166. AND THEN THERE WERE NONE

Agatha Christie 1939

I honestly am not sure why I didn't reread this book sooner because it is my absolute favorite of Agatha Christie's work!  It is exquisitely Brilliant and Awesome!!! Ten strangers (Emily Brent, Vera Claythourne, Dr. Armstrong, Anthony Marston, old Justice Wargrave, Philip Lombard, General Macarthur, C.M.G., D.S.O. Manservant and wife: Mr. and Mrs. Rogers),  united by the common thread of  a guilty conscience, are summoned to Indian Island by an Unknown host. One by one, they die, until there were none!

'In the corner of a first-class smoking carriage, Mr. Justice Wargrave, lately retired from the bench, puffed at a cigar and ran an interested eye through the political news in the Times.'(opening lines)

'She had pictured it differently, close to shore, crowned with a beautiful white house. But there was no house visible, only the boldly silhouetted rock with its faint resemblance to a giant Indian's head. There was something sinister about it.'(22)

'She stood in front of the fireplace and read it. It was the old nursery rhyme that she remembered from her childhood days.

Ten little Indian boys went out to die;

One choked his little self and then there were nine.

Nine little Indian boys sat up very late;

One overslept himself and then there were eight.

Eight little Indian boys travelling in Devon; 

One said he'd stay there and then there were seven. 

Seven little Indian boys chopping up sticks;

One chopped himself in halves and then there were six.

Six little Indian boys playing with a hive;

A bumblebee stung one and then there were five.

Five little Indian boys going in for law;

One got in Chancery and then there were four.

Four little Indian boys going out to sea;

A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.

Three little Indian boys walking in the Zoo;

A big bear hugged one and then there were two.

Two little Indian boys sitting in the sun;

One got frizzled up and then there was one.

One little Indian boy let all alone;

He went and hanged himself and then there were none.

Vera smiled. Of course! This was Indian Island.'(32)

'He said: Just now we had a somewhat disturbing experience. An apparently disembodied voice spoke to us all by name, uttering certain precise accusations against us.'(54)

'If this had been an old house, with creaking wood, and dark shadows, and heavily panelled walls, there might have been an eerie feeling. But this house was the essence of modernity. There were no dark corners -- no possible sliding panels -- it was flooded  with electric light -- everything was new and bright and shining. There was nothing hidden in this house, nothing concealed. It had no atmosphere about it.... Somehow, that was the most frightening of all .....'(72)

'It's those little figures, sir. In the middle of the table. The little china figures. Ten of them, there were. I'll swear to that, ten of them.'(95)

'In the sense you mean, no. I came to that conclusion early this morning. I could have told you that your search would be fruitless. Nevertheless, I am strongly of the opinion that 'Mr. Owen' ( to give him the name he himself has adopted) is on the island. Very much so. ... It is perfectly clear. Mr. Owen is one of us...'(135)

'Five people -- five frightened people. Five people who watched each other, who now hardly troubled to hide their state of nervous tension.... There were little pretence now -- no formal veneer of conversation. They were five enemies linked together by a mutual instinct of self-preservation.'(191)

'I have wanted -- let me admit it frankly -- to commit a murder myself. I recognized this as the desire of the artist to express himself! If I was, or could be, an artist in crime!'(263)

St. Martin's Paperback edition/May 2001

275 pages

Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

162. a RED HERRING without MUSTARD

Alan Bradley 2011

Eleven-year-old Flavia is off to solve another murder mystery once again. After she accidentally burns down the tent of the Gypsy fortune-teller Fenella, a series of events follow, that includes finding a dead body hanging from the trench of a sculpture of Poseidon. With nothing but her bicycle Gladys in tow, Flavia sleuths around her interesting neighborhood of Bishop's Lacey, asks endless questions, and once again cracks the investigation with absolute charm. In this third book of the Flavia de Luce Mystery series, the author gives a poignant glimpse of  Flavia's mother Hariet, who died soon after she was born.

'"You frighten me," the Gypsy said. "Never have I seen my crystal ball so filled with darkness.'(opening lines)

'I had already learned that sisterhood, like Loch Ness, has things that lurk unseen beneath the surface, but I think it was only now that I realized that of all the the invisible strings that tied the three of us together, the dark ones were the strongest.'(41)

'Once, when we were lying on the south lawn looking up into the blue vault of a perfect summer sky, I had suggested to Feely that Father's quest for imperfections was not limited to stamps, but was sometimes expanded to include his daughters.'(45)

'I'd learned quite early in life that the mind loves nothing better than to spook itself with outlandish stories, as if the various coils of the brain were no more than a troop of roly-poly Girl Guides huddled over a campfire in the darkness of the skull.'(69)

'Alone at last! Whenever I'm with other people, part of me shrinks a little. Only when I am alone can I fully enjoy my own company.'(102)

'I have no fear of the dead. Indeed, in my own limited experience I have found them to produce in me a feeling that is quite the opposite of fear. A dead body is much more fascinating than a live one, and I have learned that more corpses tell better stories.'(114)

'Love's not some bug river that flows on and on forever, and if you believe it is, you're a bloody fool. It can be clammed up until nothing's left but a trickle..."(155)

'I had long ago discovered that when a word or formula refused to come to mind, the best thing for it was to think of something else: tigers, for instance, or oatmeal. Then, when the fugitive word was least expecting it, I would suddenly turn the full blaze of my attention back onto it, catching the culprit in the beam of my mental torch before it could sneak off again into the darkness.... "Thought-stalking," I called the technique, and I was proud of myself for having invented it.'(180)

'Spring water, I knew, was a remarkable chemical soup: calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron, and assorted salts and sulphates. I grabbed the battered old iron tin cup that hung from a chain, scooped it full of the burbling water, and drank until I thought I could feel my bones strengthening.'(250)

'Our September breakfast menu had been in force for almost two weeks now, and the base of my tongue shrank back a little as Mrs. Mullet brought to the table what I thought of as our daily ration of T.O.A.D.
Toast
Oatmeal
Apple Juice
Dates
The dates stewed and served with cold clotted cream, were another of Mrs. Mullet's culinary atrocities. They looked and tasted like something that had been stolen from a coffin in a midnight churchyard.'(263)

'I think there must be a kind of courage that comes from not being able to make up your mind.'(273)

a Delacorte Press Hardcover Edition
399 pages
Book borrowed from the library
Book qualifies for:100+ Reading Challenge

158. the WEED that STRINGS the HANGMAN'S BAG

Alan Bradley 2010

In this second book of the Flavia de Luce Mystery series (although they are all stand-alone books), eleven year-old Flavia who has an unhealthy fascination with death, chemistry and poison, craftily solves the mystery of  puppeteer Rupert Porson's sizzling demise. As usual, the plot is absorbing and the characters amusing  (if  you are able to suspend your disbelief that Flavia seems to know everything!). The vividly described puppet shows were especially enthralling for me. I am slowly getting familiar with the 1950s rural English town of Bishops's Lacey and really getting attached to the family's trusted gardener Dogger.

'I was lying dead in the churchyard. An hour had crept by since the mourners had said their last farewells.'(opening lines)

'I have never much cared for flippant remarks, especially when others make them, and in particular, I don't give a frog's fundament for them when they come from an adult. It has been my experience that facetiousness in the mouth of someone old enough to know better is often no more than camouflage for something far, far worse.'(17)

'Everyone needs to escape don't they? In one way or another.'(20)

'Meg, in a tattered outfit of rusty black bomabazine, looked like a vulture that had been sucked up by a tornado and spat back out. A red glass cherry bobbed cheerfully from a wire on her black flowerport hat.'(68)

'Now it seemed that Daffy's brain had not only died, but that it had begun to curdle. Her right eye rolled off into one corner, while the other looked as if it were about to explode clean out of her head.
This was the effect she had been working on for years: the ability to bulge her eyes out in two different directions at the same time.
"A touch of old exophthalmos," she had called it once, and I had begged her to teach me the trick. I had practiced in front of a looking glass until my head was splitting, but I could never manage more than a a light lateral googly.'(103)

Eleven-year-olds are supposed to be unreliable. We're past the age of being poppets: the age where people bend over and poke us in the tum with their fingers and make idiotic noises that sound like "boof-boof" -- just the thought of which is enough to make me bring up my Bovril. And yet we're still not at the age where anyone ever mistakes us for a grown-up. The fact is, we're invisible -- except when we chose not to be.'(112)

'A stir at one side of the stage caught our attention, and then a figure strode confidently out towards the hapsichord-- it was Mozart!... Dressed in a suit of green silk, with lace at his throat, white knee-stockings, and buckled shoes, he looked as if he had stepped straight through a window from the eighteenth century into our own.... Shaking his head, he went to his instrument, pulled a match from his pocket, and lit the candle: one at each end of the harpsichord's keyboards.... It was an astonishing performance!'(128)

'Jack seemed to be looking up as, with a sound like thunder, the giant came crashing down from the sky.
For a few moments, the monster lay twitching horribly, a trickle of ruby blood oozing from the corner of its mouth, its ghastly head and shoulders filling the stage with flying sparks, as smoke and little flames rose in acrid tendrils from its burning hair and goatee. BUt the blank eyes that stared out unseeing into mine were not those of the hinged giant, Galligantus...'(151)

'We sat for a few moments in silence, Aunt Felicity dabbing away at her canvas with no particularly exciting results, and then she spoke again: "If you remember nothing else, remember this: Inspiration from outside one's self is like the heat in an oven. It makes passable Bath buns. But inspiration from within is like a volcano: It changes the face of the world."'(203)

'There's something about pottering with poisons that clarifies the mind. When the slightest slip of the hand could prove fatal, one's attention is forced to focus like a burning-glass upon the experiment, and it is then that the answers to half-formed questions so often come swarming to mind as readily as bees coming home to the hive.'(276)

'Gelsemine was one of chemistry's chameleons, shifting color with delicious abandon, and all without a trace of its former hue... People were like that, too.'(278-279)

'Seen from the air, the male mind must look rather like the canals of Europe, with ideas being towed along well-worn towpaths by heavy-footed dray horses. There is never any doubt that they will, despite wind and weather, reach their destinations by following a simple series of connected lines.
But the female mind, even in my limited experience, seems more of a vast and teeming swamp, but a swamp that knows in an instant whenever a stranger -- even miles away -- has so much as dipped a single toe into her waters. People who talk about this phenomenon, most of whom know nothing whatsoever about it, call it "woman's intuition.".'(308-309)

'Brains and morals have nothing to do with one another. Take myself, for instance: I am often thought of as being remarkably bright, and yet my brains, more often than not, are busily devising new and interesting ways of bringing my enemies to sudden, gagging, writhing, agonizing death.
I am quite firm in my belief that poisons were put upon the earth in the first place to be discovered -- and put to good use -- by those of us with the wits, but not necessarily the physical strength, to ...'(350)

2011 Bantam Book Trade Paperback Edition
358 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge
______________________________________

WINNER of the 2011 Reading from My Shelves Project Giveaway:

After the comments were sorted out for valid entries, the winning number generated through Random.org is:

          #2  - Avid Reader

Congratulations!
Thanks to everyone who participated.

155. the SWEETNESS at the BOTTOM of the PIE

Alan Bradley 2009

This is the first of (hopefully) many more Flavia de Luce mystery books to come. Flavia is an adorable and spunky eleven-year-old sleuth who has a passion for chemistry, specifically poisons. Unlike her sisters Feely and Daffy, she devotes all her time studying them in her own laboratory. But when she finds a dead bird with an orange stamp on its beak, and soon after finds a dead man in her backyard, she must hurry and find the culprit. A brilliant simple mystery infused with enough charm, humor and suspense to keep me asking for more!

'It was as black in the closet as old blood. They have shoved me in and locked the door. I breathed heavily through my nose, fighting desperately to remain calm.'(opening lines)

'What intrigued me more than anything was finding out the way in which everything, all of creation -- all of it! -- was held together by invisible chemical bonds, and I found a strange, inexplicable comfort in knowing that somewhere, even though we couldn't see it in our own world, there was real stability.'(10)

'It was a bird, a jack snipe -- and it was dead. It lay on its back on the doorstep, its stiff wings extended like a little pterodactyl, its eyes rather unpleasantly filmed over, the long black needle of its bill pointing straight up into the air. Something impaled upon it shifted in the morning breeze -- a tiny scrap of paper. Not a scrap of paper, a postage stamp.'(15)

'I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn't. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.'(29)

'As I stood outside in Cow Lane, it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No... eight days a week.'(57-58)

'I brought to mind the image of the stranger lying there in the first light of dawn; the slight growth of whiskers on his chin, strands of his red hair shifting gently on the faint stirrings of the morning breeze, the pallor, the extended leg, the quivering fingers, that last, sucking breath. And the word, blown into my face ... "Vale."'(77)

'It's a fact of life that a girl can tell in a flash if another girl liked her. Feely says that there is a broken telephone connection between men and women, and we can never know which of us rang off. With a boy you never know whether he's smitten or gagging, but with a girl you can tell in the first three seconds. Between girls there is a silent and unending flow of invisible signals...'(85)

'Except for a handkerchief-scarf of grass at one side, Miss Mountjoy's willow filled the fenced-in yard. Even on the doorstep I could feel the dampness of the place: the tree's languid branches formed a green bell jar through which little light seemed to penetrate, giving me the odd sensation of being under water. Vivid green mosses made a stone sponge of the doorstep, and water stains stretched their sad and black fingers across the face of the orange plaster.'(136)

'... there are questions which need to be asked, and there are questions which need not be asked.'(142)

'It was downhill all the way, and I made good speed. When I backpedaled, the Sturmey-Archer three-speed hub on Glady's rear wheel gave off a noise like a den of enraged, vernon-dripping rattlesnakes. I pretended they were right there behind me, striking at my heels. It was glorious! I hadn't felt in such fine form since the day I first produced, by successive extraction and evaporation, a synthetic curare from the bog arum in the Vicar's lily pond.'(156)

'Here we are, Father and I , shut up in a plain little room, and for the first time in my life having something that might pass for a conversation. We were talking to one another almost like adults; almost like one human being to another; almost like father and daughter. And even though I couldn't think of anything to say, I felt myself wanting to go on and on until the last star blinked out.'(191)

'Unless some sweetness at the bottom lie,
Who cares for all the crinkling of the pie?'(223)

'Whenever one comes face-to-face with a killer in a novel or in a cinema, his opening words are always fripping with menace, and often from Shakespeare.'(302)

'It was a lie and I detected it at once. As an accomplished fibber myself, I spotted the telltale signs of an untruth before they were halfway out of his mouth: the excessive detail, the offhand delivery, and the wrapping-up of it all in casual chitchat.'(304)

a Delacorte Press Book, May 2009
370 pages
Book borrowed from the library
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

150. the HOUND of the BASKERVILLES

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 1902

This book superseded all my expectations. I enjoyed everything about it: the dark, foggy and ghostly setting in Devonshire, England,  the simple yet twisty plot, the lucid prose that describes the eerie scenes so perfectly, and the very amiable and brilliant Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Watson. After the horrifying death of Sir Charles Baskerville from what seems to be a diabolical beast, the masterful duo sets to solve a possible curse on the Baskerville family, the task rendered particularly urgent because there is but one last heir, Sir Henry, that remains. 

'Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table.'(opening lines)

"Really Watson, you excel yourself," said Holmes, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. "I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very  much in your debt."(3)

"You interest me very much, Mr. Holmes. I had hardly expected so dolicocephalic a skull or such well-marked supra-orbital development. Would you have any objection to my running my finger along your parietal fissure? A cast of your skull, sir, until the original is available, would be an ornament to any anthropological museum. It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull."(9)

'But it was not the sight of her body, nor yet was it that of the body of Hugo Baskerville lying near her, which raised the hair upon the heads of these three daredevil rosyterers, but it was that, standing over Hugo, and plucking at his throat, there stood a foul thing; a great black beast, shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever mortal eye has rested upon. '(16-17)

'I knew that seclusion and solitude were very necessary for my friend in those hours of intense mental concentration during which he weighed every particle of evidence, constructed alternative theories, balanced one against the other, and made up his mind as to which points were essential and which immaterial.'(35)

'As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor.'(43)

'Setting aside the whole grim story of Sir Charles's death, we had a line of inexplicable incidents all within the limits of two days, which included the receipt of the printed letter, the black-bearded spy in the hansom, the loss of the new brown boot, the loss of the old black boot, and now the return of the new brown boot. Holmes sat in silence in the cab as we drove back to Baker Street, and I knew from his drawn brows and keen face that his mind, like my own, was busy in endeavouring to frame some scheme into which all these strange and apparently disconnected episodes could be fitter. All afternoon and late into the evening he sat lost in tobacco and thought.'(68)

'The road in front of us grew bleaker and wilder over huge russet and olive slopes, sprinkled with giant boulders. Now and then we passed a moorland cottage, walled and roofed with stone, with no creeper to break its harsh outline. Suddenly we looked down into a cuplike depression, patched with stunted oaks and firs which had been twisted and bent by the fury of years of storm. Two high narrow towers rose over the trees. The driver pointed with his whip.
"Baskerville Hall," said he.'(81-82)

"As if in answer to his words there rose suddenly out of the vast gloom of the moor that strange cry which I had already heard upon the borders of the great Grimpen Mire. It came with the wind through the silence of the night, a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it died away. Again and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild, and menacing.'(137-138)

'And it was at this moment that there occurred a most strange and unexpected thing. We had risen from our rocks and were turning to go home, having abandoned the hopeless chase. The moon was low upon the right, and the jagged pinnacle of a granite tor stood up against the lower curve of its silver disc. There, outlined as black as an ebony statue on that shining background, I saw the figure of a man upon the tor.'(142)

'Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.'(200)

'One of Sherlock Holmes's defects -- if, indeed, one may call it a defect -- was that he was exceedingly loath to communicate his full plans to any other person until the instant of their fulfillment. Partly it came no doubt from his own masterful nature, which loved to dominate and surprise those who were around him. Partly also from his professional caution, which urged him to never take any chances.'(214)

The more outre and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined, and the very point which appears to complicate a case is, when duly considered and scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it.'(239)

'There are seventy-five perfumes, which it is very necessary that a criminal expert should be able to distinguish from each other, and cases have more than once within my own experience depended upon their prompt recognition.'(241)

First Aladdin Paperback edition 2000
246 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

134. the WOMAN in WHITE

Wilkie Collins 1859-1860

Secrets and mysteries abound in this classic Victorian thriller. Even the scatter of foreshadowing of impending gloom did not seem to take away from the thrill of slowly and leisurely uncovering the layers of truth the story offers. A collection of narratives in epistolary form, explain the puzzling appearance and the later disappearance of Anne Catherick, the woman in white, and her important role in the future life of Laura Fairlie, a woman who also just happens to look like her.  Laura's half-sister, Marian Halcombe proves to be a very brave and persistent sleuth, a trait that even captivates the villain Count Fosco. Walter Hartwright, Laura's drawing teacher who later falls in love with her, is equally unyielding and determined to clear her good name.  A very enjoyable book. 

'This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.'(opening line)

'There in the middle of the broad, bright high-road -- there, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth or dropped from the heaven -- stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white garments, her face bent in grave inquiry on mine, her hand pointing to the dark cloud over London, as I faced her.'(47)

'At any time, and under any circumstances of human interest, is it not strange to see how little real hold the objects of the natural world amid which we live can gain on our hearts and minds? We go to Nature for comfort in trouble, and sympathy in joy, only in books.'(79)

'Yes, my hardly earned self-control was as completely lost to me as if I had never possessed it; lost to me, as it is lost every day to other men, in other critical situations, where women are concerned. I know, now, that I should have questioned myself from the first. I should have asked why any room in the house was better than home to me when she entered it, and barren as a desert when she went out again -- why I always noticed and remembered the little changes in her dress that I had noticed and remembered in no other woman's before -- why I saw her, heard her, and touched her (when we shook hands at night and morning) as I had never seen, heard, and touched any other woman in my life?'(90)

'The foreboding of some undiscoverable danger lying hid from us all in the darkness of the future was strong on me. The doubt whether I was not linked already to a chain of events which even my approaching departure from Cumberland would be powerless to snap asunder -- the doubt whether we any of us saw the end as the end would really be -- gathered more and more darkly over my mind. Poignant as it was, the sense of suffering caused by the miserable end of my brief, presumptuous love seemed to be blunted and deadened by the still stronger sense of something obscurely impending, something invisibly threatening, that Time was holding over our heads.'(101)

'When a sensible woman has a serious question put to her, and evades it by a flippant answer, it is a sure sign, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, that she has something to conceal.'(163)

'There are many varieties of sharp practitioners in this world, but I think the hardest of all to deal with are the men who overreach you under the disguise of inveterate good-humour.'(175)

'Men! They are the enemies of our innocence and our peace -- they drag us away from our parents' love and our sisters' friendship -- they take us body and soul to themselves, and fasten our helpless lives to theirs as they chain up a dog to his kennel. And what does the best of them give us in return?'(203)

'The unsolved mystery in connection with this unhappy woman is now rendered doubly suspicious, in my eyes, by the absolute conviction which I feel, that the clue to it has been hidden by Sir Percival from the most intimate friend he has in the world... There are many kinds of curiosity, I know -- but there is no misinterpreting the curiosity of blank surprise: if I ever saw it in my life I saw it in the Count's face.'(262)

'Women can resist a man's love, a man's fame, a man's personal appearance, and a man's money, but they cannot resist a man's tongue when he knows how to talk to them.'(278)

'Men little know when they say hard things to us how well we remember them, and much harm they do us.'(281)

'Any woman who is sure of her own wits is a match at any time for a man who is not sure of his own temper.'(332)

'That sublime self-forgetfulness of women, which yields so much and asks so little, turned all her thoughts from herself to me.'(565)

a Penguin Book Edition
646 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: Victorian Challenge
                               100+ Reading Challenge

82. DR. JEKYLL and MR. HYDE

Robert Louis Stevenson 1886

Who has not heard of this novella? A classic mystery science fiction, it is a very intriguing and candid rendition of the battle between one's own good and evil side, said to have been written by the author while sick in bed in 1885. There are three main narratives from three close friends (Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Utterson and Dr. Lanyon) that essentially comprise this short book. It starts with Lawyer Mr Utterson wondering about the mysterious relationship between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as he witnesses the horrid Mr. Hyde and later receives Dr. Jekyll's last will wherein he leaves all his property to Mr. Hyde. He gets more confused after a close friend Dr. Lanyon abruptly dissociates and detests Dr. Jekyll. The last narrative is in the form of a letter of explanation from Dr. Jekyll of the disastrous events after his discovery of the transforming potion.

'Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable.'(opening line)

'But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove."I incline to Cain's heresy," he used to say quaintly: "I let my brother go to the devil in his own way."(37)

'It is the mark of a modest man to accept his friendly circle ready-made from the hands of opportunity; and that was the lawyer's way. His friends were those of his own blood or those of whom he had known the longest; his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied no aptness in the object.'(38)

'He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something down-right detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn't specify the point. He's an extraordinary looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way. No, sir, I can make no hand of it; I can't describe him. And it's not want of memory; for I declare I can see him this moment.'(43)

'The will was holograph... it provided not only that, in case of the decease of Henry Jekyll, M.D... all his possessions were to pass into the hands of his "friend and benefactor Edward Hyde," but that in case of Dr. Jekyll's "disappearance or unexplained absence for any period exceeding three calendar months," the said Edward Hyde should step into the said Henry Jekyll's shoes without further delay and free from any burthen or obligation, beyond the payment of a few small sums to the members of the doctor's household.' (45)

'The death of Sir Danvers was, to his way of thinking, more than paid for by the disappearance of Mr. Hyde. Now that the evil influence had been withdrawn, a new life began for Dr. Jekyll. He came out of his seclusion, renewed relations with his friends, became once more their familiar guest and entertainer; and whilst he had always been known for charities, he was no less distinguished for religion. He was busy, he was much in the open air, he did good; his face seemed to open and brighten, as if with an inward consciousness of service; and for more than two months, the doctor was at peace.'(71)

'On the 8th of January Utterson had dined at the doctor's with a small party; Lanyon had been there; and the face of the host had looked from one to other as in the old days when the trio were inseparable friends. On the 12th, and again on the 14th, the door was shut against the lawyer. "The doctor was confined to the house," Poole said, "and saw no one." On the 15th, he tried again, and was again refused; and having now been used for the last two months to see his friend almost daily, he found this return of solitude to weigh upon his spirits. The fifth night he had in Guest to dine with him, and the sixth he betook himself to Dr. Lanyon's.'(72)

'It was sometimes his way-- the master's, that is -- to write his orders on a sheet of paper and throw it on the stair. We've had nothing else this week back; nothing but papers, and a closed door, and the very meals left there to be smuggled in when nobody was looking. Well, sir, everyday, ay, and twice and thrice in the same day, there had been orders and complaints, and I have been sent flying to all the wholesale chemists in town. Every time I brought the stuff back, there would be another paper telling me to return it, because it was not pure, and another order to a different firm. This drug is wanted bitter bad, sir, whatever for.'(83)

'What he told me in the next hour, I cannot bring my mind to set on paper. I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard, and my soul sickened at it; and yet now when that sight has faded from my eyes, I ask myself if I believe it, and I cannot answer.'(102)

'It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in my fault, that made me what I was, and with even a deeper trench than in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man's dual nature.'(103)

'It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both; and from an early date, even before the course of my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest most naked possibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as a beloved daydream, on the thought of the separation of these daydreams, on the thought of the separation of these elements.'(104)
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First Signet Classic Printing, December 1978
124 pages
Book borrowed from the library
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Personal note: This edition has an awesome introduction by Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita). For a great review, check this one from The Books of My Life.

77. FRANKENSTEIN

Mary Shelley 1818

A timeless, relevant book, a symbolic reminder to us of the dangers of pursuing scientific obsessions no matter what. Robert Walton narrates in epistolary form his rescue of Victor Frankenstein as his ship and crew are stranded on ice on their way to explore the North Pole. While recuperating on the ship, Victor Frankenstein, despondent and remorseful reveals his horrific deed: his creation of a life who turned into a monstrous murderer whom he now wants to destroy. The novel also lends a unique voice to Frankenstein's monster as he seeks understanding for the confused existence he never asked for.

'You may easily perceive, Captain Walton that I have suffered great and unparalleled misfortunes.. I had determined, at one time, that the memory of these evils should die with me; but you have won me to alter my determination. You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been. I do not know that the relation of my disasters will be useful to you; yet, when I reflect that you are pursuing the same course, exposing yourself to the same dangers which have rendered me what I am, I imagine that you may deduce an apt moral from my tale; one that may direct you if you succeed in your undertaking, and console you in case of failure.'(25)

'I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self. Besides, in drawing the picture of my early days, I also record those events which led, by insensible steps, to my after tale of misery: for when would I account to myself of the birth of that passion, which afterwards ruled my destiny, I find it arise, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; but, swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys.'(34)

'Such were the professor's words-- rather let me say such the words of fate, enounced to destroy me. As he went on, I felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy; one by one the various keys were touched which formed the mechanism of my being: chord after chord was sounded, and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose. So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein-- more, far more, will I achieve: treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.'(42)

'Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least be my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.'(47)

'A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and do destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind.'(50)

'It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.'(51)

'I beheld the wretch-- the miserable monster whom I have created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped, and rushed downstairs.'(52)

'... but is it not a duty to the survivors, that we should refrain from augmenting their unhappiness by an appearance of immoderate grief? It is also a duty owed to yourself; for excessive sorrow prevents improvement or enjoyment, or even the discharge of daily usefulness, without which no man is fit for society.'(80)

'Remorse extinguished every hope, I had been the author of unalterable evils; and I lived in daily fear, lest the monster whom I had created should perpetuate some new wickedness.'(81)

'Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, they creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.'(89)

'I was dependent on none and related to none. 'The path of my departure was free'; and there was none to lament my annihilation. My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? '(115)

'We may not part until you have promised to comply with my requisition. I am alone, and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species, and have the same defects. This being you must create.'(128)
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a Barnes and Noble Classics edition, 2003
197 pages
Book owned
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Personal note: Highly recommended by Bibliophiliac and great book review by Kah Woei at The Books Of My Life.

74. the LAST BRIDGE

Teri Coyne 2009


Alexandra 'Cat' Rucker's father is dying and her mother just committed suicide. So she is forced to come back home to Wilton, Ohio, the hometown she ran away from ten years ago because of physical and sexual abuse from 'the Hand'. A fierce and sharp portrayal of a broken woman's struggle to finally face the reality of dark family secrets and past loves at the same time that she tries to deal with her inner demons and discover stunning new revelations about her family.

'Two days after my father had a massive stroke my mother shot herself in the head. Her suicide was a shock-- not the fact that she killed herself but the way in which she did it. It was odd that my mother chose such a violent end to her own violent life.'(opening lines)

'I wish I could ask her what she saw before she pulled the trigger. I don't need her to say she saw me. I want to know she saw something. That she felt something. And that it felt like freedom. And then, if I could, I would ask her what that felt like.'(4)

'Thanks,' I said. Cat is my nickname. It's short for alley Cat. My real name is Alexandra but my family used to call me Ally. Then my sister, Wendy, called me Alley Cat, and then just Cat. After a while, I was known in Wilton as Cat.'(5)

February 23rd.
Cat,
He isn't who you think he is.
Mom xxxooo
... I counted the words including the hugs and kisses. Ten, minus the date-- one for every year I had been gone.'(13)

'I battled my body on a daily basis. Most days it won, and I crawled back to wherever I came from-- the bed, the floor. Today I rallied the troops: I asked the legs to stand, the head to focus, and the heart to stay hidden.'(25)

'I counted twelve Bundt cakes. This was part of Wilton tradition: a Bundt cake for a death, a blanket for a birth, a casserole for a heart attack.'(30)

'My extracurricular activity was avoiding Dad at all costs. One didn't go out for this sport as much as get drafted for it. Dad didn't do much in the way of work... He was good with his hands. Whatever he touched bended to his will: crops grew, dead machines turned over, skin bruised.'(36)

'With no one to share the stories with, I studied the books more closely and secretly began drawing and writing my own comic, called "Kat's Eye." It was the story of a girl named Kitty Kat who was banished from her hometown of 'Niceville" (I saw that town on a map of Florida once) by her nemesis, "the Hand." The stories were about Kitty Kat's attempts to fight the Hand (and his fellow evildoers, "the Monster" and "the Hard Heart") and get back to Niceville.(45)

'The sound of the phone ringing reverberated inside my head. I shot up in bed and looked frantically around the strange room. Amnesia was a by-product of the black edge of sleep I drank myself into most nights.'(64)

'This was why I didn't tell people. They never believed me. Deep down they wanted to think that it wasn't awful as it seemed. Instead of feeling bad for me, they'd rather act like I was doing something to deserve the treatment.'(75)

'I waited and hoped she would find me and take us away. I wanted her to be willing to lose another finger for me. I wanted her to be someone else. "We all have our crosses to bear," was her answer the last time I tried to tell her what was happening.'(90)

'I went back to the swing and pushed myself. The chains creaked as he studied me. His eyes took in every outward feature: my hair, eyes, hands, lips. Maybe if he looked long enough he could see right through to the heart of me. And in seeing that dark core, would he understand or would he run away?'(97)

'In his review of me, I felt what he saw, the way the parts of me made a body, a living, breathing equation that had been ravaged but could also be adored. And while I had vowed to never look my father in the face when he was touching me, I could not look away from Addison as his eyes seemed to reconstruct me into something different. '(106)

'So what is walking the plank?' Addison asked the next morning as I searched the room for my mother's pearls.'(120)

'At the far end of our property over by Rucker's Creek, there's a crack where the land splits. The ravine is deep and rocky and goes for about a mile. There's a rope bridge that spans the crack that's been there my whole life. My dad and your dad built it before my parents were married. You can climb it and get to this sweet patch of wood and grass and a small hunting shack.'(121)

'You can be lonelier with someone else than by yourself. That kind of love, that life she made, destroyed everything. Being alone never hurt anybody.'(150)

'The hardest part of leaving isn't the looking back; it isn't the loss you feel for a place or people; it's the fear that what you intended to leave isn't ever going to go, and that what you really want, you're never going to get.'(184)

'It's not the answer to your problems you are looking for, it's the courage to face them.'(219)
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2010 Ballantine Books Trade Paperback Edition
225 pages
Book won
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Personal note: My first book giveaway win courtesy of Tea Time with Marce.

64. MURDER on the ORIENT EXPRESS

Agatha Christie 1934

A classic detective fiction, Hercule Poirot is a private Belgian detective who boards the Orient Express train en route from Istanbul to England. The surprisingly crowded Stamboul-Callais coach sleeping compartments become the scene of an investigation as a snowstorm halts their journey, an American is found dead, and the brilliant Poirot solves the murder using his brain cells: by pure logic and deduction.

'Hercule Poirot addressed himself to the task of keeping his moustaches out of the soup.'(27)

'It is incredible, Monsieur. All the world elects to travel tonight.'(31)

'The Orient Express had started on its three-days' journey across Europe.'(35)

'And yet - it lends itself to romance, my friend. All around us are people, of all classes, of all nationalities, of all ages. For three days these people, these strangers to one another, are brought together. They sleep and eat under one roof, they cannot get away from each other. At the end of three days they part, they go their several ways, never, perhaps to see each other again.'(38)

'You may well ask that. First this snow - this stoppage. And now -... And now a passenger lies dead in his berth -stabbed.'(61)

"No," said Mr Bouc thoughtfully. "That is the act of a man driven almost crazy with a frenzied hate - it suggests more the Latin temperament. Or else it suggests, as our friend the chef de train insisted, a woman."(78)

'We have here a hypothesis of the First and Second Murderer, as the great Shakespeare would put it. The First Murderer stabbed his victim and left the compartment, turning off the light. The Second Murderer came in the dark, did not see that his or her work had been done and stabbed at least twice at a dead body. '(83)

'See you, my dear doctor, me, I am not one to rely upon the expert procedure. It is the psychology I seek, not the fingerprint or the cigarette ash. But in this case I would welcome a little scientific assistance. This compartment is full of clues, but can I be sure that those clues are really what they seem to be?'(89)

'Ah, I'm coming to that. As I say, these clues, the watch stopped at a quarter-past one, the handkerchief, the pipe cleaner, they may be genuine, or they may be fake. As to that I cannot yet tell.'(90)

'Ratchett, as you suspected, was merely an alias. Ratchett was Casetti, the man who ran the celebrated kidnapping stunts - including the famous affair of little Daisy Armstrong.'(113)

'Mon cher, it is my habit to be neat and orderly. I make here a little table of chronological events.'(145)

'The impossible cannot have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.'(213)

'You are in error. You are inclined to put the cart before the horse. Before I ask myself, "Where did this man vanish to?" I ask myself, " Did such a man really exist?" Because, you see, if the man were an invention-- a fabrication-- how much easier to make him disappear! So I try to establish first that there is really is such a flesh and blood person.'(219)

'Mon ami, if you wish to catch a rabbit you put a ferret into the hole, and if the rabbit is there he runs. That is all I have done.'(248)

"We will go back to the dining-car," said Poirot. "We know now all that we can know. We have the evidence of the passengers, the evidence of their baggage, the evidence of our eyes. We can expect no further help. It must be our part now to use our brains.'(252)

'But I know human nature, my friend, and I tell you that, suddenly confronted with the possibility of being tried for murder, the most innocent person will lose their head and do the most absurd things. No, no the grease spot and that changed label do not prove guilt...'(284)

'If you confront anyone who has lied with the truth, they usually admit it - often our of sheer surprise. It is only necessary to guess right to produce your effect.'(302)

"I like to see an angry Englishman," said Poirot. "They are very amusing. The more emotional they feel the less command they have of language."(315)

'As to who killed him --" He paused, looking at his audience. He could not complain of any lack of attention. Every eye was fixed upon him. In the stillness you could have heard a pin drop. He went on slowly:'(337)
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An Agatha Christie Signature Edition published 2001
347 pages
Book owned
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Personal note: Souvenir book bought in Amsterdam, May, 2010; and thanks to NancyO from 2010:The Year in Books who encouraged me to read the book earlier that I would have.

51. the FORGOTTEN GARDEN

Kate Morton 2008

A highly intricately woven story of three women, Nell, Eliza and Cassandra, mysteriously connected together by a suitcase with a fairy tale book that started a journey from Queensland, Australia to London and Cornwall, at the Cliff Cottage where the secrets of the forgotten garden is delicately revealed.

"It was dark where she was crouched but the little girl did as she'd been told. The lady had said to wait, it wasn't safe yet, they had to be as quiet as larder mice. It was a game, just like a hide-and-seek."(3)

"Later, when her grandmother had slipped into unconsciousness again, Cassandra wondered at the mind's cruel ability to toss up flecks of the past. Why, as she neared her life's end, her grandmother's head should ring with the voices of the people long since gone. Was it always this way? Did those with passage booked on death's silent ship always scan the dock for faces of the long-departed?"(14)

"Beneath the notebook she found the book of fairy tales. The cover was green cardboard, the writing gold: Magical Tales for Girls and Boys, by Eliza Makepeace."(36)

"All the secrets that had materialized in her grandmother's wake were beginning to knit together. Nell's unknown parentage, her arrival as a child at an ocean port, the suitcase, the mysterious trip to England, this secret house..."(58)

"Later, when she looked back upon events, Cassandra knew it was the suitcase that found her, just as it had done the first time."(80)

"As the ocean continued to stretch below, Cassandra turned to the first story and began to read, a story called "The Crone's Eyes," which she recognized from the hot summer's day long ago." (94)

"You mustn't wait for someone to rescue you...A girl expecting rescue never learns to save herself. Even with the means, she'll find her courage wanting. Don't be like that, Eliza. You must find your courage, learn to rescue yourself, never rely on someone else." (122)

"They are strands of hair, Eliza, taken from the women in my family. My grandmother's her mother's before, and so on. It's tradition. This is called a mourning brooch...Because it reminds us of those we've lost. Those who came before and made us who we are." (124)

"Then she folded his memory a gently as she could, wrapped it in the layers of emotion--joy, love, commitment--for which she no longer had need, and locked the whole deep inside her." (142)

"You mustn't speak your name. It's a game we're playing. That's what the Authoress had said. Nell could hear it now, the silvery voice, like a breeze off the ocean surface. It's our secret. You mustn't tell."(164)

"The prospect of an early death sits differently upon each person. In some it gifts maturity far outweighing their age and experience" calm acceptance blossoms into a beautiful nature and soft countenance. In others, however, it leads to the formulation of a tiny ice flint in their heart. Ice that, though at times concealed, never properly melts."(239)

"Even the most pragmatic person fell victim at times to a longing for something other."(254)

"Rose Mountrachet at eighteen was fair indeed: white skin, a cloud of dark hair swept back in loose braid and the full bosom so fashionable in the period."(268)

"It was a garden, a walled garden. Overgrown but with beautiful bones visible still. Someone had cared for this garden once. The remains of two paths snaked back and forth, intertwined like the lacing on an Irish dancing shoe. Fruit trees had been espaliered around the sides, and wires zigzagged from the top of one wall to the top of another. Hungry wisteria branches had woven themselves around to form a sort of canopy. Against the southern wall, an ancient and knobbled tree was growing... It was the apple tree..."(314)

"She of course, had her heart set on a greater match & will not see that I care for not one whit for money or title. Those are her desires for me, & while I confess I once shared them, I do so no longer--How can I when my Prince has come for me and unlatched the door to my golden cage?"(333)

"In each man's heart there lies a hole. A dark abyss of need, the filling of which takes precedence over all else. Adeline suspected that Nathaniel Walker's hole was pride, the most dangerous pride, that of the poor man."(337)

"If a windsock is left suspended for years on end, without opportunities for rest or repair, the harsh winds will invariably tear holes in its fabric. So too, Lady Mountrachet, your daughter must be allowed time to recuperate. Must be shielded from the strong winds that threaten to rend her asunder."(407)

"Deep within the heart of the cottage, behind a special door with a shiny lock, there was a very precious object. A Golden Egg whose glow was said to be brilliant, so beautiful, that those whose eyes lit upon it were rendered instantly blind."(471)

First Atria Books hardcover edition April 2009,
549 pages
Book borrowed from the Library

44. REBECCA

Daphne Du Maurier 1938

In a flashback style, the narrator of this romantic mystery was unnamed until she encountered a quick courtship and marriage that turned her into the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter. He whisked her away to Manderley estate where she is unwanted by the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers and is haunted by the memory of Rebecca, Maxim's first wife.

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me."

"We both have known fear, and loneliness, and very great distress. I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We all of us have our particular devil who rides and torments us, and we must give battle in the end. We have conquered ours, or so we believe."

"Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind."

"What hound of heaven had driven him to the high hills this afternoon? I thought of his car, with half a length between it and that drop of two thousand feet, and the blank expression of his face. What footsteps echoed in his mind, what whispers, and what memories, and why of all poems, must he keep this one in the pocket of his car?"

"If only there could be an invention...that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again."

"I was glad to see the dogs there, sitting before the fire, and Jasper, the younger, came over to me at once, his tail wagging, and thrust his nose into my hand."

"But this writing table, beautiful as it was, was no pretty toy where a woman would scribble little notes, nibbling the end of a pen, leaving it, day after day, in carelessness, the blotter a little askew. The pigeon-holes were docketed, "letter-unanswered," "letter-to-keep," "household," "estate," "menus," "miscellaneous," "addresses,"; each ticket written in that same scrawling startled me, to recognize it again, for I had not seen it since I had destroyed the page from the book of poems, and I had not thought to see it again."

"Now you are here, let me show you everything...I know you want to see it all, you've wanted to for a long time, and you were too shy to ask. It's a lovely room, isn't it? The loveliest room you have ever seen."

""Miss Caroline de Winter," shouted the drummer. I came forward to the head of the stairs and stood there, smiling, hat in my hand, like the girl in the picture. I waited for the clapping and the laughter that would follow as I walked slowly down the stairs."

"This was her bed. It's a beautiful bed, isn't it? I keep the golden coverlet on it always, it was her favourite. Here is her nightdress she was wearing for the last time, before she died. Would you like to touch it again?"

"'You maid me better than anyone, Danny,' she used to say. 'I won't have anyone but you.'"

"They were all fitting into place, the jig-saw pieces. The odd strained shapes that I had tried to piece together with my fumbling fingers and they never fitted."

"But you. I can't forget what it has done to you. I was looking at you, thinking of nothing else that I loved. It's gone forever, that funny, young, lost look that I loved. It won't come back again."

Personal Note: A surprising and fitting ending to a fabulous day in Luxembourg city, Luxembourg, May 5, 2010.

43. the SPARROW

Mary Doria Russell 1996

An extraordinary science fiction with strong religious and philosophical undertones about extraterrestrial life in planet Rakhat. The voyagers are a group of friends: Emilio Sandoz, Anne, George, Jimmy and Sofia. Emilio Sandoz, a Jesuit priest and lone survivor of the mission recounts their compelling story in alternating present and flashback telling. It is a story of love and friendship, belief and faith.

"It was predictable, in hindsight. Everything about the history of the Society of Jesus bespoke deft and efficient action, exploration and research. During what the Europeans were pleased to call the Age of Discovery, Jesuit priests were never more than a year or two behind the men who made initial contact with previously unknown peoples..."

"Ruminating over the same problem as he walked back to his lightless room on the eastern side of the Rome Ring, John Candotti had his own theory about how things had gone wrong. The mission, he thought, probably failed because of a series of logical, reasonable, carefully constructed decisions, each of which seemed like a good idea at the time. Like most colossal disasters."

"Sometimes... I begin with songs. They provide a sort of skeleton grammar for me to flesh out. Songs of longing for future tense, songs of regret for past tense, songs of love for the present."

""Do you know what made me fall in love with you?" George asked suddenly. Anne shook her head, puzzled that he should ask her this now. "I heard you laugh, down the hall, just before I got to Spanish class that first day. I couldn't see you. I just heard this fabulous laugh, like a whole octave, top to bottom. And I had to hear it again.""

"At first, they simply listened to the fragment of music over and over, each time groaning as the signal fell off to static just as the music began to build to something wonderful. Then after the third hearing, Anne said, "Okay. What can we tell about them? They sing in groups, and there is a lead singer. So they have a social organization. Can we assume they breathe air because their music can be heard like this?""

"The discussion went on for some time, with George, Anne and Jimmy extrapolating, deducting and arguing. Emilio, thoughtful, went back to the music again, playing it through softly once more, but then he turned the playback off. Sofia alone had neither comment on the music nor any speculation about the singers..."

"Trained as linguist and a priest, Emilio had a hard time understanding the Einsteinian physics that predicted that the transit time elapsed on Earth would be around seventeeen years, while the effect of traveling near light speed would make it seem closer to six months for the crew onboard the asteroid."

"And now we have evidence that another sentient species exists nearby and that they sing. They sing, Anne... We have to find out about them. There is simply no alternative. We have to know them."

"Why is it that God gets all the credit for the good stuff, but it's the doctor's fault when shit happens? When the patient comes through, it's always 'Thank God," and when the patient dies, it's always blame the doctor."

"When he got back to the apartment, he found that the household numbers were somewhat reduced that evening. Askama had left to play with her friends, as she often did if Emilio was out of sight for a while. Manuzhai had gone visiting. She might not come back at all; equally likely, she might return with five or six guests who'd spend the night. Chaypas was away on some errand, for some unspecified length of time. People often disappeared like that, for hours or days or weeks. Time seemed unimportant to the Runa. There were no calendars or clocks."

"The Runa could be perceptive, but he did occasionally find some of them -- not dense really, but limited somehow. "The technological basis for the society is gathering." George was saying disgusted. "They collect food. and flowers, for crying out loud. Damned if I know what they do with them.""

"Emilio, everything I have learned about the mission leads me to believe that you went for the greater glory of God. You believed that you arrived at your destination by the grace of God. In the beginning, everything you did was for the love of God. I have the testimony of two of your superiors who believed sincerely that something far out of the ordinary happened to you on Rakhat, that you--..."

"There are times, he would tell the Reshtar, when we are in the midst of life -- moments of confrontation with birth or death, or moments of beauty when nature or love is fully revealed, or moments of terrible loneliness -- times when a holy and awesome awareness comes upon us. It may come as deep inner stillness or as a rush of overflowing emotion. It may seem to come from beyond us, without any provocation, or from within us, evoked by music or by a sleeping child. If we open our hearts at such moments, creation reveals itself to us in all its unity and fullness. and when we return from such a moment of awareness, our hearts long to find some way to capture it in words forever, so that we can remain faithful to its higher truth."

Personal Note: Read and was amazed: May 1, 2010 Amsterdam, Netherlands. Thanks to Bibliolatry

18. the SHIVERING SANDS

Victoria Holt 1969

An old fashioned 19th century whodunit like they used to write it that will keep you guessing until the end. Caroline Verlaine, a musician, has just lost her husband Pietro, a world-famous pianist. Soon after, her sister Roma an archeologist disappears. Caroline travels to the scene of her disappearance at a mysterious Lovat Stacy estate in Kent.

"I am wondering where I should begin my story. Should it be on the day when I saw Napier and Edith being married in the little church at Lovat Mill? Or when I was sitting in the train starting out on my journey to discover the truth behind the disappearance of my sister Roma?"

"I was a woman who had tasted life and found it bitter--no, bitter-sweet, as all life is; but the sweetness was gone and the bitterness remained."

"From my earliest memories I was interested in sounds. I loved that of trickling water, the sounds of the fountains playing, the clop-clop of horse's hoof on the road, the call of the secret traders; the wind in the pear tree... I could even hear music in the dripping of a tap..."

"Now you're going to be a coy young lady and say 'This is too sudden.'Some of the best things in life are; and you have to make up your mind suddenly or lose them."

"You've heard about the Sands, Mrs. Verlaine. Quick sands...shivering sands...Boats are caught in them and they can't get off. They feel themselves held in a grip so fierce that nothing will release them...and slowly they begin to sink into the shivering sands."

"It was Beethoven's Fur Elise, in my mind one of the most beautiful pieces ever written...I was deeply moved, for the piece brought back memories of the house in Paris and of Pietro. He had said of this piece: "Romantic...haunting...mysterious.
You couldn't go wrong with a piece like that. With that you can hypnotise yourself into thinking you're a great pianist.""

"You leap to conclusions, do you not? As for bluntness I find that those who pride themselves on being frank usually apply then term to their own plain speaking. They often have another for other people's--rudeness."

"The maternal instict... not that I want to discourage it... But it should be applied sparingly, and in secret. Worry about me, but don't let me know it. Be unobtrusive. Little attentions should be performed subtly so that they go unnoticed. I should turn in disgust from a fussy possessive female."

Personal note: A blind pick from a number of old books in a surprise bookshelf inside our hotel room at Fairmont Queen Elizabeth, Montreal, Canada.

11. WAKING LAZARUS

T.L. Hines 2006

Jude Allman has died three times, and three times, he miraculously came back from the dead. The story implies the premise that we are all here on this earth for a reason. It is both mysterious and inspirational.

"The first time Jude Allman died, he was eight years old."

"Keep it secret, keep it safe. He said it in his mind, over and over, a kind of mantra that calmed his body, stilled his nerves. Keep it secret, keep it safe."

"When he was younger, he had always assumed mentally ill people couldn't know they were sick. After all, it you were sane enough to recognize you were crazy, how crazy could you really be? But now he knew that wasn't the case. He had always been to feel the paranoia creeping into his own brain. Felt it crawling like a low slug, and yet he was powerless to stop it."

"The world swam. Colors reversed. Reversed. Jude shook his head, thinking he must be blacking out, but the odd colors stayed in his line of vision. It was as if he were looking at film negatives, everything tinted a sick orange, the sky dark and shadows white."

"All I can say is: there must be a good reason why you're still here, because there are a thousand reasons why you shouldn't be."

"You're worried about what you did today. Or, more appropriately, didn't do. To be blunt, you should be. One, it's never a good idea to ignore the signs as they're given to you. Two, you need to keep in mind every decision in the universe has ripples, echoes that spread out from it."

"Accepting and becoming. It had been so much easier than expected. They were two, and they were one. Always had been, probably. But they had been so careful to separate the two before, afraid not to separate the two. The Normal needed to mix in, the Hunter needed to be invisible."

"If you had died first, this conversation never would have happened. So in an odd way we're here right now because of Mom."

2. the SHADOW OF THE WIND

Carlos Luis Zafron, english translation 2004

A story set in Barcelona, about ten year old Daniel Sempere's adventure soon after he picks out a book, The Shadow of the Wind from the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. He then goes into a quest to find out about the life of the book's author - Julian Carax. It is part mystery, part thriller, and ultimately a love story.

"I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time."

"This is a place of mystery, Daniel, a sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strngthens."

"A secret's worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept."

"Making money isn't hard in itself...What's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting your life to."

"Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.
There are no second chances in life, except to feel remorse."

"Gustavo Barcelo had a way of listening that seemed both contemplative and Solomonic, like a doctor or a pope."

"Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen."

"Sometimes what matters isn't what one gives but what one gives up."

"Coincidences are the scars of fate. There are no coincidences. We are puppets of our subconscious desires."

"Of all the things that Julian wrote, the one that I have always felt closest to my heart is that as long as we are remembered, we remain alive."

"Julian had once told me that a story is a letter the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise."

1. the BLIND ASSASSIN

Margaret Atwood,2000

A novel within a novel. The main storyline is set in Ontario, Canada, and involves Iris narrating by a series of flashbacks, how three deaths early on in the story (Laura, her sister, Richard, her politically ambitious wealthy husband, and her grand-daughter Sabrina) came to be. The other storyline involves an affair between an unidentified couple, one of which wrote a novel entitled the Blind Assassin.

"Why do we always assume at such moments that everyone is staring at us. Usually nobody is."

"I dont need that fluff on my coffee.Looks like shaving cream. One swallow and you're foaming at the mouth."

"But thoughtless ingratitude is the armour of the young; without it, how would they ever get through life? The old wish the young well, but they wish them ill also; they would like to eat them up, and absorb their vitality, and remain immortal themselves. Without the protection of surliness and levity, all children would be crushed by the past-the past of others, loaded onto their shoulders. Selfishness is their saving grace."

"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."

"Where was the threshold, between the inner world and the outer one? We each move unthinkingly through this gateway everyday, we use the passwords of grammar-I say, you say, he and she say it, on the other hand, does not say-paying for the privelege of sanity with common coin, with meanings we've agreed on."

"All the speech-making can bloat a man up. I've watched the process, many times now. It's those kind of words, the kind they use in speeches. They have a fermenting effect on the brain. You can see it on television, during the political broadcasts-the words coming out of their mouths like bubbles of gas."