When they reached the car, it was shaking from Ilia's jumping and barking. She was trying to squeeze herself through the two-inch gap at the top of the window that Joy had left open for fresh air. There was nothing for it but to open the door and let her dive into Kubu's arms and do a complete lick and polish of his face. (from The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu by Michael Stanley)
I've totally lost track of the number of rotten days that have been magically transformed by coming home to my dog. Animals have an amazing way of putting things into perspective, don't they?
Famed mystery writer P.D. James told a college audience that her career path was laid out early in life. "My parents had an inkling of what I might become when I was five years old. When they read me 'Humpty Dumpty', I asked, 'Was he pushed?'"
Well, I've found another book to add to my wishlist: David Crystal's As They Say in Zanzibar: Proverbial Wisdom From Around the World. It is a compilation of more than 2,000 proverbs. Crystal says in the foreword, "Proverbs do more than express a general truth or a universal belief. Each in its own way adds a tiny bit more to our understanding of the world's linguistic and cultural diversity, and thus helps us grasp more fully what it means to be human."
It looks as though there are quite a few about books and reading, one of them being "A book holds a house of gold." (China)
Welcome to my wishlist, Mr. Crystal!
"Bookish people drolly claim to be addicted. I think, in some cases, this is literally true. . . . I suppose this makes me a small-time pusher, holding a couple of capsules of a novel compound, looking for vulnerable readers for whom it might turn out to be habit-forming. There's enough of them. When I walk into a bookshop--one of the big ones, a vast dispensary stacked with complex uppers and downers--I can't help thinking, my God, what army of junkies is all this feeding?"--Henrietta Rose-Innes
"The book is warm. The book is handy. The book is handsome to the eye. The book occupies the shelf of the owner and is a reflection of him or her or, actually, me. The book is always there, to be reached for, to be thumbed and, too often I admit, to wonder about: Why did I buy this? My bookcase is full of mysteries. . . . I asked a bookseller in New York to recommend a brilliant but unheralded book, and he went through his shelves and picked out several, none of which I had ever heard of. Her Privates We was one of them. The Hemingway blurb sold me. No digital anything can do that."--Columnist Richard Cohen
