#kleypas

January 3, 2021 | “unreadable as a sphinx”

I read my first Lisa Kleypas book, titled Mine Till Midnight (2007). I wasn’t that impressed with it, although the other readers on Goodreads.com rated it as, on average, 4.09 out of 5 stars. Bah. Anyways, there was one word that caught my eye in the story: sphinx, which is why I am remarking about it on this blog.

(Side comment: the book features two half-Gypsy characters, one of which is Merripen, who is mentioned in the screenshot. And in an earlier post, I found out that the etymology of the word gypsy is “earlier gipcyan, gipsen, from EGYPTIAN, from the supposed origin of gypsies when they appeared in England in the early 16th c.” But back to sphinxes ...)

According to history.com, “a sphinx (or sphynx) is a creature with the body of a lion and the head of a human, with some variations. It is a prominent mythological figure in Egyptian, Asian, and Greek mythology. ... From Egypt, the sphinx imported to both Asia and Greece around 15th to 16th century B.C.”

And according to vocabulary.com, “Most sphinxes [in Egypt] were made to represent various Egyptian pharaohs. The original Greek sphinx told riddles and ate those who couldn’t solve them, until Oedipus finally got one right and that sphinx died. In Greek, sphinx means ‘the strangler.’ If someone is like a sphinx, it just means they’re mysterious and quiet, not that they’ll strangle you.”

Apparently, in the book, the sister Win is unreadable—mysterious—like a sphinx. Perhaps the sphinx being referenced is the Greek version; however, Egyptian sphinxes, especially the Great Sphinx in Giza, have their own mysteries, too. Without speaking, the Great Sphinx makes us wonder. Where is my nose? he asks without asking.

Nose aside, I think it’s cute that it has a tail.

Best of 2016: Romance

I’m not sure if Goodreads was a good choice or a bad choice for me, though I do get a bunch of glee out of tracking all the books I read. Last year I topped 112, which I was shocked about. This year, I’ll make 150 I think. I’m already at 146, and there’s still another 3 weeks until the new year. What can I say? Romance novels are a quick but gleeful read for me, and I blame them almost entirely…