2012/55: Bacchae -- Euripides

Bacchae -- Euripides

Kadmos: Is your soul still quivering?
Agave: I don't understand your words. I have become somehow
sobered, changing from my former state of mind.
Kadmos: Can you hear and respond clearly?
Agave: Yes, for I forget what we said before, father.
Kadmos: To whose house did you come in marriage?
Agave: You gave me, as they say, to Echion, the sown man.
Kadmos: What son did you bear to your husband in the house?
Agave: Pentheus, from my union with his father.
Kadmos: Whose head do you hold in your hands? [lines 1268-1275]

Read, along with several other tragedies (Oedipus Rex, Oresteia, etc), for the Coursera Greek and Roman Mythology course. I've seen a couple of productions of Bacchae, but wasn't familiar with the text.
( spoilers? really? )

2012/56: Angelmaker -- Nick Harkaway

Angelmaker -- Nick Harkaway

He is the man who arrives too late. Too late for clockwork in its prime, too late to know his grandmother. Too late to be admitted to the secret places, too late to be a gentleman crook, too late really to enjoy his mother’s affection before it slid away into a God-ridden gloom. And too late for whatever odd revelation was waiting here. He had allowed himself to believe that there might, at last, be a wonder in the world which was intended just for him. [location 1985]

( very slightly spoilery if you squint. Ninja! )

2012/57: Madensky Square -- Eva Ibbotson

Madensky Square -- Eva Ibbotson

At ten o'clock this morning, Frau Hutte-Klopstock, the wife of the City Parks Superintendent, handed me a magazine and said she wanted to look like Karsavina in The Firebird .

"Something diaphanous, I thought," she said. "Shimmering. In flame or orange."

Frau Hutte-Klopstock is healthy, she is muscular; she is sportif and athletic. A small glacier in the High Tatras has been named after her and of this one must be glad. But oh God! Karsavina!

( spoilery for incidental details )