Once two members had read the same book, they could argue, which was our great delight. We read books, talked books, argued over books, and became dearer and dearer to one another.
You can cross out all of the above when Remy is with Kit. At first, she seemed inclined to follow Kit around with her eyes instead of talking to her, but that changed when Kit offered to teach her how to lisp. Remy looked startled, but she agreed to take lessons and they went off to Amelia’s greenhouse together. Her lisp is hampered by her accent, but Kit doesn’t hold that against her and has generously given her extra instructions.
I never met a man half so true as a dog.
I myself have never had one, but now I can picture one. I didn’t like Wuthering Heights at first, but the minute that specter, Cathy, scrabbled her bony fingers on the window glass – I was grasped by the throat and not let go. With that Emily I could hear Heathcliff’s pitiful cries upon the moors.
Kit ran up and down the shoreline, inciting the waters to rush in farther and faster. Remy touched my shoulder and smiled. “Elizabeth must have been like that once,” she said, “the Empress of the seas.” I felt as if she had given me a gift – even such a tiny gesture as a touch takes trust – and I was glad she felt safe with me.
That’s what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit.
This profusion of questions, exclamations, and tales is the new version of the Society. Its members are spread all over the world, but they are joined by their love of books, of talking about books, and of their fellow readers. We are transformed each time we pass a book along, each time we ask a question about it.
The war is now the story of our lives, and there’s no denying it.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society came into being because of a roast pig we had to keep secret from the German soldiers, so I feel a kinship to Mr. Lamb.
In every nook, I find little things that tell me about her. She was a noticer, Sidney, like me, for all the shelves are lined with shells, bird feathers, dried sea grasses, pebbles, eggshells, and the skeleton of something that might be a bat. They’re just bits that were lying on the ground, that anyone else would step over or on, but she saw they were beautiful and brought them home.
That’s what I told myself – Well, you’re still alive. I think all of us said the same each morning when we woke up – Well, I’m still alive. But the truth is, we weren’t. What we were – it wasn’t dead, but it wasn’t alive either.
Leggere bei libri ti toglie per sempre il piacere di leggere quelli brutti.
Phrenology: the Science of Interpreting Bumps on the Head.
We clung to books and to our friends; they reminded us that we had another part to us. Elizabeth used to say a poem. I don’t remember all of it, but it began “Is it so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done, to have advanced true friends?” It isn’t. I hope, wherever she is, she has that in her mind.
My greatest pleasure has been in resuming my evening walks along the cliff tops. The Channel is no longer framed in rolls of barbed wire, the view is unbroken by huge VERBOTEN signs. The mines are gone from our beaches, and I can walk when, where, and for as long as I like. If I stand on the cliffs and turn out to face the sea, I don’t see the ugly cement bunkers behind me, or the land naked without its trees. Not even the Germans could ruin the sea.
We’re right together – you make me happy, you never bore me, you’re interested in the things I’m interested in, and I hope I’m not deluded when I say I think the same is true for you. We belong together. I know you loathe it when I tell you I know what’s best for you, but in this case I do.
He’s an expert on Wilkie Collins, of all things. Did you know that Wilkie Collins maintained two separate households with two separate mistresses and two separate sets of children? The scheduling difficulties must have been shocking. No wonder he took laudanum.
I like stories of passionate encounters. I myself have never had one, but now I can picture one.
It was amazing to me then, and still is, that so many people who wander into bookshops don’t really know what they’re after – they only want to look round in the hope of seeing a book that will take their fancy.
I love seeing the bookshops and meeting the booksellers – booksellers really are a special breed. No one in their right mind would take up clerking in a bookstore for the salary, and no one in his right mind would want to own one – the margin of profit is too small. So, it has to be a love of readers and reading that makes them do it – along with first dibs on the new books.
Buz, buz, buz, bum, bum, bum, wheeze, wheeze, wheeze, fen, fen, fen, tinky, tinky, tinky, cr’annch! I shall certainly come to be condemned at last. I have been drinking too much for two days running.