Poirot salva o criminoso

Olá! O sol arde aqui no Rio.
Tá fogo!... Mesmo.

Estou de volta às origens, animada com os romances policiais. E isso pede: Agatha Christie! Na minha faze devoradora de ACs, eu li esse como 'Cipreste triste', nessa edição de banca de jornal mesmo. Ah... minha prá-adolescência!...

Vamos lá?

Poirot salva o criminoso

Agatha Christie

Capítulo sexto

página 40

"Carta da enfermeira O'Brien para a enfermeira Hopkins, a 14 de Julho:

Laborough Court 

Cara colega Hopkins:

- Há dias que tenciono escrever-lhe. Esta residência é encantadora e as gravuras nela bastante famosas, mas não posso dizer que seja tão confortável como Hunterbury, não sei se me entende. Como fica em pleno campo é difícil conseguir criadas e as que cá estão são raparigas inexperientes e algumas pouco prestáveis. Embora eu tenha a certeza de que não sou pessoa que dê trabalho, as refeições que trazem numa bandeja poderiam ao menos ser quentes: 'ambém não há facilidade de ferver água, e o chá nem sempre é feito com água a ferver! Mas enfim tudo isso é suportável! O doente um homem calmo e simpático - uma pneumonia dupla, mas a crise passou e o médico diz que está a melhorar.

O que tenho a dizer-lhe, que lhe interessa com certeza, é a coincidência mais fantástica que possa imaginar. Na sala cá de casa, sobre o enorme piano, há uma fotografia numa moldura grande de prata, e calcule que é a mesma fotografia de que lhe falei - aquela assinada Lewis que a Srª Welman me pediu. É claro que fiquei intrigada - quem não ficaria? Perguntei ao mordomo quem era, e ele respondeu imediatamente que era o irmão de Lady Rattery-- Sir Lewis Rycroft. Parece que vivia perto daqui - e morreu na guerra.

É triste, não acha? Perguntei casualmente se era casado e o mordomo disse que sim, mas que Lady Rycroft tinha sido internada num manicômio pouco tempo depois do casamento. Ainda é viva, segundo me disse. Não é interessante isto? Estávamos enganadas em todas as nossas hipóteses. Devem ter gostado muito um do outro, ele e a Srª Welman e não puderam casar por causa da mulher estar no manicômio.

Tal e qual como nos filmes, não acha? E ela viveu de recordações todos estes anos e contemplou a fotografia dele pouco antes de morrer.

Ele morreu em 1917 disse o mordomo. Um verdadeiro romance, acho eu.

Já viu o novo filme da Myrna Loy? Soube que corria aí em Maidensfold esta semana. Aqui não há sequer cinemas perto! É terrível estar desterrada no campo. Não admira que não arranjem criadas em termos! Bem, adeus por hoje, escreva e conte-me todas as novidades.

Sua afectuosamente Eiken O'Brien 

Carta da enfermeira Hopkins para a enfermefra O'Brien a 14 de Julho: 

Chalé Rosa 

Querida colega O'Brien:

- Por aqui vai tudo como o costume.

Hunterbuy está sem ninguém - os criados foram-se todos embora e está lá uma placa que diz: 'Vende-se'. Outro dia vi a srª Bishop que vive agora em casa de uma irmã a um quilômetro daqui. Como se pode calcular ficou muito impressionada quando soube que a propriedade ia ser vendida. Parece que para ela era coisa assente que Miss Carlisle casaria com o sr. Welman e viveriam ali. Mas diz que o noivado se desfez! Miss Carlisle partiu para Londres logo depois de você se ter ido embora. De vez em quando a atitude dela era muito estranha. Eu não sabia verdadeiramente o que havia de pensar! Mary Gerrard partiu para Londres e está a começar a praticar para massagista. Acho que fez muito bem. Miss Carlisle vai entregar-lhe duas mil libras o que acho muito simpático da parte dela e um procedimento pouco vulgar."

---

Cartas... cartas...

Desde os feriados de fim de ano, eu também tenho trabalhado em um romance baseado em cartas. Reais.

Digo, vindas da realeza.

Mmmm... estória nova na área.

Anúncio: 40 páginas 40 é meu jeitinho de engolir celebrar meu aniversário de 40 anos que está dobrando a esquina. 

Divulgando esses 40 livros bacanérrimos, de maneira nenhuma quero prejudicar os autores. 

Se você, como eu, gosta do que lê, compra o livro! 

Todos os 40 livros estão listados aqui na barra lateral. ►

Achei as imagens no Google. Créditos a quem postou primeiro.

As esganadas

olá!
Ano novo, dieta nova. Certo?
Já me acabei hoje na esteira e naquele horror de transport, e como o dia será de 45°C +, lá vem um dia de sauna.

Para manter a motivação, vamos ver como é ruim para a saúde ficar fora de forma. Lá vai!

As Esganadas

Jô Soares

Capítulo 9

página 40

"Quem é você que não sabe o que diz?
  Meu Deus do Céu, que palpite infeliz!
  Salve Estácio, Salgueiro, Mangueira,
  Oswaldo Cruz e Matriz
  Que sempre souberam muito bem
  Que a Vila...

  O sucesso de Noel, interpretado por Aracy de Almeida, é quebrado pelo inconfundível Rodolpho d’Alencastro: “Amigo rádio-ouvinte da prg-3, Tupi do Rio! Interrompemos nossa programação para uma edição extraordinária! Uma mulher ‘desolhada’ e morta foi encontrada esta manhã na plateia do elegante cinema Plaza! Todavia, se desconhece sua identidade; porém, pela ausência ocular, pela conformação volumosa da falecida e pelas bananas entaladas em sua garganta e nas partes íntimas, a polícia associa a ocorrência ao intrigante Caso das Esganadas! Foi necessário o auxílio do nosso valoroso Corpo de Bombeiros para retirá-la do local. Esta mensagem é uma cortesia do sabonete Vale Quanto Pesa. Grande, bom e barato. Nas cores branco, azul e rosa, Vale Quanto Pesa deixa a cútis limpa e cheirosa. À venda em todo o Brasil.”

  Noronha desliga o rádio Delco do seu Chevrolet e estaciona o carro ao lado do Instituto Médico-Legal na praça XV. Comenta a impropriedade do anúncio:

  — Que reclame inadequado.

  — O pior é que cortaram a Aracy no meio — muxoxa Calixto.

  — Falar em cortar ao meio às portas do necrotério também não me parece lá de muito bom gosto... — diz Tobias Esteves.

  Os três se dirigem à entrada do IML. Acima dos portões há uma inscrição em latim:

  fideliter ad lucem per ardua tamen

  — “Fidelidade à verdade custe o que custar” — traduz Tobias."

---

Ainda bem que estou de dieta... Muito perigoso ser gordinha!

E banana? 
Melhor evitar!

Anúncio: 40 páginas 40 é meu jeitinho de engolir celebrar meu aniversário de 40 anos que está dobrando a esquina. 

Divulgando esses 40 livros bacanérrimos, de maneira nenhuma quero prejudicar os autores. 

Se você, como eu, gosta do que lê, compra o livro! 

Todos os 40 livros estão listados aqui na barra lateral. ►

Achei as imagens no Google. Créditos a quem postou primeiro.

A clash of Kings

hello,

Tomorrow the year starts for good. First Monday is the international day to start a new diet, search for a new job, put an end to all procrastination. Let's go!

Let's roar! Grrrr!

Nothing more resolute than the battle to keep one's neck intact.
Therefore, today's 40th page belongs to the most liked underdog character of all times.

A Clash of Kings

A song of Ice and Fire, book 2

George RR Martin

page 40

Tyrion

"Damn you, eunuch. “I fear I’m the intruder, Lord Varys,” he said with forced courtesy. “When I came in, you were in the midst of some merriment.”

“M’lord Varys complimented Chella on her ears and said she must have killed many men to have such a fine necklace,” Shae explained. It grated on him to hear her call Varys m’lord in that tone; that was what she called him in their pillow play. “And Chella told him only cowards kill the vanquished.”

“Braver to leave the man alive, with a chance to cleanse his shame by winning back his ear,” explained Chella, a small dark woman whose grisly neckware was hung with no less than forty-six dried, wrinkled ears. Tyrion had counted them once. “Only so can you prove you do not fear your enemies.”

Shae hooted. “And then m’lord says if he was a Black Ear he’d never sleep, for dreams of one-eared men.”

“A problem I will never need face,” Tyrion said. “I’m terrified of my enemies, so I kill them all.”

Varys giggled. “Will you take some wine with us, my lord?”
“I’ll take some wine.” Tyrion seated himself beside Shae. He understood what was happening here, if Chella and the girl did not. Varys was delivering a message. When he said, I was taken by a sudden urge to meet your young lady, what he meant was, You tried to hide her, but I knew where she was, and who she was, and here I am. He wondered who had betrayed him. The innkeeper, that boy in the stable, a guard on the gate... or one of his own?

“I always like to return to the city through the Gate of the Gods,” Varys told Shae as he filled the wine cups. “The carvings on the gatehouse are exquisite, they make me weep each time I see them. The eyes... so expressive, don’t you think? They almost seem to follow you as you ride beneath the portcullis.”

“I never noticed, m’lord,” Shae replied. “I’ll look again on the morrow, if it please you.”

Don’t bother, sweetling, Tyrion thought, swirling the wine in the cup. He cares not a whit about carvings. The eyes he boasts of are his own. What he means is that he was watching, that he knew we were here the moment we passed through the gates.

“Do be careful, child,” Varys urged. “King’s Landing is not wholly safe these days. I know these streets well, and yet I almost feared to come today, alone and unarmed as I was. Lawless men are everywhere in this dark time, oh, yes. Men with cold steel and colder hearts.” Where I can come alone and unarmed, others can come with swords in their fists, he was saying.

Shae only laughed. “If they try and bother me, they’ll be one ear short when Chella runs them off.”

Varys hooted as if that was the funniest thing he had ever heard, but there was no laughter in his eyes when he turned them on Tyrion. “Your young lady has an amiable way to her. I should take very good care of her if I were you.”

“I intend to. Any man who tries to harm her- well, I’m too small to be a Black Ear, and I make no claims to courage.” See? I speak the same tongue you do, eunuch. Hurt her, and I’ll have your head."

---

Men and their thoughtless southern... ends.

I see a New year's resolutiion here: Think straighter!

Disclaimer: 40 pages 40 is my way to come to terms with celebrate my upcoming 40th birthday. By promoting 40 awesome books I like in no way I intend to dupe the original authors. If you, as me, like what you read, buy them!

All 40 books can be found on the right side bar. ►

All images found on Google. Kudos to the original poster.

One day

Happy New Year! 

2014 started scorchingly hot here in Rio. 35ºC officially, but it must be more than 40!

Spend time at the beach is theonly way to live!... it's so hot we sweat under the sunglasses. Either pool or beach, but water anyway

To start this new year, after watching BBC's Death comes to Pemberley and spending the week away at my parents concoting another Pride and Prejudice fanfic (ha!), I chose one of my favorite books, and... surprise, surprise! It's their vacation at the beach!

Here you go...

One Day

CHAPTER FIVE

The Rules of Engagement

page 40

"WEDNESDAY, 15 JULY 1992

The Dodecanese Islands, Greece

And then some days you wake up and everything is perfect.

This fine bright St Swithin‘s Day found them under an immense blue sky with not the smallest chance of rain, on the sun deck of the ferry that steamed slowly across the Aegean. In new sunglasses and holiday clothes they lay side by side in the morning sun, sleeping off last night‘s taverna hangover. Day two of a ten-day island-hopping holiday, and The Rules of Engagement were still holding firm.

A sort of platonic Geneva Convention, The Rules were a set of basic prohibitions compiled before departure to ensure that the holiday didn‘t get ‗complicated‘. Emma was single again; a brief, undistinguished relationship with Spike, a bicycle repairman whose fingers smelt perpetually of WD40, had ended with barely a shrug on either side, but had at least served to give her confidence a boost. And her bicycle had never been in better shape.

For his part Dexter had stopped seeing Naomi because, he said, it was 'getting too intense‘, whatever the hell that meant. Since then he had passed through Avril, Mary, a Sara, a Sarah, a Sandra and a Yolande before alighting on Ingrid, a ferocious model turned fashion-stylist who had been forced to give up modelling – she had told Emma this with a straight face – because 'her breasts were too large for the catwalk‘, and as she said this it seemed as if Dexter might explode with pride.

Ingrid was the kind of sexually confident girl who wore her bra on top of her shirt, and although she was by no means threatened by Emma or indeed by anyone on this earth, it had been decided by all parties that it might be better to get a few things straight before the swimwear was unveiled, the cocktails were drunk. Not that anything was likely to happen; that brief window had closed some years ago and they were immune to each other now, secure in the confines of firm friendship. Nevertheless, on a Friday night in June, Dexter and Emma had sat outside the pub on Hampstead Heath and compiled The Rules.

Number One: separate bedrooms. Whatever happened, there were to be no shared beds, neither double nor single, no drunken cuddles or hugs; they were not students anymore. 'And I don‘t see the point of cuddling anyway,‘ Dexter had said. 'Cuddling just gives you cramp,‘ and Emma had agreed and added:

'No flirting either. Rule Two.‘


'Well I don‘t flirt, so . . .‘ said Dexter, rubbing his foot against the inside of her shin."

---

Ah, Dex... Dex, Dex, Dex... a guy I love to hate.

If only he were more like Darcy...

Meu Cantinho Literário: Promoção de Natal - RESULTADO

Hello, hello!
congrats to the winner!
Parabéns à vendedora!

Mayane B., cadê você?

Meu Cantinho Literário: Promoção de Natal - RESULTADO:   Olá, pessoas. Obrigada por participarem de mais um sorteio do blog. E desculpem o atraso para divulgar o resultado. Sabem como é, fest...

The Ocean at the end of the lane

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I'm a bit late for the first and a bit early for the latter but I mean well. As of every year we leave the city to spend the holidays with family and life outside my little coccoon in Rio is very difficult.

No high speed internet connection, no AC in every room, sharing a garden table with my 4-year-old and his batman gear... that's no easy feat.

I've been reading 'The Jane Austen Book Club ' and somehow it made me think of the boy from the Ocean and his father. It was Grigg and his father on their road trip, the pool and the messiah that got me thinking about ties, bathtubs and nannies... 

Anyway, my synapsys are fine but my internet connection is shitty here and I can't babble and find nice pics because my mobile wifi is fifty shades of lame.

Here you have it:

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Neil Gaiman

chapter VI

page 40

"My mother sighed. ‘It is not going to be Gertruda all over again, dear. Ursula’s a very nice girl, from a very good family. And she positively adores the two of you.’

My father came home, and dinner was served. A thick vegetable soup, then roast chicken and new potatoes with frozen peas. I loved all of the things on the table. I did not eat any of it.

‘I’m not hungry,’ I explained.

‘I’m not one for telling tales out of school,’ said Ursula Monkton, ‘but someone had chocolate on his hands and face when he came down from his bedroom.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t eat that rubbish,’ grumbled my father.
‘It’s just processed sugar. And it ruins your appetite and your teeth,’ said my mother.

I was scared they would force me to eat, but they didn’t. I sat there hungrily, while Ursula Monkton laughed at all my father’s jokes. It seemed to me that he was making special jokes, just for her.

After dinner we all watched Mission: Impossible. I usually liked Mission: Impossible, but this time it made me feel uneasy, as people kept pulling their faces off to reveal new faces beneath. They were wearing rubber masks, and it was always our heroes underneath, but I wondered what would happen if Ursula Monkton pulled off her face, what would be underneath that?

We went to bed. It was my sister’s night, and the bedroom door was closed. I missed the light in the hall. I lay in bed with the window open, wide awake, listening to the noises an old house makes at the end of a long day, and I wished as hard as I could, hoping my wishes could become real. I wished that my parents would send Ursula Monkton away, and then I would go down to the Hempstocks’ farm, and tell Lettie what I had done, and she would forgive me, and make everything all right.

I could not sleep. My sister was already asleep. She seemed able to go to sleep whenever she wanted to, a skill I envied and did not have.

I left my bedroom.

I loitered at the top of the stairs, listening to the noise of the television coming from downstairs. Then I crept barefoot-silent down the stairs and sat on the third step from the bottom. The door to the television room was half open, and if I went down another step, whoever was watching the television would be able to see me. So I waited there.

I could hear the television voices punctuated by staccato bursts of TV laughter.

And then, over the television voices, adults talking.

Ursula Monkton said, ‘So, is your wife away every evening?’"

---

THE bucket... ah... the bucket!

I really liked this book...

It was named 2013 Book of the year. Wow!

Congrats to the winner of the Christmas giveaway.

Happy warm tea, the mug warmer is yours!

Colours and Years

hello, Summer is here!
Exactly now, the smouldering hot season starts in Rio de Janeiro.
As if on cue, weather started to get warmer...

Sumer Google doodle... cute! But we won't feel lucky, we'll feel HOT here in Rio.

Oh well, at least we'll have beach, coconut water and cold beer...

For my birthday, a friend sent me a lovely book about life and memories, a nice reflection on choices made. So well written, so pleasant to read... And since it's mere 72 hours since my apocalipse, my gift will be today's 40th page.

Colours and Years

Margit Kaffka

Chapter V.

page 40

"For this very reason it was a refined and noble art to deal daintily with it, in the feverish turns of the dance, floating, twirling or tiptoeing on the spot, never forgetting ourselves totally, or what we owned to external appearances and to our superior status.

We joined hands and floated in a waltz around the big dining-room, swaying gently and smoothly with our supple waists. Hanika hummed a tune for us in her stifled, colorless little wisp of a voice and hurried to push the chairs out of our way. ‘They’re the most beautiful of all! There’s none like them in the world!’ she sighed feverishly and exultantly. Grandma opened the door on us; she stood there nodding and observant.

‘Five hundred forints for he two of them… for that they should be pretty, too!’ she said to herself. ‘But they really are magnificent, so they are’, she added more enthusiastically. ‘They fit both of you like a glove!’

She swiftly turned around and went back into her big room overlooking the courtyard. In recent days, she had not had much time for us. She sat in the alcove of the window where the floor was raised, as if on a throne, and held audience for her own clients – those who obtained small sums of money from her at a good rate interest, applicants for leases or agents for cheap plots of land, solicitors, tradesmen and merchants. The most frequent caller was Lipi, our nimble and clever Jew who was good for anything; he was her client and her business confidant. Now all her energy was devoted to her life’s great desire: the elevation of the family through the one and only male heir.

István, indeed, was thirty years old and deputy public notary; next door Ágnes, grandma’s favorite, smoothly groomed and in white muslin dress, grew imperceptibly into a gentle church-mouse of a girl; she was two years older than I was and so very different. ‘As for this lot here, just let them get on with things quickly and as best they can!’ – this thought was obvious in the whole way grandma treated us. She felt that our style and everything employed to achieve it were quite different, and she did not pester my mother over the espense of the dresses. She knew they were our armour, with which we had to be victorious and conquer an all-important battle of life.

When Lipi left grandmother, he would look in on me cheerfully as I sat in the covered terrace. ‘How grown-up you are, Miss Magda! You’ve grown beautiful too! There’s a new factory in Kolozsvár that makes the most splendid walnut furniture. I’ll get hold of some for the price they sell it to me!’"

---

See you soon...

partiu praia!

Disclaimer: 40 pages 40 is my way to come to terms with celebrate my upcoming 40th birthday. By promoting 40 awesome books I like in no way I intend to dupe the original authors. If you, as me, like what you read, buy them!

All 40 books can be found on the right side bar. ►

All images found on Google. Kudos to the original poster.