The English Patient

I usually don't write about the guilty pleasure of reading a novel, snatched between necessary activities, but this book is exceptional. Like poetry, this book makes me hungry for it between-times. Here:

"They talk, the slight singsong of his voice within the canvas smell of their tent, which has been his all through the Italian campaign, which he reaches up to touch with his slight fingers as if it too belonged to his body, a khaki wing he folds over himself during the night."

And: "But I never imagine Herodotus this way. I see him more as one of those spare men of the desert who travel from oasis to oasis, trading legends as if it is the exchange of seeds, consuming everything without suspicion, placing together a mirage."

"She sniffs the stone, the cool moth smell of it."

In the Sistine Chapel: "They were under the huge vault. The sergeant lit a flare, and the sapper lay on the floor and looked up through the rifle's telescope, looked at the ochre faces as if he were searching for a brother in the crowd. The cross hairs shook along the biblical figures, the light dousing the coloured vestments and flesh darkened by hundreds of years of oil and candle smoke."

Now, pictures:

Getting ready for school

Biking KidM: candid

"EYE."

KidV's reading nest