"The Crown Hotel was lately built, and still retained the dusty, honeyed trace of fresh-planed timber; the walls still beading gems of sap along each groove, the hearths still clean of ash and staining. Moody's room was furnished very approximately, as in a pantomime where a large and lavish household is conjured by a single chair. The bolster was thin upon the mattress, and padded with what felt like twists of muslin; the blankets were slightly too large, so that their edges pooled on the floor; giving the bed a rather shrunken aspect, huddled as it was beneath the rough slope of the eave. The bareness lent the place a spectral, unfinished quality that might have been disquieting, had the prospect through the buckled glass been of a different street and a different age, but to Moody the emptiness was like a balm. He stowed his sodden case on the whatnot beside his bed, wrung and dried his clothes as best he could, drank off a pot of tea, ate four slices of dark-grained bread with ham, and, after peering through the window to the impenetrable wash of the street, resolved to defer his business in town until the morning."
From The Luminaries
On the topic of availability of books, I continue to grouse about the books published in Britain (or Canada or Australia) that are not simultaneously published in the US. I can think of no reason for publishers to do this now that we are all so connected - with people in the US reading British blogs and newspapers and English-speaking people around the world reading the New York Times Book Review and other US reviews.
This book, which I am particularly eager to buy will not be published in the US until the middle of October. By then I may or may not still want to buy it and other books will have been published here which may have cleaned out my budget. I could buy it from an English bookseller but that will cost me more than getting it here in the fall. (I used to wonder about people who had "pet peeves" and now I am one of them.)
Posted by: Mary Ronan Drew | 09 August 2013 at 05:30 PM