Ledger Smith Quotes

A ‘library’ turned out to be a room where books were read. The fact that people used to have so many books that they needed a whole separate room just to store them, much less a word for the room, said everything Lan guessed she needed to know about the way the world used to be. In Norwood, loose pictures and salvaged magazines were locked up like other valuables. The mayor had a few books, including the town ledger where Lan’s own name had been written on the day of her birth and presumably crossed out along with her mother’s the day she’d left, but all of them together could have fit on one shelf. Here was a room the size of the dining hall, two stories tall and lined in bookshelves, with ladders on runners along every wall so that no shelf was out of reach. These were books that could not be measured in hundreds or even thousands, but in some greater number that had no name. If only she knew how to read.

Malachi Smith. Crispin Jones. Suzette Boudrot. Claude Le Breton.” Matthew paused as Ransome searched the ledger’s entries for the names. “You should have kept them in chronological order instead of alphabetical. That’s how I remember them.” Ransome

What the Piece Work [brothel] lacked in respectability, it made up for in discretion. I'd met the doorman and clerk on half a dozen occasions, but never exchanged names. The sign-in ledger read like a SmithJones family reunion. Ever the contrarian, I signed myself in as "Hugh Jarse"...