Another year of not reading as much as I'd like, for which I blame the lack of significant daily commute and the acquisition of a decent smartphone with the Pocket app and too many Significant Political Events requiring the reading of way too many current affairs articles by way of processing my feelings and thoughts on the subject, i.e. IT'S ALL THE FAULT OF BREXIT AND TRUMP.
So apparently I didn't post in here at all in 2016, possibly due to the guilty conscience about not having typed up the books I read in 2015.
Apparently LJ is borked today and I cannot use rich text formatting or preview, as it is more interested in pushing options to repost to other social media or pay for targeting or reposts than in being able to post on LJ, so apologies for the lack of formatting behind the cut, as I cannot be bothered to insert all the italics manually. ( Collapse )
When you see this on your flist, quote some Shakespeare on your LJ.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.
(In my head, this is always spoken by Jonathan Frid, with the original Dark Shadows music in the background.)
From the Curator’s Annual Report for the Year 1899:
'… even the stoical indifference of the attendants to everything but their duty is sometimes severely tried as in the case of a lady visitor dressed completely in white who refused to write her name in the visitors’ book in black ink but at length was prevailed upon to do it in red and then inscribed therein the name "Snowdrop", West Kensington, and loftily informed the attendant that it was her mission in life to destroy everything black and finally caused a complete collapse to Wilson our most aged attendant by informing him she was intimately acquainted with Seti and was the sister of Moses’s father in law Jethro.'
A remarkable attempt was made on Saturday night, about ten o'clock, to commit a robbery upon a dog: This faithful animal, it seems, is the property of one Porson, of Church-street, Bethnal-green, who, working at a Factory at Bow, does not return home above once in a month, but has for a long time past made a practice of sending his mother half-a-guinea a week by his dog, who has always brought the deposit safe in his mouth. Talking lately of the circumstance in a Public-house, a person was induced to stop the animal on Saturday night, near the mother's house, when, in making the attempt, he was so much bitten, that it is thought he will lose the use of one of his fingers; and, by the interference of a neighbour, who knew the dog's errand, was obliged to relinquish his fraudulent design.
A Card to the Commissioners of Sewers, and the Blackfriars Bridge Committee. [c.$1820?]
In the extensive Improvements now making under your authorities, it is to be hoped that you will not forget the absolute necessity there is for Sink Stones not Basons), to be placed in the different Wards, at proper corners, such as have existed for many years at Whitehall and the Horse Guards. Experience has shown, that the various means which have been resorted to of late years, with a view to prevent what is called Nuisances, have in fact increased them; and it is submitted, that the false delicacy of certain Citizens, in objecting to those necessary accommodations to public wants, ill becomes those who are in the habit of calling for a chamber-pot at their dinner tables, a practice noticed by foreigners as a national indelicacy.
Sir/ I left a Letter for you last Week & told your Servant that I would call for an answer in a day or two I called on Monday last & was told by that saucy Rascal that you had not opened the Letter & did not know when you would this is the first time I ever knew a Gent[lema]n to make his footman his Secretary I should not have given myself the trouble to have addressed you but seeing your name Blazoned in the Papers for £50. for the Refugees &c I thou[gh]t it was most likely you would assist a distressed Respectable Man with a large Family & your own Countryman but I find you are not so disposed. under those circumstances I shall not trouble you any further Sir-- yours &c Not a Spanish nor yet a Portugese Refugee
From a printed letter 'To the Proprietors of the East-India Stock', [1805]:
Ladies And Gentlemen,
Having found ourselves unable to approve the arrangement proposed by the Court of Directors in respect of Prince of Wales' Island, we have the honour to submit to you the reasons, that have induced us to demand, that this important question shall be finally decided by the ballot.
1stly. [...]
7thly. Because at a period when the Company's debts exceed 23 millions, and when financial embarrassments preclude the regular payment of the duties of custom; we cannot believe that an establishment of £.50,000 per annum, independent of all contingencies, can be necessary for the civil government of the Island, having no political relations to maintain, and containing a superficies no greater than 160 square miles, of which 53 only (an extent, equal to one fourth part of the Isle of Wight) are fitted for cultivation.
amused