#ForsyteSaga26 This chapter has my head spinning. "And for a moment George walked no longer in black Piccadilly, but lay again, with hell in his heart, and his face to the sweet-smelling, dewy grass, in the long shadow of poplars that hid the moon."

#ForsyteSaga26 "Soames used the underground again in going home." In previous chapters, the Forsytes moved through the City in performance, in ways that projected status: carriages, walks through the park. Now, shameful Soames is underground.

#AntonyandCleo_2026 Soldier: Your Emperor Continues still a Jove. (IV.6.32-33)

#AntonyandCleo_2026 Antony: Come, good fellow, put thine iron on. If fortune be not ours today, it is Because we brave her. Come. (IV.4.4-6) Thou fumblest, Eros, and my Queen’s a squire More tight at this than thou. (IV.4.20-21)

#ForsyteSaga26 This might be my favourite chapter so far. (Young J.) "He had rowed in the galley himself! He knew the long hours of waiting and the lean minutes of a half-public meeting; the tortures of suspense that haunt the unhallowed lover."

#SundaySarton "Oddly, very oddly, she is forever surprised and even faintly wronged that her sons and daughters are just people, for many mothers hope and half expect that their newborn child will make the world better, will somehow be a redeemer.”

#SundaySarton A few gems: "All we can pray is not to outlive the self." "...it feels like an illness to be so far from my inner self." "Poetry is revolting unless it is good poetry."

#ForsyteSaga26 "In this search, who knows what he thought and what he sought? Bread for hunger—light in darkness?"

#AntonyandCleo_2026 Antony: Perchance tomorrow You’ll serve another master. I look on you As one that takes his leave. (IV.2.38-40)

“I always assume that a good book is more intelligent than its author. It can say things that the writer is not aware of.” —Umberto Eco

#ForsyteSaga26 III.1 This sentence stuck in my mind: "Throughout a descent of five stories the conversation continued, the lift boy standing with his back turned, his cynical face protruding through the bars."

#AntonyandCleo_2026 Antony: I and my sword will earn our chronicle. (III.13.213) I will be treble-sinewed, -hearted, -breathed, And fight maliciously. For when mine hours Were nice and lucky, men did ransom lives Of me for jests; (III.13.216-219)

#ForsyteSaga26 Of their seaside holidays... "Each section, in the vineyard of its own choosing, grew and culled and pressed and bottled the grapes of a pet sea-air." This wonderfully strange metaphor is so oblique, yet so exact.

#Dickens2026_DC Chapter 3 "We used to walk about that dim old flat at Yarmouth in a loving manner, hours and hours. The days sported by us, as if Time had not grown up himself yet, but were a child too, and always at play." The writing is sometimes more elegant than I remember from past Dickens.

#AntonyandCleo_2026 Caesar: Observe how Antony becomes his flaw, And what thou think’st his very action speaks In every power that moves. (III.12.41-43)

#ForsyteSaga26 Chapter XII - June Pays Some Calls "The more I see of people the more I am convinced that they are never good or bad—merely comic, or pathetic." This line made me think that Young Jolyon might be something of an author's surrogate in the novel.

#AntonyandCleo_2026 Antony: Now I must To the young man send humble treaties, dodge And palter in the shifts of lowness, who With half the bulk o’ th’ world played as I pleased, Making and marring fortunes. (III.11.67-71)

#AntonyandCleo_2026 Enobarbus: How appears the fight? Scarus: On our side like the tokened pestilence, Where death is sure. (III.10.11-13)

#ForsyteSaga26 "His light grey gloves were still on his hands, and on his lips his smile sardonic, but where the feeling in his heart?" I'm a sucker for some quirky syntax. It's almost (or is) dramatic verse. His light grey gloves were still on his hands, and on his lips his smile sardonic

#Dickens2026_DC Chapter 2 "I look at the sunlight coming in at the open door through the porch, and there I see a stray sheep—I don’t mean a sinner, but mutton—half making up his mind to come into the church."

#AntonyandCleo_2026 Cleopatra: Celerity is never more admired Than by the negligent. (III.7.30-31)

#Dickens2026_DC "He walked as softly as the Ghost in Hamlet, and more slowly. He carried his head on one side, partly in modest depreciation of himself, partly in modest propitiation of everybody else. It is nothing to say that he hadn’t a word to throw at a dog."

#AntonyandCleo_2026 Agrippa: Who, queasy with his insolence already, Will their good thoughts call from him. (III.6.22-23)

#AntonyandCleo_2026 Octavia: Husband win, win brother Prays and destroys the prayer; no midway ’Twixt these extremes at all. (III.4.19-21)

#SundaySarton "...for goodness, it seems to me, is always tolerant of the beliefs or nonbeliefs of others. We convert, if we do at all, by being something irresistible, not by demanding something impossible." (55)

#ForsyteSaga26 "This delectable fish, brought from a considerable distance in a state of almost perfect preservation, was first fried, then boned, then served in ice, with Madeira punch in place of sauce, according to a recipe known to a few men of the world." As a professional cook...gross.

#ForsyteSaga26 "There are moments when Nature reveals the passion hidden beneath the careless calm of her ordinary moods..." Warm air, open windows, scent, leaves, atmosphere, sensual weather are doing a lot of emotional and erotic work in the background (backdrop) of this chapter.

#ForsyteSaga26 Chap ii, 8 (fell behind yesterday) "But to see them neglected and passed by! Ah! they smiled, but their eyes stabbed like the eyes of an offended swan..."

#AntonyandCleo_2026 Cleopatra: Is she as tall as me? (III.3.18)

#ForsyteSaga26 Some favs: And further on, Swithin's greys were turning their noses towards the noses of James' bays, as though in conclave over the family, while their coachmen were in conclave above. There was only one chair left unoccupied, except, of course, the two that nobody ever sat on.

#ForsyteSaga26 "Young Jolyon also was silent; he had quickly penetrated his father's thought, for, dethroned from the high seat of an obvious and uncomplicated view of things, he had become both perceptive and subtle." Great sentence. This chapter was tight.

#AntonyandCleo_2026 Lepidus: What manner o’ thing is your crocodile? Antony: It is shaped, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it hath breadth. It is just so high as it is, and moves with its own organs. It lives by that which nourisheth it, and, the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.

#ForsyteSaga26 "This photograph—a witness to the eternal irony underlying commercial enterprise—still retained its position on the wall, an effigy of the directors' pet, but dead, lamb."

#ForsyteSaga26 "How could he fall, when his soul abhorred circumstances which render a fall possible—a man cannot fall off the floor!" "...a man would not be supercilious unless he knew!"

#AntonyandCleo_2026 Pompey: What counts harsh Fortune casts upon my face, But in my bosom shall she never come To make my heart her vassal. (II.6.68-70)

#AntonyandCleo_2026 Antony: The very dice obey him, And in our sports my better cunning faints Under his chance. If we draw lots, he speeds. His cocks do win the battle still of mine When it is all to naught, and his quails ever Beat mine, inhooped, at odds. (II.3.38-43)

#SundaySarton I am more and more convinced that in the life of civilizations as in the lives of individuals too much matter that cannot be digested, too much experience that has not been imagined and probed and understood, ends in total rejection of everything—ends in anomie.

#SundaySarton Growing old … what is the opposite of “growing”? I ask myself. “Withering” perhaps? The child in the old person is a precious part of his being able to handle the slow imprisonment.

#AntonyandCleo_2026 Enobarbus: Being barbered ten times o’er... (II.2.253) Enobarbus ...she did make defect perfection, (II.2.263)

#ForsyteSaga26 "A silver tray was brought, with German plums. There was a lengthy pause. In perfect harmony all were eating them."

#AntonyandCleo_2026 Caesar: Yet if I knew What hoop should hold us stanch, from edge to edge O’ th’ world I would pursue it. (II.2.126-128)

#ForsyteSaga26 June saw Irene look up at him through her screen of blossoms. It was not the look of a coquette, but—far worse to the watching girl—of a woman fearful lest that look should say too much.

#AntonyandCleo_2026 Antony: As for my wife, I would you had her spirit in such another. The third o’ th’ world is yours, which with a snaffle You may pace easy, but not such a wife. (II.2.66-69) new-to-me word. snaffle: a simple horse riding bit, usually with a joint in the middle

#ForsyteSaga26 More foreshadowing: 'Pride comes before a fall!' In accordance with this, the greatest of Nature's ironies, the Forsyte family had gathered for a last proud pageant before they fell.

#AntonyandCleo_2026 Pompey: Let witchcraft join with beauty, lust with both. Tie up the libertine in a field of feasts, Keep his brain fuming. (II.1.27-29)

#ForsyteSaga26 "Your wife? She doesn't like the cold? I'll see to that..." 😳

#AntonyandCleo_2026 Cleopatra: By Isis, I will give thee bloody teeth If thou with Caesar paragon again My man of men. Charmian: By your most gracious pardon, I sing but after you. Cleopatra: My salad days, When I was green in judgment, cold in blood, To say as I said then. (I.5.81-88)

For Star Wars Day, give us your top 10 sci-fi films. Iron Cross Sunshine Monsters Prospect Aniara Moon Predestination Time Lapse Primer Pi

#ForsyteSaga26 Chapter Seven: "The look on her face, such as he had never seen there before, such as she had always hidden from him, was full of secret resentments, and longings, and fears. Her eyes, under their twitching brows, stared painfully. And she was silent."