Fans of Eloisa James & Julia Quinn discussion
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17 January 2022
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Don't know it but I'm very interested. Thanks for sharing. :-)
Good morning and hope your temp is better than here we have dropped 12 degrees since 6 AM. BrrGood day to curl up with a good book!
The book I shared is:
The Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
and yes, the series that is on now catches the books very well.
Susan wrote: "Good morning and hope your temp is better than here we have dropped 12 degrees since 6 AM. BrrGood day to curl up with a good book!
The book I shared is:
The Discovery of Witches by Deborah Har..."
I just finished watching the last season and LOVED IT! I'm very tempted to read it now, especially after you've shared it.
Thanks for sharing. :-)
It is really excellent reading a lot more of the story and relationships. you will love it. Fourth book is avaialble and is a continuation of Marcus's story.Read on!
That is what this group is about encouraging each other to expand our reading experience.
Susan wrote: "That is what this group is about encouraging each other to expand our reading experience."Best group on Goodreads. :D
I really like these books and have read them multiple times; I have met the author and generally have fallen in love with their love story.
Unwrapping a love story layer by layer.
“What was the fifth question you had to answer for the Prize Fellowship?”
Candidates were invited to sit an exam that involved four questions combining thought-provoking breadth and depth with devilish complexity. If you survived the first four questions, you were asked the famous “fifth question.” It was not a question at all, but a single word like “water,” or “absence.” It was up to the candidate to decide how to respond, and only the most brilliant answer won you at (college name).
He reached across the table---without setting himself on fire---and poured some more wine into my glass. “Desire,” he said, studiously avoiding my eyes.
So much for that diversionary plan.
“Desire? What did you write?”
“As far as I can tell, there are only two emotions that keep the world spinning, year after year.” He hesitated, then continued. “One is fear. The other is desire. That’s what I wrote about.”
Love hadn’t factored into his response, I noticed. It was a brutal picture, a tug-of-war between tow equal and opposing impulses. It had the ring of truth, however, which was more than could be said of the glib “love makes the world go round.”
Hero kept hinting that his desire ---for blood, chiefly---was so strong that it put everything else at risk.
But vampires weren’t the only creature who had to manage such strong impulses. Much of what qualified as magic was simply desire in action. Witchcraft was different---that took spells and rituals. But magic? A wish, a need, a hunger too strong to be denied--- these could turn into deed when they crossed a witch’s mind.
“Magic is desire made real.” It is how I pulled down Notes and queries the night we met, “ I said slowly. When a witch concentrates on something she wants, and then imagines how she might get it, she can make it happen. That’s why I have to be so careful about my work.” I took a sip of wind and my hand trembling on the glass.
“Then you spend most of your time trying not to want things, just like me. For some of the sme reason, too.” Hero’s snowflake glances flickered across my cheeks.
“If you mean the fear that if I started, there would be not stopping me---yes. I don’t want to look back on a life where I took everything rather than earned it.”
“So you earn everything twice over. First you earn it by not simply taking it, and then you earn it again through work and effort.” He laughed bitterly. “The advantages of being an otherworldly creature don’t amount to much, do they?”
Hero suggested we sit by his fireless fireplace, I lounged on the sofa, and he carried some nutty biscuits over to the table by me, before disappearing into the kitchen once more. When he returned, he was carrying a small try with the ancient black bottle on it—the cork now pulled---and two glasses of amber-colored liquid. He handed one to me.
“Close your eyes and tell me what you smell,” he instructed in in his (college name) don’s voice. My lids dropped obediently. The wine seemed at once old and vibrant. It smelled of flowers and nuts and candied lemons and some other, long-past world that I had---until now--- been able only to read about and imagine.
It smells like the past. But not the dad past. It’s so alive.
“Open your eyes and take a sip.”
As the sweet, bright liquid went down my throat, something ancient and powerful enter my blood stream. This must be what vampire blood tastes like. I kept my thoughts to myself.
“Are you going to tell me what it is?” I asked around the flavors in my mouth.
“Malmsey,” he replied with a grin. “Old, old malmsey.”
“How old?” I said suspiciously. “As old as you are?”
He laughed. “No, you don’t want to drink anything as old as I am. It’s from 1795, from grapes frown on the island of Madeira. It was quite popular once, but nobody pays much attention to it now.”
“Good, “I said with greedy satisfaction. “All the more for me.” He laughed again and sat easily in one of the Morris chairs.
***
Hero’s eyes glittered. He stretched his fingers slightly but didn’t let go of my hand. Instead, he lifted it to his lips and put a slow kiss on the tender flesh in the hollow of my palm.
Off to bed, he said, releasing my fingers. His eyes left trails of ice and snow behind as they lingered not only over my face but my body, too.
Wordlessly I looked back at him, Astonished that a kiss on the palm could be so intimate.