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Lady Hermione … was looking stunned, flustered, disturbed, unnerved and disconcerted. … Gally, who was given to homely similes, thought she was madder than a wet hen, and he was right. Only an exceptionally emotional hen when unusually moist could have exhibited an equal annoyance.
P.G. Wodehouse, Galahad at Blandings (via manycurrentssmallpuddle) -
“We ought to send for a doctor!”
“I don’t want a doctor!”
“Then I shall go and heat you up a nice glass of milk,” said Ma Balsam. She belonged to the school of thought which holds that a nice glass of hot milk, while not baffling the death angel altogether, can at least postpone the inevitable.
P.G. Wodehouse, A Pelican at Blandings (via manycurrentssmallpuddle) -
It was a small dingy bookshop in a side street … I sidled through the doorway. It was necessary to sidle, since precariously arranged books impinged more and more every day on the passageway from the street. Inside, it was clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down.
Agatha Christie, The Clocks, 1963
(via manycurrentssmallpuddle) -
“Why does it feel like God has conditions on loving me?”
“He doesn’t. You’re projecting your own list of what you think He should expect. It gets pretty intense when you realize He accepts you despite the fact that you’re a mess as the moment … Jesus is the kind who moves in, says I love you anyway, and then starts helping repair the mess. He means it when He says He loves you as you are, not based on what you’ve done. But He loves you too much to leave you in that chaos once you know Him.”
Dee Henderson, The Rescuer (via manycurrentssmallpuddle) -
He had time, now, to kneel and wait, having busied himself thus far in anxious efforts like a man struggling up a mountain, when he knew there was a force that could make the mountain bow.
Ellis Peters, Saint Peter’s Fair (via manycurrentssmallpuddle) -
by Maud Hart Lovelace
Published 1942
I feel like a broken record–these books are so adorable and sweet! In this book, the girls decide to crown a queen of spring. However, Betsy and Tacy’s older sisters have already decided to do the same thing! Drama ensues.
What I really love about these books is how beautifully and kindly Lovelace portrays family. Betsy and her sister have always gotten along so well, that to see them in the midst of a serious argument is really quite distressing. But the way that they make up, and the way that everything comes together in the end–perfect.
I am enjoying these books so very, very much, and cannot recommend them highly enough. 5/5.
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You know, the longer I live, the more clearly I see that half the trouble in this bally world is caused by the light-hearted and thoughtless way in which chappies dash off letters of introduction and hand them other chappies to deliver to chappies of the third part. It’s one of those things that make you wish you were living in the Stone Age. What I mean to say is, if a fellow in those days wanted to give anyone a letter of introduction, he had to spend a month or so carving it on a large-sized boulder, and the chances were that the other chappies got so sick of lugging the thing round in the hot sun that he dropped it after the first mile. But nowadays it’s so easy to write letters of introduction that everybody does it without a second thought, with the result that some perfectly harmless cove like myself gets in the soup.
P.G. Wodehouse, The Inimitable Jeeves (via manycurrentssmallpuddle) -
The Inimitable Jeeves
by P.G. Wodehouse
Published 1923
While this book does not include the first appearance of Jeeves, it is the first collection of short stories devoted solely to the famous butler and his lovable master. If you have never read a Jeeves and Wooster book, stop whatever you’re doing right now and find one immediately. These books are a treasure.
That said, I prefer some of Wodehouse’s later works of Jeeves, which are full-length. While these short stories tie together loosely, each chapter is basically independent, and so, for me, the theme of “Bertie has a piece of clothing Jeeves doesn’t like. Bertie has a problem. Jeeves solves the problem. Bertie gets rid of the despised piece of clothing” gets a little redundant. But despite that, I still cannot read Wodehouse in public because I start laughing out loud and people look at me as though I’ve gone crazy. He is a definite favorite.
4/5.
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And of course, dash it, at the end of ten minutes I’d allowed the blighter to talk me round. It’s always the way. Anyone can talk me round. If I were in a Trappist monastery, the first thing that would happen would be that some smooth performer would lure me into some frightful idiocy against my better judgement by means of the deaf-and-dumb language.
P.G. Wodehouse, The Inimitable Jeeves (via manycurrentssmallpuddle) -
St. Peter’s Fair
by Ellis Peters
Published 1981
Another gem in the Brother Cadfael series. In this fourth book, the annual abbey’s fair is being held. But with Shrewsbury still in the midst of England’s civil war, the fair can be a place for more than honest trading. Also, feelings are still running high in the town, which has suffered from the war.
The story is exciting, the mystery is good, and the wisdom of Brother Cadfael–and in this book, particularly, Father Abbot–shines through.
5/5.
