Watermark Books and Cafe

I've started this book at David's behest (read: harassment), and am thoroughly enjoying it, not in the least because I acquired my first mortar and pestle at the same age as the book's heroine. So far, Flavia de Luce has me in her thrall, occasionally tightening the literary shackles with her acerbic tongue and precocious observations (molecular and moral) of the people around her. I'm quite content to be confined within these pages for as long as they turn!

Ah, The Vampyre...a story I've only heard whispers of, a dark tale spawned in 1816, "The Year Without a Summer," by a ghost story-telling contest between Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Byron's then-current mistress, and his doctor, John Polidori. Supposedly, the character of the Vampyre was inspired by "mad Caliban" Byron himself. Also included in this book are less-well-known Gothic tales of suspense by Edward Bulwer, Letitia Landon, William Carleton, and James Hogg. I can smell the blood and laudanum oozing from the pages as I type.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns." It is no wonder why I come back to "Lolita" again and again - like Humbert Humbert, I am hopelessly in love. Nabokov's prose is gorgeous, and it is no wonder that this book is considered one of the best novels of the 20th century. The lyrics gust from the pages to haunt me when I least expect them to (I picked this up for the third time during a recent bout of insomnia.). Make time to read this book, for once you start, you will not be able to put it down until the bittersweet end.