Top Ten Picks: Literary Places

This week Jillian at Random Ramblings is asking us to name our top ten favorite settings in literature. Places that intrigue us, move us with their beauty, take us to the edges of our imagination with their creepiness. Places we want to go or places we hope we never have to go. Here's mine (From mysteries, of course):

1. A flat in Picadilly, London circa 1920s-1940s. Home of Lord Peter Wimsey. I want to hear him play the piano. I want to immerse myself in his library. I want to listen to him talk piffle and then turn around and be brilliant in solving a case. I want Bunter to bring me tea.

2. 221B Baker Street, London circa late 1800s/early 1900s. The most famous flat in London. I'd even put up with pipe smoke if I could see the Master at work.

3. Oxford, England. Home of Oxford University. But more importantly the home of many detectives such as Inspector Morse and Oxford don, Gervase Fen. The setting for many a British academic mystery....and the place where Harriet Vane finally comes to her senses and accepts Peter Wimsey's proposal of marriage.

4. The "Haunted Bookshop." (from the book of the same title) I want to meet the owner. He talks about books the way I feel about books. I'd like to take up residence in the shop and just browse to my heart's content. I'd like to be given the book I need and not the one I want (as the proprietor would put it).

5. New York City circa 1940s-1950s. I want the New York of Pam & Jerry North (stars of a series by Frances & Richard Lockridge). I want to go to the Charles for dinner. I want to visit Jerry's publishing business (and maybe convince him to publish that little mystery I've got in the works).6. River Heights. Home of Nancy Drew. I want to live in a town where everybody knows and helps everybody and the bad guys ALWAYS lose.

7. The moors around Dartmoor. Home of the Hound of the Baskervilles. A spooky site that I'd want to visit just to say I have--and to admire it's terrible beauty. But only if I've got a good guide so I don't go under the mire.

8. Cape Cod--home of Phoebe Atwood Taylor's Asey Mayo. I've always wanted to visit the East Coast. And it'd be good to see Asey's stomping grounds.

9. The library in The Name of the Rose. Who wouldn't want to see all those books lost to time?

*****Spoiler******
But I'd have to find a way to stop the fire. I couldn't bear to see them go up in flame.

10. Scotland Yard. Of course, what would this list be for a British mystery lover without the shrine of British detection? But only if I can venture in when Ngaio Marsh's Inspectory Alleyn is on duty or Elizabeth George's Inspector Lynley or any of Agatha Christie's various inspectors or....

Top Ten Picks: Favorite Book Quotes

This week Random Bookish Ramblings has us thinking about our top ten favorite quotes from books, authors, and writers. She says this is easy because she is used to writing down random quotes and lines that she winds up loving. It's the opposite for me...same reason. There are SO many quotes that I've collected over the years. How on earth am I supposed to pick just ten? But, here we go....top ten favorites for today...for right now...in no particular order.

1. [about professors in general & Professor Gumbold in particular] "There's some here who seem gaga but aren't, there's some who don't seem gaga but are. He's gaga and it show." The Case of the Missing Bronte by Robert Barnard

2. "The circular wall of the Reading Room wrapped the scholars in a protective layer of books....The dome looked down on the scholars, and the scholars looked down on their books; and the scholars loved their books, stroking the pages with soft pale fingers. The pages responded to the finger's touch, and yielded their knowledge gladly to the scholars, who collected it in little boxes of file-cards. When the scholars raised their eyes from their desks they saw nothing to distract them, nothing out of harmony with their books....And the scholars dropped their eyese to their books again, fortified and consoled." The British Museum Is Falling Down by David Lodge

3. "There is no substitute for books in the life of a child." Recipe for a Magic Childhood by Mary Ellen Chase

4. "Jane is likely to be back in an hour with more books than she can carry. Let her loose where there are second-hand books and she's like a fox in a henhouse." Queen of the Flowers by Kerry Greenwood

5. "The Lopez Law of Life: Never be without a book. The day you forget to bring a book is the day you will get stuck in an elevator (trafic jam, etc.) for two hours and 45 minutes." by Manfred Lopez

6. "That's why I call this place the Haunted Bookshop. Haunted by the ghosts of books I haven't read. Poor uneasy spirits, they walk and walk around me. There's only one way to lay the ghost of a book, and that's to read it." The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley

7. "The trouble with bookshops is that they are as bad as pubs. You start with one and then you drift to another, and before you know where you are you are on a gigantic book-binge." Bodies in a Bookshop by R. T. Campbell (one of my all-time favorites!)

8. "...there is no rule in the detective's handbook that says I can't enjoy myself while I am waiting. And if there is, it's silly and I don't propose to take any notice of it." Murder in the Dark by Kerry Greenwood (I love Phryne Fisher!)

9. [Harriet Vane] "All my life I have been wandering in the dark--but now I have found your heart--and am satisfied." [Lord Peter] "And what do all the great words come to in the end, but that?--I love you--I am at rest with you--I have come home." Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy L Sayers

10. "What is love?...it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing exists that so fills and binds the heart as love does." The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Top Ten Picks: Favorite Books to Movies

Top Ten Picks is a bookish meme hosted by Random Ramblings (and which I found through Lady Scribble's Book Lounge) where we pick our top ten favorite things about books according to the topics she picks. This week's topic: Our favorite books into movies!

Not sure I can come up with ten....but here goes, in no particular order:




1. Around the World in 80 Days (Brosnan version)

Although I have a fondness for David Niven and his version of the Jules Verne classic, I have a passion for Pierce Brosnan. I love him as the proper English gentleman who has to keep his word on the bet. I also like the transformation he goes through as Princess Aouda influences his thinking.





2. The Great Train Robbery

The play between the Sean Connery & Donald Sutherland characters is great. This is an instance where I like the movie better than the book. And it's one of the few heist movies that I really like. Probably because it's set in the Victorian era.








3. War of the Worlds

This is one of my favorites by Wells. And I don't care how many times they remake it, you can't beat the 1953 version.







4. Hound of the Baskervilles (Jeremy Brett)

Much as I love the Basil Rathbone version which is actually true to period--unlike most of the Holmes movies with Rathbone, Jeremy Brett lived and breathed the essence of Holmes. He read the original stories and was a stickler for making sure the writers stayed true to the canon. Absolutely the best Holmes ever!





5. The Thin Man

I have to agree with Lady Scribbles on this one...the movie is absolutely better than the book. Myrna Loy and William Powell play Nick & Nora to perfection. And I love the screwball comedy. The series of movies gets a little out of control towards the end, but they're all fun.


6. Gone with the Wind

Love Vivien Leigh as Scarlett and Clark Gable as Rhett. She's feisty and determined. I just wish she'd figure out sooner who she really loves. Ashley is such a waste of her time....











7. Murder on the Orient Express

David Suchet is the better Poroit. But I love the 1973 version with its star-studded cast. I thought this version captured the over-all feel of the Christie classic.







8. Rebecca (1940)

Alfred Hitchcock certainly knew what he was doing with suspense. The casting is perfect. Dame Judith Anderson is wonderful as the woman you love to hate, Mrs. Danvers. I love the old classics.





9. Gettysburg (Killer Angels by Michael Shaara)

I'm not usually a war movie buff. There are just a few that I've seen that I actually like. I love this movie and have watched it over and over again. It would be worth it just for the visuals and the music. But I like the way it follows characters from both sides of the war. I enjoyed learning more about Joshua Chamberlain (one of my favorite personalities from the Civil War) and General John Buford. Two officers who made a difference by holding their ground when it counted.




10. The Maltese Falcon

I love it when a movie takes a genre I don't usually like (like private eye/hard-boiled) and turns it into something I like to watch. Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade--can't be beat!

I made it to ten!