Drunk on words
“Do you find it easy to get drunk on words?”
“So easily that, to tell the truth, I am seldom perfectly sober.”
-Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey in Dorothy Sayers’ Gaudy Night
First off, a little business regarding this quote - I have decided that Gaudy Night would have to replace Evensong in my top ten list. I have been entranced ever since I first met Lord Peter (in Murder Must Advertise, I believe) and this is unquestionably the best of his books. Lord Peter is another favorite character I was introduced to by my high school librarian. I am greatly in her debt. My family probably doesn’t see it that way, since I haunted used bookstores from High Point to Chapel Hill searching for the complete Lord Peter series. I remember finding the last one on Franklin Street as a friend and I were looking for prom shoes.
Anyway.
I was thinking of that quote today because my aunt asked me for some of the quotes I used at my graduation party (I made bookmarks and little signs with quotes on reading and books and libraries), so I sent her what I could remember. That’s always been one of my favorite scenes in that book, as he sleeps and she reads and realizes how important he has become to her.
Yesterday I checked out the second in the Deborah Knott series by Margaret Maron (An aside: is it bad that I got interested in this series partly because Lauren Winner of Girl Meets God fame mentioned somewhere that she likes this series? Am I an insane stalker fangirl!?) and I finished it today at lunch. Thanks to my fantastic job, I was able to go right out to the stacks and grab the third. I had planned to work on my reading journal a bit during lunch, but I was so close to finishing the book that I did that instead. I always forget to write down which books I have read after I finish them - I’m usually too anxious to start another. But since I had the journal here with me, I decided to check. Unless I’ve forgotten something, I’ve already read almost 20 books this year!
Drunk on words, indeed.
(And, if you like British mysteries, do yourself a favor and check out Lord Peter. I’d start with the first one - Whose Body - or the first one featuring Harriet Vane - Strong Poison.)
March 31st, 2004 at
do you read a lot of mysteries?
March 31st, 2004 at
I was thinking the other day that it’d be interesting to count how many books I read a year. I wonder if the library keeps track of what I check out at all?
March 31st, 2004 at
What is popular these days at the old library?
April 1st, 2004 at
I read a fair amount of mysteries, but not as many as Sarah does.
CJ, I bet the library does not keep track of it, only because libraries generally don’t like to keep records that could be subpoenaed. They think what people read is no one’s business, so the records are erased so that no one can use them (a.k.a. The Patriot Act). That’s just a guess, though - it couldn’t hurt to ask.
These days people want the new John Grisham and the new Barbra Taylor Bradford. People are still wanting the Da Vinci Code, but it’s slowed down a lot. We get a lot of requests for the latest Left Behind book, since it came out this week. Whatever’s on the best-seller lists, both fiction and non-fiction, are popular.
April 1st, 2004 at
i love lord peter. dorothy sayers is among the best.