86. NARRATIVE of the LIFE of FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Frederick Douglass 1845

A short autobiography was originally written to chronicle the author's life as a slave in rural Baltimore in the 1800s. This book gives an intense and troubling depiction of slavery and racism at that time, and provides an intimate and moving glimpse of his heart, mind and soul as a slave: a person owned, handled, disposed of and sold like property. He discovers reading and learning as the first tool for his freedom. This literary work was instrumental in helping the earliest anti-slavery movements and should be a must-read for everyone.

'I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot county, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the largest part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant.'(opening lines)

'If the lineal descendants of Ham are alone to be scripturally enslaved, it is certain that slavery at the south must soon become unscriptural; for thousands are ushered into the world, annually, who, like myself, owe their existence to white fathers, and those fathers most frequently their own masters.'(4)

'Slaves sing most when they are unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears... The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.'(15)

'To all these complaints, no matter how unjust, the slave must answer never a word. Colonel Lloyd could not brook any contradiction from a slave. When he spoke, a slave must stand, listen and tremble; and such was literally the case.'(19)

'Though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read... and the argument which he so warmly urged, against my learning to read, only served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn.'(37)

'In moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me... The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.'(43)

'I would pour out my soul's complaint, in my rude way, with an apostrophe to the moving multitude of ships:--
"You are loosed from the moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip! You are freedom's swift-winged angels, that fly around the world; I am confined in bands of iron!O that I were free! O, that I were on one of your gallant decks, and under your protecting wing! Alas! betwixt me and you, the turbid waters roll."'(67)

'For my part, I should prefer death to hopeless bondage.'(86)

'I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.'(98)

a Dolphin Book edition
124 pages
Book owned

Personal note: Book idea recommendation from Bibliophiliac.

85. LOOKING for ALASKA

John Green 2005

A young adult book that old adults should also read, if only to remind ourselves of all the challenges we faced as teenagers, or if so lucky, to open our minds that these challenges do exist for a lot of teenagers. Sixteen year old Miles "Pudge" Halter, a collector of famous people's last words, with no friends and 'no life' while living in Florida, is in search of the "great Perhaps" so he decides to attend Culver Creek Boarding School in Alabama. He discovers the teenage life away from home, experiences a lot of firsts (some good, some bad, some you know what) with classmates and new friends Chip "Colonel" Martin, Takumi Hikohito, his first girlfriend, Lara Buterskaya and enthralling and beguiling Alaska Young. The book is smartly divided into two parts: Before and After. The 'what' is the lesson.

'The week before I left my family and Florida and the rest of my minor life to go to boarding school in Alabama, my mother insisted on throwing me a going-away party. To say that I had low expectations would be to underestimate the matter dramatically.'(opening lines)

'"So this guy," I said, standing in the doorway of the living room. "Francois Rabelais. He was this poet. And his last words were 'I go to seek a Great Perhaps.' That's why I'm going. So I don't have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps."(5)

'The Colonel explained to me that 1. this was Alaska's room, and that 2. she had a single room because the girl who was supposed to be her roommate got kicked out at the end of last year, and that 3. Alaska had cigarettes, although the Colonel neglected to ask whether 4. I smoked, which 5. I didn't.(14)

"He'-- that's Simon Bolivar--'was shaken by the overwhelming revelation that the headlong race between his misfortunes and his dreams was at that moment reaching the finish line. The rest was darkness. "Damn it," he sighed. "How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!"'(18)

"I've maybe read a third of 'em. But I'm going to read them all. I call it my Life's Library. Every summer since I was little, I've gone to garage sales and bought all the books that looked interesting. So I always have something to read. But there is so much to do: cigarettes to smoke, sex to have, swings to swing on. I'll have more time for reading when I'm old and boring."(20)

'You can say a lot of bad things about Alabama, but you can't say that Alabamans as a people are unduly afraid of deep fryers. In that first week at the Creek, the cafeteria served fried chicken, chicken-fried steak, and fried okra, which marked my first foray into the delicacy that is the fried vegetable. I half expected them to fry the iceberg lettuce. But nothing matched the bufriedo,... deep-fried bean burrito, the bufriedo proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that frying always improves a food.(22)

"You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining the future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present."(54)

'Sometimes you lose a battle. But mischief always wins the war.'(56)

'Alaska is famous for pranking. I mean, last year, we put a Volkswagen Beetle in the library. So if they have a reason to try and one-up her, they'll try. And that's pretty ingenious, to divert water from the gutter to her room. I mean, I don't want to admire it...'(72)

'But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.'(88)

'A pre-prank?... "A prank designed to lull the administration into a false sense of security," the Colonel answered, annoyed by the distraction. " After the pre-prank, the Eagle will think the junior class has done its prank and won't be waiting for it when it actually comes."(98)

'"How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!" to a margin note written in her loop-heavy cursive: Straight & Fast.'(155)

"Because everybody who has ever lost their way in life has felt the nagging insistence of that question. At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze, and I don't want us to forget...'(158)

'... and I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.'(218)

'When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and falling. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.'(220)

Speak, Penguin group edition
221 pages
Book borrowed from the library

84. The Chronicles of Narnia Series - Book 3: the HORSE and HIS BOY

C.S. Lewis 1954

This is the third book of seven of the chronologically renumbered Narnian series and is set during the time of King Peter's reign in Narnia. While Queen Susan was trying to escape an arranged marriage to Tisroc's son Rashmedah, an orphan boy named Shasta flees his callous adoptive father with the help of a great war Narnian horse named Bree. They meet Aravis, a brave young girl with her Narnian horse Hwin. She is also trying to escape marriage to Tisroc's vizier so they decide to go back to Narnia together. During the journey, Shasta gets mistaken for Corin, a prince from Archenland and they accidentally discover a plot to invade Archenland and Narnia. The book ends well, of course with the help of Aslan, and the happy discovery of Shasta's real identity.

'This is the story of an adventure that happened in Narnia and Calormen and the lands between, in the Golden Age when Peter was High King in Narnia and his brother and his two sisters were Kings and Queens under him.'(opening line)

'For one of the poets has said, 'Application to business is the root of prosperity, but those who ask questions that do not concern them are steering the ship of folly toward the rock of indigence.'(3)

"You yourself have wisely said," answered Arsheesh, "that the boy's labor has been to me of inestimable value. This must be taken into account in fixing his price. For if I sell the boy I must undoubtedly either buy or hire another to do his work."(7)

"Narnia," answered the Horse. "The happy land of Narnia-- Narnia of the heathery mountains and the thymy downs, Narnia of the many rivers, the plashing glens, the mossy caverns and the deep forests ringing with the hammers of the Dwarfs. Oh the sweet air of Narnia! An hour's life there is better that a thousand years in Calormen,"(10)

'But in spite of his rude words Bree was a patient teacher. No one can teach riding as well as a horse. Shasta learned to trot, to canter, to jump, and to keep his seat even when Bree pulled up suddenly or swung unexpectedly to the left or the right-- which, as Bree told him, was a thing you might have to do at any moment in a battle.'(24)

'Apparently," thought Shasta to himself, "I'm being mistaken for a prince of Archenland, wherever that is. And these must be Narnians. I wonder where the real Corin is?"(64)

'Shasta lay down beside it with his back against the cat and his face towards the Tombs, because if one is nervous there's nothing like having your face toward the danger and having something warm and solid at your back.'(92)

"My son, by all means desist from kicking the venerable and enlightened Vizier: for as a costly jewel retains its value even if hidden in a dung-hill, so old age and discretion are to be respected even in the vile persons of our subjects."(119)

'One of the drawbacks about adventures is that when you come to the most beautiful places you are often too anxious and hurried to appreciate them; so that Aravis (though she remembered them years later) had only a vague impression of gray lawns, quietly bubbling fountains, and the long black shadows of cypress trees.'(132)

"Now,' said Bree. "All that about galloping for a day and a night, like in stories, can't really be done. it must be walk and trot: but brisk trots and short walks. And whenever we walk you two humans can slip off and walk too. Now. Are you ready, Hwin? Off we go. Narnia and the North!"(136)

'But one of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no one to force you any more you find you have almost lost the power of forcing yourself.'(146)

'He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.'(155)

"But that's just the point," groaned Bree. "Do Talking Horses roll? Supposing they don't? I can't bear to give it up. What do you think, Hwin?"(225)

HarperCollins first renumbered Edition
241 pages
Book borrowed from JRMD

83. the PAINTED VEIL

W. Somerset Maugham 1925

A quiet, uncluttered, straightforward book in its rendition of the pitfalls of adultery. When Walter Fane discovers his wife Kitty's involvement with another man Charles, he takes her to Mei-tan-fu, a far off place in China during a cholera epidemic. Kitty, brought up never wanting, raised to marry well, shallow and ignorant of sacrifice and devotion discovers what and how it is to be compassionate as she faces unimaginable poverty, hardship and death in this 'painted veil called life'.

'Kitty, coming to Hong Kong on her marriage, had found it hard to reconcile herself to the fact that her social position was determined by her husband's occupation... she has understood quickly that as the wife of the Government bacteriologist she was of no particular consequence. It made her angry.'(15)

'A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, he told her, to which she retorted that a proverb was the last refuge of the mentally destitute.'(21)

'Her beauty depended a good deal on her youth, and Mrs. Garstin realized that she must marry in the first flush of her maidenhood. When she came out she was dazzling: her skin was still her greatest beauty, but her eyes with their long lashes were so starry and yet so melting that it gave you a catch at the heart to look into them.'(23)

'Kitty in a panic married Walter Fane.'(25)

'But through all these day-dreams ran a current of apprehension. It was funny; it was as though the wood and the strings of the orchestra played Arcadian melodies and in the bass the drums, softly but with foreboding, beat a grim tattoo.'(47)

'Well, you know, women are often under the impression that men are much more madly in love with them than they really are.'(55)

'His tone was so contemptuous that she flushed with anger. And perhaps her anger was greater because she had never before heard him say to her any but sweet, flattering, and delightful things. She had been accustomed to find him subservient to all her whims.'(65)

'He loves me with all his heart and soul. He loves me passionately as I love him. You've found out. I'm not going to deny anything. Why should I? We've been lovers for a year and I'm proud of it. He means everything in the world to me and I'm glad that you know at last. We're sick to death of secrecy and compromise and all the rest of it. It was a mistake that I ever married you, I never should have done it, I was a fool. I never cared for you. We never had anything in common. I don't like the people you like and I'm bored by the thing that interests you. I'm thankful it's finished.'(65)

'I had no illusions about you,' he said. 'I knew you were silly and frivolous and empty-headed. But I loved you. I knew that your aims and ideals were vulgar and commonplace. But I loved you. I knew that you were second-rate. But I loved you... I knew that you'd only married me for convenience. I loved you so much, I didn't care.'(66)

'What most husbands expect as a right I was prepared to receive as a favor.'(66)

'Wounded vanity can make a woman more vindictive that a lioness robbed of her cubs.(67)

'One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her.'(77)

'She was silent. Vaguely, as when you are studying a foreign language and read a page which at first you can make nothing of, till a word or a sentence gives you a clue; and on a sudden a suspicion, as it were, of the sense flashes across your troubled wits, vaguely she gained an inkling into the workings of Walter's mind. It was like a dark and ominous landscape seen by a flash of lightning and in a moment hidden again by the night. She shuddered at what she saw.'(82)

'But the magician who built worked swiftly and now a fragment of colored wall crowned the bastion; in a moment, out of the mist, looming vastly and touched here and there but a yellow ray of sun, there was seen a cluster of green and yellow roofs. Huge they seemed and you could make out no pattern; the order, if order there was, escaped you; wayward and extravagant, but of an unimaginable richness. This was no fortress, nor a temple, but the magic place of some emperor of the gods where no man might enter. It was too airy, fantastic, and unsubstantial to be the work of human hands; it was the fabric of a dream.'(97)

'You know, my dear child, that one cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one's soul.'(138)

'Beauty is also a gift of God, one of the most rare and precious, and we should be thankful if we are happy enough to possess it and thankful if we are not, that others possess it for our pleasure.'(148)

'The dog it was that died.'(191)

'I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.'(196)

'Each member of the orchestra plays his own little instrument, and what do you think he knows of the complicated harmonies which unroll themselves on the indifferent air? He is concerned only with his small share. But he knows that the symphony is lovely, and though there's none to hear it, it is lovely still, and he is content to play his part.'(197)
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First Vintage International Edition, February 2004
246 pages
Book owned
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Personal note: This is a souvenir book bought from the Strand, New York City, February, 2010. For a great review check out Patricia's Particularity.

82. DR. JEKYLL and MR. HYDE

Robert Louis Stevenson 1886

Who has not heard of this novella? A classic mystery science fiction, it is a very intriguing and candid rendition of the battle between one's own good and evil side, said to have been written by the author while sick in bed in 1885. There are three main narratives from three close friends (Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Utterson and Dr. Lanyon) that essentially comprise this short book. It starts with Lawyer Mr Utterson wondering about the mysterious relationship between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as he witnesses the horrid Mr. Hyde and later receives Dr. Jekyll's last will wherein he leaves all his property to Mr. Hyde. He gets more confused after a close friend Dr. Lanyon abruptly dissociates and detests Dr. Jekyll. The last narrative is in the form of a letter of explanation from Dr. Jekyll of the disastrous events after his discovery of the transforming potion.

'Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable.'(opening line)

'But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove."I incline to Cain's heresy," he used to say quaintly: "I let my brother go to the devil in his own way."(37)

'It is the mark of a modest man to accept his friendly circle ready-made from the hands of opportunity; and that was the lawyer's way. His friends were those of his own blood or those of whom he had known the longest; his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied no aptness in the object.'(38)

'He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something down-right detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn't specify the point. He's an extraordinary looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way. No, sir, I can make no hand of it; I can't describe him. And it's not want of memory; for I declare I can see him this moment.'(43)

'The will was holograph... it provided not only that, in case of the decease of Henry Jekyll, M.D... all his possessions were to pass into the hands of his "friend and benefactor Edward Hyde," but that in case of Dr. Jekyll's "disappearance or unexplained absence for any period exceeding three calendar months," the said Edward Hyde should step into the said Henry Jekyll's shoes without further delay and free from any burthen or obligation, beyond the payment of a few small sums to the members of the doctor's household.' (45)

'The death of Sir Danvers was, to his way of thinking, more than paid for by the disappearance of Mr. Hyde. Now that the evil influence had been withdrawn, a new life began for Dr. Jekyll. He came out of his seclusion, renewed relations with his friends, became once more their familiar guest and entertainer; and whilst he had always been known for charities, he was no less distinguished for religion. He was busy, he was much in the open air, he did good; his face seemed to open and brighten, as if with an inward consciousness of service; and for more than two months, the doctor was at peace.'(71)

'On the 8th of January Utterson had dined at the doctor's with a small party; Lanyon had been there; and the face of the host had looked from one to other as in the old days when the trio were inseparable friends. On the 12th, and again on the 14th, the door was shut against the lawyer. "The doctor was confined to the house," Poole said, "and saw no one." On the 15th, he tried again, and was again refused; and having now been used for the last two months to see his friend almost daily, he found this return of solitude to weigh upon his spirits. The fifth night he had in Guest to dine with him, and the sixth he betook himself to Dr. Lanyon's.'(72)

'It was sometimes his way-- the master's, that is -- to write his orders on a sheet of paper and throw it on the stair. We've had nothing else this week back; nothing but papers, and a closed door, and the very meals left there to be smuggled in when nobody was looking. Well, sir, everyday, ay, and twice and thrice in the same day, there had been orders and complaints, and I have been sent flying to all the wholesale chemists in town. Every time I brought the stuff back, there would be another paper telling me to return it, because it was not pure, and another order to a different firm. This drug is wanted bitter bad, sir, whatever for.'(83)

'What he told me in the next hour, I cannot bring my mind to set on paper. I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard, and my soul sickened at it; and yet now when that sight has faded from my eyes, I ask myself if I believe it, and I cannot answer.'(102)

'It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in my fault, that made me what I was, and with even a deeper trench than in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man's dual nature.'(103)

'It was on the moral side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both; and from an early date, even before the course of my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest most naked possibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell with pleasure, as a beloved daydream, on the thought of the separation of these daydreams, on the thought of the separation of these elements.'(104)
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First Signet Classic Printing, December 1978
124 pages
Book borrowed from the library
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Personal note: This edition has an awesome introduction by Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita). For a great review, check this one from The Books of My Life.

81. the LOON FEATHER

Iona Fuller 1940

Set in the 1800s at Mackinac Island, my most cherished place in Michigan, this historical fiction is extraordinary, written in unpretentious lyrical prose. It is a heart-warming portrayal of Native American Oneta born to Shawnee hero Tecumseh who dies soon after her birth. Her mother remarries Pierre Debans, a French fur trader and later dies. She is then sent to a convent school in Quebec for twelve years. She returns and finds the Island and herself at a crossroads between the old of her Indian heritage and the threat of the new 'White' ways. A possible Indian revolt against Pierre and meeting Martin, a doctor from Boston made her finally see her chosen path. I savored this book and did not want it to end.

'It was fur that made our lives what they were. Fur, and the people who lived by it. The earliest memories of my life are of soft deerskin clothing and warm fur robes that kept me as comfortable in winter as the bear in his cave.' (opening lines)

'Furs were the means of getting whatever the Indian and the white trapper wanted, for in those days they were the legal tender and there was little that prime beaver would not buy.'(4)

'And there was always the water, for Mackinac is where the lakes meet, in the straits flowing between Lakes Michigan, Huron and Superior. Pierre read from a book once about "seas of sweet water," and that was what we had on every side and in every direction, pure, beautifully colored, yet transparent almost as the air itself.(5)

'I wish I could remember my father from the first time he came back from the border war after I was born. I wish I could remember more clearly those heavily arched brows above black, penetrating eyes that no one failed to notice, the face grave and noble, and full of courage, almost sad in wisdom.'(24)

'I am afraid I remember little about the school except the daily ride behind the dog team, scooting over the ground behind furry leaping creatures, up and down hill between snow-laden trees. The most important thing the school did for me was not intended for me at all, and often I think that may be true of teaching. For who knows what the mind of a child may take up?(34)

'It is well to die as one has lived, not in strange things put upon you by other men...'(55)

'Sometimes on the straits, when the sun warms the air, and the water is clear and blue as the sky, a strange thing happens. There is no change of wind, nor any more wind. But suddenly a high wave forms in the center, and moves rapidly across to the island. It breaks there, high on the beach, almost putting out the first row of fires. Then it is gone. No cause is visible, yet it has formed and disappeared, leaving the water as smooth as before. Thus, among his people, was the life on my father.'(56)

'When the robin's song is a laughing one, there will be peace and enough to eat. When it is harsh, there will be war and trouble. The robin is a young girl of our tribe who died from too long fasting. She asked that her spirit might go into a bird, and that she might come back to her people every spring and tell them what the year would hold. She painted her breast red as a promise that she would always come, and that we may know her.'(96)

'But about the loon-- you know, but he's a funny bird. He's a lonesome, a melancholy bird, but he's got a lot of sense. We can learn something from him. The way he's made, he can't walk much, so he don't get out on land-- you never seen one on land, did you?-- He don't get out of the water unless he has to. A lesson to some of us to stay where we're meant to be.'(98)

"That is our custom," I said. "If Mother hadn't had a husband before, if she was living with her father, you would bring him presents. But my mother has had one husband. So you should bring some meat to her door. If she takes it in, you can come in to stay."(120)

'It was the only way to decide a thing rightly. Mother had told me of other times she had fasted and waited for a dream, beginning with the first one when she was just entering womanhood. That was the most important dream.'(124)

"Remember, Oneta, that your father was the greatest of his race since Pontiac, and many say even greater than he. Remember in your trouble now that he was always alone, even as you feel alone now. Honored as he was by so many, your father was even more alone than you. And yet-- he was not alone."(185)

"Once," Martha began at last, "I sat on the edge of a council with the general they called Harrison, and heard Tecumseh say these words,
It is true that I am a Shawnee. My forefathers were warriors. Their son is a warrior. From them I take only my existence; from my tribe I take nothing. I am the maker of my own fortune. I have a voice within me, communing with past ages... The sun is my father, the earth is my mother."(186)

'For the first time, I saw how easy-going the cabin life had been. I felt like a keg that had drifted down a peaceful river, at once caught in a whirlpool and sent around in a basin for weeks, sometimes descending to rise again and make the same dizzy circuit. Madame had scolded when I made mistakes, but when I got used to her ways, her chiding hurt no more than the nibble of little fishes when one stands with bare legs in the water.'(210)

'Saints were ever less to me than the many spirits of trees and rocks and streams. When the priest spoke of eternity as going on forever, the picture of the endlessly rolling, tumbling waters of the straits went through my mind. The music of the choirs, the chanting of the mass, only made more vivid the sound of the waters in the straits, the quietly dripping springs, the wind and rain of autumn storms... Among the organ notes deep and high came disturbing notes of other music-- thin notes of a wooden flute, the beating of hands on a skin drawn tight over a piece of hollow log set in earth, boat songs, and even the endless scraping of fiddle strings. It was as if I were using these things as a barrier to something trying to crush me, as though if I ceased to be myself I should not live.'(229)

'Sharp edges of stones gnashed under Pierre's shoes as he turned and went up the slope of the beach. Unlike moccasins that would have let him feel the little ridges and hollows, his stout leather shoes leveled the path and kept him knowing it was rough. As I watched him go, the same thought came that I had the first time I ever saw him-- what was he doing here? He looked more than ever like one just alighted from a boat for a brief look at the island.(367)

'I walked slowly westward down the beach, marveling, for directly came upon me the thought that while I had tried to help Jacques endure what must be, Martin had helped him get what he wanted. I wondered if I had not stumbled on a wider thought, that behind it was one difference between my race and his. Indians were ever better at renunciation than the white man. I wondered too, as I walked, how he had come to know the heart of Rosanne better than Jacques and I, who had see n her grow up.'(382)

'To the careless eyes of a new voyageur, I was only an Indian girl. Lying there, I realized how far I had gone in building on the knowledge I had gained from books, on the fine clothing I had, on the feeling that I was as good as anyone on the island. Abjectly I faced for the first time the meaning of this truth. I was of my tribe. All the years at the convent and in Grand'mere's home were as nothing.(404)

'I felt a new stir of life along my veins, as words of Marthe's, said in my childhood, sounded clear in my thoughts. "You are all there is of Tecumseh remaining on this earth." I sat up, a new excitement running through me, a quiver of pride such as I had not felt for many years. I was Tecumseh's daughter! All things that had troubled me had come because I had forgotten who I was,'(409)

'I looked away across the island, over the tops of the little trees. The wind was murmuring in the balsams, and like a voice down the long waves of time I seemed to hear the words, said long ago over a new baby girl, "You will bring to your people a man who is greater than a warrior."(454)

'I look back at that day through the happiness of years, so I may be remembering it in greater beauty than was there, just as it is in the air between and not the far-off ridge that has the delicate blue. Out of the happiness of those years has come a rich deepening of the truth I felt that day, that when there is likeness of spirit, two people are of one kind. And if there is not likeness, the two are divided by something even greater that the accident of race.'(456)
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a Harvest book Harcourt edition
456 pages
Book owned
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Personal note: Bought this as souvenir book from the Island Book store Under the Lilac Tree Hotel, Mackinac Island, July 15,2010.

80. The Chronicles of Narnia Series-Book 2: the LION, the WITCH and the WARDROBE

C.S. Lewis 1950

My favorite book in this fantasy series, Book 2 opens with the discovery of the Wardrobe built from the magical apple tree planted by Digory Kirke in Book 1. Professor Digory hosts siblings Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy Pevensies in his house and they magically disappear to Narnia via the Wardrobe. Fanciful adventures once again ensue when they find that the Witch Jadis has transformed Narnia into an ever white wintry place and they meet Mr. Tumnus, Father Christmas and Giant Rumblebuffin. After a great sacrifice from Aslan changes the course of events, the siblings become the next Kings and Queens of Narnia.

'Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of anti-raids. They were sent to the house of an old Professor who lived in the heart of the country...'(opening lines)

"Meanwhile," said Mr. Tumnus, "it is winter in Narnia, and has been for ever so long, and we shall both catch cold if we stand here talking in the snow. Daughter of Eve from the far land of Spare Oom where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe, how would it be if you came and had tea with me?"(13)

'At last the Turkish Delight was all finished and Edmund was looking very hard at the empty box and wishing that she would ask him whether he would like some more. Probably the Queen knew quite well what he was thinking; for she knew, though Edmund did not, that this was enchanted Turkish Delight and that anyone who had once tasted it would want more and more of it, and would even, if they were allowed, go on eating it till they killed themselves.'(39)

'All four of them bundled inside it and sat there, panting, in the dark. Peter held the door closed but did not shut it; for, of course, he remembered, as every sensible person does, that you should never never shut yourself up in a wardrobe.'(57)

"We're following a guide we know nothing about. How do we know which side that bird is on? Why shouldn't it be leading us into a trap?"
"That's a nasty idea. Still-- a robin, you know. They're good birds in all the stories I've read. I'm sure a robin wouldn't be on the wrong side."(67)

'At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in its inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer.'(74)

'Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.'(85)

"... and it's on that she bases her claim to be Queen. But she's no Daughter of Eve. She comes of your father Adam's" (here Mr Beaver bowed) "your father Adam's first wife, her they called Lilith. And she was one of the Jinn. That's what she comes from on one side. And on the other she comes of the giants. No, no, there isn't a drop of real human blood in the Witch."(87)

"But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that's going to be human and isn't yet, or used to be human once and isn't now, or ought to be human and isn't, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.'(88)

'... but if you have been-- if you've been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you-- you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again.'(173)

'Have you ever had a gallop on a horse? Think of that; and then take away the heavy noise of the hoofs and the jingle of the bits and imagine instead the almost noiseless padding of the great paws. Then imagine instead of the black or gray or chestnut back of the horse the soft roughness of golden fur, and the mane flying back in the wind. And them imagine you are going about twice as fast as the fastest racehorse. But this is a mount that doesn't need to be guided and never grows tired. He rushes on and on, never missing his footing, never hesitating, threading his way with perfect skill between tree trunks, jumping over bush and briar and the smaller streams, wading the larger, swimming the largest of all.(180)

'Giants of any sort are now so rare in England and so few giants are good-tempered that ten to one you have never seen a giant when his face is beaming. It's a sight well worth looking at.'(187)

"Of course," said Aslan. "And now! Those who can't keep up-- that is, children, dwarfs, and small animals-- must ride on the backs of those who can-- that is, lions, centaurs, unicorns, horses, giants and eagles. Those who are good with their noses must come in the front with us lions to smell out where the battle is. Look lively and sort yourselves."(191)

'But amid all these rejoicings Aslan himself quietly slipped away. And when the Kings and Queens noticed that he wasn't there they said nothing about it. For Mr. Beaver had warned them, "He'll be coming and going," he had said. "One day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down-- and of course he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild you know. Not like a tame lion."(200)

'Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia.'(206)

HarperCollins first renumbered Edition
206 pages
Book borrowed from JRMD

79. ROMANCING MISS BRONTE

Juliet Gael 2010

A fascinating rendition of what the Bronte family's life would have been, based on both fact (Charlotte's letters) and fiction (the authors' exquisite imagination). It accurately describes Charlotte, Emily and Anne's perseverance and triumphs as they start their careers as authors, initially under the male pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. It gives a dramatic depiction of their short lives, as Emily, Anne and their brother Branwell all die of consumption. And it successfully renders an intimate and tender portrayal of how Charlotte's love blossomed for Arthur Bell Nicholls as she finally accepts his marriage proposal.

'He rode in the back of a wagon loaded with crates of chickens and bales of hay, driven by a brutish farmer who had not uttered a word throughout the journey except to curse his horse. Arthur would have enjoyed a bit of conversation as the wagon lurched along the muddy ruts, but the natural world was a thing of splendor and inspiration to him, and he was content to gaze upon the vistas opening up before his eyes.'(opening lines)

'Literature cannot be a business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it, even as an accomplishment and a recreation. To those duties you have not yet been called, and when you are you will be less eager for celebrity. Write poetry for its own sake; not with a view to celebrity. So written, it is wholesome both for the heart and soul.'(43)

'Your feelings are peculiar, Emily. Peculiar in a rare, beautiful way that very few people see-- because you don't want to be seen,' she said. 'And your poetry is very much like you. I read the verses aloud to myself and I fancied I could hear a sort of wild melancholy and musicality. It was your love of nature and music, all of it wrapped in this clear, condensed, and very powerful language.'(47)

'That summer, throughout the long, warm evenings as she sat near the open window darning her father's socks or mending one of Emily's petticoats, her thoughts returned to images that had always given her so much pleasure: a grand Gothic hall in an isolated place, a subservient young woman and a master. But as the ideas gave birth to a story, a new kind of heroine emerged. This young woman would have passion and soul-- she would be a governess perhaps, poor and plain like herself, but neither slavish nor meek in spirit. She would be inferior in rank to her master, but in every other way his equal. She would name her Jane Eyre.'(73)

'Although scarcely articulate, Mrs. Rochester would embody all the darkness of Charlotte's psyche: fire, fear, blood, sensuality, the foreign and the exotic-- all these things trapped and enclosed in a room in an attic in the past.'(81)

'I regret to say that Wuthering Heights has provoked the harshest condemnations. The reviews have wounded Emily to the quick.'(102)

'Our bonds of affection are so deeply rooted that we feel each other's heartaches as if it were our own, and I can not take the same pleasure anymore in my own success.'(102)

'He saw Charlotte in the light of a dutiful and highly conscientious clergyman's daughter. A peculiar woman from a peculiar family, intellectual, argumentative, and overly inclined to all things perhaps, but certainly not a passionate little Jane Eyre. The girls were all shy and reticent, hiding in the parlor and kitchen, appearing only when their father wished or when duty required. He could not imagine any of them writing those words.'(145)

'A year ago, had a prophet warned me how I should stand in June 1849-- how stripped and bereaved-- had he foretold that autumn, the winter, the spring of sickness and suffering to be gone through, I should have thought-- this can never be endured. It is over, Branwell-- Emily-- Anne are gone like dreams, gone as Maria and Elizabeth went twenty years ago. I have buried them one by one, and thus God has upheld me. The fact is, my work is my best companion-- hereafter I look for no great earthly comfort except what congenial occupation can give.'(191)

'Come, come now, Miss Bronte, I cannot believe that you would have our literature with vulgar and coarse heroines!'
'But there is my point, sir-- that you confuse coarseness with honesty. Why, I have never-- even from childhood-- believed your heroines to be natural or true. You good woman is a queer cross between a painted doll and an angel, and your bad woman is always a temptress. If I should be obliged to copy these characters, I would simple not write at all.'(208)

"Father, look at me," Charlotte said with heated determination. "I'm not a girl, not even a young woman anymore. I never was pretty and now I'm ugly. What is there to attract a man? It certainly isn't money. At your death I shall have three hundred pounds along with the little I've earned myself-- do you honestly think there are other men who would want me? Men who would serve eight long years in a place like this for a stunted spinsterish clergyman's daughter?"(320)

'I often find it difficult that a delicate creature like you might ever want any part of a great whiskered fellow like myself. I know you are a brilliant woman, with great intellectual gifts-- and I admire you all the more for these talents. But when I think of you-- and I think of you every moment- I never see you in the light of genius and fame. I think of you as fragile and vulnerable, and easily wounded. I cannot bear the thought of seeing you harmed, in any way, by any person.'(325)

'What I taste of happiness is of the soberest order. I trust to love my husband-- I am grateful for his tender love to me-- I believe him to be an affectionate, a conscientious, a high-principled man-- and if with all this, I should yield to regrets that fine talents, congenial tastes, and thoughts are not added, it seems to me I should be most presumptuous and thankless.'(339)

'As for Arthur, by the end of their honeymoon he had gained twelve pounds and reclaimed his hale and hearty physique. That she should be the cause of this transformation was a subject of quiet wonder to Charlotte.'(381)

'But Charlotte's allegiances had shifted-- fully, irrevocably. She had once written of her desire for a master, "one in whose presence I shall feel obliged and disposed to be good. One whose control my impatient temper must acknowledge. a man whose approbation can reward-- whose displeasure punish me. A man I shall feel it impossible not to love, and very possibly to fear."(388)

"She writes of a "faithful love that refused to abandon its object, love that disaster could not shake, love that in calamity, waxed fonder, in poverty clung closer"...'(406)

Ballantine Books, First Edition, 2010
407 pages
Book borrowed from the library

78. The Chronicles of Narnia Series - Book 1: the MAGICIAN'S NEPHEW

C.S. Lewis 1955

Book 1 of 7 of the chronologically renumbered Chronicles of Narnia Series is where we witness Aslan, the great Lion through his mesmerizing songs create Narnia. The chronicles start in London in the 1900s and we meet Digory Kirke and Polly Plumber exploring a house and then tricked by Digory's Uncle Andrew's magical rings. They found themselves in an In-between place of pools of water that took them to different places: to Charn where they meet evil witch Jadis who is wishing to take over Narnia, back to Earth and then finally to Narnia. So many fantastic adventures happen along the way including the creation of the magical apple tree and the crowning of cab driver Frank and wife Helen as the first King and Queen of Narnia.

'This is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child. It is a very important story because it shows how all the comings and goings between our own world and the land of Narnia first began.' (opening line)

'But what she noticed first was a bright red wooden tray with a number of rings on it. They were in pairs-- a yellow one and a green one together, then a little space, and then another yellow one and another green one. They were no bigger than ordinary rings, and no one could help noticing them because they were so bright.'(12)

'Not just yet,' said Uncle Andrew. 'This is too good an opportunity to miss. I wanted two children. You see, I'm in the middle of a great experiment. I've tried it on a guinea-pig and it seemed to work. But then a guinea-pig can't tell you anything. And you can't explain to it how to come back.'(14)

"And I suppose you've sent Polly into it then," said Digory. His cheeks were flaming with anger now. "And all I can say," he added, "even if you are my Uncle-- is that you've behaved like a coward, sending a girl to a place you're afraid to go to yourself."(25)

'Now the truth was that Uncle Andrew, who knew nothing about the Wood between the Worlds, had quite a wrong idea about the rings. The yellow ones weren't "outward" rings; and the green ones weren't "homeward" rings; at least, not in the way he thought ... Uncle Andrew, you see, was working with things he did not really understand; most magicians are.'(43)

'Make your choice, adventurous Stranger;
Strike the bell and bide the danger,
Or wonder, till it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had.'(56)

'It is silent now. But I have stood here when the whole air was full of the noises of Charn; the trampling of feet, the creaking of wheels, the cracking of the whips and the groaning of the slaves, the thunder of chariots, and the sacrificial drums beating in the temples. I have stood here (but that was near the end) when the roar of battle went up from every street and the river of Charn ran red.' She paused and added, 'All in one moment one woman blotted it out forever.'(69)

'I expect most witches are like that. They are not interested in things or people unless they can use them; they are terribly practical.'(86)

'Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale: cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. They didn't come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out-- single stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our world. There were no clouds. The new stars and the new voices began at exactly the same time. If you had seen and heard it, as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing.'(117)

'The Lion was pacing to and fro about that empty land and singing his new song. It was softer and more lifting than the song by which he had called up the stars and the sun; a gentle, rippling music. And as he walked and sang the valley grew green with grass. It spread out from the Lion like a pool.'(123)

'When you listened to his song you heard the things he was making up: when you looked round you, you saw them.'(126)

'Far overhead from beyond the veil of blue sky which hid them the stars sang again; a pure, cold, difficult music. Then there came a swift flash like fire (but it burnt nobody) either from the sky or from the Lion itself, and every drop of blood tingled in the children's bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying: "Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters."(137)

'For what you see and hear depends on a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are.'(148)

'Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.'(150)

'And you Narnians, let it be your first care to guard this Tree, for it is your Shield. The Witch of whom I told you has fled away into the North of the world... But while that Tree flourishes she will never come down into Narnia. She dare not come within a hundred miles of the Tree, for its smell, which is joy and life and health to you, is death and horror and despair to her.'(206)

'But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it.'(208)

HarperCollins first renumbered edition
221 pages
Book borrowed from JRMD

77. FRANKENSTEIN

Mary Shelley 1818

A timeless, relevant book, a symbolic reminder to us of the dangers of pursuing scientific obsessions no matter what. Robert Walton narrates in epistolary form his rescue of Victor Frankenstein as his ship and crew are stranded on ice on their way to explore the North Pole. While recuperating on the ship, Victor Frankenstein, despondent and remorseful reveals his horrific deed: his creation of a life who turned into a monstrous murderer whom he now wants to destroy. The novel also lends a unique voice to Frankenstein's monster as he seeks understanding for the confused existence he never asked for.

'You may easily perceive, Captain Walton that I have suffered great and unparalleled misfortunes.. I had determined, at one time, that the memory of these evils should die with me; but you have won me to alter my determination. You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been. I do not know that the relation of my disasters will be useful to you; yet, when I reflect that you are pursuing the same course, exposing yourself to the same dangers which have rendered me what I am, I imagine that you may deduce an apt moral from my tale; one that may direct you if you succeed in your undertaking, and console you in case of failure.'(25)

'I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self. Besides, in drawing the picture of my early days, I also record those events which led, by insensible steps, to my after tale of misery: for when would I account to myself of the birth of that passion, which afterwards ruled my destiny, I find it arise, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; but, swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys.'(34)

'Such were the professor's words-- rather let me say such the words of fate, enounced to destroy me. As he went on, I felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy; one by one the various keys were touched which formed the mechanism of my being: chord after chord was sounded, and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose. So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein-- more, far more, will I achieve: treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.'(42)

'Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least be my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.'(47)

'A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and do destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind.'(50)

'It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.'(51)

'I beheld the wretch-- the miserable monster whom I have created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped, and rushed downstairs.'(52)

'... but is it not a duty to the survivors, that we should refrain from augmenting their unhappiness by an appearance of immoderate grief? It is also a duty owed to yourself; for excessive sorrow prevents improvement or enjoyment, or even the discharge of daily usefulness, without which no man is fit for society.'(80)

'Remorse extinguished every hope, I had been the author of unalterable evils; and I lived in daily fear, lest the monster whom I had created should perpetuate some new wickedness.'(81)

'Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, they creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.'(89)

'I was dependent on none and related to none. 'The path of my departure was free'; and there was none to lament my annihilation. My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? '(115)

'We may not part until you have promised to comply with my requisition. I am alone, and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species, and have the same defects. This being you must create.'(128)
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a Barnes and Noble Classics edition, 2003
197 pages
Book owned
__________________________________________

Personal note: Highly recommended by Bibliophiliac and great book review by Kah Woei at The Books Of My Life.

76. CHILD 44

Tom Rob Smith 2008

This suspense thriller debut novel set in Totalitarian Stalin-era Russia opens up in 1933 with a disturbing scene of poverty-stricken brothers Andrei and Pavel snaring a cat for food. Twenty years later, we meet Leo Stepanovich Demidov, a decorated MGB agent who suffers an explusion when he refused to denounce his wife Raisa as a spy, and transferred from Moscow to small town Voualsk where he discovers a gruesome pattern of child serial killing, the heart of the novel. As he works with reluctant militia officer Nesterov to solve the murders, the true nature of his relationship with his wife Raisa also unravels. It is a fast paced, action-packed page turner that is immensely satisfying.
'Since Maria had decided to die her cat would have to fend for itself. She'd already cared for it far beyond the point where keeping a pet made any sense. Rats and mice had long since been trapped and eaten by the villagers. Domestic animals had disappeared shortly after that.'(opening lines)

'The traitor had escaped. Leo was to blame. He'd given this man, a stranger, the benefit of the doubt. He'd presumed he was innocent; the kind of mistake a novice might make. Better to let ten innocent men suffer than one spy escape. He'd disregarded a fundamental principle of their work: the presumption of guilt.'(44)

'The duty of an investigator was to scratch away at innocence until guilt was uncovered. If no guilt was uncovered then they haven't scratched deep enough. '(46)

'Though he never said as much, he was uncomfortable making an arrest without more evidence. Of course that was a qualm he'd lived with throughout his professional life. He'd made many arrests knowing only the citizen's name and address and the fact that someone mistrusted them. A suspect's guilt became real as soon as they became a suspect. As for evidence, that would be acquired during their interrogation.'(47)

'Even though it had been his place of work for the past five years, Leo had never felt comfortable in the Lubyanka, the headquarters of the MGB...An invisible borderline existed around the building... There was no chance you could be found innocent inside these walls. It wasn't an assembly line of guilt. Perhaps the Lubyanka hadn't been constructed with fear in mind, but fear had taken over all the same, fear had made this former insurance office its own, its home.'(79)

'Leo had heard of prisoners who lay abandoned for weeks and doctors who served no other purpose than the study of pain. He taught himself to accept that these things existed not just for their own sake. They existed for a reason, a greater good. They existed to terrify. Terror was necessary. Terror protected the revolution. Without it, Lenin would've fallen. Without it, Stalin would've fallen.'(80)

'In the one hundred and forty articles of the criminal code Leo had just one article to guide him, a subsection defining the political prisoner as a person engaged in activity intended to: Overthrow, subvert, or weaken the Soviet Power. And that was more or less it: an elastic set of words stretching to accommodate anyone from top-ranking Party officials to ballet dancers to musicians to retired cobblers. Not even those who worked within the Lubyanka's walls, not even those who kept this machinery of fear ticking, could be certain that the system they sustained would not one day swallow them too.'(81)

'Only children still believe in friends, and only stupid children at that.'(107)

'An officer must train his heart to be Cruel. Cruelty was a virtue. Cruelty was necessary. Aspire to cruelty! Cruelty held the keys that would unlock the gates to the perfect State.'(114)

'Leo couldn't sleep. He lay awake, staring at the ceiling, listening to the slow breathing of his wife... She was an unsettled sleeper. Was that enough reason to denounce her? He knew it was. He knew how it could be written up: Unable to rest easy, troubled by her dreams: my wife is clearly tormented by some secret.

'How different was he from the man he considered his moral opposite-- Vasili Nikitin? Was the difference merely that Vasili was senselessly cruel while he'd been idealistically cruel? One was an empty indifferent cruelty while the other was a principled, pretentious cruelty which thought of itself as reasonable and necessary. But in real terms, in destructive terms, there was little to separate the two men.'(211)

'The problem with becoming powerless, as you are now, is that people start telling you the truth. You're not used to it, you've lived in a world protected by the fear you inspire. But if we're going to stay together, let's cut the deluded romanticism. Circumstance is the glue between us. I have you. You have me. We don't have very much else. And if we're going to stay together, from now on I tell you the truth, no comfortable lies-- we're equal as we have never been equal before.'(225)

'How may other incidents have been covered up? Our system is perfectly arranged to allow this man to kill as many times again and again, and we're going to keep arresting the wrong people, innocent people, people we don't like, or people we don't approve of, and he's going to kill again and again.'(287)

'In many ways Nesterov had collected this information in a comparable frame of mind. At first he'd tried to dismiss the similarities: the ground-up material stuffed into the children's mouths, whether officers called it soil or dirt, the mutilated torsos. But the points of similarity were too striking. There was the string around the ankles. The bodies were always naked, the clothes left in a pile some distance away... They'd been solved by blaming drunks or thieves or convicted rapists-- undesirables, to whom any allegation would stick.'(314)

'Yet why wouldn't the wounds heal? Why couldn't he move on as he'd moved on from his decision to the MGB? He'd been able to swap devotion to the MGB with another cause, devotion to this investigation. But he had no one else to love; there'd never been anyone else. The truth was that he couldn't let go of the small hope, the fantastical notion that maybe, just maybe, she could love him for real.'(339)

'Your mother and I considered very carefully the contents of this letter. it contains everything we wanted to say to you but were unable to for one reason or another. It contains all the things we should've spoken about a long time ago.'(356)

Grand Central mass market Edition 2009
493 pages
Book owned
Great review from Random Ramblings here.

READING AWAY

by LAKE MICHIGAN
July 10-19, 2010



Books to read:

The Chronicles of Narnia Series

Book 1- The Magician's Nephew
Book 2- The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
Book 3- The Horse and His Boy
Book 4- Prince Caspian
Book 5- The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Book 6- The Silver Chair
Book 7- The Last Battle

75. I AM THE MESSENGER

Markus Zusak 2002

In this marvelous novel, nineteen year old cab driver Ed Kennedy's ordinary and mediocre life (with likewise lackadaisical friends Marv and Ritchie) turns very complicated and exciting after he foils a bank robbery. A series of card aces then appear, each with three names/ addresses/ messages, each one appearing only after he completed the previous task. Through these tasks, the book imparts subtle lessons on life, and brilliantly engages the reader to follow his journey and to keep guessing and discovering just WHO it was who sent him the messages.

'The gunman is useless.
I know it.
He knows it.
The whole bank knows it.'(opening lines)

'The thing to note with Marv is that he's problematic at the best of times. Argumentative. Less than amiable. He's the type of friend you find yourself constantly arguing with-- especially when it comes to his shitbox Falcon. He's also a completely immature arsehole when he's in the mood.'(6)

'For a moment, I look down and pity him because I realize that I'm quite possibly looking at the most hapless man on earth. First of all, he robs a bank with unutterably stupid people like Marv and me inside it. Then his getaway car vanishes. Then, when he's onto a good thing because he knows how to get his hands on a different car, it's the most pathetic car in the Southern Hemisphere. In a way, I feel sorry for him. Imagine it-- the humiliation.'(11)

'Who would send me something like this? I ask myself. What have I done to get an old playing card in my letter box with strange addresses scrawled on it?'(26)

'If I can go through a conversation with her without being called a wanker or dickhead at least once, I'm in front. The worst thing about it is the sheer emphasis she swears with. Whenever she calls me something like that, she spits it from her mouth, practically hurling it at me.'(28)

'To fill you in, Ritchie's name isn't even really Ritchie. It's Dave Sanchez. We call him Ritchie because he has a tattoo of Jimi Hendrix on his right arm but everyone reckons it looks more like Richard Pryor. Thus Ritchie. Everyone laughs and says he should get Gene Wilder on the other arm and he'll have the perfect combination. They were a dynamic duo if ever there was one.'(32)

'You never know, I tell myself. One day there might be a few select people who'll say, "Yes, Dylan was on the brink of stardom when he was nineteen. Dali was well on his way to being a genius, and Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for being the most important women in history. And at nineteen, Ed Kennedy found that first card in the mail.'(36)

'He has sex with her and the bed cries out in pain. It creaks and wails and only I can hear it. Christ, it's deafening. Why can't the world hear? I ask myself. Within a few moments I ask it many times. Because it doesn't care, I finally answer, and I know I'm right. It's like I've been chosen. But chosen for what? I ask.'(41)

'Typically, it's not going to be that easy. There are no addresses this time. There's no uniform to this. There's nothing to make any part of it secure. Each part is a test, and part of that is in the unexpected.
This time, it's words.
Only words.'(113)

'Earlier, I told him about the cards, to which he said, "How does this sort of thing always seem to happen to you, Ed? If there's anything weird floating around, it always manages to land on you. You're like a weird-shit magnet."(136)

'Our footsteps run, and I don't want them to end. I want to run and laugh and feel like this forever. I want to avoid any awkward moment when the realness of reality sticks its fork into our flesh, leaving us standing there, together. I want to stay here, in this moment, and never go to other places, where we don't know what to say or what to do.'(155)

'It's not a big thing, but I guess, it's true-- big things are often just small things that are noticed.'(221)

'It's with those words that I see things from Audrey's perspective. She liked me being just Ed. It was safer that way. Stable. Now I've changed things. I've left my own fingerprints on the world, no matter how small, and it's upset the equilibrium of us-- Audrey and me.'(232)

'Carefully now, her statement comes out. "Believe it or not-- it takes a lot of love to hate you like this."(245)

'It's the heart that hurts most when things go wrong and fall apart.'(270)

'I'd wanted to stay on that porch with him until the sun shone bright on both of us, but I didn't. I stood up and walked down the steps. I'd rather chase the sun than wait for it.'(283)

'And if a guy like you can stand up and do what you did for all those people, well, maybe everyone can. Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of.'(353)

First American Edition, February 2005
357 pages
Book borrowed from the library

74. the LAST BRIDGE

Teri Coyne 2009


Alexandra 'Cat' Rucker's father is dying and her mother just committed suicide. So she is forced to come back home to Wilton, Ohio, the hometown she ran away from ten years ago because of physical and sexual abuse from 'the Hand'. A fierce and sharp portrayal of a broken woman's struggle to finally face the reality of dark family secrets and past loves at the same time that she tries to deal with her inner demons and discover stunning new revelations about her family.

'Two days after my father had a massive stroke my mother shot herself in the head. Her suicide was a shock-- not the fact that she killed herself but the way in which she did it. It was odd that my mother chose such a violent end to her own violent life.'(opening lines)

'I wish I could ask her what she saw before she pulled the trigger. I don't need her to say she saw me. I want to know she saw something. That she felt something. And that it felt like freedom. And then, if I could, I would ask her what that felt like.'(4)

'Thanks,' I said. Cat is my nickname. It's short for alley Cat. My real name is Alexandra but my family used to call me Ally. Then my sister, Wendy, called me Alley Cat, and then just Cat. After a while, I was known in Wilton as Cat.'(5)

February 23rd.
Cat,
He isn't who you think he is.
Mom xxxooo
... I counted the words including the hugs and kisses. Ten, minus the date-- one for every year I had been gone.'(13)

'I battled my body on a daily basis. Most days it won, and I crawled back to wherever I came from-- the bed, the floor. Today I rallied the troops: I asked the legs to stand, the head to focus, and the heart to stay hidden.'(25)

'I counted twelve Bundt cakes. This was part of Wilton tradition: a Bundt cake for a death, a blanket for a birth, a casserole for a heart attack.'(30)

'My extracurricular activity was avoiding Dad at all costs. One didn't go out for this sport as much as get drafted for it. Dad didn't do much in the way of work... He was good with his hands. Whatever he touched bended to his will: crops grew, dead machines turned over, skin bruised.'(36)

'With no one to share the stories with, I studied the books more closely and secretly began drawing and writing my own comic, called "Kat's Eye." It was the story of a girl named Kitty Kat who was banished from her hometown of 'Niceville" (I saw that town on a map of Florida once) by her nemesis, "the Hand." The stories were about Kitty Kat's attempts to fight the Hand (and his fellow evildoers, "the Monster" and "the Hard Heart") and get back to Niceville.(45)

'The sound of the phone ringing reverberated inside my head. I shot up in bed and looked frantically around the strange room. Amnesia was a by-product of the black edge of sleep I drank myself into most nights.'(64)

'This was why I didn't tell people. They never believed me. Deep down they wanted to think that it wasn't awful as it seemed. Instead of feeling bad for me, they'd rather act like I was doing something to deserve the treatment.'(75)

'I waited and hoped she would find me and take us away. I wanted her to be willing to lose another finger for me. I wanted her to be someone else. "We all have our crosses to bear," was her answer the last time I tried to tell her what was happening.'(90)

'I went back to the swing and pushed myself. The chains creaked as he studied me. His eyes took in every outward feature: my hair, eyes, hands, lips. Maybe if he looked long enough he could see right through to the heart of me. And in seeing that dark core, would he understand or would he run away?'(97)

'In his review of me, I felt what he saw, the way the parts of me made a body, a living, breathing equation that had been ravaged but could also be adored. And while I had vowed to never look my father in the face when he was touching me, I could not look away from Addison as his eyes seemed to reconstruct me into something different. '(106)

'So what is walking the plank?' Addison asked the next morning as I searched the room for my mother's pearls.'(120)

'At the far end of our property over by Rucker's Creek, there's a crack where the land splits. The ravine is deep and rocky and goes for about a mile. There's a rope bridge that spans the crack that's been there my whole life. My dad and your dad built it before my parents were married. You can climb it and get to this sweet patch of wood and grass and a small hunting shack.'(121)

'You can be lonelier with someone else than by yourself. That kind of love, that life she made, destroyed everything. Being alone never hurt anybody.'(150)

'The hardest part of leaving isn't the looking back; it isn't the loss you feel for a place or people; it's the fear that what you intended to leave isn't ever going to go, and that what you really want, you're never going to get.'(184)

'It's not the answer to your problems you are looking for, it's the courage to face them.'(219)
___________________________________________
2010 Ballantine Books Trade Paperback Edition
225 pages
Book won
___________________________________________
Personal note: My first book giveaway win courtesy of Tea Time with Marce.

73. WUTHERING HEIGHTS

Emily Bronte 1847

This classic is about the lives of two neighboring estates: the Lintons of Thrushcross Grange and the Earnshaws of Wuthering Heights in old England 1801. Heathcliff, the main character is an orphan raised by the Earnshaws who falls madly in love with Catherine, his 'adoptive' sister whilst developing extreme conflict with his 'adoptive' brother Hindley. Although Catherine does love Heathcliff, she marries Edgar Linton and later dies. Heathcliff suffers this tremendous loss and his heart fills with vengeance and hatred to no end. This truly is an exceptional gothic novel inspite of the characters that are unlikable and sometimes horrid, the setting that is ghostly, dark and moorish, and the language that is glorious and dramatic but challenging. It is a book like no other: ardent love that is haunting, mystifying and totally unforgettable.

'1801.--I have just returned from a visit to my landlord--the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.' (opening line)

'Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling. 'Wuthering' being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmosphere tumult to which its situation is exposed to stormy weather.'(4)

'But Mr. Heathcliff forms a singular contrast to his abode and style of living. He is a dark-skinned gipsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman: that is, as much a gentleman as many a country squire: rather slovenly, perhaps, yet not looking amiss with his negligence, because he has an erect and handsome figure; and rather morose.'(5)

'A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.'(28)

'Oh dear, I don't wonder! And how did you like the master?'
'A rough fellow, rather, Mrs. Dean. Is not that his character?'
'Rough as a saw-edge, and hard as whinstone! The less you meddle with him the better.'(35)

'The curate might set as many chapters as he pleased for Catherine to get by heart, and Joseph might thrash Heathcliff till his arm ached; they forgot everything the minute they were together again: at least the minute they had contrived some naughty plan of revenge; and many a time I've cried to myself to watch them growing more reckless daily, and I not daring to speak a syllable, for fear of losing the small power I still retained over the unfriended creatures.'(46)

'Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.'(56)

'Nothing--only look at the almanack on that wall; he pointed to a framed sheet hanging near the window, and continued, "The crosses are for the evenings you spent with the Lintons, the dots for those spent with me. Do you see? I've marked everyday.'(68)

'The soft thing looked askance through the window: he possessed the power to depart as much as a cat possess the power to leave a mouse half killed, or a bird half eaten. Ah, I thought, there will be no saving him: he's doomed, and flies to his fate! And so it was: he turned abruptly, hastened into the house again, shut the door behind him; and when I went in a while after to inform them that the Earnshaw had come home rabid drunk, ready to pull the whole place about our ears (his ordinary frame of mind in that condition), I saw the quarrel had merely affected a closer intimacy-- had broken the outworks of friendship, and confess themselves lovers.'(71)

'If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable.'
'Because you are not fit to be there,' I answered. 'All sinners would be miserable in heaven.'(80)

'That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.'(80)

'My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning; my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as my own pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.'(82)

'You suppose she has nearly forgotten me?' he said. 'Oh, Nelly! you know she has not! You know as well as I do, that for every thought she spends on Linton she spends on a thousand on me! At a most miserable period of my life, I had a notion of the kind: it haunted me on my return to the neighborhood last summer; but only her own assurance should make me admit the horrible idea again. And then, Linton would be nothing, nor Hindley, nor all the dreams that ever I dreamt. Two words would comprehend my future--death and hell: existence, after losing her, would be hell.(148)

'You loved me--then what right had you to leave me? What right--answer me--for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart-- you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of liking will it be when you--oh, God! would you like to like with your soul in the grave?(159)

'And I pray one prayer-- I repeat it till my tongue stiffens--Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you--haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe, I know that ghosts have wondered on earth. Be with me always-- take any form-- drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!'(165)

'He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would be drunk: I said I should fall asleep in his; and he said he could not breathe in mine, and began to grow very snappish.'(240)

'I know he has a bad nature,' said Catherine:'he's your son. But I'm glad I've a better, to forgive it; and I know he loves me, and for that reason I love him. Mr. Heathcliff, you have nobody to love you; and, however miserable you make us, we shall still have the revenge of thinking that your cruelty arises from your greater misery. You are miserable, are you not? Lonely, like the devil, and envious like him? Nobody loves you-- nobody will cry for you when you die! I wouldn't be you!'(277)

'My old enemies have not beaten me; now would be the precise time to revenge myself on their representatives: I could do it; and none could hinder me. But where is the use? I don't care for striking: I can't take the trouble to raise my hand! That sounds as if I had been labouring the whole time only to exhibit a fine trait of magnanimity. It is far from being the case: I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing.'(312)

'In the first place, his starting likeness to Catherine connected him fearfully with her. That, however, which you may suppose the most potent to arrest my imagination, is actually the least: for what is not connected with her to me? and what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped in the flags! In every cloud, in every tree-- filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by day-- I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men and women-- my own features-- mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and I have lost her!'(312)

'I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.'(326)

a Barnes and Noble Classics edition, 2004
326 pages
Book owned

72. I CAPTURE the CASTLE

Dodie Smith 1948

Cassandra Mortmain at 17 lives with her family (her father, step-mother Topaz, brother Thomas, sister Rose, dog Heloise, cat Ab and helper Stephen) in an old English castle Godsend, it's tower Belmotte and a moat where she occasionally swims in the moonlight. Amidst this fairy tale and romantic setting is the reality that the castle is ancient and crumbling, their father is wasting his life away reading detective novels, they are very poor and hardly have any money for food, furniture and other necessities, and their life is soon to be very complicated by the arrival of Americans Simon and Neil Cotton. This delightful and enchanting book is divided into three books (the Sixpenny, Shilling and the Two-Guinea books) which are Cassandra's journals in her effort to become a writer and to capture the intricacies of her family life and the castle.

'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which I have padded with our dog's blanket and the tea-cosy... And I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring-- I wrote my very best poem while sitting on the hen-house.'(opening lines)

'I have just remarked to Rose that our situation is really rather romantic--two girls in this strange and lonely house. She replied that she saw nothing romantic about being shut up in a crumbling ruin surrounded by a sea of mud. I must admit that our home is an unreasonable place to live in. Yet I love it.'(4)

'I am writing this journal partly to practice my newly acquired speed-writing and partly to teach myself how to write a novel--I intend to capture all our characters and put it in conversation... The only time father obliged me by reading one of them, he said I combined stateliness with a desperate effort to be funny. He told me to relax and let the words flow out of me.'(4)

'I finish this entry sitting on the stairs. I think it worthy of note that I never felt happier in my life- despite sorrow for father, pity for Rose, embarrassment about Stephen's poetry and no justification for hope as regards our family's general outlook. Perhaps it is because I have satisfied my creative urge; or it may be due to the thought of eggs for tea.'(11)

'When I close my eyes, I see different castles--one in the sunset light of that first evening, one all fresh and clean as in our early days here, one as it is now. The last picture is very sad because of all our good furniture has gone...'(35)

'But there is something I want to capture. It has to do with the feeling I had when I watched the Cottons coming down the lane, the queer separate feeling. I like seeing people when they can't see me.'(63)

'Gentlemen are men who behave like gentlemen.'(103)

'He sounded faintly sad. Perhaps he finds beauty saddening--I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked father why this was and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty's evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die. Then he said I was probably too young to understand him; but I understood perfectly.'(147)

'I was tired by then so I floated and Neil did too; it was lovely just drifting along, staring up at the stars. That was when we first heard the Vicar at the piano, playing "Air from Handel's Water Music, " one of his nicest pieces--I guessed he had chosen it to suit our swim, which I took very kindly.'(174)

'I do call it a sign of a beautiful nature if a girl who is in love and surrounded by all that splendor is lonely for her sister.'(193)

'I daresay I am being very sily but there it is! I DO NOT ENVY ROSE. When I imagine changing places with her I get the feeling I do on finishing a novel with a brick-wall happy ending--I mean the kind of ending when you never think any more about the characters...'(197)

'Just to be in love seemed the most blissful luxury I had ever known. The thought came to me that perhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return-- that perhaps true loving can never know anything but happiness. For a moment I felt I had discovered a great truth.'(224)

'Another great luxury is letting myself cry-- I always feel marvellously peaceful after that. But it is difficult to arrange times for it, as my face takes so long to recover; it isn't safe in the mornings if I am to look normal when I meet father at lunch, and afternoons are no better, as Thomas is home by five. It would be all right in bed at night but such a waste, as that is my happiest time. Days when father goes over to read in the Scoatney library are good crying-days.'(232)

'Man's extremity is God's opportunity... Of course, there are extremities at either end; extreme happiness invites religion almost as much as extreme misery.'(234)

'In addition, I think religion has a chance of a look-in whenever the mind craves solace in music or poetry--in any form of art at all. Personally, I think it is an art, the greatest one; an extension of the communion all the other arts attempt.'(234)

'I could hear rain still pouring from the gutters and a thin branch scraping against one of the windows; but the church seemed completely cut off from the restless day outside--just as I felt cut off from the church. I thought: I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness.'(237)

"I've got to be needed, Cassandra-- I always have been. Men have either painted me, or been in love with me, or just plain ill-treated me-- some men had to do a lot of ill-treating, you know, it's good for their work; but one way or another, I've always been needed. I've got to inspire people, Cassandra--it's my job in life.'(274)

'And then--! Suddenly the whole plan was complete in my mind almost to the detail. But surely I meant it as a joke then? '(307)

'Now it's October. I am up on the mound, close to the circle of stones. There are still some bits of charred wood left from my Midsummer fire.'(330)

St. Martin's Press Edition
343 pages
Book borrowed from JRMD