What I'm reading @whatpaulsreading-blog - Tumblr Blog

The situation wasn't helped by the fact that the middle managers were serving us from what looked like an overcrowded aquarium under which someone had briefly passed a Bunsen burner. Fish that with a moment's veterinary attention could have been returned to the wild to resume fulfilling lives found their way in preposterous numbers on to our plates, and at one stage I swear I was eating some sort of anal sphincter. I would have to admit, under questioning, that I have never seen an anal sphincter detached from its host and I hope that I never do, but if the rubbery ring on my plate wasn't such a sphincter then I'd like to know what was.

Margrave of the Marshes (2005), John Peel (the genius of)

#Margrave of the Marshes #john peel

Book joke

I woke up this morning yelling, "Hobbit, Hobbit, Hobbit, Hobbit".

It turns out I was Tolkein in my sleep...

"too early!" by Charles Bukowski

there are some people who will

phone a man at 7 a.m. when he is desperately sick and hungover. I always greet these idiots with a few violent words and the slamming down of the receiver knowing that their morning eagerness means that they retired early and thus wasted the preceding night (and most likely the preceding days, weeks and years). that they could imagine that I'd want to converse with them at 7 a.m. is an insult to whatever intelligent life is left in our dwindling universe.

...and if Miss Elizabeth had entertained any doubts about the wisdom of her scheme to secure Mr Darcy, the first sight of Pemberley had confirmed her detirmination to fall in love with him at the first convenient moment.

The wicked wit of PD James' Death Comes to Pemberley

I had one Lamb slaughtered and hanging for five days and one in pen four still two days off being finished I decided to use the one already slaughtered. For vegetables I went out to the garden my best bet now baby carrots and some pink fur apple potatoes very waxy pale-pink skin I could do them parboiled with butter parsley. My main green I decided would be spinach sauteed with garlic finish with a squeeze of lemon and with this I'd do a boned shoulder of Lamb rolled with herb stuffing and for entree a single loin Cutler like head chef had done that day when he ruined his suit moist and pink and topped with my own just reduced from the Lamb stock I had going served with French-cut deep-fried Jerusalem artichokes and a sorrel garnish. Hunter was doing saltimbocca and for entrees a grilled stuffed quail.

The Cook by Wayne Macauley

September read often, and liked it best when words did not pretend to be simple, but put on their full armor and rode out with colours flying.

The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her own Making, Catherynne M. Valente

Have been unavoidably detained by the world. Expect us when you see us.

Stardust, Neil Gaiman

#Reading #Stardust #Neil Gaiman

‘Eyes, eyes! New eyes for old!’ shouted a tiny woman in front of a table covered with bottles and jars filled with eyes of every kind and colour. ‘Instruments of music from a hundred lands!’ ‘Penny whistles! Tuppenny Hums! Threepenny choral anthems!’ ‘Try your luck! Step right up! Answer a simple riddle and win a wind-flower!’ ‘Everlasting lavender! Bluebell cloth!’ ‘Bottled dreams, a shilling a bottle!’ Coats of night! Coats of twilight! Coats of dusk!’ ‘Swords of fortune! Wands of power! Rings of eternity! Cards of grace! Roll-up, roll-up, step this way!’

The fairie market, Stardust - Neil Gaiman

#quote #neil gaiman #fairie market #stardust

No man is an island, entire of itself: every man is a piece of the continent; a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were; as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne, Meditation 17, from Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624). Modernised spelling and punctution.

As to the proper use and distinction of words, it ought to be common to all who make their language at all an object of care.

Quintillian, Institutio Oratoria (93 BC)

The perfection of style is to be clear

Aristotle, Poetics Book 22 (c. 350 BC) Trans: S.H. Butcher

#Rhetoric #Aristotle #Poetics

What is there greater than the word which persuades

Plato, Gorgias (380 BC) Trans: Benjamin Jowett

#Rhetoric #Plato

Never use a long word when a short one will do.

George Orwell, ‘Politics and the English Language’ (1946)

#Rhetoric #George Orwell