A Hermit's Secrets, The Royal Gossip.

i have begun to marvel nearly every day at how very quickly the days have flown since my last musings... i feel the need to apologize most sincerely to all, for i have dreadfully neglected to write and ponder upon the vast and insurmountable snippets of tete-a-tete that have ventured through my own distracted thoughts. the days have grown weary, it seems, of my many ponderances and fleeting thoughts of philosophies and of sponge cakes and strawberries and tea. i am afraid i have indeed grown quite negligent in these couple of months, hardly able to spare the time enough for a sweet conversation and comments on all your beautiful and wonderful blogs. 

as expected, the chill and frost of winter in April has nearly all but deceased in the wake of summer's onset~in just the past three days alone, it has been almost ninety degrees, this forcing me to store up my bundles of cozy winter coats and stockings and replace them with many airy and pretty things to stay moderately cool in the present haze. i have enjoyed many many cups of favourite tea and biscuits and read captivating books and taken far too many naps and been buried in piles and piles of work work work! i have been quite the busy bee these months.

oh, this year of life seems to be slipping through my fingers... beyond words, how i wish i could wrap it all up in a large and safe bundle of brown paper, tied with a ribbon for ensured protection from the outside world. only then could i hold it in my arms so long as to gaze at it in enchantment for its fleeting moments of pleasure and unadulterated joy in its own existence. the one thing i could be as selfish with as i desired, the only thing in the world completely mine.

*Recommended Reads:*

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

The Guernsey Literary and Potatoe Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Tess of the d'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

Hotel Sarajevo by Jack Kersh

The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd

Dreams of My Russian Summers by Andreï Makine

Requiem for a Lost Empire by Andrei Makine

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

White Rose by Amy Ephron

A Cup of Tea by Amy Ephron

Atonement by Ian McEwen

A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle