spiffing-books:

1. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold - “I Knew a Woman” by Theodore Roethke

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain! 

2. A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh - The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot

…I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. 

3. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe - “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 

4. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck - “To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough” by Robert Burns

But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy! 

5. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy - “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” by Thomas Gray

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

6. Remembrance of Th

(Source: amandaonwriting)