Thoughts for the day.

[cactuswatcher]

I've been enjoying some apple cider I bought recently. But I miss the extra zing of fresh unpasteurized cider we used to have. It would get powerful if you let it sit around. But it was so crisp and sweet. I suppose it would soon destroy the plastic they put cider in these days.

I was reading some perfectly good English, today, and suddenly my thoughts tripped over the phrase "she thought to herself." It never bothered me before. But to whom else is she going to think? Madame Bizarreau, the clairvoyant?

Comments

[anomster.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of an article I read years ago that ask what the "his" was for in "he shrugged his shoulders." Whose shoulders was he going to shrug other than his own? But that's how English (unlike, say, Spanish, in which the equivalent amounts to "S/He shrank him/herself of the shoulders") does it. In your example, "she thought" would be fine w/out "to herself," but it sounds to me as if it means something different in a subtle way I can't define.

BTW, I love "Madame Bizarreau"!

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

It would definitely have a place where the context was a conversation. She said... She thought to herself... etc. But the context I read it in was one where the woman was silently riding for hours with strangers in a train compartment, and it really jumped out at me as unnecessary.