Wednesday, February 20, 2013

A Room with a View: 27% Complete

I fear my apologies for lack of updates are beginning to sound a little hollow, so I will forgo.
 
I haven't done a lot of reading lately for whatever reason, but I have done a little as you can see.  I'm still liking A Room with a View although I'm over a quarter of the way through the book and it still seems like not a lot has happened.  She witnessed a murder, but that's about it.
 
Anyway, the word of the day is "desideratum" which means "something that is needed or wanted." (definition from The New Oxford American Dictionary)
 
E.M. Forster's writing is often perceptive and poetic, something I'm enjoying.  I love those moments in a book when you read something and say to yourself, "Ah, I am incredibly familiar with that concept, only I have never thought it through in so many words."  I have had several of those moments in this book.  One I liked was this quote, in which Lucy and George Emerson end up spending a few moments (scandalously!) alone together in Italy.  Forster writes,
 
"She stopped and leant her elbows against the parapet of the embankment.  He did likewise.  There is at times a magic in identity of position; it is one of the things that have suggested to us eternal comradeship."

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

A Room with a View: 22% Complete

Yes, I know, I am woefully overdue for an update.  Many apologies, but it's been a rather hectic couple of weeks.  I had to attend a memorial service on Saturday for my dear aunt, I applied to nursing school on Friday, I had a big math test on Wednesday, and *drum roll, please* I got ENGAGED to my boyfriend of three years on the 25th!    But I'm back, and I'll try to do better from here on out. 
 
I'm enjoying A Room with a View so far.  It's rather funny to me to think of a British person going to Italy for the summer and then spending virtually the entire time in the company of other Brits who are also on vacation.  I mean, god forbid you actually have to talk to an Italian person!
 
The vocabulary word I have for you is "incommode" meaning "to inconvenience someone" (definition from The New Oxford American Dictionary).
 
I have two humorous quotes for you.  In the first, Lucy's guardian is rather concerned about her safety in going outside alone but the proprietor of the hotel they are staying at reassures her,
 
"Being English, Miss Honeychurch will be perfectly safe.  Italians understand.  A dear friend of mine, Contessa Baroncelli, has two daughters, and when she cannot send a maid to school with them, she lets them go in sailor-hats instead.  Everyone takes them for English, you see, especially if their hair is strained tightly behind."
 
And the second will ring true with anyone who has children or who has ever had to deal with a child who is having a meltdown:
 
"The child's legs had become as melting wax.  Each time that old Mr. Emerson and Lucy set it erect it collapsed with a roar.  Fortunately an Italian lady, who ought to have been saying her prayers, came to the rescue.  By some mysterious virtue, which mothers alone possess, she stiffened the little boy's back-bone and imparted strength to his knees."