Tonight we have a ladies’ night Literacy activity. We’ve all been instructed to bring a used book to exchange. As obedient as I generally am, I couldn’t do it. I had to go out and buy a new copy of the book I’m exchanging. Partly because I can’t give up my original copy… okay, so Totally because I can’t give up my original copy. I love this book – not just the words, but the pages and the bends and the marks on the paper and the smell and all of it.
I’m “exchanging” Dodie Smith’s I CAPTURE THE CASTLE because I love it so, so much. And because it’s unlikely to be stir-y. I don’t want to cause any stirs tonight. I’ve wrapped it in red paper and a raffia bow. The red paper now has my handwritten favorite quotes (from the novel) all over it, and if I didn’t have to (I totally don’t have to) hand it over, I’d keep it because it looks lovely.
Quotes like these:
“Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.”
“How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel!”
“Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself.”
“Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing.”
“No bathroom on earth will make up for marrying a bearded man you hate.”
“Truthfulness so often goes with ruthlessness.”
“I have noticed that rooms which are extra clean feel extra cold.”
“Oh, comfortable cocoa!”
“Miserable people cannot afford to dislike each other.”
“Do Americans kiss each other all the time?”
and
“Perhaps if I make myself write I shall find out what is wrong with me.”
The favorite one is about our main character learning to cook – but it didn’t really go with the others. So I didn’t add it there. But here it is for posterity and whatnot:
“I scrubbed some rather dirty-looking chops with soap which proved very lingering, and I did not take certain things out of a chicken that I ought to have done.” (I know, right?)