The smile of a great man

"He smiled understandingly - much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in your life. It faced - or seemed to face - the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey."


from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, page 49.

earl grey and chapter twenty three

The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.
-  Alan Bennett

on sleeping with the hallway light on

so just lately, I've been reading a few too many murder mysteries. It started with old Agatha Christie and now that I've been introduced to the charming Mr. Lennox I shall never get away. I started 'A death in the Small Hours' by Charles Finch very quietly late last night. I'm on page eleven and it's wonderful.

An honest pom pom rug update: no progress... to busy trying to discover who killed the housemaid.

In the words of C.S Lewis, "You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me."

hello

I've been busy busy busy down at the bookshop lately and I'm loving flicking through all the books and magazines for inspiration.

Photograph by the stunning Charlotte Howard

I thought I'd start posting a few of my projects on here as a little extra incentive for me to keep creating and making this year. Anyway I've just started making a rug for our new living room so I'll post a photo next week when we have internet again. Yay!

patience is a virtue

"She knew that none if this would come true until the following summer, but it didn't matter."

from Moominpappa At Sea by Tove Jansson

Grace and dreaming

"What if she is dreaming...? Dreams are private, she said. And she is right. A dream is a story that no one else will get to hear or read."

from Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

books

"Be careful of books. Be careful with books. Be careful or one can become a weapon-wielder. Be careful or one can become the victim."


Cai Guo-Qiang

a bookshelf

i love this. it's so erratic and hoarderish (a new word?) and a little bit wonderfully organised all at the same time.

Photo by Melchior Tersen via Andrew Harlow.

sharing stories

beautiful words make me happy.

Date a Girl Who Reads by Rosemarie Urquico 

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by God, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

i found this here http://or-so-i-feel.blogspot.com/

hundreds of tiny words

you have a pile of books next to your bed. a little shelf all its own. and i love you for it.