97. the GIVER

Lois Lowry 1993

A very thought-provoking novel. Imagine a perfect world without the hassles of conflicts nor war, without indecision nor ambiguity because everything is decided and chosen for you, without racism nor poverty because everyone is the same, and without pain nor disease because everything has a cure and a solution. This is the community where Jonas grew up, until he turned twelve, the year he is appointed the honor of being the next Receiver of Memory. As the memories pass to him from The Giver, he discovers and feels for the first time such things as color, music, belonging, loving, and having to make a choice between staying or leaving.

'It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened. No. Wrong word. Jonas thought. Frightened meant that deep, sickening feeling of something terrible about to happen.'(opening lines)

'Mirrors were rare in the community; they weren't forbidden, but there was no real need of them, and Jonas had simply never bothered to look at himself very often even when he found himself in a location where a mirror existed. Now, seeing the newchild and its expression, he was reminded that the light eyes were not only a rarity but gave the one who had them a certain look-- what was it? Depth, he decided;'(21)

'Stirrings. He had heard the word before. He remembered that there was a reference to the Stirrings in the Book of Rules, though he didn't remember what it said. And now and then the Speaker mentioned it. ATTENTION. A REMINDER THAT STIRRINGS MUST BE REPORTED IN ORDER FOR TREATMENT TO TAKE PLACE.(37)

"If you don't fit in, you can apply for Elsewhere and be released. My mother says that once, about ten years ago, someone applied and was gone the next day."(48)

'With the chant, Jonas, knew, the community was accepting him and his new role, giving him life, the way they had given it to the newchild Caleb. His heart swelled with gratitude and pride.
But at the same time he was filled with fear. He did not know what this selection meant. He did not know what he was to become.
Or what would become of him.'(64)

'5. From this moment you are are prohibited from dream-telling...
7. You are not permitted to apply for release.
8. You may lie.'(68)

'Sometimes I wish they'd ask for my wisdom more often-- there are so many things I could tell them; things I wish they would change. But they don't want change. Life here is so orderly, predictable-- so painless. It's what they've chosen.'(103)

"I knew that there had been times in the past-- terrible times-- when people had destroyed others in haste, in fear, and had brought about their own destruction."(112)

"The decision was made long before my time or yours," The Giver said, "and before the previous Receiver, and... Back and back and back." Jonas repeated the familiar phrase. Sometimes it had seemed humorous to him. Sometimes it had seemed meaningful and important.'(113)

'"The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.'(154)

a Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers book
180 pages
Book owned

96. ONE DAY

David Nicholls 2009

A single day, July 15 is revisited annually from 1988 to 2007 in this absorbing tale effectively depicting the up and down friendship of Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley. Dexter is a handsome, uppity, girlfriend-hopping, self-centered and materialistic man. Emma seems the opposite: a sweet, charming, smart, conscientious and sentimental woman. After hooking up on the night of graduation, July 15, 1988, they separate and somehow always meet up or connect on the 15th of July every year there after. Through their separate lives, can they remain each other's best friend forever?

"I suppose the important thing is to make some sort of difference," she said. "You know, actually change something."(opening line)

"So I've given this whole "growing old" thing some thought and I've come to the decision that I'd like to stay exactly as I am right now."(5)

'At twenty three, Dexter Mayhew's vision of his future was no clearer than Emma Morley's. He hoped to be successful, to make his parents proud and to sleep with more than one woman at the same time, but how to make these all compatible?... He wanted to live life to the extreme, but without any mess or complications. He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random, it would be a cool photograph. Things should look right. Fun; there should be a lot of fun and no more sadness than absolutely necessary.'(9)

'The trick of it, she told herself, is to be courageous and bold and make a difference. Not change the world exactly, just the bits around you. Go out there with your double-first, your passion and your new Smith Corona electric typewriter and work hard at... something. Change lives through art maybe. Write beautifully. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully well. Experience new things. Love and be loved if at all possible. Eat sensibly. Stuff like that.'(12)

'You're gorgeous, you old hag, and if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of Confidence. Either that or a scented candle.'(42)

'I will find you, I've been thinking about you. Dex and Em, Em and Dex-- what was he thinking?(49)

'Rule Number Five. No scrabble. More and more of his friends were playing it now, in a knowing ironic way, triple-word-score-craving freaks, but it seemed to him like a game designed expressly to make him feel stupid and bored. No Scrabble and no Boggle either; he wasn't dead yet.'(74)

"I'm not scared of her, I'm just not going to do it so that we can say that we've done it. And I'm not going to do it if the first thing you say afterwards is "please don't tell anyone" or "let's forget it ever happened". If you have to keep something secret it's because you shouldn't be doing it in the first place!"(100)

'I love him, she thought, I'm just not in love with him and also I don't love him. I've tried, I've strained to love him but I can't. I am building a life with a man I don't love, and I don't know what to do about it.'(187)

"Sympathy for the spinster. I'm perfectly content, thank you. And I refuse to be defined by my boyfriend. Or lack of." She was starting to speak with real zeal now. "Once you decide not to worry about that stuff anymore, dating and relationships and love and all that, it's like you're free to get on with real life."(286)

'Ridiculous at thirty-eight, to expect a song or book or film to change your life. No, everything had evened out and settled down and life was lived against a general background hum of comfort, satisfaction and familiarity. There would be no more of those nerve-jangling highs and lows.'(382)
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Hodder & Stoughton Great Britain edition 2010
435 pages
Book owned
_________________________________________

Personal note: I finally read this souvenir book bought from Amsterdam, May 2010. If you want to see a great review of this book, check out Loving Books.

95. MOCKINGJAY

Suzanne Collins 2010

In this suspenseful, action-packed third and final book of the Hunger Game Series, Katniss Everdeen becomes the rebels' Mockingjay, the symbol of their all out war against the Capitol and President Snow. Even as this last battle nearly breaks Katniss, she becomes the instrument of change for the city of Panem and the end of the horrible hunger games.

'I stare down at my shoes, watching as a fine layer of ash settles on the worn leather. This is where the bed I shared with my sister, Prim, stood.'(opening line)

'In my head I hear President Snow's words, spoken the morning I was to begin the Victory tour. "Katniss Everdeen, the girl who was on fire, you have provided a spark that, left unattended, may grow to an inferno that destroy Panem.'(6)

'What they want is for me to truly take on the role they designed for me. The symbol of the revolution. The Mockingjay. It isn't enough, what I've done in the past, defying the Capitol in the Games, providing a rallying point. I must now become the actual leader, the face, the voice, the embodiment of the revolution.'(10)

'Positioned on my dresser, that white-as-snow rose is a personal message to me. It speaks of unfinished business. It whispers. I can find you. I can reach you. perhaps I am watching you now.'(15)

"Once you're in the arena, the rest of the world becomes very distant," he continues. "All the people and things you loved or cared about almost cease to exist. The pink sky and the monsters in the jungle and the tributes who want your blood become your final reality, the only one that ever mattered. As bad as it makes you feel, you're going to have to do some killing, because in the arena, you only get one wish. and it's very costly.'(23)

'I begin to fully understand the lengths to which people have gone to protect me. What I mean to the rebels. My on-going struggle against the Capitol, which has so often felt like a solitary journey, has not been undertaken alone. I have had thousands upon thousands of people from the districts at my side. I was their Mockingjay long before I accepted the role.'(90)

"President Snow says he's sending us a message? Well, I have one for him... Fire is catching!.. And if we burn, you burn with us!"(99)

"Ask yourself, do you really trust the people you're working with? Do you really know what's going on? And if you don't... find out."(113)

'Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where I told you to run, so we'd both be free.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.'(124)

'I'm not flailing now, as my muscles are rigid with the tension of holding myself together. The pain over my heart returns, and from it I imagine tiny fissures spreading out into my body. Through my torso, down my arms and legs, over my face, leaving it crisscrossed with cracks.'(154)

'That I knew that I have misjudged you. That you do love him. I'm not saying in what way. Maybe you don't know yourself. But anyone paying attention could see how much you care about him."(156)

'Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survuve without.'(329)

'... collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.'(379)

'What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again.'(388)

'Here it's safe, here it's warm
Here the daisies guard you from every harm
Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true
Here is the place where I love you.'(390)
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First Edition, September 2010
390 pages
Book owned

94. JAMES and the GIANT PEACH

Roald Dahl 1961

In this delightful children's book, James Henry Trotter is an orphan neglected and abused by his cruel Aunts Sponge and Spiker. When a stranger gives him a thousand little green things that were supposed to change his life, he accidentally spills them in the garden and a giant peach soon emerges. Inside this giant peach are the wonderful characters he meets: a Centipede,a grasshopper, a spider, a ladybug, a silkworm and an earthworm. And together, they roll off the hill to sail and fly away into the most fabulous adventure of their life.

'Then one day, James's mother and father went to London to do some shopping, and there a terrible thing happened. Both of them suddenly got eaten up (in full daylight, mind you,and on a crowded street) by an enormous angry rhinoceros which had escaped from the London Zoo.'(1)

'"One thousand long slimy crocodile tongues boiled up in the skull of a dead witch for twenty days and nights with the eyeballs of a lizard! Add the fingers of a young monkey, the gizzard of a pig, the beak of a green parrot, the juice of a porcupine, and three spoonfuls of sugar. Stew for another week, and then let the moon do the rest!"(9)

"Whoever they meet first, be it bug, insect, animal, or tree, that will be the one who gets the full power of their magic! So hold the bag tight! Don't tear the paper! Off you go! Hurry up! Don't wait! Now's the time! Hurry!"(11)

'The two women and the small boy stood absolutely still on the grass underneath the tree, gazing up at this extraordinary fruit. James's little face was glowing with excitement, his eyes were as big and bright as two stars. He could see the peach swelling larger and larger as clearly as if it were a balloon being blown up.'(16)

'Something else, he told himself, something stranger than ever this time, is about to happen to me again soon. He was sure of it. He could feel it coming.'(23)

'So what would you call it if you saw a grasshopper as large as a dog? As large as a large dog? You could hardly call that an insect, could you?'(26)

'A few minutes later, Miss Spider had made the first bed. It was hanging from the ceiling, suspended by a rope of threads at either end so that actually it looked more like a hammock than a bed. But it was a magnificent affair, and the stuff that it was made of shimmered like silk in the pale light.'(31)

'Poor earthworm," the Ladybug said, whispering in James's ear. "He loves to make everything into a disaster. He hates to be happy. He is only happy when he is gloomy. Now isn't that odd? But then, I suppose just being an Earthworm is enough to make a person pretty gloomy, don't you agree?"(49)

"For dinner on my birthday shall I tell you what I chose:
Hot noodles made from poodles on a slice of garden hose--
And a rather smelly jelly
Made of armadillo's toes.
(The jelly is delicious, but you have to hold your nose.)"(53)

'And now came the big moment. Quickly, the five hundred and second seagull was caught and harnessed to the peach stem...
And then suddenly...
But slowly...
Majestically...
Like some fabulous golden balloon...
With all the seagulls straining at the strings above...'(66)

"If you want to know, I happen to be a 'short-horned' grasshopper. I have two short feelers coming out of my head. Can you see them? There they are. They are quite short, arent' they? That's why they call me a 'short-horn'. And we 'short-horns' are the only ones who play our music in the violin style, using a bow. My 'long-horned' relatives, the ones who have long feelers coming out of their heads, make their music simply by rubbing the edges of their two top wings together. They are not violinists, they are wing-rubbers."(72)

a Puffin Book
119 pages
Book owned

93. GIRL in HYACINTH BLUE

Susan Vreeland 1999

A simple painting of a girl with a hyacinth blue shawl innocently gazing out the window is the subject of this outstanding novel. Is this painting a Vermeer? In a very smartly done chronologically reversed format, spanning in time from the present in New York City to the next in World War II Amsterdam and so on, until the last setting back to the original time of the art's creation between 1665-1668 Delft, each short chapter tells the different story of each of the painting's most previous owner. As the painting passes from one hand to another and affects and transforms each owner, the story also gives us a glimpse of the changing landscape of the Netherlands. The novel comes together in the end when the artist and the art's inspiration also tell their own tale.

'Cornelius Engelbrecht invented himself. Let me emphasize, straight away, that he isn't what I would call a friend, but I know him enough to say that he did purposely design himself: single, modest dresser in receding colors, mathematics teacher, sponsor of the chess club, mild-mannered acquaintance to all rather than a friend to any, a person anxious to be invisible.(opening lines)

'You've got to see opportunities and seize them on the spot. That's how it's done. Or, if a quick move isn't expedient, make a plan.(16)

'The one thing he craved, to be believed, struck at odds with the thing he most feared, to be linked by blood with his century's supreme cruelty. He'd have to risk exposure for the pure pleasure of delighting with another, now that his father has gone, in the luminescence of her eye. To delight for a day, and then to free himself. A promise.'(28)

"Everybody works... That's what life is . Work and a little play and a lot of prayer."(45)

'Now it became clear to her what made her love the girl in the painting. It was her quietness. A painting, after all, can't speak. Yet she felt this girl, sitting inside a room but looking out, was probably quiet by nature, like she was... Her face told her she probably wanted something so deep or so remote that she never dared breathe it but was thinking about it there by the window. And not only wanted. She was capable of doing some great wild loving things.'(51)

'It was strange: When you reduced even a fledgling love affair to its essentials-- I loved her, she maybe loved me, I was foolish, I suffered-- it became vacuous and trite, meaningless to anyone else. In the end, it's only the moments that we have, the kiss on the palm, the joint wonder at the furrowed texture of a fir trunk or at the infinitude of grains of sand in a dune. Only the moments.'(71)

'Remember no wrongs.'(75)

'How love builds itself unconsciously... out of the momentous ordinary.'(80)

'If there was anything to weep for, it wasn't Gerard or Monsieur le C--, or even me. It was the painting, for now it would go forth through the years without its certification, an illegitimate child, and all illegitimacy, whether of painting or of children or of love, ought to be a source of truer tears than any I could muster at parting.'(107)

'What was it all for? To have excitement about life, about life together, about a farm and a new kind of crop that would feed the whole world, and then to see it dissolve into only work, work, and tiny, growing separations. How does it all hold together?(148)

"Why does the world need another painting of a woman alone in a room? Or a hundred more paintings?"(204)

"The world doesn't know all that it needs yet," Pieter said, "but there will come a time when another of your paintings of a woman by a window will provide something."(204)

'In a moment she lifted her face to his, her cheeks rosy with shame. Regret glazing her eyes softened him. She stood before him as if offered by God. The blue cloth of her smock draped like billowy sky. There was something in this girl he could never grasp, an inner life inscrutable to him, He was in awe of the child's flight of fancy, her insatiable passion always to be running off somewhere, her active inner life. To still it for a moment, long enough to paint, for eternity, ah.(220)

'If two people love the same thing, she reasoned, then they must love each other, at least a little, even if they never say it.'(235)

a Penguin Book edition 2000
242 pages
Book owned

92. the SECRET GARDEN

Frances Hodgson Burnett 1911

A garden abandoned ten years ago comes to life after ten year old Mary, an orphan recently sent to live in MisselthwaiteManor, accidentally discovers the key to its door. With the help of her new friend Dickon, a twelve year old boy with the magical green thumb and who talks to animals, they transform their secret to a glorious magnificent wild garden. A young boy, Colin emotionally abandoned ten years ago by his father comes to life after Mary accidentally finds him, befriends him and takes him to this magical garden. As the three children play, run, laugh, share stories, exercise and eat in their secret garden, Mary finds friendship and happiness, and Colin finds his way back to his father.

'When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true, too. She has a little thin face and a little thin body, thin light hair and a sour expression.'(opening lines)

'Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And marigolds all in a row.'(8)

'"Not but that it's a grand big place in a gloomy way, and Mr. Craven's proud of it in his way-- and that's gloomy enough, too. The house is six hundred years old, and it's on the edge of the moor, and there's a hundred rooms in it, though most of them's shut up and locked. And there's pictures and fine old furniture and things that's been there for ages, and there's a big park round it and gardens and trees with branches trailing to the ground-- some of them," She paused and took another breath. "But there's nothing else," she ended suddenly.'(13)

'Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for someone.'(44)

'But Dickon laughed. "Eh!" he said, and as he crumbled the rich black soil she saw he was sniffing up the scent of it, "there doesn't seem to be no need for no one to be contrary when there's flowers an' such like, an' such lots o' friendly wild things runnin' about makin' homes for themselves, or buildin' nests an' singin' an' whistlin', does there?"(99)

"It's the best thing that could happen to the sickly pampered thing to have someone to stand up to him that's as spoiled as himself."(155)

'It was not until afterward that Mary realized that the thing that had been funny as well as dreadful-- that it was funny that all grown-up people were so frightened that they came to a little girl just because they guessed she was almost as bad as Colin himself.'(160)

"Mother says as th' two worst things as can happen to a child is never have his own way-- or always to have it. She doesn't know which is th' worst."(166)

"When I was at school my jography told as th' world was shaped like an orange an' I found out before I was ten that th' whole orange doesn't belong to nobody. No one owns more than his bit of a quarter an' there's times it seems like there's not enow quarters to go round. But don't you-- none o' you-- think as you own th' whole orange or you'll find out you're mistaken, an' you won't find it out without hard knocks." What children learns from children,' she says, "is that there's no sense in grabbin at th' whole orange-- peel an' all. If you do, you'll likely not get even th' pips, an' them's too bitter to eat,'"(178)

'One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live for ever and ever and ever.'(195)

'Oh! The things which happened in that garden! If you have never had a garden you cannot understand, and if you have had a garden you will know that it would take a whole book to describe all that came to pass there. At first it seemed that green things would never cease pushing their way through the earth, in the grass, in the beds, even in the crevices of the walls. Then the green things began to show buds and the buds began to unfurl and show colour, every shade of blue, every shade of purple, every tint and hue of crimson. In its happy days flowers had been tucked away into every inch and hole and corner... Iris and white lilies rose out of the grass in sheaves, and the green alcoves filled themselves with amazing armies of the blue and white flower lances of tall delphiniums or columbines or campanulas.'(214)

"I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us..."(217)

"You learn things by saying them over and over and thinking about them until they stay in your mind for ever and I think it will be the same with Magic. If you keep calling it to come to you and help you it will get to be part of you and it will stay and do things."(219)

a Tor Book First Edition 1990
271 pages
Book owned

91. the SILENCE of the LAMBS

Thomas Harris 1988

In this well-known mystery thriller, Clarice Starling is an FBI rookie asked to gather information from an infamous cannibal murderer, psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter to help them catch a serial murderer nicknamed Buffalo Bill. As Hannibal Lecter stunningly escapes his captivity, Clarice and the FBI team race against time to save the latest high-profile victim, a Senator's daughter from a surely gruesome death.

'Behavioral Science, the FBI section that deals with serial murder, is on the bottom floor of the Academy building at Quantico, half-buried in the earth. Clarice Starling reached it flushed after a fast walk from Hogan's Alley on the firing range. (opening lines)

'Be very careful with Hannibal Lecter. Dr. Chilton, the head of the mental hospital, will go over the physical procedure you use to deal with him. Don't deviate from it. Do not deviate from it one iota for any reason. If Lecter talks to you at all, he'll just be trying to find out about you. It's the kind of curiosity that makes a snake look in a bird's nest.'(6)

"And then Raspail himself... died. Why?"
"Frankly, I got sick and tired of his whining. Best thing for him, really. Therapy wasn't going anywhere. I expect most psychiatrists have a patient or two they'd like to refer to me."(54)

"Listen to me, a crime is confusing enough without the investigation mixing it up. Don't let a herd of policemen confuse you. Live right behind your eyes. Listen to yourself. keep the crime separate from what's going on around you now. Don't try to impose any pattern or symmetry on this guy. Stay open and let him show you."(70)

'Out of the cosmic hangover the Smithsonian leaves came her last thought and a coda for her day: Over this odd world, this half the world that's dark now, I have to hunt a thing that lives on tears.'(97)

"Clarice, I'm going to tell you what Buffalo Bill wants Catherine Baker Martin for, and then good night. This is my last word under the current terms. You can tell the Senator what he wants with Catherine and she can come up with a more interesting offer for me... or she can wait until Catherine bobs to the surface and see that I was right."(138)

'In Crawford's experience, anger made women look tacky. Rage made their hair stick out behind and played hell with their color and they forgot to zip. Any unattractive feature was magnified.'(175)

'Starling wished she could talk to Crawford. Waste and stupidity get you the worst, that's what he said. Use this time and it'll temper you. Now's the hardest test-- not letting rage and frustration keep you from thinking. It's the core of whether you can command or not.'(201)

"Do you think if you caught Buffalo Bill yourself and if you made Catherine all right, you could make the lambs stop screaming, do you think they'd be all right too and you wouldn't wake up again in the dark and hear the lambs screaming? Clarice?"(211)

"The moth was wonderful and terrible to see, its large brownblack wings tented like a cloak, and on its wide furry back, the signature device that has struck fear in men, for as long as men have come upon it suddenly in their happy gardens. The domed skull, a skull that is both a skull and face, watching from its dark eyes, the cheekbones, the zygomatic arch traced exquisitely beside the eyes.'(239)

'What does he do, Clarice? What is the first and principal thing he does, what need does he serve by killing? He covets. How do we begin to covet? We begin by coveting what we see every day.(272)

'Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed.'(294)

St. Martin's Press First Edition
338 pages
Book owned

90. IN THE KEY of GENIUS (The Extraordinary Life of Derek Paravicini)

Adam Ockelford 2007

Derek Paravicini is an autistic musical savant with absolute 'perfect pitch' who can remember any musical piece after hearing it just once in his life. Born three months premature, one of a twin who survives but is left totally blind, they discover his musical talent after his beloved Nanny encouraged him to play an old keyboard at two years old. This work of non-fiction is narrated by the author, Derek's first piano teacher who guided him with heart-felt admiration and devotion through his first concert at nine years old, through the difficulties of adolescence, the loss of his Nanny and his current fame and successful musical career.

'Mary Ann lay absolutely still, silently praying that she had been mistaken... She sensed that the climax to a difficult six months (and a terrible week) was near. For the last seven days, doctors had battled to prevent her from going into premature labour.'(8)

'Hastily, names had been chosen that reflected something of his distinguished lineage: 'Derek' after his maternal grandfather (Derek Parker-Bowles, who had died a couple of years earlier); 'Nicolas' after his father; and 'Somerset' after a paternal grandfather, Somerset Maugham.'(11)

'That night, Nanny made another decision: since Derek couldn't see her, whenever she wasn't physically in contact with him she had better keep in touch by talking or singing... At first, of course, Derek didn't know what any of this meant, but he quickly got used to Nanny's voice-- a constant mellow stream in a complex and ever-changing auditory landscape-- and by the time he was three he could do a creditable impression of her 'warbling'.(20)

'His fascination with abstract patterns of sound, those thousands of hours spent simply listening during the first twenty months of his life, largely uncontaminated by understanding, had caused millions of special neuronal connections to form, and it was those connections that now lay behind the emergence of a precocious musicality.(34)

'Mary Ann could only smile at Nanny in disbelief. Her son truly was amazing. How could it be that this little boy, just over two years old, totally blind, virtually unable to speak and apparently able to understand very little of what was going on in the world, had taught himself to play the keyboard-- something that she couldn't even do herself?'(39)

'He began in A flat major, as Beethoven had intended, reinforcing my view that Derek must have 'perfect pitch'. This meant that whenever he heard a piece of music, the notes didn't just sound vaguely 'high' or 'low', as they do too most of us. For him, each one had its own distinct character. This gave Derek a huge advantage as he taught himself to play by ear, since he didn't have to fumble around on the keyboard, finding out what sounded right by trial and error. Before his fingers even touched the piano he already knew which notes he needed to play.'(80)

'For at the end of every session with Derek I sensed that there was still more to come-- a great deal more-- and that I hadn't as yet come near to fathoming the depths of his labyrinthine musical mind. I was continually working out how to help him realise the next level of his potential. It was rather like trying to look round the bends in a tunnel that was twisting further and further into the ground, with a light flickering somewhere at the end. Every time you thought that you'd got there, it turned out that there was another bend to negotiate. Yet on each occasion, the light that appeared to be just beyond the reach was brighter that it had been before: he was yet to show us the full brilliance of his latent musicality.(113)

'That was one of the odd things about Derek, as Nanny had observed years earlier. In order to learn a piece, he didn't physically have to practise it or even play it through. All he had to do was just listen a few times and it would be there, ready and waiting, for whatever he wanted to call it up-- sometimes years later.'(134)

'It's like the spines of a hedgehog. Imagine that each memory is a single spine. Touch its tip with precisely the right verbal label and that memory will open to you. But miss it, even by a tiny amount, and Derek won't have any idea what you're getting at. And he doesn't have the reasoning power to make an educated guess either: he doesn't do "fuzzy logic".'(221)

'There was something about Derek's playing-- an immediacy, an authority that took no prisoners-- that seemed to cut through the fault line in perception and understanding that their autism so often produced, and he was able to communicate through music with children who in almost every other situation were locked away in themselves.'(267)
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Arrow edition 2008
279 pages
Book owned
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I found this on You Tube, Derek at 26 years old, 4 years ago:

89. the HOUSE of MIRTH

Edith Wharton 1905

Old money and the high society of New York controlled Lily Bart's life for a long time. After the death of her parents, at twenty one, she was forced to live with her wealthy aunt and continued to enjoy the good life of expensive fashionable clothes, lavish parties and grand vacations. Blessed with stunning beauty and proper breeding, she was desired and coveted. However, she was also envied, gossiped and eventually maligned. After a series of naive mistakes, she lost the prospect of marrying two wealthy prospects, was disinherited by her aunt, and quickly spiraled into a life of poverty. What is remarkable about Lily is that underneath this seemingly shallow character is a woman with a conscience, deep conviction and high morality.

'Selden paused in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand Central Station his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss Lily Bart.'(opening line)

'"If I were shabby no one would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself. The clothes are the background, the frame, if you like: they don't make success, but they are a part of it."(10)

'Why must a girl pay so dearly for her least escape from routine? Why could one never do a natural thing without having to screen it behind a structure of artifice?'(13)

'Training and experience had taught her to be hospitable to newcomers, since the most unpromising might be useful later one, and there were plenty of available oubliettes to swallow them if they were not.'(14)

'Lily understood that beauty is only the raw material of conquest, and that to convert it into success other arts are required. She knew that to betray any sense of superiority was a subtler form of the stupidity her mother denounced, and it did not take her long to learn that a beauty needs more tact than the possessor of an average set of features.'(32)

'Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.'(34)

"My idea of success," he said, "is personal freedom."
"Freedom? Freedom from worries?"
"From everything-- from money, from poverty, from ease and anxiety, from all the material accidents. To keep a kind of republic of the spirit-- that's what I call success."(65)

"The people who take society as an escape from work are putting it to its proper use; but when it becomes the thing worked for it distorts all the relations of life."(67)

'Ah, lucky girls who grow up in the shelter of a mother's love-- a mother who knows how to contrive opportunities without concealing favours, how to take advantage of propinquity without allowing appetite to be dulled by habit! The cleverest girl may miscalculate where her own interests are concerned, may yield too much at one moment and withdraw too far at the next: it takes a mother's unerring vigilance and foresight to land her daughters safely in the arms of wealth and suitability.'(88)

'And into what hands Bertha Dorset's secret had been delivered! For a moment the irony of the coincidence tinged Lily's disgust with a confused sense of triumph. But the disgust prevailed-- all her instinctive resistances of taste, of training, of blind inherited scruples, rose against the other feeling. Her strongest sense was one of personal contamination.'(102)

'No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity...'(110)

'It is less mortifying to believe one's self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness.'(119)

... half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn't any.'225)

'One of the surprises of her unoccupied state was the discovery that time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any unrecognized pace. Usually, it loiters; but just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly break into a wild irrational gallop.'(297)

'The poor little working-girl who had found strength to gather up the fragments of her life, and build herself a shelter with them, seemed to Lily to have reached the central truth of existence. it was a meagre enough life, on the grim edge of poverty, with scant margin for possibilities of sickness or mischance, but it had the frail audacious permanence of a bird's nest built on the edge of a cliff-- a mere wisp of leaves and straw, yet so put together that the lives entrusted to it may hang safely over the abyss.'(314)

Quotes above are from this Riverside edition 1963
323 pages
Book owned

Thanks to Allie at Literary Odyssey for the idea to read the book.

AS MY TASTE EVOLVES

I have counted, calculated, projected and plotted that I will reach my goal of a thousand books in FIVE years- 2015. And as I read these books and finish this journey, I already know my top dozen choices will change. This is the page that will bear witness to that change.

MY TOP DOZEN BOOKS

(in alphabetical order)

Updated April 26, 2012:

PREVIOUSLY ON THE TOP DOZEN:

88. LOVING FRANK

Nancy Horan 2007

The format of this book is one of my favorites, the blend of fact and fiction; this one based on the romantic affair between famous Architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Both married with children, Mamah Cheney eventually divorced, Frank Wright stayed married to his wife who refused to set him free. Even as they questioned and rationalized this scandalously infamous affair, they defied the norms of society and continued their passionate love. Eventually Frank Wright built Mamah a house in Wisconsin they named Taliesen. This house became the setting to their love's affecting ending.

'It was Edwin who wanted to build a new house. I didn't mind the old Queen Anne on Oak Park Avenue. It was full of the things of my childhood, and I found it comforting after so many years away.'(opening lines)

"The measure of a man's culture is the measure of his appreciation." he said. "We are ourselves what we appreciate and no more."(10)

'Their deep discussions were a stark contrast to her discourse with Edwin. It was when Mamah found herself saving up insights to tell Frank-- thoughts she never would have shared with her husband-- that she knew they'd grown too close.'(17)

'I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current.'(35)

'Some of his houses look more like trees than boxes. He cantilevers the roof so it spreads its eaves wide like sheltering branches. He even cantilevers terraces out from the house in the same way, if you can picture it. His walls are bands of windows and doors, the most gorgeous stained-glass designs of abstract prairie flowers. All that glass gives you the sense that you're living free in nature, rather than cut off from it.'(65)

"The world keeps going on," she said as they continued walking. "Everybody who ever lost someone thinks that. It's strange, though. It still comes as a surprise when you see people carrying on.'(112)

'Have you forgotten the very things you've said to me? You can't keep your children by having no life of your own. You said that once to me. You said, "They will know. Your own unhappiness will plant the seeds of unhappiness in your children. And they will blame you for it someday."(124)

"Finding you was like finding a safe place to think again. Before I met you, I felt I could soar at the drawing table, but I always came back to the most static prison in my marriage. It set me free to find you, to think that there was the possibility of something more expansive. You make me want to be a better man. A better artist." He put his hand in hers. "I'd be such a sad person if it had never happened."(128)

'Why is the heart that is broken considered so much more valuable than the one or the two who must cause the pain lest they themselves perish?'(130)

"I want to talk to you today about the noblest type of love-- the kind that joins the spiritual with the erotic. When both lovers yearn to become entirely one being, to free each other and to develop each other to the greatest perfection, this is the highest form of love possible between a man and a woman of the same moral and intellectual level."(132)

'How small we humans are, she thought. All our scrambling around, trying to buttress ourselves against death. All our efforts to insulate ourselves against uncertainty with codes of behavior and meaningless busyness.'(139)

'How to reconcile the deepest loves of her soul? Staring out the window, she tried to imagine a time in the future when she would explain to her children this understanding. They would have to be adults to comprehend it. But she believed they would see that her choice to leave their father was not meant as a cruel self-indulgence geared to make them unhappy. Rather, it was an act of love for life.'(140)

"Mr. Wright is way ahead of other architects. People just think 'prairie house' when they hear his name. But he's so much than that. If you listen to what he says about organic architecture, you can go build natural houses anywhere in the world. People don't understand that now, but they will someday."(165)

'What he had kept from her, though, was what she kept from him-- the terrible weight of remorse and doubt that daily, hourly sometimes, shifted inside like a cargo.'(172)

'Frank kept his calm. "I believe we can't be useful to the progress of society without a stubborn selfhood... I wanted to be honestly myself first and take care of everything else afterward. I can do better by my children now than I could have done had I sacrificed that which was life itself to me. I believe in them, but no parent can live his children's lives for them. More are ruined that way than saved. I don't want to be a pattern for them. I want them to have room in which to grow up to be themselves."(245)

'There isn't a day goes by that I don't miss you. And some days... well, I just wish for things that can't be right now. But I carry both of you around in my heart all the time. It's fun-- it's as if I have a little room inside where I can go, and there you are. And that makes me calm as can be.'(328)

'A woman with a capacity for love and life made really a... finer courage, a higher more difficult ideal of the white flame of chastity than was "moral" or expedient and for which she was compelled to crucify all that society holds sacred and essential-- in name...'(352)

Ballantine Book First Edition
356 pages
Book borrowed from the Library

87. the ART of RACING in the RAIN

Garth Stein 2008

I laughed out loud, I almost cried, and I am not even a dog lover nor a car racing fan. From a totally different point of view, canine Enzo narrates his life and love for his family: Denny, Denny's wife Eve and daughter Zoe. Denny is a talented and undiscovered race car driver who faces his own race against ultimate despair and defeat after Eve is diagnosed and dies of brain cancer. He finds himself suddenly battling for custody of Zoe and wrongly accused of a life-changing crime. Enzo, a television addict, a race-car driver and a human at heart takes us to these stories, and educates us in the Art of Racing, with humor and greatly imaginative charm.

'Gestures are all that I have; sometimes they must be grand in nature. And while I occasionally step over the line and into the world of the melodramatic, it is what I must do in order to communicate clearly and effectively.'(opening lines)

'I've always felt almost human. I've always known that there's something about me that's different than other dogs. Sure, I'm stuffed into a dog's body, but that's just the shell. It's what's inside that's important. The soul. And my soul is very human.'(3)

'This is what Denny says. He says racing is doing. It is being part of a moment and being aware of nothing else but that moment. Reflection must come at a later time. The great champion Julian SabellaRosa has said, "When I am racing, my mind and my body are working so quickly and so well together, I must be sure not to think, or else I will definitely make a mistake."'(14)

'I watch too much TV. When Denny goes away in the mornings, he turns it on for me, and it's become a habit. He warned me not to watch all day, but I do. Fortunately, he knows I love cars, so he lets me watch a lot of Speed Channel.'(17)

'My nose-- yes, my little black nose that is leathery and cute-- could smell the disease in Eve's brain long before even she knew it was there.
But I hadn't a facile tongue. So all I could do was watch and feel empty inside; Eve had assigned me to protect Zoe no matter what, but no one had been assigned to protect Eve. And there was nothing I could do to help her.'(37)

'These are things that only dogs and women understand because we tap into pain directly, we connect to pain directly from its source, and so it is at once brilliant and brutal and clear, like white-hot metal spraying out of a fire hose, we can appreciate the aesthetic while taking the worst of it straight in the face. Men, on the other hand, are all filters and deflectors and timed release.'(63)

'Your car goes where your eye go. Simply another way of saying that which manifest is before you.'(83)

'Here's why I will be good person. Because I listen. I cannot speak, so I listen very well. I never interrupt, I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another's conversations constantly.'(101)

'... how difficult it must be to be a person. To constantly subvert your desires. To worry about doing the right thing, rather than doing what is most expedient. At that moment, honestly, I had grave doubts as to my ability to interact on such a level. I wondered if I could ever become the human I hoped to be.'(122)

'The true hero is flawed. The true test of a champion is not whether he can triumph, but whether he can overcome obstacles-- preferably of his own making-- in order to triumph. A hero without a flaw is of no interest to an audience or to the universe, which, after all, is based on conflict and opposition, the irresistible force meeting the unmovable object.'(135)

'He relaxed on the wheel at the apex and the car drifted toward the exit and he was full on the gas and we flew-- flew!-- out of that turn and toward the next and the next and the next after that. Fifteen turns at Thunderhill. Fifteen. And I love them all equally. I adore them all. Each one is different, each with its own particular sensation, but each so magnificent! Around the track we went, faster and faster, lap after lap.'(155)

'What could I do? Had I not made myself clear? Had I not communicated my message? What else was there for me to do?
One thing only. I lifted my hind leg and I urinated on the papers.'(267)

'But racing in the rain is also about the mind! It is about owning one's own body. about believing that one's car is merely an extension of one's own body. About believing that the track is an extension of the track, and the sky is an extension of the car, and the rain is an extension of the track, and the sky is an extension of the rain. It is about believing that you are not you. You are everything. and everything is you.'(314)

HarperCollins First edition
321 pages
Book borrowed from the library