Ketutar

"She was slender, yet formed like a goddess: at once lithe and voluptuous. Her only garment was a broad silken girdle. Her white ivory limbs and the ivory globes of her breasts drove a beat of fierce passion through the Cimmerian's pulse, even in the panting fury of battle. Her rich black hair, black as a Stygian night, fell in rippling burnished clusters down her supple back."

Oh, my!

Undreamable wealth lay before the eyes of the gaping pirates; diamonds, rubies, bloodstones, sapphires, turquoises, moonstones, opals, emeralds, amethysts, unknown gems that shone like the eyes of evil women.

The shadows were black around him,
The dripping jaws gaped wide,
Thicker than rain the red drops fell;
But my love was fiercer than Death's black spell,
Nor all the iron walls of hell
Could keep me from his side.
—'The Song Of Bêlit'

I enjoy reading biographies, because it makes humans of celebrities. I often forget that there is a life, a normal life, behind that facade of stardom.
David Niven writes nicely, with compassion and understanding, but... he doesn't seem to much care about women, women's POV, women's experiences, women's opinions. And that bothers me.

Well... I suppose if one's a kid one would appreciate this more than I did.
I thought Teddy was delightful, eager, helpful, enthusiastic. I don't like the big bear growling and getting irritated. :-( Not Christmas-y.
And everyone should know one takes spruces in through narrow passages root-end first. Not the top first.

Well... the beginning was a bit bothersome. It got exciting about 2/3 in to the book, and I rather enjoyed the mystery.

I didn't enjoy Rosalind's stupidity and whining, though. I hate heroines who just have to engage in the police work and investigations, who whine about the police/PI not sharing with them all the information, even though they have nothing to do with the business, and even though they are being told over and over again to back off and leave the police business to people whose job it is.
But, she got more reasonable and rational toward the end of the book.

It was very exciting, though, and I just have to read the next book! :-D

Pretty harmless. Sweet little feel good book. Everyone gets happy ending. Nice.
But... I didn't like it. I was bored most of the book.
Also, it's the last book, published 2018, and there's too much loose ends in the story of Noelle. I don't like that.
Too much praying and emotions to my taste. And it didn't feel genuine. Too much talking about things, too little acting. Like “I'll pray for you”. I have always found that... “goody-two-shoes” “better than thou” kind of show. Pray for me all you want, but don't advertise it as if that made you a good person, or that praying is all it takes. I mean, the good will is always a nice thing, but... I think Romeo is a better person than Jane. Romeo was being nice and kind and generous and forgiving to everyone, even the villains of the story, Jane was being “why would I be nice to him, when he isn't nice to me?”
“Sol is not the only person on this earth to have suffered injustice. You don't think I'm not suffering injustice?”
Frankly, I didn't see Jane do anything nice to anyone who hadn't done something nice to her first.
I wish Danica had taken more cue from Melanie Wilkes. Now, that's a lady and a Christian.

When I was young, I was ravenous to read all books about witches and stuff like that. I read Eva Ibbotson, I read Diana Wynne Jones, I read Susan Cooper... so when I saw this book, of course I snatched it and read it.

I love it.

Sorensen Carlisle was... almost as if I had imagined him myself. Everything about him was perfect. I was so in love with him that I was jealous to Laura :-D

I remember having read the story of the king of the valley of the blind men in Reader's Digest once upon a time... I didn't know it was by H.G.Wells. It made a huge impact on me. I suppose I was a teenager, I don't remember where on the scale :-DI can't help thinking about [b:Atlas Shrugged 662 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1405868167l/662.SY75.jpg 817219] when I read The Cone. :-DThe Door reminds me a little about Starless Sea. :-DThe Star is interesting, ecological catastrophe story... one of the earliest of that kind, I can imagine :-D[b:The White People and Other Weird Stories 11226926 The White People and Other Weird Stories Arthur Machen https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1311702486l/11226926.SY75.jpg 16152817] and [b:The Hound of Death 450779 The Hound of Death Agatha Christie https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1374713913l/450779.SY75.jpg 2785408] also come to mind. Very nice stories.

Five stars for what this book is.

“NOTE TO THE READER
The purpose of this book is merely to enable you to communicate in Polish.
In the program itself you may notice that the composition of some of those sentences might sound rather clumsy. This is intentional.
These sentences were formulated in a specific way to serve two purposes:
to facilitate the easy memorization of the vocabulary
and to teach you how to combine the words in order to form your own sentences for quick and easy communication,
rather than making complete literal sense in the English language.
So keep in mind that this is not a phrase book!”

“When asking a question, czy is usually placed at the beginning of the sentence to indicate the case of “do” “do we?”, “do you?”, “does he?” etc. However, native Polish speakers usually don't use the czy case.”

“Ci is the “indirect object pronoun” of the pronoun, i.e. the person who is actually affected by the action that is being carried out.”

“In Norwegian, “don't” comes after the verb: “I don't need” / jeg trenger ikke.”

“In Norwegian, you would say “to make breakfast” and not “to prepare breakfast.”

This is a lovely YA mystery, with the 16 years old Connie Blair in main role.
She's pretty, smart, grounded, rational girl with big dreams and ability to enjoy life and beauty.
She has a twin sister who wants nothing but stay in her small hometown, get married and have a normal life as a housewife in the late 40s, when this book was written, but Connie wants to be like her aunt, a career woman, and live in the city.
She gets a week's job as a floor model in a big department store where her aunt works as the stylist, and solves a mystery with international connections.

I thought it was exciting, interesting, and I want to read more about Connie's adventures in amateur sleuth world.

I'm slightly offended by his choice of Yule as a Cthulhian festival :-D
Also, it didn't quite manage to horrify me, mainly because it felt a bit too silly.
It has potential, though. Someone could make a decent horror movie based on this. I like the ending though. Though Necronomicon as bedside reading in a hospital... er... what kind of hospital is that, say? Lovecraftian? :-D