Your favourite bit of a lovely book?

[Beachtastic]

This doesn't really belong under Books as I'm not currently reading it and it's not Book of the Month (etc)! But (I know this makes me sound like a weirdo) an Outlook reminder just popped up this morning with this pasted in it. I must have set it to surprise myself with something delightful before tackling the day's work.

It's from Wind in the Willows and is the opening paragraph of the chapter, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" (which oldies like me will remember being a Pink Floyd album):

The Willow-Wren was twittering his thin little song, hidden himself in the dark selvedge of the river bank. Though it was past ten o'clock at night, the sky still clung to and retained some lingering skirts of light from the departed day; and the sullen heats of the torrid afternoon broke up and rolled away at the dispersing touch of the cool fingers of the short midsummer night. Mole lay stretched on the bank, still panting from the stress of the fierce day that had been cloudless from dawn to late sunset, and waited for his friend to return. He had been on the river with some companions, leaving the Water Rat free to keep a engagement of long standing with Otter; and he had come back to find the house dark and deserted, and no sign of Rat, who was doubtless keeping it up late with his old comrade. It was still too hot to think of staying indoors, so he lay on some cool dock-leaves, and thought over the past day and its doings, and how very good they all had been.

Are there any book passages that gladden your heart?

I'm going to re-set the reminder to pop up again in 3 months' time so that I can enjoy it all over again 😍

Oh wow I came on this thread to post the EXACT same thing beachtastic! It's just sublime! I love the whole book but that chapter is beautiful.

To add, there is another passage I love, for more sad reasons which is when Lee Scoresby and his daemon Hester die in The Subtle Knife by Phillip Pullman (part of the His Dark Materials trilogy).

""Hester, don't you go before I do," Lee whispered. "Lee, I couldn't abide to be anywhere away from you for a single second," she whispered back. Lee saw the fireball and heard through the roar in his ears Hester saying, "That's all of 'em, Lee." He said, or thought, "Those poor men didn't have to come to this, nor did we." She said, "We held 'em off. We held out. We're a-helping Lyra." Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face as close as she could get, and then they died"

I love this line from Alice in Wonderland - especially when I am at risk of getting over-whelmed - usually by over-complicating things myself!

“Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

And from Winnie the Pooh - which has an unbelievable number of great bits:

"Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred."
Pooh thought for a little.
"How old shall I be then?"
"Ninety-nine."
Pooh nodded. "I promise," he said.
Still with his eyes on the world Christopher Robin put out a hand and felt for Pooh's paw. "Pooh," said Christopher Robin earnesstly, "if I - if I'm not quite -" he stopped and tried again --- "Pooh, whatever happens, you will understand, won't you?"
Understand what?"
"Oh, nothing." He laughed and jumped to his feet. "Come on!"
"Where?" said Pooh.
"Anywhere," said Christopher Robin.

So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.

Awww, I love "her little proud broken self" 💕

So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.

So beautiful 💖

I just remembered another bit that sticks in my mind, from the Christmas chapter of Little Women. It reminds me of childhood family Christmases before insane consumerism took over everything:

Jo was the first to wake in the gray dawn of Christmas morning. No stockings hung at the fireplace, and for a moment she felt as much disappointed as she did long ago, when her little sock fell down because it was crammed so full of goodies. Then she remembered her mother’s promise and, slipping her hand under her pillow, drew out a little crimson-covered book. She knew it very well, for it was that beautiful old story of the best life ever lived, and Jo felt that it was a true guidebook for any pilgrim going on a long journey. She woke Meg with a “Merry Christmas,” and bade her see what was under her pillow. A green-covered book appeared, with the same picture inside, and a few words written by their mother, which made their one present very precious in their eyes. Presently Beth and Amy woke to rummage and find their little books also, one dove-colored, the other blue, and all sat looking at and talking about them, while the east grew rosy with the coming day.

I do like the Christmas part of LW, but - seriously? They sit and talk about The Life Of Christ, which is pretty sparse on details and which they probably knew off by heart already, and that's their Christmas present?

(I'm speaking as someone who had a loving and uncomplicated faith as a child, btw)

I mean, I get that there wasn't much spare cash, but beautifully-bound books wouldn't have been cheap!

My own contribution to this (because somebody nicked the end of HaPC) is "I did it with Beeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzzzz!"

or at least the bit that comes before it, which made me cry. Pterry has a beautiful flow of words, and Lords and Ladies was near the start of his peak form.

The end of Cold Comfort Farm:

[Flora] glanced upwards for a second at the soft blue vault of the midsummer night sky. Not a cloud misted its solemn depths. Tomorrow would be a beautiful day.

And the description of Dick and Elphine’s wedding breakfast sitting ready for the guests:

It was half-past ten. The awning was up, looking immediately festive, as awnings always do. And in the kitchen the two long trestle tables were decorated and ready. Flora had arranged two kinds of food for the two kinds of guests she was expecting. For the Starkadders and such of the local peasantry as would attend there were syllabubs, ice-pudding, caviare sandwiches, crab patties, trifle and champagne. For the County there was cider, cold home-cured ham, cheese, home- made bread and salads made from local fruit. The table from which the County were to feed was rich with cottage flowers. The rosy efflorescence of the peonies floated above the table from which the peasantry would eat. Wreaths of cottage flowers, like chains of little gems, hung from the rafters. Their reds, oranges, blues and pinks glowed against the soft, sooty-black of the ceiling and walls. The air smelled sweet of cherry-pie and fruit salad. Outside the sun flamed in glory ; and inside the kitchen there were these sweet smells and cool, delicious-looking food.

And the description of Elphine’s dress being made:

Flora then took Elfine to Maison Solide. M. Solide had dressed Flora for the last two years and did not despise her as much as he despised most of the women whom he dressed. His eyes widened when he saw Elfine. He looked at her broad shoulders and slim waist and long legs. His fingers made the gestures of a pair of scissors, and he groped blindly towards a roll of snow-coloured satin which a well-trained assistant put into his arms.
“ White ? ” ventured Flora.
“ But what else ? ” screamed M. SoHde, ripping the scissors across the satin. “ It is to wear white that God, once in a himdred years, makes such a young girl.”
Flora sat and watched for an hour while M. Solide worried the satin like a terrier, tore it into breadths, swathed and caped and draped it. Flora was pleased to see that Elfine did not seem nervous or bored. She seemed to take naturally to the atmosphere of a world-famous dressmaker’s establishment. She bathed delightedly in white satin, like a swan in foam. She twisted her neck this way and that, and peered down the length of her body, as though down a snow slope, to watch the assistants like busy black ants pinning and rearranging the hem a thousand feet below.

I always thought Mrs March was a real CF, actually. She'd brainwashed her children into thinking a few words in one of her old books was a great Christmas present - then don't they give things to her instead of keeping them for themselves? (Trying to remember but do recall outrage!)

Alongside Hester and Lee this has me in floods. It’s just so heartbreakingly beautiful. The whole section.

“And when we do find each other again, we'll cling together so tight that nothing and no one'll ever tear us apart. Every atom of me and every atom of you...We'll live in birds and flowers and dragonflies and pin trees and in clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams...And when they use our atoms to make new lives, they won't just be able to take one, they'll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we'll be joined so tight..."

They lay side by side, hand in hand, looking at the sky.”

From ‘In Memorium’ Alice Winn. One of the most moving love stories.

You have all had me on tears with the best bits of my favorite books, and I've just read in memoriam, and that has me weeping on my sunbed by the pool

The Midnight Library

Phillip Pullman is a genius.

Ministry of Time

How mad that you were thinking of the same passage!!!!!!!!!!

from Mrs Dalloway - "she was asleep, only drowsy and heavy, drowsy and heavy, like a field of clover in the sunshine this hot June day, with the bees going round and about and the yellow butterflies" rather apt
also from the same book "shredding and slicing, dividing and subdividing, the clocks nibbled at the June day"
I am thinking I should read Mrs Dalloway again

Bah humbug! Yes, the book is awfully pious, not me at all, but I just love that bit - the simplicity and kindness and gratitude of it. Didn't their mother cover the books herself? I'll have to go and have a look... I just love the sound of a "dove-coloured" book, it's so soft and sweet 😍

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn chapter is a magical piece of writing, something very special. Thanks OP

Just checked (thanks Copilot! @😜) and it was their mum ("Marmee" 😳) who covered them.

I have to say, if my mum had given me the bloody Pilgrim's Progress for Xmas I'd have had a tantrum and demanded to know where my Aqua Manda bath cubes and Matchmakers were 😡

Yes I think struggling to be more like one of the pious girls from Little Women (not to mention bloody Polyanna!) blighted my emotional development by more or less eradicating any feeble trace of assertiveness 🤡

I still like that passage though 🤔

That's really nice, but I must admit... I hated the book 😔

“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

The letter Captain Wentworth writes to Anne Elliot in Jane Austen's Persuasion is my favourite piece:

I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in
F. W.