A peak into Etiquette & Espionage and The Disappearing Spoon

I gave into temptation.  My new stack of books was looking at me, taunting me, so I started to read Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger along with continuing The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean.

So for Book Beginnings on Friday hosted by Rose City Reader here is ... okay I am totally going to cheat here, and give you a sentence from the bottom of page two because it is such a lovely sentence.

"The bowl landed, in glorious perfection, atop the head of Mrs. Barnaclegoose, who was not the kind of women to appreciate the finer points of being crowned by trifle."

Strawberry Trifle (Source with Recipe
although it really should be custard not pudding.)

And since I gave you the first sentence of chapter one from Disappearing Spoon last time, here are a few sentences from the Introduction ...


(which I just realized do not go well with the trifle, so fair warning this is not a smooth transition in topic) 

"I'm from the Great Plains and had learned in history class that Lewis and Clark had trekked through South Dakota and the rest of the Louisiana Territory with a microscope, compasses, sextants, three mercury thermometers, and other instruments. What I didn't know at first is that they also carried with them six hundred mercury laxatives, each four time the size of an aspirin.  ...  As a handy side effect, Dr. Rush's pill have enabled modern archaeologists to track down campsites used by the explorers. With the weird food and questionable water, someone in their party was always queasy"


And for The Friday 56 hosted at Freda's Voice here is something from page 56 of Etiquette & Espionage ... 

What kind of finishing school has a lady of the night on staff ? 

"Rouge – the red stuff on her cheeks."

"Oh! I though that was jam."

"Oh, really!" Dimity tittered obligingly.


And from page 256 of The Disappearing Spoon

"At the time, spiritualism, a movement imported from America, had overrun the houses of aristocrats and shopkeeps alike all over England. Even someone like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who invented the hyperrational detective Sherlock Holmes, could find room in his capacious mind to accept spiritualism as genuine."

A Spirit Photograph for which Sir Conan Doyle posed Source