<"Summer's End">

[fiefoe]

I so rarely re-read books that I hope I'll remember to reuse '<>' next time. It's nice to know that I still enjoy the same things about this book after almost eight years. Back then, Kathleen Giles Seidel's 'woman's fiction' slant made it a refreshing encounter amidst my steady diet of romance books.

• At fifty-eight you no longer met the midshipmen and the graduate students, you met the admirals, the professors, the men who had become the Arthurs and the Merlins and the Solomons.
• But most good skaters do have very obedient personalities. {Yep, here's my way to say goodbye to the Olympics.}
  
• Her slacks were hemmed slightly longer back than in front so that the cuffs fell gracefully along the line of her shoe.
  
• Phoebe cared about her appearance exactly the wrong amount. A person should either be like her sister-in-law and never care, or be like Amy and care all the time.
• If you could anticipate something, you could control it.
• She liked having a fair bit of mess and noise swirling around her. What was the point of being a lighthouse on a perfectly smooth, sandy shore?
• He might have his problems, but if there was one thing on earth he respected it was batteries. He didn't waste batteries.
• "We're a sentimental people," Amy said. You had to understand that all the way down to your toes if you ever wanted to be successful in American popular culture.
• They are orderly, elegant women who were accustomed to their order and elegance being essential to their husbands' careers.
• "I want that lot so badly I might even stoop to graciousness in order to get it."
• Amy's gutters would be far too delicate to be touched by anyone but Jack.
• "I would kiss you if I could," Jack said. "But if anyone saw, Giles would never get this charades game going."