Bibliophile: Yesterday is Here Again

"A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.” --William Styron
Note: I went to make this week's Bibliophile, when I realized I never got around to posting *last* week's Bibliophile. Which, in turn, was a Bibliophile that I had never finished for the week before that. Punctuality is hard. But it makes the title I originally intended even more apropos, so it all comes out in the wash.

This week, Bibliophile is on the road once more, with a short discussion of some new books at Brock University. Brock U has a lovely new book list, conveniently sorted by call number. And we will plunge its depths. After the break.
(I'll level with you--this is actually last week's Bibliophile. I started it, but there just weren't enough hours in the day, or at least that particular day, to bring it to the end. But today, I'm stuck at home. I forgot to refill my inhaler prescription, so any activity as strenuous as leaving the house is probably beyond my ability. So we've got plenty of time to wrap things up here.)

Friday Quotations: Wider and Larger. That's what she said.

"There was your mistake.  There was your error.  The error all women commit.  Why can't you women love us, faults and all?  Why do you place us on monstrous pedestals?  We have all feet of clay, women as well as men; but when we men love women, we love them knowing their weaknesses, their follies, their imperfections, love them all the more, it may be, for that reason.  It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love.  It is when we are wounded by our own hands, or by the hands of others, that love should come to cure us--else what use is love at all?  All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive.  All lives, save loveless lives, Love should pardon.  A man's love is like that.  It is wider, larger, more human than a woman's.  Women think that they are making ideals of men.  What they are making of us are false idols merely.  You made your false idol of me, and I had not the courage to come down, show you my wounds, tell you my weaknesses.  I was afraid that I might lose your love, as I have lost it now.  ... Let women make no more ideals of men!  Let them not put them on alters and bow before them, or they may ruin other lives as completely as you--you whom I have wildly loved--have ruined mine!" --An Ideal Husband, Oscar Wilde.



My first pick for today was the exact same Invisible Cities quotation I used a year ago.  Points for consistency, I guess.  So instead, you get another passage from An Ideal Husband.  I didn't like a lot of things about this play; this passage encompasses a lot of its problems, combining some lovely sentiments with some rather questionable and largely ridiculous gender statements.  But at least it's less depressing than Young Adult.

Later Days.

Friday Quotations: People are Like Art

"MABEL CHILTERN is a perfect example of the English type of prettiness, the apple-blossom type.  She has all the fragrance and freedom of a flower.  There is ripple after ripple of sunlight in her hair, and the little mouth, with its parted lips, is expectant, like the  mouth of a child.  She has the fascinating tyranny of youth, and the astonishing courage of  innocence.  To sane people she is not reminiscent of any work of art.  But she is really like a Tanagra statuette, and would be rather annoyed if she were told so."  --Oscar Wilde.  An Ideal Husband.

I recently made a breakthrough with my new iPhone.  See, you can't walk down the street reading a book.  It's socially unacceptable.  Ridiculous.  Crazy.  But it's fine to walk down the street staring at your iPhone.  A few ebook downloads later, and I've got a library on the go.  A library filled with things like Oscar Wilde plays. 

Later Days.