The Saucy Wenches Book Club

“Help me out here, Mr. Fikry. Tell me you have a background in education or child development or some such.” “Um . . . I was on my way to a PhD in American literature before I quit that to open this bookstore. My specialty was Edgar Allan Poe. The Fall of the House of Usher is a decent primer on what not to do with children.” ~ Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“I want you, Elsie. All the time. I think of you. All. The. Fucking. Time. I’m distracted. I’m shit at work. And my first instinct, the very first time I saw you, was to run away. Because I knew that if we’d start doing this, we would never stop. And that’s exactly how it is. There is no universe in which I’m going to let you go. I want to be with you, on you, every second of every day. I think — I dream of crazy things.” ~ Ali Hazelwood, Love, Theoretically

“History is a merciless judge. It lays bare our tragic blunders and foolish missteps and exposes our most intimate secrets, wielding the power of hindsight like an arrogant detective who seems to know the end of the mystery from the outset.” ~ David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon: Oil, Money, Murder and the Birth of the FBI

She was a great girl-shaped forest. She was a thing on fire. Her hand was leaves and smoke and snow and flesh all at once. ~ Mona Awad, Bunny

She was always doing that, telling him stories. Prying open cracks for magic to seep in, making the world a place of possibility. ~ Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts

“Dragon relationships are absolutely incomprehensible,” I murmur. “Yeah? You should try a human one sometime. Just as vicious, but less fire.” ~ Rebecca Yarros, Fourth Wing

“That’s what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It’s geometrically progressive — all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.” ~ Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

To Lila, Kell had always been a pane of glass tilted toward her just so, so that where others saw only colors and streaks, she saw the truth of it. Of him. ~ V.E. Schwab, The Fragile Threads of Power

How profligate America was with her apples! How had I never noticed? Less than two centuries ago, not a seed had touched the soil, and now they were everywhere, dropped by bare-armed boys with juicy chins, gentry passing in their carriages, lovers who in distant fields had hurled the cores and turned to different past-times. [snip] ...it was as if one might subtract all matter but the apple tree and still see, in what remained, the contours of the world. ~ Daniel Mason, North Woods

“What do you think my chances are there?” she asked. “Maybe he has a geriatric kink,” I said, shaking out my napkin. “Dab a little Metamucil behind each ear and go get him, cougar.” “No, no,” Mary Alice corrected. “She’s too old to be a cougar. She’s a saber-tooth tiger.” ~ Deanna Raybourn, Killers of a Certain Age

“My job is about being right. Always. If I’m ever wrong, I must make use of all my means and resources to bend and align reality according to my mistake so that it ceases to be a mistake.” ~ Hernan Diaz, Trust

“You lie down with snakes, you get up with the urge to bite back. All I’m saying.” ~ Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

“You know better than this. You can’t fix him.” ~ Cassidy Hutchinson, Enough

“Did you train that cat to attack people?” Jacobs asked. “No,” I said. “She’s just a good judge of character.” ~ John Scalzi, Starter Villain

“Maybe there is another who sees life not as a flickering candle but as a torch that can illuminate an undiscovered world.” ~ Jimmy Buffett, A Salty Piece of Land

She also lent me her books, saying reading was a way of traveling the world, getting to know people you'll never meet, also traveling through time, getting to know people who lived long ago. ~ Jeannette Walls, Hang the Moon

“Sometimes, you just have to step up to the plate, even if the plate is miles outside your comfort zone. It’s like going deep inside yourself, forgetting about whatever emotions you may have and thinking: no, I’m a performer. This is what I do. Get on with it.” ~ Elton John, Me