Libraries Christmas Quotes

When I discovered libraries, it was like having Christmas every day.

You should date a girl who reads. Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve. Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn. She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book. Buy her another cup of coffee. Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice. It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does. She has to give it a shot somehow. Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world. Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two. Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series. If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are. You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype. You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots. Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads. Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

I have a sort of Christmas-morning sense of the library as a big box full of beautiful books.

Twas a cold Yuletide evening, and I wandered the stacks, shelving multiple titles that the patrons brought back. We toiled overtime at our library here, 'cause the powers that be cut our staffing this year.

Nick chided a censor, who wished some books gone, and suggested she scan Fahrenheit 451. For the book-budget cutters, Old Claus had no plan, cause if they could read, they just read Ayn Rand.

The Frays had never been a religiously observant family, but Clary loved Fifth Avenue at Christmas time. The air smelled like sweet roasted chestnuts, and the window displays sparkled with silver and blue, green and red. This year there were fat round crystal snowflakes attached to each lamppost, sending back the winter sunlight in shafts of gold. Not to mention the huge tree at Rockefeller Center. It threw its shadow across them as she and Simon draped themselves over the gate at the side of the skating rink, watching tourists fall down as they tried to navigate the ice. Clary had a hot chocolate wrapped in her hands, the warmth spreading through her body. She felt almost normal—this, coming to Fifth to see the window displays and the tree, had been a winter tradition for her and Simon for as long as she could remember. “Feels like old times, doesn’t it?” he said, echoing her thoughts as he propped his chin on his folded arms. She chanced a sideways look at him. He was wearing a black topcoat and scarf that emphasized the winter pallor of his skin. His eyes were shadowed, indicating that he hadn’t fed on blood recently. He looked like what he was—a hungry, tired vampire. Well, she thought. Almost like old times. “More people to buy presents for,” she said. “Plus, the always traumatic what-to-buy-someone-for-the-first-Christmas-after-you’ve-started-dating question.” “What to get the Shadowhunter who has everything,” Simon said with a grin. “Jace mostly likes weapons,” Clary sighed. “He likes books, but they have a huge library at the Institute. He likes classical music …” She brightened. Simon was a musician; even though his band was terrible, and was always changing their name—currently they were Lethal Soufflé—he did have training. “What would you give someone who likes to play the piano?” “A piano.” “Simon.” “A really huge metronome that could also double as a weapon?” Clary sighed, exasperated. “Sheet music. Rachmaninoff is tough stuff, but he likes a challenge.” “Now you’re talking. I’m going to see if there’s a music store around here.” Clary, done with her hot chocolate, tossed the cup into a nearby trash can and pulled her phone out. “What about you? What are you giving Isabelle?” “I have absolutely no idea,” Simon said. They had started heading toward the avenue, where a steady stream of pedestrians gawking at the windows clogged the streets. “Oh, come on. Isabelle’s easy.” “That’s my girlfriend you’re talking about.” Simon’s brows drew together. “I think. I’m not sure. We haven’t discussed it. The relationship, I mean.” “You really have to DTR, Simon.” “What?” “Define the relationship. What it is, where it’s going. Are you boyfriend and girlfriend, just having fun, ‘it’s complicated,’ or what? When’s she going to tell her parents? Are you allowed to see other people?” Simon blanched. “What? Seriously?” “Seriously. In the meantime—perfume!” Clary grabbed Simon by the back of his coat and hauled him into a cosmetics store that had once been a bank. It was massive on the inside, with rows of gleaming bottles everywhere. “And something unusual,” she said, heading for the fragrance area. “Isabelle isn’t going to want to smell like everyone else. She’s going to want to smell like figs, or vetiver, or—” “Figs? Figs have a smell?” Simon looked horrified; Clary was about to laugh at him when her phone buzzed. It was her mother. where are you? It’s an emergency.

This room in the heart is a necessary protection and must be guarded like no other. It must be kept hidden from everyone, for without it we have no refuge from grief over love lost, or the terrible ache of unrequited love. It is a room built into every heart by God.

They spent pork-barrel money like a tidal-wave sea, but no funds trickled down far enough to reach me. Our books numbered few and were falling apart, and I sat mending pages with a crestfallen heart.

[M]y mother read a horror novel every night. She had read every one in the library. When birthdays and Christmas would come, I would consider buying her a new one, the latest Dean R. Koontz or Stephen King or whatever, but I couldn't. I didn't want to encourage her. I couldn't touch my father's cigarettes, couldn't look at the Pall Mall cartons in the pantry. I was the sort of child who couldn't even watch commercials for horror movies - the ad for Magic, the movie where marionette kills people. sent me into a six-month nightmare frenzy. So I couldn't look at her books, would turn them over so their covers wouldn't show, the raised lettering and splotches of blood - especially the V.C. Andrews oeuvre, those turgid pictures of those terrible kids, standing so still, all lit in blue.

As each new generation becomes more distanced from human interaction by its all-consuming obsession with superfluous technology, our collective passion wanes a little more, making the cracks in each persons’ bridge wider, until it is easy to fall through the fractures and disappear forever.

Books made up the bulk of my birthday and Christmas presents. Then I discovered the public library.

When I close my eyes for the last time, an entire library of instructions for genuinely rewarding living will go with me.

Anyway, Patrick bought me a tiara. He also bought me a pony. My mommy wasn't happy about the pony, even though we have lots of space in the backyard of our new house. I have a new grandpa, too. We call him Ru because it's easier to say than his real name. He promised to take us toParis on Christmas break. He also bought me a tiara. My uncle Lor spends a lot of time in the library bus. He tells me all the time why it's important to write stuff down. So I am. He also bought me a tiara, and Mommy said, "Enough already." (So I didn't tell her that Drake and Darrius gave me one, too.)

Christmas is about community, collaboration, celebration. Done right, Christmas can be an antidote to the Me First mentality that has rebranded capitalism as neo-liberalism. The shopping mall isn't our true home, nor is it a public space, though, as libraries, parks, playgrounds, museums and sports facilities disappear, for many the fake friendliness of the mall is the only public space left, apart from the streets

It humbled me to be living out of my car by design, but the thought of living in a cardboard shelter in some alley, or sleeping on a park bench at night frightened me. We never realize how little separates each of us from the gutter until we’re up against it ourselves.

Fairy tales might not be history, but as I learned in the hours I spent in the library over Christmas break, Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm were historians. They didn’t invent their fairy tales—they collected them, writing down the folk tales and stories they heard from friends and servants, aristocrats and innkeepers’ daughters. Their first collection of stories was meant for grown-ups and I could see why—they’re way too bloody and creepy for children. Even the heroes go around boiling people in oil and feeding them red-hot coals. Imagine Disney making a musical version of “The Girl Without Hands,” a story about a girl whose widowed father chops off her hands when she refuses to marry him!

Romantic love, a soulmate, was a concept too old-fashioned for the modern world. It was a concept beyond the capacity of hearts hardened so thoroughly that armor-piercing bullets could no longer penetrate them.

The tradition of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve was firmly established by the Victorian period. Its origins are in the early Christian belief that souls in purgatory were most active on the day before a holy

The shelves were supposed to be loaded with books—but they were, of course, really doors: each book-lid opened as exciting as Alice putting her gold key in the lock. I spent days running in and out of other worlds like a time bandit, or a spy. I was as excited as I’ve ever been in my life, in that library: scoring new books the minute they came in; ordering books I’d heard of—then waiting, fevered, for them to arrive, like they were the word Christmas.

The tradition of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve was firmly established by the Victorian period. Its origins are in the early Christian belief that souls in purgatory were most active on the day before a holy day, and thus more likely to intrude into our world.

December 6th, 2018: 1: 03am: The sound of a door SLAMMING from within the darkened, glass-fronted depository 1: 04am: The sound of a child laughing, female It being 24 degrees fahrenheit has nothing on the chills shuddering from my skin 1: 13am: I decide to ride home; my shadow, cast from streetlamps, passes me on the road Escaping this haunting is futile The entity’s Terror only increases with each second I get further from the library “Please don’t go there again”, it begs me without language Yet here I am, 10: 26pm, alone, pondering who may be watching from within

Right up until the end, Victor’s mind had been as methodical as an efficient library, whereas Amelia felt that hers was more like the cupboard under the stair where ancient hockey sticks were shoved in beside broken Hoovers and boxes of old Christmas decorations, and the one thing you knew was in there—a five-amp fuse, a tin of tan shoe polish, a Phillips screwdriver—would almost certainly be the one thing you couldn’t lay your hands on.

The colder and more crass the world has become, the more it scoffs at love at first sight. Popular television shows which would have made your grandmother puke, blockbuster movies so banal, vulgar, unfunny and shallow that only the brain-dead could find enjoyment in them, and best-selling fiction featuring either graphic descriptions of brutal, stomach-churning violence, or sexual depravity that drew no lines, had become completely acceptable, even the norm in our desensitized society.

It was rare that she got dressed up and went out, but each time a dinner party or the Christmas dinner with the other library staff came round she would stand in front of the mirror asking George to tell her if the dress was too short or too long, whether her makeup was okay, and if her hair looked fussy or too plain. He always smiled and told her she looked beautiful but she didn't believe him. She would believe him now - she was beautiful. She hopes Kate realizes it before she is eighty-seven.

Copyright, 1894 by G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS PUBLISHERS' NOTE. The two stories by Mr. Crawford, presented in this volume, have been in print before, having been originally written for two Christmas annuals which were issued some years back. With the belief that the stories are, however, still unknown to the larger portion of Mr. Crawford's public, and in the opinion that they are well worthy of preservation in more permanent form, the publishers have decided to reprint them as the initial volume of the "Autonym" library.

We decided to attend to our community instead of asking our community to attend the church.” His staff started showing up at local community events such as sports contests and town hall meetings. They entered a float in the local Christmas parade. They rented a football field and inaugurated a Free Movie Night on summer Fridays, complete with popcorn machines and a giant screen. They opened a burger joint, which soon became a hangout for local youth; it gives free meals to those who can’t afford to pay. When they found out how difficult it was for immigrants to get a driver’s license, they formed a drivers school and set their fees at half the going rate. My own church in Colorado started a ministry called Hands of the Carpenter, recruiting volunteers to do painting, carpentry, and house repairs for widows and single mothers. Soon they learned of another need and opened Hands Automotive to offer free oil changes, inspections, and car washes to the same constituency. They fund the work by charging normal rates to those who can afford it. I heard from a church in Minneapolis that monitors parking meters. Volunteers patrol the streets, add money to the meters with expired time, and put cards on the windshields that read, “Your meter looked hungry so we fed it. If we can help you in any other way, please give us a call.” In Cincinnati, college students sign up every Christmas to wrap presents at a local mall — ​no charge. “People just could not understand why I would want to wrap their presents,” one wrote me. “I tell them, ‘We just want to show God’s love in a practical way.’ ” In one of the boldest ventures in creative grace, a pastor started a community called Miracle Village in which half the residents are registered sex offenders. Florida’s state laws require sex offenders to live more than a thousand feet from a school, day care center, park, or playground, and some municipalities have lengthened the distance to half a mile and added swimming pools, bus stops, and libraries to the list. As a result, sex offenders, one of the most despised categories of criminals, are pushed out of cities and have few places to live. A pastor named Dick Witherow opened Miracle Village as part of his Matthew 25 Ministries. Staff members closely supervise the residents, many of them on parole, and conduct services in the church at the heart of Miracle Village. The ministry also provides anger-management and Bible study classes.

So she was disappointed to answer his summons to the Great Solar early one morning, only to find the chamber filled with what looked like every house-slave at Kyneston. One of her friends from the kitchens explained that it was the annual pre-Christmas deep clean. Everyone mucked in. Abi was reluctantly collecting a duster when Jenner appeared at her elbow. “Not you, Miss Hadley, if I may? I was hoping you might help me in the library.” He led her there, then dithered over whether or not to shut the door. Abi wasn’t much of an expert at “reading the signs,” as a flirty schoolfriend had once termed it. But the situation seemed somehow promising.

OPTIONS FOR REDUCING While thrift stores such as Goodwill or the Salvation Army can be a convenient way to initially let go, many other outlets exist and are often more appropriate for usable items. Here are some examples: • Amazon.com • Antiques shops • Auction houses • Churches • Consignment shops (quality items) • Craigslist.org (large items, moving boxes, free items) • Crossroads Trading Co. (trendy clothes) • Diggerslist.com (home improvement) • Dress for Success (workplace attire) • Ebay.com (small items of value) • Flea markets • Food banks (food) • Freecycle.org (free items) • Friends • Garage and yard sales • Habitat for Humanity (building materials, furniture, and/or appliances) • Homeless and women’s shelters • Laundromats (magazines and laundry supplies) • Library (books, CDs and DVDs) • Local SPCA (towels and sheets) • Nurseries and preschools (blankets, toys) • Operation Christmas Child (new items in a shoe box) • Optometrists (eyeglasses) • Regifting • Rummage sales for a cause • Salvage yards (building materials) • Schools (art supplies, magazines, dishes to eliminate class party disposables) • Tool co-ops (tools) • Waiting rooms (magazines) • Your curb with a “Free” sign

I was not able to sleep that night. To be honest, I didn’t even try. I stood in front of my living room window, staring out at the bright lights of New York City. I don’t know how long I stood there; in fact, I didn’t see the millions of multicolored lights or the never-ending streams of headlights and taillights on the busy streets below. Instead, I saw, in my mind’s eye, the crowded high school classrooms and halls where my friends and I had shared triumphs and tragedies, where the ghosts of our past still reside. Images flickered in my mind. I saw the faces of teachers and fellow students I hadn’t seen in years. I heard snatches of songs I had rehearsed in third period chorus. I saw the library where I had spent long hours studying after school. Most of all, I saw Marty. Marty as a shy sophomore, auditioning for Mrs. Quincy, the school choir director. Marty singing her first solo at the 1981 Christmas concert. Marty at the 1982 Homecoming Dance, looking radiant after being selected as Junior Princess. Marty sitting alone in the chorus practice room on the last day of our senior year. I stared long and hard at those sepia-colored memories. And as my mind carried me back to the place I had sworn I’d never return to, I remembered.

As the subject watches the movies, the MRI machine creates a 3-D image of the blood flow within the brain. The MRI image looks like a vast collection of thirty thousand dots, or voxels. Each voxel represents a pinpoint of neural energy, and the color of the dot corresponds to the intensity of the signal and blood flow. Red dots represent points of large neural activity, while blue dots represent points of less activity. (The final image looks very much like thousands of Christmas lights in the shape of the brain. Immediately you can see that the brain is concentrating most of its mental energy in the visual cortex, which is located at the back of the brain, while watching these videos.) Gallant’s MRI machine is so powerful it can identify two to three hundred distinct regions of the brain and, on average, can take snapshots that have one hundred dots per region of the brain. (One goal for future generations of MRI technology is to provide an even sharper resolution by increasing the number of dots per region of the brain.) At first, this 3-D collection of colored dots looks like gibberish. But after years of research, Dr. Gallant and his colleagues have developed a mathematical formula that begins to find relationships between certain features of a picture (edges, textures, intensity, etc.) and the MRI voxels. For example, if you look at a boundary, you’ll notice it’s a region separating lighter and darker areas, and hence the edge generates a certain pattern of voxels. By having subject after subject view such a large library of movie clips, this mathematical formula is refined, allowing the computer to analyze how all sorts of images are converted into MRI voxels. Eventually the scientists were able to ascertain a direct correlation between certain MRI patterns of voxels and features within each picture. At this point, the subject is then shown another movie trailer. The computer analyzes the voxels generated during this viewing and re-creates a rough approximation of the original image. (The computer selects images from one hundred movie clips that most closely resemble the one that the subject just saw and then merges images to create a close approximation.) In this way, the computer is able to create a fuzzy video of the visual imagery going through your mind. Dr. Gallant’s mathematical formula is so versatile that it can take a collection of MRI voxels and convert it into a picture, or it can do the reverse, taking a picture and then converting it to MRI voxels. I had a chance to view the video created by Dr. Gallant’s group, and it was very impressive. Watching it was like viewing a movie with faces, animals, street scenes, and buildings through dark glasses. Although you could not see the details within each face or animal, you could clearly identify the kind of object you were seeing. Not only can this program decode what you are looking at, it can also decode imaginary images circulating in your head.

You should date a girl who reads. Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve. Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn. She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book. Buy her another cup of coffee. Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice. It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does. She has to give it a shot somehow. Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world. Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two. Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series. If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are. You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype. You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots. Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads. Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

From what I've heard, others can recall the exact time in their lives when they lost their virginity. Not so with Catholics. Ours was wrapped beneath layers of guilt. Cautiously, slowly, and hoping that God was too busy with other things to notice, our logic and lust would unravel quilts of Sunday morning sermons, catechism lessons, confessional admonitions, and parental warnings. Such apprehensive behavior would often overflow into other activities. A devout Catholic would never completely open his Christmas gifts until August. Catholics also did very well on bomb squads. By the time we got through all the wrappings, we would often discover that our virginity had simply melted away. Ask a non-Catholic when they lost their virginity and they recall a specific moment. Ask a Catholic the same question and they begin counting the years on their fingers. Sitting in the library trying to figure out mathematical equations for a statistics course. I looked up from my pad of scribblings to see Denise Meyers, a girl I vaguely knew from around school, straining to reach a book that was on one of the higher shelves. She was wearing a short skirt. Discovering a new mathematical equation: Arousal equals the distance of the short skirt above the knees times the shapeliness of the legs. Denise Meyers was a reasonably attractive girl but, under the gaze of someone being affected by "library lunacy," she looked incredibly provocative. "Library lunacy" was a state of mind reached by sitting in the library and concentrating on material so boring that, after a few minutes, even the seventy-year-old librarian begins looking good. One sure indication that your mind was slipping

I have no intention of being reckless,” she said. “I just don’t want to waste away in a lab or library while life goes on around me.

All these things happen on Christmas Eve, they are all told of on Christmas Eve. For ghost stories to be told on any other evening than the evening of the twenty-fourth of December would be impossible in English society as at present regulated.

Can there be something tonic about pure, active fear in these times of passive, confused oppression? It is nice to choose to be frightened, when one need not be.

The Harrington Castle probably had a library that could put the Beast’s to shame.

back — and I stretched myself in comfort on the green couch in the library and contemplated the heap of nice white paper bundles on the piano — Then I was a surprise-party to A.F. and we sat up late and talked of many things. It is ten years since Mr. Fields died and I spent my first Christmas there!” Of Miss Jewett and Mrs. Fields, Henry James wrote that “their reach together was of the firmest and easiest and I verily remember being struck with the stretch of wings that the spirit of Charles Street could bring off.” About the “marriage” between Alice and Katharine, however, Henry was not quite so sanguine. Something in its intensity troubled him, and he would express this unease in The Bostonians.

Your father even wrote the first theories about daytime dreaming in this library." She smiles at Albert, a look of pride. "He invented daydreams, you know," she says, looking back to me. "A way for humans to dream up wild, unthinkable things right in the middle of the afternoon, without ever needing to go to sleep." I think back to my own daydreams, moments when I'd managed to lose myself in thought, especially in my old life: dreaming of a future with Jack, dreaming of who I might be if I ever escaped Dr. Finkelstein.

Where is she?’ asked Harry, grabbing the tape measure and unrolling his own homework. ‘Somewhere over there,’ said Ron, pointing along the shelves, ‘looking for another book. I think she’s trying to read the whole library before Christmas.

I met Chris at the Student Union. We both used to study there between our 9:30 and 11:30 classes. I had seen him on campus before. He was always wearing this yellow sweatshirt and giant headphones. The kind of headphones that say, “I may not take my clothes seriously. I may not have brushed or even washed my hair today. But I pronounce the word ‘music’ with a capital ‘M.’ Like God.” So I had noticed him before. He had Eddie Vedder hair. Ginger brown, tangly. He was too thin (much thinner than he is now), and there were permanent smudges under his eyes. Like he was too cool to eat or sleep. I thought he was dreamy. I called him Headphone Boy. I couldn’t believe my luck when I realized we studied in the Union at the same time. Well, I studied. He would pull a paperback out of his pocket and read. Never a textbook. Sometimes, he’d just sit there with his eyes closed, listening to music, his legs all jangly and loose. He gave me impure thoughts. (...) There we were. In the Student Union. He always sat in the corner. And I always sat one row across from him, three seats down. I took to leaving my 9:30 class early so I could primp and be in my spot looking casual by the time he sauntered in. He never looked at me – or anyone else, to my relief – and he never took off his headphones. I used to fantasize about what song he might be listening to… and whether it would be the first dance at our wedding… and whether we’d go with traditional wedding photography or black and white… Probably black and white, magazine style. There’d be lots of slightly out-of-focus, candid shots of us embracing with a romantic, faraway look in our eyes. Of course, Headphone Boy already had a faraway look in his eyes, which my friend Lynn attributed to “breakfast with Mary Jane.” This started in September. Sometime in October, one of his friends walked by and called him “Chris.” (A name, at last. “Say it loud and there’s music playing. Say it soft and it’s almost like praying.”) One Tuesday night in November, I saw him at the library. I spent the next four Tuesday nights there, hoping it was a pattern. It wasn’t. Sometimes I’d allow myself to follow him to his 11:30 class in Andrews Hall, and then I’d have to run across campus to make it to my class in the Temple Building. By the end of the semester, I was long past the point of starting a natural, casual conversation with him. I stopped trying to make eye contact. I even started dating a Sig Ep I met in my sociology class. But I couldn’t give up my 10:30 date with Headphone Boy. I figured, after Christmas break, our schedules would change, and that would be that. I’d wait until then to move on. All my hope was lost. And then… the week before finals, I showed up at the Union at my usual time and found Chris sitting in my seat. His headphones were around his neck, and he watched me walk toward him. At least, I thought he was watching me. He had never looked at me before, never, and the idea made my skin burn. Before I could solve the problem of where to sit, he was talking to me. He said, “Hey.” And I said, “Hi.” And he said, “Look…” His eyes were green. He kind of squinted when he talked. “I’ve got a 10:30 class next semester, so… we should probably make other arrangements.” I was struck numb. I said, “Are you mocking me?” “No,” he said, “I’m asking you out.” “Then, I’m saying yes.” “Good..,” he said, “we could have dinner. You could still sit across from me. It would be just like a Tuesday morning. But with breadsticks.” “Now you’re mocking me.” “Yes.” He was still smiling. “Now I am.” And that was that. We went out that weekend. And the next weekend. And the next. It was wildly romantic.

In a library, one only sees the world through the eyes of others, not oneself.

It is difficult to say exactly at what point fear begins, when the causes of that fear are not plainly before the eyes. Impressions gather on the surface of the mind, film by film, as ice gathers upon the surface of still water, but often so lightly that they claim no definite recognition from the consciousness.

Unpleasant, haunting memories have a way of coming to life again just when the mind least desires them—in the silent watches of the night, on sleepless pillows, during the lonely hours spent by sick and dying beds.

Can there be something tonic about pure, active fear in these times of passive, confused oppression? It is nice to choose to be frightened, when one need not be. Or it may be that, deadened by information, we are glad of these awful, intent and nameless beings as to whom no information is to be had.

We all come to understand at some point in our lives that there is no Santa Claus. But the reason Santa Claus remains an integral part of Christmas celebrations is not for the sake of small children. It is because grown-ups who were once children themselves continue to hold the truth of Santa Claus in their hearts even after they become adults, and they live in that belief.

You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost. "I don't," said Scrooge. "What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your own senses?" "I don't know," said Scrooge. "Why do you doubt your senses?" "Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!

could fill a library with my memories of you, Gwen Baker,’ he said before pushing off the wall and sailing away down the pool.

Who says every story has to be a romance? My Kindle library, that’s who.

There is love here, there is lusciousness of poetry, no people. People are either poison or magic, either way they break hearts. But there is love here and Christmases and a library. There are possibilities, of joy.

That is just what baby did not know, and in spite of the kiss, he made up his mind to cry. It was very distressing. Christie walked up and down in the bit of a space, and cuddled the poor fellow, and whispered loving words to him, and cooed a lullaby in to his ear, but he would have none of them. He wanted just one thing, and that was his mother’s face. The gentlemen began to interest themselves in the matter, though the velvet-dressed young lady was still deep in her Seaside Library, only taking time to dart a frown at baby for being so noisy. One and another asked who had been with the child, and what had become of her; and Wells told his story about seeing her leave the car at the last station. “A case of desertion,” said one man, looking severely at Christie as though she might be the cause; but she looked back at him out very cross eyes, and was glad that she did. The idea of any mother deserting her baby!

It was very hard for him to admit it to himself, but having her around had brought him a strange comfort, and he had no idea why. Looking out for her made him feel better somehow. Making sure she was fed and protected against danger—that seemed to work for him, too. It was a lot of trouble, actually. If she hadn’t been around, he wouldn’t go to as much bother with meals. Three out of four nights he’d just open a can of something, but because she’d been sick and needed a hot meal he’d put his best foot forward. Plus, she needed to put on another few pounds. He had spent a lot of time wondering if searching for him, sleeping in her car and probably skipping meals had made her thin and weak. Knowing she was going to be there when he got home, pestering and bothering him, made him hurry a little bit through his work, his chores. He couldn’t figure out why—he was damn sure not going to go over all that old business about the war, about Bobby. Just thinking about that stuff put a boulder in his gut and made his head ache. And yet, he had a ridiculous fear that this phone call to her sister would result in her saying, “I have to go home now.” But there was no use worrying about it—she’s going to leave soon no matter what the sister says. It’s not as though she’d camp out in his cabin through the holidays—she had people at home. Never mind her grousing about her sister, at least she had a sister who loved her, cared about her. And what had she said when she asked for a ride to town? Just a little while longer… It was the first relationship he’d had in about four years. Old Raleigh didn’t count—that had been pure servitude. If the man hadn’t left him part of a mountain, Ian would never have suspected Raleigh was even slightly grateful for the caretaking in the last months. Ian saw people regularly—he worked for the moving company when the weather was good, had his firewood route, went places like the library, had a meal out now and then. People were nice to him, and he was cordial in return. But he never got close; there had been no relationships. No one poked at him like she did, making him smile in spite of himself. That business with the puma—her opening the outhouse door and yelling at him like that—he knew what that was about. She was afraid he’d get hurt by the cat and risked her own skin to warn him. Been a long damn time since he felt anyone really cared about him at all. Maybe that was it, he thought. Marcie thinks she cares, and it’s because I was important to Bobby. If we’d just met somehow, it wouldn’t be like this. But that didn’t matter to him right now. He liked the feeling, alien though it was. He’d be back for her in two and a half hours and while he was delivering a half a cord to some dentist in Fortuna he’d watch the time so he wouldn’t be late getting back to pick her up. And with every split log he stacked, he’d be hoping her family wouldn’t find a way to get her home right away. *

I’ve got some wood to deliver in the morning.” “Right. Yeah, I know that. Do I still have my library books?” “You think I could get to the library in the hour you were gone today?” “Oh, never mind. Good night, my sweet bear.” Oh, God, how that made his heart swell and lurch. Before he could stop himself, he bent his lips to her temple and placed a soft kiss there. Her hand came up, stroked his hairy face, and she hummed. “The only problem with this is that I can hardly tell when you smile. I so love it when you smile.” “Good night, lightweight.” While

Your father and I made a deal. I agreed to let him sell some paintings and things to raise the money he needed to fix up the house, and he agreed to let me have one book from the family library to take home each year." "The Christmas book!" said Sophie. "Exactly, the Christmas book. So every year at Christmas I pick one book to keep for my own." He took her by the hand and led her into a small bedroom at the end of the corridor. "Do you see this shelf right here next to my bed? Those are all the books I've picked over the years. It is my very special shelf." "It must be exciting to go into a big library and get to pick any book you want." "I'm glad you think so, Sophie. Because I want you to do the same thing. I want you to pick any book in my flat to take home with you and keep." "Really?" she said, her face lighting up. "Really," said Bertram. "after all, it's almost Christmas." "Any book?" "Any book. But choose carefully," said Uncle Bertram. "A good book is like a good friend. It will stay with you for the rest of your life. When you first get to know it, it will give you excitement and adventure, and years later it will provide you with comfort and familiarity. And best of all, you can share it with your children or your grandchildren or anyone you love enough to let into its secrets.

What in the—? My begonias!” he heard someone say behind him. Nick looked over his shoulder. A small but muscular woman in sweaty workout clothes was stepping out of a big shiny car in the neighbor’s driveway. She was gaping in horror at the chewed-up flowerbed and the smoking lawn mower. Scowling, she turned toward Uncle Newt’s house. And the scowl didn’t go away when she noticed Nick looking back at her. In fact, it got scowlier. Nick smiled weakly, waved, and hurried into the house. He closed the door behind him. “Whoa,” he said when his eyes adjusted to the gloom inside. Cluttering the long hall in front of him were dozens of old computers, a telescope, a metal detector connected to a pair of bulky earphones, an old-fashioned diving suit complete with brass helmet, a stuffed polar bear (the real, dead kind), a chainsaw, something that looked like a flamethrower (but couldn’t be … right?), a box marked KEEP REFRIGERATED, another marked THIS END UP (upside down), and a fully lit Christmas tree decorated with ornaments made from broken beakers and test tubes (it was June). Exposed wires and power cables poked out of the plaster and veered off around every corner, and there were so many diplomas and science prizes and patents hanging (all of them earned by Newton Galileo Holt, a.k.a. Uncle Newt) that barely an inch of wall was left uncovered. Off to the left was a living room lined with enough books to put some libraries to shame, a semitransparent couch made of inflated plastic bags, and a wide-screen TV connected by frayed cords to a small trampoline.

The idea of a hot bath hung in the future like the promise of Christmas or a new book in a favourite series.

Until this night, this awful night, he’d had a little joke about himself. He didn’t know who he was, or where he’d come from, but he knew what he liked. And what he liked was all around him-the flower stands on the corners, the big steel and glass buildings filled with milky evening light, the trees, of course, the grass beneath his feet. And the telephones-it didn’t matter. He liked to figure them out, master them, then crush them into tiny hard multicolored balls which he could then juggle or toss through plate glass windows when nobody was about. He liked piano music, the motion pictures, and the poems he found in books. He also liked the automobiles that burnt oil from the earth like lamps. And the great jet planes that flew on the same scientific principles, above the clouds. He always stopped and listened to the people laughing and talking up there when one of the people laughing and talking up there when one of the planes flew overhead. Driving was an extraordinary pleasure. In a silver Mercedes-Benz, he had sped on smooth empty roads from Rome to Florence to Venice in one night. He also liked television-the entire electric process of it, with tiny bits of lights. How soothing it was to have the company of the television, the intimacy with so many artfully painted faces speaking to you in friendship from the glowing screen. The rock and roll, he liked that too. He liked the music. He liked the Vampire Lestat singing “Requiem for the Marquise”. He didn’t pay attention to the words much. It was the melancholy and the dark undertone of drums and cymbals. Made him want to dance. He liked the giant yellow machines that dug into the earth late at night in the big cities with men in uniforms, crawling all over them; he liked the double-decker buses of London, and the people-the clever mortals everywhere-he liked, too, of course. He liked walking in Damascus during the evening, and seeing in sudden flashes of disconnected memory the city of the ancients. Romans, Greeks, Persians, Egyptians in these streets. He liked the libraries where he could find photographs of ancient monuments in big smooth good-smelling books. He took his own photographs of the new cities around him and sometimes he could put images on those pictures which came from his thoughts. For example, in his photograph of Rome there were Roman people in tunics and sandals superimposed upon the modern versions in their thick ungraceful clothes. Oh, yes, much to like around him always-the violin music of Bartók, little girls in snow white dresses coming out of the church at midnight having sung at the Christmas mass. He liked the blood of his victims too, of course. That went without saying. It was no part of his little joke. Death was not funny to him. He stalked his prey in silence; he didn’t want to know his victims. All a mortal had to do was speak to him and he was turned away. Not proper, as he saw it, to talk to these sweet, soft-eyed things and then gobble their blood, break their bones and lick the marrow, squeeze their limbs to dripping pulp. And that was the way he feasted now, so violently. He felt no great need for blood anymore; but he wanted it. And the desire overpowered him in all its ravening purity, quite apart from the thirst. He could have feasted upon three or four mortals a night.

Looking for another book. I think she’s trying to read the whole library before Christmas.

On Christmas Eve 1851 a fire took hold in a chimney of the library and more than half of the library’s 55,000 books were destroyed, including most of the Jeffersonian library.

You will catch your death, Wife.” Joseph opened his cape and enveloped her in its folds, which—happily for her—necessitated that he hug her to his chest. “I will be back as soon as possible.” “We have much to do in your absence.” “I’ve never seen this house so thoroughly decorated for the holidays. I can’t believe there’s another thing to be done.” Louisa felt his chin come to rest on her temple. “We have a great deal of baking to do if we’re to send baskets to the tenants and neighbors. I must write to the agencies to find us another governess, and you’ve set me the task of finding a charity worthy of your coin. Then too, I am behind on my correspondence, and if all else fails, I have your library to explore. I will stay busy.” “While I will freeze my backside off, haring about the realm without you.

I want to do you in oils,” she said, advancing into the room. “I will content myself with some sketches first. I trust you can remain awake for another hour.” “Awake will not be a problem.” Sane, however, became questionable. “Genevieve, you cannot remain in my rooms with me unchaperoned when the rest of the house is abed.” She flipped a fat golden braid over her shoulder. “I was unchaperoned with you at breakfast; I was unchaperoned with you in your studio before the boys arrived. I was unchaperoned with you in the library when the children went for their nap after luncheon. How did you expect to pose for me, Mr. Harrison, if not privately?” “You are—we are—not properly clothed.” Her gaze ran over him assessingly, as dispassionately as if this Mr. Harrison fellow were some minor foreign diplomat with little English. “Had I been accosted in the corridor by my sister, Sophie would have taken greater notice were I not in nightclothes. Besides”—a pink wash rose over her cheeks—“I have seen you without a single stitch and memorialized the sight by the hour with pen, pencil, and paper. Perhaps you’d like to take a seat?” He would like to run screaming from the room, and nearly did just that when a quiet scratching came from the door. “This will be our chaperone,” Lady Jenny said. To be found alone, after dark, with a lady in dishabille could also be his downfall. The Academy would quietly pass him by, his father’s worst accusations would be justified, and the example he was supposed to set for all those younger siblings would become a cautionary tale. As he watched Genevieve stride across the room to the door, Elijah realized being found with him could be her downfall too, the loss of all the reputation and dignity she’d cultivated carefully for years. The Royal Academy might admit him in another ten years, despite some scandal in his past—Sir Thomas had been accused of dallying with no less than the regent’s wife—but Jenny’s reputation would not recover. “Genevieve—” She opened the door a few inches, and a sizable exponent of the feline species strutted into the room, tail held high. This was the same dignified, liveried fellow who’d shared a bed with Elijah at Carrington’s. “And here we have Timothy?” “None other. He can hold a pose for hours and all the while look like he’s contemplating the secrets of the universe.” “While we contemplate folly. Genevieve, you take a great risk for a few sketches.” She

Louisa watched her husband shave. He was careful, methodical, and efficient as he scraped dark whiskers from his face. He kept a mug—not a cup—of tea at his elbow throughout this masculine ritual, shaving around his mouth first so he might sip at his tea. “You missed a spot on your jaw, Husband.” Husband. Her very own husband. He turned, flecks of lather dotting his visage, and held his razor out to her. Not quite a challenge, but something more than an invitation. The moment called for a shaving sonnet. Louisa set her tea aside—tea Joseph had prepared for her—and climbed off the bed. She took the razor from him and eyed his jaw. “Were you trying to spare my sensibilities last night?” “You were indisposed.” They both fell silent while Louisa scraped the last of the whiskers from Joseph’s cheek. She appropriated the towel he’d draped over his shoulder and wiped his face clean. “I know I was indisposed, but you blew out all the candles before you undressed. I’ve seen naked men before.” She’d never slept with one wrapped around her, though. Such an arrangement was… cozy, and inclined one toward loquaciousness. “You’ve seen naked men?” There was something too casual in Joseph’s question. Louisa set the razor down and stepped back. “Growing up, there was always a brother or two to spy on, and I think they didn’t mind being spied on so very much, or they wouldn’t have been quite as loud when they went swimming. I attend every exhibition the Royal Society puts on, and the Moreland library is quite well stocked.” He kissed her, and by virtue of his mouth on hers, Louisa understood that her husband was smiling at her pronouncements. He gave her a deucedly businesslike kiss though, over in a moment. As Louisa lingered in her husband’s arms, sneaking a whiff of the lavender soap scent of his skin, she wondered if married kisses were different from the courting kind. “I have married a fearlessly naughty woman,” Joseph said, stroking a hand down her braid. “And to think I was concerned that I was imposing by asking you to share my bed last night.” “You needn’t be gallant. I talked your ears off.” And he’d listened. He hadn’t fallen asleep, hadn’t patted her arm and rolled over, hadn’t let her know in unsubtle ways that the day had been quite long enough, thank you very much.

The nation’s Charters of Freedom were also evacuated from the capital. The attorney general ruled that the Library of Congress had the inherent authority to remove the founding documents without a presidential or congressional order, and so the day after Christmas in 1941 they were smuggled out of Washington. Even as the wreckage of the U.S. Navy still burned in Pearl Harbor, two Secret Service agents hid the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and other important documents aboard a B&O railroad passenger car en route to Kentucky. All were carefully wrapped in manila paper and then padlocked inside a bronze container, which was then sealed with lead and crated inside a larger box;

Somewhere over there,” said Ron, pointing along the shelves. “Looking for another book. I think she’s trying to read the whole library before Christmas.” Harry

When I discovered libraries, it was like having Christmas everyday!

Because I get scared sometimes. I’m here with you now, and we’ve had Christmas together and it was glorious, but I don’t know how and when things… will end…’ Martha took her hand. ‘I thought you were the woman who battled a crocodile and won.’ Zelda gave a small laugh. She reached up and touched the back of her head. ‘I have the scar to prove it.’ ‘And are you one of those people who reads a book and tries to guess the ending?’ ‘No. I hate that. I like a nice surprise. I don’t want to know what comes next until it happens. I take each page and chapter as they come.’ Zelda smiled as she realized what she had just said.

Yo mama is so stupid… she thought Dunkin’ Donuts was a basketball team! Yo mama is so stupid… she tripped over a wireless phone! Yo mama is so stupid… she failed a survey! Yo mama is so stupid… she got locked in a grocery store and starved to death! Yo mama is so stupid… when they said that it is chilly outside, she went outside with a bowl and a spoon. Yo mama is so stupid… she tried to drown a fish! Yo mama is so stupid… she tried to throw a bird off a cliff! Yo mama is so stupid… she took a knife to a drive-by! Yo mama is so stupid… she thought Boyz II Men was a daycare center! Yo mama is so stupid… she bought a ticket to Xbox Live! Yo mama is so stupid… she thought she couldn’t buy a Gameboy because she is a girl! Yo mama is so stupid… she thought a scholarship was a ship full of students! Yo mama is so stupid… she threw a clock out the window to see time fly! Yo mama is so stupid… she went to the ocean to surf the Internet! Yo mama is so stupid… you can hear the ocean in her head! Yo mama is so stupid… she thought Hamburger Helper came with a friend! Yo mama is so stupid… she got locked in Furniture World and slept on the floor. Yo mama is so stupid… she sits on the floor and watches the couch. Yo mama is so stupid… she stayed up all night trying to catch up on her sleep! Yo mama is so stupid… she got her hand stuck in a website! Yo mama is so stupid… she thought Christmas wrap was Snoop Dogg’s new song! Yo mama is so stupid… she can't pass a blood test. Yo mama is so stupid… she thought the Harlem Shake was a drink! Yo mama is so stupid… she ordered a cheeseburger without the cheese. Yo mama is so stupid… she tried to climb Mountain Dew! Yo mama is so stupid… that she burned down the house with a CD burner. Yo mama is so stupid… she went to PetSmart to take an IQ test! Yo mama is so stupid… she went to the library to find Facebook! Yo mama is so stupid… she stole free bread. Yo mama is so stupid… she sold her car for gas money. Yo mama is so stupid… she stopped at a stop sign and waited for it to turn green. Yo mama is so stupid… when she asked me what kind of jeans I am wearing I said, “Guess”, and she said, “Levis”. Yo mama is so stupid… she called me to ask me for my phone number! Yo mama is so stupid… she worked at an M&M factory and threw out all the W's. Yo mama is so stupid… she tried to commit suicide by jumping out the basement window. Yo mama is so stupid… she got lost in a telephone booth. Yo mama is so stupid… she stuck a phone in her butt to make a booty call! Yo mama is so stupid… I said that drinks were on the house and she went to get a ladder! Yo mama is so stupid… she went to a dentist to fix her Bluetooth! Yo mama is so stupid… she put lipstick on her forehead to make up her mind. Yo mama is so stupid… it took her two hours to watch 60 seconds.

The British Library’s series of Crime Classics concentrates on stories associated with “the Golden Age of murder” , during which the formation of the Detection Club marked a valiant attempt to raise the standards of crime writing. Membership of the Club was by election, and confined to those authors whose work was regarded by their peers as exemplary. Edgar Wallace was among those not deemed eligible to join, because of his focus on writing thrillers rather than carefully plotted whodunnits. In terms of literary merit, his work was often slapdash, but neither Wallace nor his stories were ever lacking in energy or exuberance, and he is represented here by a tale written with his characteristic verve.