""

    Concluding by Henry Green, p 91 of the New Directions paperback

    May 7, 2018

  • ""And such a day of it altogether, with the tamasha this evening" Edge continued."

    Concluding by Henry Green, p 11 of the New Directions paperback

    May 4, 2018

  • "I saw her tossing newly gauffred curls as the open roadster headed east, away from Ollie..."

    Talking It Over by Julian Barnes, p 104

    March 28, 2018

  • "Rather I was a simple, a frangible petitioner, assisted only by the goddess Flora."

    Talking It Over by Julian Barnes, p 90

    March 28, 2018

  • "They took me home that night in Gillian's rebarbatively quotidian motor-car."

    Talking It Over by Julian Barnes, p 48

    March 28, 2018

  • "He practically had me signed up for the European Monetary System when all I wanted was to touch him for a gold moidore."

    Talking It Over by Julian Barnes, p 29

    March 28, 2018

  • "On the walls of the Castel dell'Ovo, Carlo Andreoli makes out the signs of the sea, the soft tufa eroded by the ever-rising damp, spurts of froth appear, stars flicker, fireworks in the distance, white fires moving, renewing."

    Malacqua by Nicola Pugliese, translated by Shaun Whiteside, p 10

    January 8, 2018

  • "The beauty of those two words—Moonee Ponds—dawned on me. They made me think of a chain of quiet billabongs under a blurred moon."

    - From "Suburbia" by Helen Garner, p 22 in Everywhere I Look

    November 29, 2017

  • "I know the op shop doesn't open till eleven on Saturdays, that the motor that roars and roars at 10 p.m. at the bottom of the street is not some crazed hoon but the railway men mending the line."

    From "White Paint and Calico" by Helen Garner, p 18 of Everywhere I Look

    November 29, 2017

  • "In old trucks, carburetors are finicky: sensitive to particles, to climate, to air, to residue, and to tinkering. Gasoline congeals in the carburetor's orifices, plugging the venturis with a gelatinous film."

    Fish in Exile by Vi Khi Nao, p 25

    May 23, 2017

  • "Her heels click as she descends into the street. Alone, I turn to face the wall. I stare at the daedal patterns on the wallpaper."

    Fish in Exile by Vi Khi Nao, p 21

    May 23, 2017

  • "The sound is like a credit card being scraped over a comb, or a guiro percussion instrument or, like the corncrake's onomatopoeic Latin name, Crex crex."

    The Outrun by Amy Liptrot, p 124

    May 9, 2017

  • "And I recalled the sluggish misgivings I'd felt when the man took the money out of my hand and held up a tethered bundle of muricated sprigs for me to somehow take hold of in return."

    Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett, p 159

    April 22, 2017

  • "In many ways this aerated point of view appeared more troubling than the costive statement from which it had originated, and I was quite defeated in my efforts to distinguish anything amusing about it."

    Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett, p 56

    April 19, 2017

  • "These peering tributaries are in amongst the other stones and stars, but they are not quite of them, I'd continue, warming to my minacious theme."

    Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett, p 48

    April 19, 2017

  • "It had something to do with love. About the essential brutality of love. About those adventitious souls who deliberately seek out love as a prime agent of total self-immolation."

    Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett, p 11

    April 19, 2017

  • "But shake out a palmful of flaked almonds and you'll see they closely resemble fingernails that have come away from a hand which has just seen the light of day.

    Black jam and blanched fingernails, slowly sinking into the oozing burgoo!"

    Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett, pp 5-6

    April 17, 2017

  • "It was a bitter cold Sunday, wet and misty, dismal, dreich, everything as dripping and grey as only Inverness in November can be; we stood at the Memorial by the river in our uniforms with the Provost and his wife and some people from the council and the British Legion, and we each stepped forward in turn below the names carved on it to do this thing, the weight of which, the meaning and resonance of which, I didn't really understand, thought I'd thought I knew all about war and the wars, until I got home after it and my parents, with a kindness that was quiet and serious, sat me down in the warm back room, made me a mug of hot chocolate then sat there with me in a silence, not a companionable silence, more mindful than that."

    "Good voice" by Ali Smith, p 35 of Public Library and Other Stories

    February 20, 2017

  • "You can tell me at supper. Aunt Oona's having the whole family over for Irish stew and crubeens."

    Crosstalk by Connie Willis, p 27

    February 14, 2017

  • "Aunt Oona's messages—except for three "Where are you, mavourneen?" inquiries—were all reminders that Sean O'Reilly was planning to read "The Passing of the Gael" at the Daughters of Ireland meeting, and the whole family was going."

    Crosstalk by Connie Willis, pp 11-12

    February 13, 2017

  • "No: I hold you a pelorus, a flexing mirror, strange quarters for the wind of God."

    The Bone People by Keri Hulme, p 535

    February 12, 2017

  • "Her left hand is studded by four silverset cabochons of greenstone, and there's a star sapphire with three dolphins circling it deiseal in gold on her right hand."

    The Bone People by Keri Hulme, p 299

    February 10, 2017

  • Common name for several Acaena species in New Zealand; they have burrs.

    "Two days ago in the Duke, and still the hooks in that conversation stick in her throat like a half-swallowed bidibid."

    The Bone People by Keri Hulme, p 168

    February 9, 2017

  • "I have taken to wandering a lot, gyrovague, te kaihau."

    The Bone People by Keri Hulme, p 118

    February 8, 2017

  • ""It was a sore subject. Once upon a time it was full of trinkets and junky glass stuff, the sort people give you but you never really need."

    "Mathoms.""

    The Bone People by Keri Hulme, p 100

    February 7, 2017

  • ""Come on," she says to the entranced child, "downstairs and help us collect some puha to go with them.""

    The Bone People by Keri Hulme, p 84

    February 7, 2017

  • "An enemy inside my broch ... a burglar ensconced here."

    The Bone People by Keri Hulme, p 40

    February 5, 2017

  • Actually fucoid but, as it appears in The Bone People by Keri Hulme:

    ""The sole midlittoral fuccoid," she intones solemnly, and squashes a bead of it under the butt of her stick."

    February 5, 2017

  • "How's Tisco?"

    "Same as ever. His magnum opus just gets longer and longer, and the title now changes daily."

    "What was it, last you heard?"

    "The Proud Puriri of Percipience ... A Disturbingly Dialectical Distillation of This Nation's Solipsistic Soul, Wrought from the Fabric of Our Unconscious and the Wiry Strands of a No. 9 Sable Brush..."

    Hicksville by Dylan Horrocks, p 74

    February 3, 2017

  • "Overhead, lounging across doorways and oblivious to my progress, floated half-naked stucco women with dusty bosoms; higher still, edging towards the invisible land that extends behind us, the heads of National Revivalists grew from the facades like giant polypores."

    Empty Streets by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 87 of the Dalkey Archive paperback edition

    January 17, 2017

  • "He had two deep folds in his cheeks running from his nostrils past his mouth and the long tuft of black beard on his chin was tied into three little tails like the barbels of a cranky hornpout."

    The Luck Uglies by Paul Durham, p 141

    January 9, 2017

  • "He had two deep folds in his cheeks running from his nostrils past his mouth and the long tuft of black beard on his chin was tied into three little tails like the barbels of a cranky hornpout."

    The Luck Uglies by Paul Durham, p 141

    January 9, 2017

  • "Bryony is not having her first drink of today until 18.00 so the big question is what to do between now and then. The obvious answer is admin, but that is very boring. And also quite hard at this lazy, pre-evening, pinkish, oscitant time of day."

    The Seed Collectors by Scarlett Thomas, p 337

    December 30, 2016

  • "Neither were we dwarfish, or of a giantlike stature, but proportional, with brown hair, sound teeth, sweet breath, and tunable voices—not given to wharling in the throat, I mean, or speaking through the nose, unless we had a cold—yet we were none so prone to beauty as she, and I perhaps least of them all."

    Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton

    December 12, 2016

  • "And then, when he had finished his supper, he would get out his collection of patibulary treasures, and over a bowl of negus finger lovingly the various bits of gallows rope, the blood-stained glove of a murdered strumpet, the piece of amber worn as a charm by a notorious brigand chief, and gloat over the stealthy steps of his pet tiger, the Law."

    Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, p 153 of the Cold Spring Press paperback

    December 6, 2016

  • I didn't know this in the sense of "A narrow piece of tape used to bind or edge fabric" until this:

    "If you remember, in the eye of the law fairy fruit was regarded as woven silk, and many days were wasted in a learned discussion of the various characteristics of gold tissues, stick tuftaffities, figured satins, wrought grograines, silk mohair and ferret ribbons."

    Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, p 113 of the Cold Spring Press paperback

    December 6, 2016

  • "Let mental suffering be intense enough, and it becomes a sort of carminative."

    Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, p 98 of the Cold Spring Press paperback

    December 6, 2016

  • "Please, Master Ranulph, be a good chap and tell me what took you at supper time when that doitered old weaver came in. You gave me quite a turn, screaming like that."

    Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, p 65 of the Cold Spring Press paperback

    December 6, 2016

  • "Dame Marigold, as she sat watching him, felt that he was rather like a cockchafer that had just flounced in through the open window, and, with a small, smacking sound, was bouncing itself backwards and forwards against its own shadow on the ceiling – a shadow that looked like a big, black velvety moth."

    Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, p 35 of the Cold Spring Press paperback edition

    November 27, 2016

  • "Every point of interest, every clue to the past, every quoit and barrow, every wayside cross, every round and camp and every ancient barton of west Cornwall draws his foot-borne curiosity."

    Rising Ground by Philip Marsden, p 192 of the University of Chicago Press hardcover

    September 26, 2016

  • "Around the creek were a number of pedunculate oaks that present something of a puzzle."

    Rising Ground by Philip Marsden, p 172 of the University of Chicago Press hardcover

    September 26, 2016

  • "Early the next morning, I rose at dawn to walk over the hill to Glastonbury. I'd tried once before, one January years earlier, but fell in a rhyne down on the Levels and lost heart."

    Rising Ground by Philip Marsden, p 103 of the University of Chicago Press hardcover

    September 26, 2016

  • "The Arthurian tales have more recently brought other camp-followers to Tintagel, the sutlers of crystals and wind-chimes, the tarot-readers and soul-curers."

    Rising Ground by Philip Marsden, p 88 of the University of Chicago Press hardcover

    September 26, 2016

  • "I remembered the phreatic, throat-like shape from years ago; and the smell – heavy and stagnant – of something I could never quite identify."

    Rising Ground by Philip Marsden, p 7 of the University of Chicago Press hardcover

    September 21, 2016

  • "When one investigator in New York started to negotiate the terms of leaving a bar with a woman late at night, she demanded that he buy her a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of whiskey. And while he was it it, could he come with her to the butcher to pay an outstanding bill? (It never seems to occur to the investigators that the women they write up might have recognized them for what they were, and decided to mess around.)

    'I told her all the butcher shops were closed now,' he wrote, 'and I didn't care to travel around from store to store, she got sore at me and called me a piker and told me to beat it.'"

    Labor of Love by Moira Weigel, p 22

    August 31, 2016

  • "A woman reclines in a long dress with fine floral patterning on a bed with a checkered bedspread. Her head scarf is polka-dotted. The bed is placed in front of a wall, which is draped with a paisley cloth. And ever her face is marked with cicatrices."

    "Portrait of a Lady" by Teju Cole, p 129 of Known and Strange Things

    August 20, 2016

  • "He had a feeling for the inanimate, too, for ruins and comminuted landscapes, places that have been reduced to their smallest units by the forces of nature and history."

    "Poetry of the Disregarded" by Teju Cole, p 42 of Known and Strange Things

    August 18, 2016

  • "In the Neapolitan country, where everybody was a spy, a soldier, a priest, or a lazzarone, the shameless beggars of all four denominations incessantly pounced on the Bottle and made it a pretext for extorting money from me."

    - "The Italian Prisoner" by Charles Dickens, in The Uncommercial Traveller

    July 24, 2016

  • "I wore a suit of barathea I'd ordered special. The only way you can clean that fabric is with gasoline."

    We Love You, Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenidge, p 233

    July 10, 2016

  • "Every cloud lenites the purple capital letters of the pirouetting peaks of the mountains."

    The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 169

    June 5, 2016

  • "The Master called me that too, did he. Say it again, Margaret... A bowsie! A bowsie, Margaret!"

    The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 167

    (http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/bowsie)

    June 5, 2016

  • "Every other day she was choking with a cold. But there wasn't much wrong with her voice on those days. "If I wasn't hoarse," she'd say to you after the funeral, "I would really have keened him." The lying latchico!"

    The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 141

    June 5, 2016

  • ""You have a crude culchie mind," he said, pissing himself laughing. "They're only pictures. They won't do you any harm.""

    The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 135

    June 5, 2016

  • "How would Little Kate know anything then, except that her tongue is as long as a langer?"

    The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 90

    June 5, 2016

  • "...So I only had ten miserable pounds worth of an altar, despite the fact that I shitted bricks chasing every old skanger and scum bucket putting money on their altars."

    The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 70

    June 5, 2016

  • "I swear you won't hear a bleep or a squeal out of her until she is stuffed up to the oxter."

    The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 67

    June 5, 2016

  • "But it was when he got really stocious—on a fair day, or a Friday, or whatever—that's when we heard the real fun."

    The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 52

    June 5, 2016

  • ""Downing poteen like water," she said. Off I went. He was out of his tree and nobody in the house was able to hold him down. You couldn't say they weren't a bunch of wimps..."

    The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 37

    June 5, 2016

  • "I was spreading a bit of manure for Patrick down in Garry Dyne when one of Tommy's young ones came up to me. "Maggie Frances is dying," she said. And what do you know, Kitty, the young one, was just going in the door when I reached the end of the haggard."

    The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 7

    June 5, 2016

  • "I have the crucifix on my breast anyway, the one I bought myself at the mission...But where's the black one that Tom's wife, Tom the crawthumper, brought me from Knock, that last time they had to lock him up?"

    The Dirty Dust by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, translated by Alan Titley, p 3

    June 5, 2016

  • "She supposed it was inevitable that, in due time, these men would take those liberties with her that have ever been claimed as angary by irregular fighting men, who have willfully severed themselves from the softening feminine influence of civilized society, with those women who have had the misfortune to become their captives."

    The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 469 of the Spectra trade paperback

    May 26, 2016

  • "The unmarked, decussating paths would have been confusing to anyone but a native."

    The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 375 of the Spectra trade paperback

    May 25, 2016

  • "As far as Miranda could see—all the way to Nanjing, maybe—it was lined with Western and Nipponese boutiques and department stores, and the airspace above the street was besprent with almond-size aerostats, each with its own cine camera and pattern-recognition ware to watch for suspicious-looking congregations of young men who might be Fist cells."

    The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 297 of the Spectra trade paperback

    May 24, 2016

  • "One day a barkentine with red sails appeared in the bay, and a red-headed man with a red beard came to shore."

    The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 197 of the Spectra trade paperback

    May 22, 2016

  • "Many of the persons who held such opinions were, of course, guilty of the most nefandous conduct themselves, and yet saw no paradox in holding such views because they were not hypocrites themselves—they took no moral stances and lived by none."

    The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 191 of the Spectra trade paperback

    May 22, 2016

  • In The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is also called a "Propaedeutic Enchiridion" (p 184 of the Spectra trade paperback edition)

    May 22, 2016

  • "preparatory study or instruction", per Merriam-Webster

    In The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is also called a "Propaedeutic Enchiridion" (p 184 of the Spectra trade paperback edition)

    May 22, 2016

  • "Dr. X was unusually clever at taking advantage of the principle of grith, or right of refuge, which in modern usage simply meant that Coastal Republic officials like Judge Fang could not enter the Celestial Kingdom and arrest someone like Dr. X."

    The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 126 of the Spectra trade paperback

    May 19, 2016

  • "The nacelles containing the tiny air turbines, which gave such devices the power to propel themselves through the air, were prominent; it was built for speed."

    The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 98 of the Spectra trade paperback

    May 19, 2016

  • "Before long the streets widened, and the hush of tires on pavement blended with the buller of waves against the gradual shores of Pudong."

    The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 84 of the Spectra trade paperback

    May 19, 2016

  • "I hope the above poem illuminates the ideas I only touched on during our meeting of Tuesday last, and that it may contribute to your paroemiological studies."

    The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 83 of the Spectra trade paperback

    paroemiology (M-W) is "the subject of proverbs"

    May 19, 2016

  • "This was nothing more than a small propeller, or series of them, mounted in a tubular foramen wrought through the body of the aerostat, drawing in air at one end and forcing it out the other to generate thrust."

    The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 56 of the Spectra trade paperback

    May 17, 2016

  • "If a campus was a green quadrilateral described by hulking, hederated Gothics, then this was a campus."

    The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 47 of the Spectra trade paperback

    May 17, 2016

  • "Bud had paid a few visits to the local laager, studied some of their training ractives on his home mediatron, put in some extra hours at the gym trying to meet their physical standards, even gone to a couple of horrific bible-study sessions."

    The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 30 of the Spectra trade paperback

    May 17, 2016

  • "The engineers of the Royal Vacuum Utility were already at work expanding the eutactic environment."

    The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 36 of the Spectra trade paperback

    May 17, 2016

  • "All the other thetes, coarcted into the tacky little claves belonging to their synthetic phyles, turning up their own mediatrons to drown out the Senderos, setting off firecrackers or guns—he could never tell them apart—and a few internal-combustion hobbyists starting up their primitive full-lane vehicles, the louder the better."

    The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 35 of the Spectra trade paperback

    May 17, 2016

  • "As soon as he caught Bud's eye, he kicked it up another gear, to a tantivy."

    The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 31 of the Spectra trade paperback

    May 17, 2016

  • "There were a bunch of coenobitical phyles—religious tribes—that took people of all races, but most of them weren't very powerful and didn't have turf in the Leased Territories."

    The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 30 of the Spectra trade paperback

    May 17, 2016

  • "Lying as close as it did to Source Victoria, the park was riddled with catachthonic Feed lines, and anything could be grown there on short notice."

    The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, p 13

    May 15, 2016

  • One of the section titles in The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson is "A thete visits a mod parlor; noteworthy features of modern armaments." Per the Collins English Dictionary (http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/thete), a thete was "a member of the lowest order of freeman in ancient Athens."

    May 15, 2016

  • "It didn't look like a difficult task, since the back of each terrace was studded with all kinds of flues, hooks, windowsills, gas pipes, stringcourses, planks of wood, missing bricks, and irregular patches."

    A Plague of Bogles by Catherine Jinks, p 270 of the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt hardcover edition

    April 13, 2016

  • "Christine's Chemin de long estude is a calque of Dante's "lungo studio," that is, Christine explicitly conceives her literary career as a learned continuation in the vernacular of the poetic archievement of Vergil."

    - Earl Jeffrey Richards's Introduction to Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies, pp xlvii-xlviii of the Persea books 1998 paperback

    January 23, 2016

  • "Her top half was clothed in a spencer, whose hardier material hid the curves her sodden dress could not fail to display. The whole shining sinuous length of her tail emerged from her dress below."

    Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, p 305

    November 14, 2015

  • "And have you seen this Miss Prunella Gentleman, of whom so much is said?" said Lady Throgmorton, as she sat supping a cup of black bohea with her friend Alethea Gray."

    - Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, p 226

    November 14, 2015

  • "The Sorcerer Royal's servants had formerly been bond by a geas against disclosure of any detail of his household affairs, breach of which was visited by the most terrible revenge."

    Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, p 188

    November 14, 2015

  • "Mrs. Lale was a sonsy, comfortable-looking creature, and it seemed as though a smile would better fit her countenance than its angular look of disapprobation."

    Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, p 123

    November 13, 2015

  • ""You should certainly include a chapter on goety," said Sir Stephen."

    Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, p 83

    November 12, 2015

  • "He was not exactly ugly (a litotes)."

    Oreo by Fran Ross, p 182 of the New Directions paperback

    October 7, 2015

  • "Oreo held her breath in case she had made a drastic error and had mentioned the roach problem in one of the three buildings in New York that did not have them.

    Mrs. Schwartz gave not an eye-narrow, not a lash-flutter. Oreo was reassured that she had not blown her cover through a blattid blunder."

    - Oreo by Fran Ross, p 176 of the New Directions paperback

    October 7, 2015

  • ""Not speaking, huh? Dicty, ain't you, Miss Siditty? Okay, hello, small stuff," he said in a put-down voice."

    Oreo by Fran Ross, p 149 of the New Directions paperback edition

    October 7, 2015

  • "Occasionally he paused to buff his nails, perking his chest with anseriform hauteur."

    Oreo by Fran Ross, p 147 of the New Directions paperback edition

    October 7, 2015

  • "She also decided that since this was, after all, her quest (so far a matter of low emprise), she would cross all the other clues off her list whenever she felt justified in doing so."

    - Oreo by Fran Ross, p 97 of the New Directions paperback edition

    October 6, 2015

  • "But the Great Report won't be composed in a study; it will come out of the jungle, breaking cover like some colourful, fantastic beast, a species never seen before, a brand-new genus, flashing, sparkling—fulgurating—high above the tree-line, there for all to see."

    Satin Island by Tom McCarthy, p 62 of the Knopf hardcover edition

    July 6, 2015

  • "So the little houses is all forsook. They have big garths round them, and pasture for grass-letting—sheep and that—and grand hayfields."

    - "Bell and Harry" by Jane Gardam, in The Hollow Land, p 11 of the Europa Editions paperback

    April 15, 2015

  • "I hadn't fought ten seconds before I felt this softness in him, realized all that quality of modern upper-class England that never goes to the quick, that hedges about rules and those petty points of honour that are the ultimate comminution of honour, that claims credit for things demonstrably half done."

    Tono-Bungay by H.G. Wells, p 31 of the Everyman paperback

    March 12, 2015

  • "I made the only possible reply by a rush at him. 'Hello!' he cried, at my blackavised attack."

    Tono-Bungay by H.G. Wells, p 31 of the Everyman paperback

    March 12, 2015

  • "A whole time can reduce down to a single taste, a moment. A whole person down to the skelf of a self."

    Hotel World by Ali Smith, pp 37-38 of the Anchor paperback edition

    February 3, 2015

  • "I fancied it was caution, but in truth it was terror—I near bewrayed myself."

    The Accidental Highwayman by Ben Tripp, p 143

    January 12, 2015

  • ""I am not," he said, "having that lummock-de-troll glunching about this place!""

    Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones, p 38 of the Greenwillow hardcover edition

    January 5, 2015

  • "Or,

    "She goes to sleep on the seat taken from the broken-down bakkie as the husband listens to the radio for news of the uprising—""

    "apartment" by Rachel Zucker, in The Pedestrians

    December 27, 2014

  • "Entering, you first noticed the traditional tokonoma to the immediate right, while a closet took up the rest of that side of the wall."

    The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide, translated by Eric Selland, p 21 of the New Directions paperback edition

    October 24, 2014

  • "The creative man will not, then, be he who has deduced something new ex nihilo, btu he who has identified it, by intuition, by trial and error, by chance — or by that infinite patience which for Flaubert was a sign of genius — amid the gangue that enclosed it and concealed it from our eyes."

    - Umberto Eco, in his foreword to Tristano by Nanni Balestrini

    October 15, 2014

  • " ... The sistrums clanked aghast/

    as always and bees unstitched the marjoram as in the old

    time and we non of us thought much about it . ..."

    - "Saps at Sea" by John Ashbery, in Quick Question

    October 11, 2014

  • "O laborers, idle shepherds, come, a truth

    I suspect once you've shifted

    the blame to your flutes come undone,

    I ween. No one knows how much

    we've done to ourselves, nor I to each other,

    cracked, before we were born."

    - "The Queen's Apron" by John Ashbery, in Quick Question

    October 11, 2014

  • "The whole urban chaos spalls and before

    we know it the subject has changed."

    "More Reluctant," in Quick Question by John Ashbery

    October 11, 2014

  • See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belomorkanal

    "The traveller had taken off his cloak and looked very slender and elegant in his pinstripe suit. He was smoking a papirosa and giving instructions at the same time."

    Pietr the Latvian by Georges Simenon, translated by David Bellos, p 11 of the Penguin paperback edition

    October 7, 2014

  • "I did my bit, bringing up those blessed boxes. I leave the titivating to Lilian. She loves all that sort of thing. She can titivate for England, she can."

    The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters, p 18

    September 24, 2014

  • "The pill entered the market in 1996 and quickly became an iatrogenic disaster."

    "The Antidote" by Ian Frazier, p 62 of the New Yorker's September 8, 2014 issue

    September 7, 2014

  • See also http://www.bbc.co.uk/ulsterscots/words/dreigh - dreigh, dreich, dreech are all given as alternative spellings.

    "The dreech weather had drawn in a few more than usual at this time of day but I saw no close acquaintance and I had a mind to drink a quiet pot of tea and glance at the early edition of the evening paper, content in my own company."

    The Mist in the Mirror by Susan Hill, p 4 of the Vintage paperback edition

    September 1, 2014

  • "As evening drew in, we turned a bend and caught a first glimpse of Simla's bungalows and country houses rising up from among the deodars of the ridge."

    City of Djinns by William Dalrymple, p 315

    July 16, 2014

  • "Orbiting the risen thought

    That sang up to the atrament"

    "Sheep Meadow" in The Ground by Rowan Ricardo Phillips

    April 27, 2014

  • "And where once the crowds were mere pent peacocks,

    Twiddling half chatoyances, shimmers in the dark,

    Now only the dancers remain."

    "Aubade: Vol. 2: The Underground Sessions" in "The Ground" by Rowan Ricardo Phillips

    April 27, 2014

  • "Change your name, change your name, the arroba urged."

    - "Apollo: Season Three" in "The Ground" by Rowan Ricardo Phillips

    April 27, 2014

  • "The white rat stepped cautiously into the room, nostrils flaring. Satisfied of its immediate safety, the rat darted up Teo's desk and sat atop her paperwork. It wore black velvet barding blazoned with a silver spiderweb; a leather scroll case the size of a cigarette hung around its neck."

    Two Serpents Rise by Max Gladstone, p 65

    April 20, 2014

  • "You are on the low side of the learning curve and don't even know terrain from terrane."
    John McPhee, in <em>Elicitation</em>, p 50 of the April 7, 2014, issue of the New Yorker

    April 13, 2014

  • "Angelica sniffed the darkness. "Cigars."

    It could have been scillas for all Tonino cared."

    The Magicians of Caprona by Diana Wynne Jones, p 158

    March 15, 2014

  • "Mr. McLintock nodded, with a pawky sort of grin."

    The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume 1 by Diana Wynne Jones, p 538

    March 11, 2014

  • "It is full of people working magic—warlocks, witches, thaumaturges, sorcerers, fakirs, conjurors, hexers, magicians, mages, shamans, diviners, and many more—from the lowest Certified witch right up o the most powerful of enchanters."

    The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume 1, by Diana Wynne Jones

    March 4, 2014

  • "Dallington's story had satisfied both Lenox and Jenkins as to the motivation of the brother and the sister, a long cathectic hatred of Queen Victoria, bred into the bone by their ancestors and their father, and flourishing, perhaps, without the soft guidance of a mother."

    An Old Betrayal by Charles Finch, p 266

    March 4, 2014

  • "Sophronia raised up her Depraved Lens of Crispy Magnification, a present on her fifteenth birthday from Dimity's brother, Pillover. It was essentially a high-powered monocle on a stick, but useful enough to keep at all times hanging from a chatelaine at her waist."

    Curtsies & Conspiracies by Gail Carriger, p 8

    January 28, 2014

  • "In September I planted a line of spruce saplings along the west portico, against the better judgment of Rodgers—and now they have all but one of them died, which I view as final and irrefragable evidence that I have entered my senescence."

    A Death in the Small Hours by Charles Finch, pp 274-275

    January 17, 2014

  • "He helped himself gloomily to salmis of game."

    Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers, p 75

    January 6, 2014

  • "Parker, acushla, you're an honour to Scotland Yard."

    Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers, p 34

    January 5, 2014

  • "Back in her apartment she pins Amsterdam to the wall above her bed, beneath another old postcard: four brightly painted totem poles and a few muskeg spruce, leaning over a marshy inlet."

    Glaciers by Alexis M. Smith, p 13

    January 3, 2014

  • "Then came the strange events that I wrote off at the time as a kind of self-undermining parapraxis. First I forgot to pack the book; then I forgot to collect my bag from the carousel in the airport."

    The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas, p 277

    January 1, 2014

  • "It is one of those deep-acting, long-acting antipsoric medicines."

    James Tyler Kent, quoted in The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas, p 118

    December 30, 2013

  • "After I've had some soup, I go and get in the bath with two of the homoeopathy books: Kent's Lectures on the Materia Medica and a rather strange-looking volume called Literary Portraits of the Polychrests."

    The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas, p 117

    December 30, 2013

  • "Elizabeth, heavily pregnant and desperate, was there waiting while her husband and sons tried to find work in the area, having been turned away from the Tavistock stannary."

    PopCo by Scarlett Thomas, p 172 of the Harcourt paperback edition

    December 1, 2013

  • "Roast chicken and kumera and peas from the back garden, and peaches and nectarines with cream for pudding, and Beverley had been allowed a glass of sherry."

    Kehua! by Fay Weldon, p 185

    October 29, 2013

  • "Beyond the vision of her pumping knees on some desperate errand, and the bloodied dress above them, and playing in the yellow dust under the macrocarpa hedge, and a young women turning cartwheels on the lawn—whom she assumes to be Rita—she has only the scantiest memories of her very early life."

    Kehua! by Fay Weldon, p 130

    October 29, 2013

  • See citation on pohutakawa.

    October 29, 2013

  • "If you go up to Coromandel these days, up to the subtropical North, where the pohutakawa trees line the rocky coast, and the dolphins sport in a warm sea, and in the deep dark kauri forests where the tui birds break the silence and the bellbirds chime, you could well believe that the spirit of the taniwha has been put to sleep."

    Kehua! by Fay Weldon, p 120

    October 29, 2013

  • "I remember what Aroha said about the kehua, the spirits of the homeless dead, and how they like to inhabit animals and birds: the screech of the morepork bird in the velvety Maori night is a case in point."

    Kehua! by Fay Weldon, p 40

    October 27, 2013

  • "The early sun is making the snow sparkle, and the red spindleberries glow in the hedge the far side of the garden, so it's all white, green and red, like the Italian flag."

    Kehua! by Fay Weldon, p 32

    October 27, 2013

  • At the start of Kehua! by Fay Weldon, there's this:

    "May the Maori amongst you excuse this fictional foray

    into your world, for which, believe me,

    I have the greatest respect, having as a child

    in the Coromandel encountered both taniwha and kehua."

    October 26, 2013

  • At the start of Kehua! by Fay Weldon, there's this:

    "May the Maori amongst you excuse this fictional foray

    into your world, for which, believe me,

    I have the greatest respect, having as a child

    in the Coromandel encountered both taniwha and kehua."

    October 26, 2013

  • "And then came the mud. In it sloshed, through the broken windows. Thick mud, watery mud, rocky mud, mud with beveled-glass shards, mud with window muntins, mud with grass, mud with barbecue utensils, mud with a mosaic birdbath."

    Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple, p 76

    October 24, 2013

  • "Turning up the deep astrachan collar of his long coat, the stranger swept out of the shop, with the air, as Miss Fritten afterwards described it, of a Satrap proroguing a Sanhedrin. Whether such a pleasant function ever fell to a Satrap's lot she was not quite certain, but the simile faithfully conveyed her meaning to a large circle of acquaintances."

    "Quail Seed" by Saki, in The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories (p 139 of the NYRB edition)

    October 14, 2013

  • "We managed to get the ponies loose in time, and the syce swam the whole lot of them off to the nearest rising ground."

    "The Guests" by Saki, p 119 of The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories (NYRB Edition)

    October 14, 2013

  • The poultry followed her in interested fashion, and swine grunted interrogations at her from behind the bars of their sties, but barnyard and rickyard, orchard and stables and dairy, gave no reward to her search.

    "The Cobweb" by Saki, p 109 of The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories (NYRB paperback)

    October 14, 2013

  • "And yet, for all that it stood so well in the centre of human bustle, its long, latticed window, with the wide window-seat, built into an embrasure beyond the huge fireplace, looked out on a wild spreading view of hill and heather and wooded combe."

    "The Cobweb" by Saki, p 104 of The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories (NYRB paperback)

    October 14, 2013

  • "As for Cassandra, who was expected to improvise her own prophecies, she appeared to be as incapable of taking flying leaps into futurity as of executing more than a severely plantigrade walk across the stage."

    "The Peace Offering" by Saki, p 75 of The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories (NYRB paperback)

    October 14, 2013

  • "Now we've seen that justice will collapse through abuse of hendiadys."

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 165

    September 17, 2013

  • "Still, despite the tight shackles and endless drudgery, despite the difficulty in dealing with all this, how should I say, journalistic prose--for that's what it is: lifeless, banausic drivel that rushes like a torrent and lacks all color and rhythm, except that it seems to come in waves, but you could at least pace yourselves by contending with these waves one at a time, consider only the number of strokes to be made between each strike of the clock, instead of dwelling on the calendar."

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 156

    September 16, 2013

  • "They took refuge in one of the izbas that are found dotted on the outskirts of Xochimilco's teeming suburbs."

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 142

    September 16, 2013

  • "The conticent hour

    when the gondola's left for a neighboring dark,"

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 141

    September 16, 2013

  • "So they gathered around a horrible toadstool covered in blemishes and eschars, for these made it look a fitting exemplar, or perhaps it was more a leprous garden gnome, who carried his personal tragedy with him everywhere he went, and because of his dual nationality bumped into us more often than not."

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 134

    September 16, 2013

  • "How is it possible that within a belletrist culture like that one, there was so much admiration for the works of Zi--with their soppy sentimentalism and bumpkin sophistication, their bad grammar and archaic anacoluthia, and all those gigantic leaps away from the slightly credible to the wholly fabulous?"

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 129

    September 16, 2013

  • "Beautiful, detailed notation by Aída on pulque and the agave plant."

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 121

    September 16, 2013

  • "She opened with a recitation--interspersed with oscitations and eructations--of a monologue by the teenage actress in The Seagull."

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 115

    September 16, 2013

  • "His voice was certainly the strangest I've heard from a creature of his kind-- at once surd and resonant, clipped and lyrical, with euphonious vowels broken by brusquely stressed consonants that reminded me a little of Careclough's Scottish brogue."

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 114

    September 16, 2013

  • "d) Once the cult of St. Mawr was born, it committed itself to what was called "the small instauration" and to "the little idiom.""

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 106

    September 16, 2013

  • "The most observant of them called the period of caducity "the fall," and he'd usually announce its arrival out loud."

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 90

    September 16, 2013

  • "Accents has the original strip of paper a valuable addition to my bibliophile's treasury, which contains a false enthymeme or involuntary syllogism"

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 90

    September 16, 2013

  • "Many years later, once we saw through his mask, that symbol of his claudication, we summoned the image of Von Aschenbach, as interpreted by Dirk Bogarde in the Visconti film (14, reference to Gathorne-Hardy, anecdote in the book about English public schools)."

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 77

    September 16, 2013

  • "On the threshold, motionless, stands the invunche."

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, pp 71 and 72

    September 16, 2013

  • "A whole argot of sectarian terms to designate where: first, the "paludinal glitterati" in Septic Midrash, then the "phalansterian demographic" constructed to "contradict the anecdote.""

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 68

    September 16, 2013

  • "Since then, having succeeded in restoring them to that previous state in which their livelihoods depended on a meager spring (one that delivers on a monthly basis), he eases a vellication of remorse with the thought that they would be amply remunerated with freedom of time and leisure, although he knows the leisure of redundancy cannot truly be enjoyed."

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 55

    September 16, 2013

  • "I feel more assured by the incoherent babbling of a panhandler than by the apodictic pronouncements of philosophers."

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 53

    September 16, 2013

  • "Critics and friends had already rebuked him for his honeyed volubility, and also that "nothing to say" which the terricolous Hardy suspected lay behind his ponderous, Tyrian diction."

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 52

    September 16, 2013

  • "When he saw them again, on that morning in August after returning from a visit to the city, he found them quite as submissive and conceited as ever; and he, once again trapped in their especial variety of confessional antechamber (in which they oft be labored him with successions of halting effusions), sought escape by firing off--or more properly, stammering--a bêtise on the "perfumed scent" of his butler's arrhythmic respiration, which was indeed perceptible to him in more than one--and to more than one--sense."

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 47

    September 16, 2013

  • "For more on the casuistry, the soteriology, and even the proctology of the letter X, see Edgar Lee Meaulnes."

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 39

    September 16, 2013

  • "Entre nous, her exuberant flaunting, her canorous bays, are they not in fact . . . symphonies?"

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 16

    September 16, 2013

  • "If pleonasm is the soul of offense, at least I know when to shut up."

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 13

    September 16, 2013

  • "If pleonasm is the soul of offense, at least I know when to shut up."

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 13

    September 16, 2013

  • "Nicasio sits with his barracan jacket slightly open, his hand reaching--in plenipotentiary gesture--for his wallet ("ample as a library," according to Dos) so he can pay the bill."

    The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, translated by Darren Koolman, p 7

    September 16, 2013

  • Having now read The No Variations several times in the course of translating and editing, I was continually amused by its author's mock affectations, moved by his corybantic delight in language, and, despite the difficulty, I believe it has that quality proper to all fine literature, which Tertullian first noted of scripture: semper habet aliquid relegentibus, however frequently we read it, we shall always meet with something new."

    Darren Koolman, in his Translator's Preface to The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni

    September 12, 2013

  • The literal meaning of Peripecias del no is "Peripeties of No," but while the title works great in Spanish, in English, it is inkhorn.

    Darren Koolman's Translator's Preface to The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni

    September 12, 2013

  • "Set in an elementary school in Argentina in the early seventies, it is in fact a pasquinade on the bourgeois pretentions and puerile rivalries among Buenos Aires writers and intellectuals at that time."

    Darren Koolman, in his Translator's Preface to The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, p V of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback

    September 10, 2013

  • No such titan ever visited

    during my days as aedile. Yet wisps

    still buttonhole us in random moats:

    - from "Gravy for the Prisoners" by John Ashbery, p 28 of the August 26, 2013 issue of the New Yorker

    September 3, 2013

  • "Video games have turned everyone under the age of 20 into experts on military history and tactics; 12-year-olds on school buses argue about the right way to deploy onagers and cataphracts while outflanking a Roman triplex acies formation."

    "It's All Geek to Me" by Neal Stephenson, pp 60-61 of Some Remarks

    September 2, 2013

  • "Of course the Carbonite stilettos pierced it as if it were cork board, but this spoiled his aim long enough for me to whip my wakizashi out from between my shoulder blades and swing at his head."

    "Slashdot Interview" by Neal Stephenson, p 28 of Some Remarks

    August 29, 2013

  • "Scatter patterns in sand, adnates, cancellates, gaping

    whelk husks, a toy tractor-trailer, cracked

    and dinged, beside the spine of a plastic tree,

    the helmet-shaped shelter of a shadow cast

    by a not-quite-buried wedge of pottery . . ."

    "Hermit Crab" by Stephen Burt, p 28 of the August 5, 2013 issue of the New Yorker

    August 13, 2013

  • "Scatter patterns in sand, adnates, cancellates, gaping

    whelk husks, a toy tractor-trailer, cracked

    and dinged, beside the spine of a plastic tree,

    the helmet-shaped shelter of a shadow cast

    by a not-quite-buried wedge of pottery . . ."

    "Hermit Crab" by Stephen Burt, p 28 of the August 5, 2013 issue of the New Yorker

    August 13, 2013

  • "She sent me out to check ten sycamores at the backs of some houses in Romsey to see whether there was a root problem when it came to the sewers (the sycamores were fine, though a leylandii clump was too close to the houses by far) and by the time I got back to work she'd sent me an email saying I'd been assigned next week off, on half-pay—in October, which is one of our busiest times."

    Artful by Ali Smith, p 57

    August 3, 2013

  • "What is this picture but a fragment?

    Is it linen—papyrus—who can say?

    All those stains and fents and stretched bits, but

    she was a character, even a beauty, you can see that

    from the set of her head and the rakish snood

    her tight black curls are fighting to escape from."

    "The Sandal" by Edwin Morgan, quoted in Artful by Ali Smith, pp 25-26

    August 2, 2013

  • "You laugh out loud and tell me what Angela Carter said about that 'fubsy beast': she thought he looked more like a pajama case than a tiger. I go away and look up the word fubsy. I've never heard it before."

    Artful by Ali Smith, p 16

    August 2, 2013

  • "He hangs his distinctive coat on a peg and says, "I have found a wonderful subject for you: Stesichorus's palinode ..." Yes, I can still see Mr. Bailly very clearly."

    Climates by André Maurois, translated by Adriana Hunter, p 11 of the Other Press paperback edition

    July 23, 2013

  • "Steeplebush flourished by some other name, lost ow, long before there were steeples."

    "Neon" by Carl Phillips, in Silverchest (p 24)

    July 22, 2013

  • "Set free from carking care and amply provided for, we were able to give most of our time and energy to our real profession – which, of course, is Sapping – and so moving northward and then westward we presently arrived, after a leisurely but eventful journey, much of it very comfortably underground, at the eastern border of Bombardy."

    The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 335 of the New York Review of Books edition

    July 19, 2013

  • "Set free from carking care and amply provided for, we were able to give most of our time and energy to our real profession – which, of course, is Sapping – and so moving northward and then westward we presently arrived, after a leisurely but eventful journey, much of it very comfortably underground, at the eastern border of Bombardy."

    The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 335 of the New York Review of Books edition

    July 19, 2013

  • "The Judge, as it happened, was playing clock-golf with his Cook, and his two maids were watching, so there was some delay before the visitors were admitted."

    The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 205 of the New York Review of Books hardcover

    July 17, 2013

  • "Are you quite sure, Mrs. Wellaby, that you haven't committed even the least little tiny tort in the last few days? Because I am ready, now as ever, to defend you against any accusation whatsoever, no matter whether it be barratry or illicit diamond-buying, forgery or coining, breach of promise to marry, or armed resistance to capture."

    The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 199 of the New York Review of Books hardcover

    July 17, 2013

  • "'Because you're a stiff-necked, rascally, rebellious, unruly rout of predestined skilly-swillers,' he would yell."

    The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 185 of the New York Review of Books hardcover

    July 17, 2013

  • "He wore a canvas jacket, whipcord breeches, and a bowler hat."

    The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 75 of the New York Review of Books hardcover

    July 17, 2013

  • "For tea they had scones and pancakes, crumpets and pikelets, muffins and cream buns, plum cake and seed cake and cream cake and chocolate cake, and often some bread and butter as well."

    The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 23 of the New York Review of Books hardcover

    July 17, 2013

  • "It was a pleasant room with a window facing south, a satinwood bed, a satinwood dressing-table, and a satinwood writing desk at which Miss Serendip used to sit and write letters to her seven sisters"

    The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 19 of the New York Review of Books hardcover

    July 17, 2013

  • "These rackets are strange: they look like "old rackets" (like violas to violins, crumhorns to bassoons); one of them has an extremely large wooden frame and the racket itself (the stringed part) is a tiny round (not oval) hole that is obviously stringless."

    La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams by Georges Perec, translated by Daniel Levin Becker

    July 8, 2013

  • "On the second floor of the Opera atelier, Anna Maria sat at a dressing table with a small mirror, took a round etui from her pocket, extracted the reddened cotton wad, spit on it, and blotted her lips."

    The Stockholm Octavo by Karen Engelmann, p 162

    July 2, 2013

  • "Miss Hagman had the perfect life: a luxurious apartment, more than adequate means, and she was free to be a coryphée, to socialize with all manner of people—from royalty to artists."

    The Stockholm Octavo by Karen Engelmann, p 157

    July 2, 2013

  • "It was Sunday, a popular night for balls and fetes, and I could hear the distant blast of a waldhorn signaling a bacchanal."

    The Stockholm Octavo by Karen Engelmann, p 13

    June 27, 2013

  • "From the Wikipedia entry for "thyrsus":

    In Greek mythology, a staff of giant fennel (Ferula communis) covered with ivy vines and leaves, sometimes wound with taeniae and always topped with a pine cone."

    - from The Magic Circle by Jenny Davidson, p 131

    June 1, 2013

  • ""I'll see a lion, a tiger, a jackal. I'll be attacked by a naja cobra, and a gharial. I'll rescue a child from the claws of a condor."

    My Beautiful Bus by Jacques Jouet, translated by Eric Lamb, p 83

    May 23, 2013

  • "Then ask him if he wouldn't happen to have some glasswort, and if not than percebes, or goose barnacles, those little crustaceans like the ones you find in Galicia and the Madrilenian markets."

    My Beautiful Bus by Jacques Jouet, translated by Eric Lamb, p 45

    May 22, 2013

  • "The remnants of a lacy filibeg clung to the twisted circlets of the Crimson crown, its garnets glinting dully, and the Punctilious Trousers bore unpleasant stains."

    "The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 239 of Errantry: Strange Stories

    May 1, 2013

  • "Saloona observed an urceolate figure who held a jeroboam of frothing liquor."

    "The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 239 of Errantry: Strange Stories

    May 1, 2013

  • "She gestured at the waiting cabriolets and winged caravans, parked alongside the bridled destriers and sleeping gorgosaurs that lined the long curving drive."

    "The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 236 of Errantry: Strange Stories

    May 1, 2013

  • ""The Crimson Court has a legendary kitchen. Too long have you languished here among your toadstools and toxic chanterells, Saloona Morn! At great danger to myself, I have secured you an invitation so that you may sample the Paeolinas' nettlefish froth and their fine baked viands, also a cellar known throughout the Metarin Mountains for vintages as rare as they are temulent. Still you remain skeptical of my motivations.""

    "The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 225 of Errantry: Strange Stories

    May 1, 2013

  • ""You require the use of my prism ship and my fungal electuaries. I remain uncertain of the benefits to myself.""

    "The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 225 of Errantry: Strange Stories

    May 1, 2013

  • ""An ustulating spell directed at his paramour's bathing chamber. The squireen has been reduced to ash. The optimate's need to retain his affection has therefore diminished.""

    "The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 223 of Errantry: Strange Stories

    May 1, 2013

  • ""The Queen was not aware of it either," replied Paytim. "Her brother poisoned her and seized control of the Crimson Messuage. He has impertinently invited me to attend his coronoation as Paeolina the Twenty-Ninth.""

    "The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 221 of Errantry: Strange Stories

    May 1, 2013

  • "Clans have fought and died over this periapt."

    "The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 217 of Errantry: Strange Stories

    May 1, 2013

  • "When the dishes were cleared and the last of the locust jelly spooned from a shared bowl, Paytim poured two jiggers of amber whiskey. She removed a pair of red-hot pokers from the kitchen athanor, plunged one into each jigger, then dropped the spent pokers into the sink."

    "The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 216 of Errantry: Strange Stories

    May 1, 2013

  • "Insensibility, melancholia, hebetude; ordinary mental tumult and more elaborate physical vexations (boils, a variety of thrip that caused the skin of an unfaithful lover to erupt in a spectacular rash, the color of violet mallows)—Saloona Morn cultivated these in her parterre in the shadow of Cobalt Mountain."

    "Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 209 of Errantry: Strange Stories

    April 29, 2013

  • "His former colleagues were now living eidolons of youth, beauty, health, joy, desire flitting past him in the studio, lovely and remote as figures from a medieval allegory."

    - "The Far Shore" by Elizabeth Hand, p 130 of Errantry: Strange Stories

    April 28, 2013

  • "Its scales rose to form a stiff, brilliantly colored armor, a farthingale glimmering every shade of violet and green."

    "Hungerford Bridge" by Elizabeth Hand: p 122 of Errantry: Strange Stories

    April 28, 2013

  • "Today, I blame myself for my irenicism: I should never have allowed the issue of Les Temps modernes on the Arab–Israeli conflict to open with Rodinson's article, 'Israel, a Colonial Reality?', for I do not believe that this is, or has ever been, the case: in my films and in my writings, I have striven tirelessly to reveal the complex reality of Israel."

    The Patagonian Hare by Claude Lanzmann, translated by Frank Wynne, p 399-400 of the Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover edition

    April 19, 2013

  • "To get from Beijing to Pyongyang, one went either by rail or by air: the first entailed a forty-eight-hour journey with a stop of indeterminate length at the Sino-Korean border before travelling north at a snail's pace through the septentrional regions of North Korea since there had recently been a catastrophic explosion that had destroyed a railway station and two trains, resulting in countless victims."

    The Patagonian Hare by Claude Lanzmann, translated by Frank Wynne, p 315 of the Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover edition

    April 18, 2013

  • "I didn't feel qualified, but I accepted and we began to work, proceeding by a Socratic, maieutic method – which is something I'm rather good at."

    The Patagonian Hare by Claude Lanzmann, p 191 of the Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover edition

    April 16, 2013

  • "It was over Duelo a garrotazos that I had apagogically envisaged rolling the opening credits for my film Tsahal, about the Israeli army and the wars it was compelled to fight."

    The Patagonian Hare by Claude Lanzmann, translated by Frank Wynne, p 31 of the Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover edition

    April 9, 2013

  • "Thus all they had to select from was tea, bread and sweet butter, porridge, ham and broiled mushrooms, rabbit pie, fricandeau of eggs, mayonnaise of prawns, and spiced beef."

    Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger, p 121

    March 11, 2013

  • "Instead he listens, just in case Tom gets tripped up in the briar patch of plesiosynchronous protocol arcana, whence only Randy can drag him out."

    Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 406 of the Avon Books paperback edition

    February 3, 2013

  • "Lord Woadmire is not related to the original line of Qwghlm, the Moore family (Anglicized from the Qwghlmian clan name Mnyhrrgh) which had been terminated in 1888 by a spectacularly improbable combination of schistosomiasis, suicide, long-festering Crimean war wounds, ball lightning, flawed cannon, falls from horses, improperly canned oysters, and rogue waves."

    Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 255 of the Avon Books paperback edition

    January 30, 2013

  • "Propped up against the stonework next to the building's entrance is a gaffer dressed in an antique variant of the Home Guard uniform, involving knickerbockers."

    Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 253 of the Avon Books paperback edition

    January 30, 2013

  • "He swings it on the end of its wristband, made in cunningly joined armor plates. It is heavy enough to stun a muskellunge."

    Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 192 of the Avon Books paperback edition

    January 28, 2013

  • "As a result, the authorities of his country, the United States of America, have made him swear a mickle oath of secrecy, and keep supplying him with new uniforms of various services and ranks, and now have sent him to London."

    Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 146 of the Avon Books paperback edition

    January 28, 2013

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