Tick tock. The clock is ticking. I have two library books due on Monday. One (this one) I am nearly finished with and the other I have barely started. Of course I only check out/read the library books I'm really interested in, but those due dates always throw me in a tizzy when I can't renew, and I am determined not to be late this time around. So, my regularly scheduled post (I am finally writing about Captain John Emmett) will have to wait a few days. I'm off to try and get in some rare reading time in the evening in tonight. I'll be back tomorrow with a lost in the stacks post tomorrow. I'll leave you with a little teaser from The Rules of Civility, though. One of the things I really love about this book is reading about New York in the Thirties. Amor Towles has a keen eye for description.
"On the Thursday after Wallace left, I wandered over to Fifth Avenue after work to see the windows at Bergdorf's. A few days before, I'd noticed that they'd been curtained for the installation of the new displays."
"Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, I always looked forward to the unveiling of the new seasons at Bergdorf's. Standing before windows, you felt like a tsarina receiving one of those jeweled eggs in which an elaborate scene in miniature has been painstakingly assembled. With one eye closed you spy inside, losing all sense of time as you marvel at every transporting detail."
"And transporting was the right word. For the Bergdorf's windows weren't advertising unsold inventory at 30% off. They were designed to change the lives of women up and down the avenue--offering envy to some, self-satisfaction to others, but a glimpse of possibility to all. And for the Fall season of 1938, my Fifth Avenue Fabergé did not disappoint."
"The them of the windows was fairy tales, drawing on the well-known works of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen; but in each set piece the "princess" had been replaced with the figure of a man, and the "prince" was one of us."