Today I read the third 'installment' of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. I'm reading it online, courtesy of dailylit.com, a website that will send readers daily 5-minute installments of thousands of novels. This was recommended to me by a former student, who has a busy school life and finds it handy to take five minutes each day to read the prepared installment. So far so good. Austen's novel has the style, grace, and wisdom that I expect from her, and I've already developed an interest in the Morland family and their daughter, Catherine. I look forward to the next installment, which will be arriving by email at 5:00 a.m. tomorrow. 

..............

I finished Joseph Conrad's novella, Youth, today and found it filled with elegant and forceful sentences, as well as countless wise reflections on the meaning of life.  It's a story of the strength, idealism, and resilience of youth, as exemplified by this quote: "Oh the glamour of youth! Oh the fire of it, more dazzling than the flames of the burning ship, throwing a magic light on the wide earth, leaping audaciously to the sky, presently to be quenched by time, more cruel, more pitiless, more bitter than the sea--and like the flames of the burning ship surrounded by an impenetrable night."