Welcome to my commonplace blog

The goal of this blog is to preserve a few ideas and quotes from books I read. In the old days when books were not so readily available, people kept "commonplace books" where they copied choice passages they wanted to be able to remember and perhaps reuse. The idea got picked up by V.F.D. and it's common knowledge that most of that organization's volunteers have kept commonplace books, and so have Laura and I.

I'm sure there are many other Internet sites and blogs dedicated to the same idea. But this one is mine. Feel free to look around and leave comments, but not spam.

17 April 2011

Stardust (Neil Gaiman)

Read with Laura, which was a risky choice that led to some skipped parts. The "adult" parts are not essential to the narrative and stand out like sore thumbs (i don't know what it is, but i don't like Neil Gaiman's sex scenes). Otherwise, this is a well-written fairy tale which is very reminiscent of Tolkien's "Faerie" stories. Very nice, really.


Quotes:

There was once a young man who wished to gain his Heart’s Desire.

And, too ignorant to be scared, too young to be awed,Tristran Thorn passed beyond the fields we know . . . and into Faerie.

It has occasionally been remarked upon that it is as easy to overlook something large and obvious as it is to overlook something small and niggling, and that the large things one overlooks can often cause problems.

Have been unavoidably detained by the world. Expect us when you see us.

They say that each night, when the duties of state permit, she climbs, on foot, and limps, alone, to the highest peak of the palace, where she stands for hour after hour, seeming not to notice the cold peak winds. She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars.

But new mythologies wait for us, here in the final moments of the twentieth century. They abound and proliferate. [...] They have their function, all the ways we try make sense of the world we inhabit, a world in which there are few, if any, easy answers. Every day we attempt to understand it. And every night we close our eyes, and go to sleep, and, for a few hours, quietly and safely, we go stark staring mad. (Neil Gaiman)

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