Update on Persephone Readathon!

Update on Persephone Readathon! I've kept up somewhat with Jessie's Daily Challenges. I posted my photos of my Persephone books, most still having their own Persephone endpage illustration bookmark. I posted a few shoutouts--writers who Persephone readers might enjoy: Angela Thirkell, Richmal Crompton, and Margery Sharp. I wrote a six word summary of the Persephone book I am currently reading (well, I'm not since I exhausted my current stash), but I posted about The Hopkins Manuscript, which I also reviewed on this blog, "interminably bleak, not dull, cataclysm narrative." And on Jessie's blog I posted a favorite quote from a Persephone book. This one is from The Crowded Street by Winifred Holtby. I think I may need to find some more Holtby to read for A Century of Books, though she did not write very many; she died tragically young. Here is the lovely quote from The Crowded Street:

 Fiercely she fought this sense of inexorable doom for the salvation of her dreams. Surely God made the world most beautiful, and set within it to delight man’s heart music, and lingering scents, and the clear light of dawn through leafless trees. To teach man the holiness of law, He set the stars to ride their courses; for patience, He showed the slow fertility of earth; for wisdom, He granted an eternal hunger that would snatch its secret from the lightning, and their riddle from the tombs of ancient men. He gave man beauty of body, and delight in swift, free, movement. He gave him friendship, and the joy of service. And, lest these things should be too sweet, and cloy with sweetness, He gave him danger, that man might know the glory of adventure. And lest man should grow weary in his wandering, God gave the last and deepest mercy, Death.

Not quite in definite words, Muriel thought this, but somehow her heart told her that Life was this joyous, regal journey. She was grown up. The whole world lay before her. The great adventure, which just must end right, was about to begin.


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