AfewReads

LORD GLENARVAN'S fortune was enormous, and he spent it entirely in doing good. His kindheartedness was even greater than his generosity, for the one knew no bounds, while the other, of necessity, had its limits. As Lord of Luss and "laird" of Malcolm, he represented his county in the House of Lords; but, with his Jacobite ideas, he did not care much for the favor of the House of Hanover, and he was looked upon coldly by the State party in England, because of the tenacity with which he clung to the traditions of his forefathers, and his energetic resistance to the political encroachments of Southerners. And yet he was not a man behind the times, and there was nothing little or narrow-minded about him; but while always keeping open his anc
(Jules Verne)

The passengers and sailors on the yacht were watching
all the animal's movements with the liveliest interest.
He soon came within reach of the bait, turned over on his back
to make a good dart at it, and in a second bacon and contents
had disappeared. He had hooked himself now, as the tremendous
jerk he gave the cable proved, and the sailors began to haul
in the monster by means of tackle attached to the mainyard.
He struggled desperately, but his captors were prepared
for his violence, and had a long rope ready with a slip knot,
which caught his tail and rendered him powerless at once.
In a few minutes more he was hoisted up over the side of the yacht
and thrown
(Jules Verne)

In the town where I was born lived a man who sailed to sea and he told us of his life in the land of submarines. So we sailed up to the sun till we found the sea of green and we lived beneath the waves in our yellow submarine. We all live in a yellow submarine yellow submarine, yellow submarine. We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine. And our friends are all on board many more of them live next door and the band begins to play we all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine. We all live in a yellow submarine. Yellow submarine, yellow submarine. ... [leer más]
(The Beatles)

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book? It took me years to write, will you take a look? It's based on a novel by a man named Lear and I need a job, so I want to be a paperback writer. Paperback writer. It's the dirty story of a dirty man and his clinging wife doesn't understand his son is working for the Daily Mail it's a steady job but he wants to be a paperback writer. Paperback writer. Paperback writer. It's a thousand pages, give or take a few I'll be writing more in a week or two I can make it longer if you like the style I can change it round and I want to be a paperback writer. Paperback writer. If you really like it you can have the rights It could make a million for you overnight. If you must return it, you can send it here but ... [leer más]
(The Beatles)

Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try, no hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people living for today... Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do nothing to kill or die for and no religion too. Imagine all the people living life in peace... You may say I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us and the world will be as one. Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can, no need for greed or hunger a brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people sharing all the world... You may say I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us and the world will live as one. ... [leer más]
(Jonh Lennon)

In Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs of every head he's had the pleasure to know. And all the people that come and go stop and say hello. On the corner is a banker with a motorcar, the little children laugh at him behind his back. And the banker never wears a mack in the pouring rain, very strange. Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes. There beneath the blue suburban skies I sit, and meanwhile back in Penny Lane there is a fireman with an hourglass and in his pocket is a portrait of the Queen. He likes to keep his fire engine clean, It's a clean machine. Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes. A four of fish and finger pies in summer, meanwhile back behind the shelter in the middle of a roundabout the pretty nurse is sell ... [leer más]
(The Beatles)

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away, now it looks as though they're here to stay. Oh, I believe in yesterday. Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be there's a shadow hanging over me. Oh, I yesterday came suddenly. Why she had to go I don't know she wouldn't say I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday. Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play now I need a place to hide away. Oh, I believe in yesterday. Why she had to go I don't know she wouldn't say I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday. Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play now I need a place to hide away. Oh, I believe in yesterday. ... [leer más]
(The Beatles)

Hey Jude, don't make it bad take a sad song and make it better remember to let her into your heart then you can start to make it better. Hey Jude, don't be afraid you were made to go out and get her the minute you let her under your skin then you begin to make it better. And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain don't carry the world upon your shoulders for well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder. ... [leer más]
(The Beatles)

When I find myself in times of trouble mother Mary comes to me speaking words of wisdom, let it be and in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me speaking words of wisdom, let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be whisper words of wisdom, let it be. And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree there will be an answer, let it be for though they may be parted there is still a chance that they will see there will be an answer, let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be. Yeah there will be an answer, let it be. ... [leer más]
(The Beatles)

Even on a Saturday, Dan and my grandmother frowned upon the idea of our spending most of the night in the "dreaded" city; there was a so-called milk train that left Boston at two o'clock in the morning-it stopped at every town between Boston and Gravesend, and it didn't get us home until : A.M. (about the time the school dining hall opened for breakfast)-but Dan and my grandmother said that Owen and I should live this "wildly" on only the most special occasions. Mr. and Mrs. Meany didn't make any rules for Owen, at all; Owen was content to abide by the rules Dan and Grandmother made for me.
(John Irving)

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice-not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany. I make no claims to have a life in Christ, or with Christ-and certainly not for Christ, which I've heard some zealots claim. I'm not very sophisticated in my knowledge of the Old Testament, and I've not read the New Testament since my Sunday school days, except for those passages that I hear read aloud to me when I go to church.
(John Irving)

Still averted from her, the young man made a sign of affirmation. "For the sake of the pueblo–to make the rain come and the corn grow. And to please Pookong and Jesus. And then to show that I can bear pain without crying out. Yes," and his voice suddenly took on a new resonance, he turned with a proud squaring of the shoulders, a proud, defiant lifting of the chin "to show that I'm a man … Oh!" He gave a gasp and was silent, gaping. He had seen, for the first time in his life, the face of a girl whose cheeks were not the colour of chocolate or dogskin, whose hair was auburn and permanently waved, and whose expression (amazing novelty!) was one of benevolent interest.
(Aldous Leonard Huxley)

The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory. Wintriness responded to wintriness. The overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber.
(Aldous Leonard Huxley)

I have here compressed into a few sentences what, there, required many. Lady Marchmain was not diffuse, but she took hold of her subject in a feminine, flirtatious way, circling, approaching, retreating, feinting; she hovered over it like a butterfly; she played 'grandmother's steps' with it, getting nearer the real point imperceptibly while one's back was turned, standing rooted when she was observed. The unhappiness, the running away - these made up her sorrow, and in her own way she exposed the whole of it, before she was done. It was an hour before she had said all she meant to say. Then, as I rose to leave her, she added as though in an afterthought: 'I wonder have you seen my brothers?.
(Evelyn Waugh)

'I HAVE been here before,' I said; I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were creamy with meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendour, and though I had been there so often, in so many moods, it was to that first visit that my heart returned on this, my latest. That day, too, I had come not knowing my destination. It was Eights Week. Oxford - submerged now and obliterated, irrecoverable as Lyonnesse, so quickly have the waters come flooding -in - Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint.
(Evelyn Waugh)

Mmm. Daniel was really sweet tonight and spent ages helping me choose my outfit for the Tarts and Vicars. He kept suggesting different ensembles for me to try on while he weighed it up. He was quite keen on a dog collar and black T-shirt with black lace-topped hold-ups as a cross between a tart and a vicar but in the end, after I'd walked about for quite a while in both of them, he decided the best one was a black lacy Marks and Spencer body, with stockings and suspenders, a French maid' s-style apron which we'd made out of two hankies and a piece of ribbon, a bow-tie, and a cotton-wool rabbit's tail. It was really good of him to give up the time. Sometimes I think he really is quite caring.
(Helen Fielding)

9 a.m. Ugh. Cannot face thought of go to work. Only thing which makes it tolerable is thought of seeing Daniel again, but even that is inadvisable since am fat, have spot on chin, and desire only to sit on cushion eating chocolate and watching Xmas specials. It seems wrong and unfair that Christmas, with its stressful and unmanageable financial and emotional challenges, should first be forced upon one wholly against one's will, then rudely snatched away just when one is starting to get into it. Was really beginning to enjoy the feeling that normal service was suspended and it was OK to lie in bed as long as you want, put anything you fancy into your mouth, and drink alcohol...
(Helen Fielding)

Sophie repeated the names silently in her mind and then shook her head. There was no one in her family named Plantard or Saint-Clair. A weary undertow was pulling at her now. She realized she was no closer than she had been at the Louvre to understanding what truth her grandfather had
wanted to reveal to her. Sophie wished her grandfather had never mentioned her family this afternoon. He had torn open old wounds that felt as painful now as ever. They are dead, Sophie. They are not coming back. She thought of her mother singing her to sleep at night, of her father
giving her rides on his shoulders, and of her grandmother and younger brother smiling at her with their fervent green eyes.
(Dan Brown)

Robert Langdon awoke slowly. A telephone was ringing in the darkness-a tinny, unfamiliar ring. He fumbled for the bedside lamp and turned it on. Squinting at his surroundings he saw a plush Renaissance bedroom with
Louis XVI furniture, hand-frescoed walls, and a colossal mahogany four-poster bed. Where the hell am I? The jacquard bathrobe hanging on his bedpost bore the monogram: HOTEL RITZ PARIS. Slowly, the fog began to lift. Langdon picked up the receiver. "Hello?" "Monsieur Langdon?" a man's voice said. "I hope I have not awoken you?" Dazed, Langdon looked at the bedside clock. It was 12:32 A.M. He had been asleep only an hour, but he felt like the dead.
(Dan Brown)

No answer came. Corelli looked at her silhouette against the light of the
window, and a tune came into his head. He could visualise the patterned patrol of his fingers on the fretboard of the mandolin, he could hear the disciplined notes ringing from the treble, singing the praise of Pelagia as they also portrayed her wrath and her resistance. It was a march, a march of a proud woman who prosecuted war with hard words and kindnesses. He heard three simple chords and a martial melody that implied a world of grace. He heard the melody rise and swell, breaking into a torrent of bright tremolo more limpid than the song of thrushes, more pellucid than the sky.
(Louis de Bernieres)