Monday Reading Notes: Rebecca & Pirate Latitudes

Let me just say, Son13 and I are having a fun time reading Michael Crichton's Pirate Latitudes out loud to each other.

Who says you're ever too old to be read to?!

'Port Royal, in 1665, was a boomtown. In the decade since Cromwell's expedition had captured the island of Jamaica from the Spanish, Port Royal had grown from a miserable, deserted, disease ridden spit of sand into a miserable, overcrowded, cut-throat infested town of eight thousand.' pg10

'Of course, Sir James and his household attended services each Sunday, along with a few pious members of the community. But as often as not, the sermon was interrupted by the arrival of a drunken seaman, who disrupted proceedings with shouts and oaths and on one occasion with gunshots.' pg11

And for myself, I am totally engrossed in Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca. Holy cow, the woman knows how to write! The atmosphere, the characters, everything. It is impossible to put down. Never having read any of her books before, I now know why she has such a devoted following.

'I had felt better when I had taken my hat off, and my wretched little fur, and thrown them both beside my gloves and my bag on to the window seat. It was a deep, comfortable room, with books lining the wall to the ceiling, the sort of room a man would move from never, did he live alone, solid chairs beside a great open fireplace, baskets for the two dogs in which I felt they never sat, for the hollows in the chairs had tell-tale marks. The long windows looked out upon the lawns, and beyond the lawns to the distant shimmer of the sea.' pg75