108. SUITE FRANCAISE

Irene Nemirovsky 2006
Translated from the French by Sandra Smith

This book is the first two parts of an unfinished work by the author who was arrested and transferred to Auschwitz before she completed an intended 5-parts book. As such, although they are meant to be connected, they are really not. It will definitely leave you wanting. However, the first part succeeds in describing the three days of frenzy and confusion in the life of Parisians as they flee the streets of Paris prior to the arrival of the Germans in 1940. The second part depicts the conflict and necessity of coexistence. The Germans and the French learn to live together. The appendices accompanying this book are the most memorable parts for me. Appendix 1 shows the author's thoughts and plans for the book through her journal entries and Appendix 2 shows the period before and after her arrest by way of various correspondences from 1936-1945. The letters from her husband are particularly haunting.

Part 1: Storm In June

'Hot, thought the Parisians. The warm air of spring. It was night, they were at war and there was an air raid. But dawn was near and the war far away.'(opening lines)

'In a novel, there is nothing more valuable than teaching the lesson of humility to the heroes.'(16)

'The stars were coming out, springtime stars with a silvery glow. Paris had its sweetest smell, the smell of chestnut trees in bloom and of petrol with a few grains of dust that crack under your teeth like pepper. In the darkness the danger seemed to grow. You could smell the suffering in the air, in the silence.'(29)

'Privileges, exemptions, connections, all that was for the middle classes. Deep in her heart were layer upon layer of hatred, overlapping yet distinct: the countrywoman's hatred, who instinctively detests city people, the servant's hatred, weary and bitter at having lived in other people's houses, the worker's hatred.'(65)

'It was an exquisite evening with clear skies and blue shadows; the last rays of the setting sun caressed the roses, while the church bells called the faithful to prayer. But then a noise rose up from the road, a noise unlike any they'd heard these past few days, a low, steady rumbling that seemed to move slowly closer, heavy and relentless. Trucks were heading towards the village. This time it really was the Germans.'(93)

'Important events-- whether serious, happy or unfortunate-- do not change a man's soul, they merely bring it into relief, just as a strong gust of wind reveals the true shape of a tree when it blows off all its leaves. Such events highlight what is hidden in the shadows; they nudge the spirit towards a place where it can flourish.'(167)

Part 2: Dolce

"But most of all, my children, let your hearts speak. Do not aim for stylistic effect: forget your letter-writing skills and speak from the heart. Ah, the heart," said the Viscountess, half closing her eyes, "nothing beautiful, nothing great is accomplished without heart."(224)

'Madame, I am a soldier, Soldiers don't think. I'm told to go somewhere and I go. Told to fight, I fight. Told to get myself killed, I die. Thinking would make fighting more difficult and death more terrible."(251)

'The individual or society? Well, Good Lord. Nothing new there, they hardly invented that idea. Our two million dead in the last war were also sacrificed to the "spirit of the hive." They died... and twenty five years later... What trickery! What vanity! There are laws that regulate the fate of beehives and of people, that's all there is to it. The spirit of the people is undoubtedly also ruled by laws that elude us, or by whims we know nothing about. How sad the world is, so beautiful, yet so absurd... But what is certain is that in five, ten or twenty years, this problem unique to our time, according to him, will no longer exist, it will be replaced by others... Yet this music, the sound of this rain on the windows, the great mournful creaking of the cedar tree in the garden outside, this moment, so tender, so strange in the middle of the war, this will never change, not this. This is for ever...(263)

'War... yes, everyone knows what war is like. But occupation is more terrible in a way, because people get used to one another. We tell ourselves, "They're just like us, after all," but they're not at all the same. We're two different species, irreconcilable, enemies forever.'(307)

'It's nothing to do with us, it's not our fault. In the heart of every man and every woman a kind of Garden of Eden endures, where there is no war, no death, where wild animals and deer live together in peace. All we have to do is to reclaim that paradise, just close our eyes to everything else. We are a man and a woman. We love each other."(321)

Appendices

'My God! what is this country doing to me? Since it is rejecting me, let us consider it coldly, let us watch as it loses its honour and its life. And the other countries? What are they to me? Empires are dying. Nothing maters. Whether you look at it from a mystical or a personal point of view, it's just the same. Let us keep a cool head. Let us harden our heart. Let us wait.'(341)

'More and more, the world is becoming divided into the haves and the have nots. The first don't want to give anything up and the second want to take everything. Who will win out?'(345)

'Irene was taken away on July 13 by the French police, acting on orders from the German police, and taken to Pithiviers-- because she was a stateless person of Jewish descent, without taking into account the fact that she is Catholic, her children are French and that she took refuge in France to escape the Bolsheviks, who also stole her parent's entire fortune.'(378)

'Could you please find out if it would be possible for me to be exchanged for my wife-- I would perhaps be more useful in her place and she would be better off here. If this is impossible, maybe I could be taken to her-- we would be better off together.'(379)

A Borzoi Book
394 pages
Book borrowed from the library

107. GRACELING

Kristin Cashore 2008

In this refreshing young adult fantasy set in the land of seven kingdoms, where people are born with exceptional abilities called Grace, marked by two different colored eyes, there lives Katsa, an orphan girl with the Grace of Killing. She lives with her uncle Randa, who uses her as a Savage killer against the enemies of his Kingdom Middluns. There also lives Prince Po from the Kingdom of Lienid, known to have a Grace for Fighting, and the only boy who matches Katsa's prowess in combat. They join forces to foil the evil ruler Leck in the Kingdom of Monsea. It was during this quest that Katsa and Po discovers each other's strengths, real Grace and deep love for each other. Although romance is a part of the plot, this one is boldly different and falls secondary to the effective portrayal of a young female blessed with startling beauty, infinite strength, a good heart and an independent streak and survival instinct uniquely her own .

'In these dungeons the darkness was complete, but Katsa had a map in her mind. One that had so far proven correct, as Oll's maps tended to do.' (opening lines)

'They would assume she was a boy, because in her plain trousers and hood she looked like one, and because when people were attacked it never occurred to anyone that it might have been a girl.'(6)

"I've heard you have one eye green as the Middluns grasses, and the other eye blue as the sky.'(21)

'His eyes. Katsa had never seen such eyes. One was silver, and the other gold. They glowed in his sun-darkened face, uneven, and strange. She was surprised that they hadn't shone in the darkness of their first meeting. They didn't seem human. She couldn't stop looking at them.'(56)

'Dear Helda. She saw what Katsa was and what she did, and Helda didn't deny that Katsa was that person. But she couldn't fathom a lady who didn't want to be beautiful, who didn't want a legion of admirers. And so she believed Katsa was both people, though Katsa couldn't imagine how she reconciled them in her mind.'(64)

'To Randa she was a savage dog he'd broken and trained. He set her on his enemies and allowed her out of her cage to be groomed and kept pretty, to sit among his friends and make them nervous.'(72)

'She was tired of fighting nine or ten men at once, fully armored men, none of them able to touch her, and she always tempering her blows. It would be thrill, a pure thrill to fight again. To fight him regularly, a dream.'(93)

'Katsa picked up her knife and fork, cut into her mutton, and thought about that. She knew her nature. She would recognize it if she came face-to-face with it. It would be a blue-eyed, green-eyed monster, wolflike and snarling. A vicious beast that struck out at friends in uncontrollable anger, a killer that offered itself as the vessel of the king's fury.'(137)

"I can't know your feelings," he said, "if you don't know them yourself."(162)

'Tears came to her eyes. Mercy was more frightening than murder, because it was harder, and Randa didn't deserve it. And even though she wanted what the voice wanted, she didn't think she had the courage for it.

Po thinks you have the courage, the voice said fiercely. Pretend that you believe he's right. Believe him, for just a moment.'(170)

"... how will I protect myself from him?"

He considered her seriously. "Well. And that's easy." he said. "my Grace will protect me from him. And I'll protect you. You'll be safe with me, Katsa."(222)

'She wasn't angry that there was a person who could provide her with help and protection. That would be arrogance, and she saw that arrogance was foolishness; she should strive for humility-- and there was another way he'd helped her. He'd gotten her thinking about humility. But it wasn't that. It was that she hadn't asked for a person whom she trusted, whom she would do so much for, whom she would give herself over to. She hadn't asked for a person whose absence, if she woke in the middle of the night, would distress her-- not because of protection he would then fail to give, but simply because she wished his company. She hadn't asked for a person whose company she wished.'(227)

'Could she be his lover and still belong to herself?'(234)

'The physical needs that limited other people did not limit her. The things from which other people suffered did not touch her. She knew instinctively how to live and thrive in the wilderness.'(252)

'The very fact of his unhappiness made him unhappy.

"I've no right to feel sorry for myself," he said to her one day, when they'd gone out into a quiet snowfall to fetch water. "I see everything. I see things I shouldn't see. I'm wallowing in self-pity, when I've lost nothing."(450)

"How exactly, when I'm aware of everything above, below, before, behind, and beyond me, am I supposed to keep my mind on the ground beneath my feet?"(453)

a Graphia edition

471 pages

Book owned

106. PERSUASION

Jane Austen 1818

The persuasion of nineteen year old Anne Elliot by her confidant Lady Russell led her to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, then a poor man. Eight years later, they meet again, Anne Elliot's fortune waning, and Frederick now with both wealth and title. Is it too late for both of them, as Frederick Wentworth seeks another suitable woman to marry and Lady Russell once again persuades Anne to marry her cousin Mr. Eliott? An enduring classic, a story of two people bursting with longing and love amidst the entanglement of one's pride and the society's norms and pretensions.

'Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest parents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt.'(opening lines)

'His two other children were of very inferior value. Mary had acquired a little artificial importance, by becoming Mrs. Charles Musgrove; but Anne, with an elegance of mind and sweetness of character, which must have placed her high with any people of real understanding, was nobody with either father or sister: her word had no weight; her convenience was always to give way; -- she was only Anne.'(7)

'A few months had seen the beginning and the end of their acquaintance; but not with a few months ended Anne's share of suffering from it. Her attachment and regrets had, for a long time, clouded every enjoyment of youth; and an early loss of bloom and spirits had been their lasting effect.'(28)

'She was very much affected by the view of his disposition towards her which all these things made apparent. This little circumstance seemed the completion of all that had gone before. She understood him. He could not forgive her, -- but he could not be unfeeling. Though condemning her for the past, and considering it with high and unjust resentment, though perfectly careless of her, and though becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer, without the desire of giving her relief. It was a reminder of former sentiment; it was an impulse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship; it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart, which she could not contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed.'(84)

'... that she ventured to hope he did not always read only poetry; and to say, that she thought it was the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.'(94)

'Anne wondered whether it ever occurred to him now, to question the justness of his own previous opinion as to the universal felicity and advantage of firmness of character; and whether it might not strike him, that, like all other qualities of the mind, it should have its proportions and limits. She thought it could scarcely escape him to feel, that a persuadable temper might sometimes be as much in favour of happiness, as a very resolute character.'(108)

'Mr. Elliot was rational, discreet, polished, -- but he was not open. There was never any burst of feeling, any warmth of indignation or delight, at the evil or good of others. This to Anne, was a decided imperfection. Her early impressions were incurable. She prized the frank, the open-hearted, the eager character beyond all others. Warmth and enthusiasm did captivate her still. She felt that she could so much more depend on the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped.'(151)

'He was more obviously struck and confused by the sight of her, than she had ever observed before; he looked quite red. For the first time, since their renewed acquaintance, she felt that she was betraying the least sensibility of the two. She had the advantage of him, in the preparation of the last few moments. All the over-powering, blinding, bewildering, first effects of strong surprise were over with her. Still, however, she had enough to feel! It was agitation, pain, pleasure, a something between delight and misery.'(165)

"A man does not recover from such a devotion of the heart to such a woman!-- He ought not-- he does not."(173)

'There was much to regret. How she might have felt, had there been no Captain Wentworth: and be the conclusion of the present suspense good or bad, her affection would be his for ever. Their union, she believed, could not divide her more from other men, than their final separation.'(181)

"Yes. We certainly do not forget you, so soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves.'(218)

"No, I believe you capable of every thing great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as-- I mean, while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone."(221)

'You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever.'(222)

a Penguin Book edition
272 pages
Book borrowed from the library

105. EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE

Jonathan Safran Foer 2005

I reread this book, and this time around, my boots feel heavier. If you have read the book, and you loved it, you know what I mean. A tender, melancholic and very visual story of Oskar Schell, a nine year old boy who lost his father Thomas during the September 11 tragedy. A series of phone messages left by his father before he died haunts his heart as he goes through mourning even as his mother and paternal grandmother tries hard to help him cope. One night, as he explores his parent's room, he finds a key and decides to find the lock it opens. As he explores Manhattan and meets new people, the mystery of the key and the heart-tugging story of his paternal grandparents also unravel.

'What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me? I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad's voice, so I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of kettles that sings the chorus of "Yellow Submarine," which is a song by the Beatles, who I love, because entomology is one of my raisons d'etre, which is a French expression that I know.'(opening lines)

'I loved having a Dad who was smarter than the New York Times, and I loved how my cheek could feel the hairs on his chest through his T-shirt, and how he always smelled like shaving, even at the end of the day. Being with him made my brain quiet. I didn't have to invent a thing.'(12)

'The average person falls asleep in seven minutes, but I couldn't sleep, not after hours, and it made my boots lighter to be around his things, and to touch stuff that he had touched...'(36)

'I couldn't explain to her that I missed him more, more than she or anyone else missed him, because I couldn't tell her about what happened with the phone. That secret was a hole in the middle of me that every happy thing fell into.'(71)

'I sit on the side with a coffee and write in my daybook, I examine the flight schedules that I've already memorized, I observe, I write, I try not to remember, being here fills my heart with so much joy, even if the joy isn't mine, and at the end of the day I fill the suitcase with old news.'(109)

'I felt, that night, on that stage, under that skull, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone. I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it? (145)

"So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go!"(153)

'He said, "This is my biographical index!" "Your what?" "I started it when I was just beginning to write! I'd create a card for everyone I though I might need to reference one day! There's a card for everyone I ever wrote about! And cards for people I talked to in the course of writing my pieces! And cards for people I read books about! And cards for people in the footnotes of those books!"'(157)

"Dad didn't have a spirit! He had cells!" "His memory is there." His memory is here," I said, pointing at my head. "Dad had a spirit," she said, like she was rewinding a bit in our conversation. I told her, "He had cells, and now they're on rooftops, and in the river, and in the lungs of millions of people around New York, who breathe him every time they speak!"(169)

'You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself form happiness.'(180)

'It's the tragedy of loving, you can't love anything more than something you miss.'(208)

"Once upon a time, New York City had a sixth borough." "What's a borough?" "That's what I call an interruption." "I know, but the story won't make any sense to me if I don't know what a borough is." "It's like a neighborhood. Or a collection of neighborhoods."(217)

'When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They were necessary to make you possible.'(232)

'... I tried to learn about him as he tried to learn about you, he was trying to find you, just as you'd tried to find me, it broke my heart into pieces than my heart was made of, why can't people say what they mean at the time? '(279)

'It's so beautiful at this hour. The sun is low, the shadows are long, the air is cold and clean. You won't be awake for another five hours, but I can't help feeling that we're sharing this clear and beautiful morning.'(305)

A signed First Edition
326 pages
Book owned by JRMD

104. SIDDHARTHA

Herman Hesse 1951

A big dose of wisdom in a very simple, short book. Set in India, Siddhartha was born to wealth and privilege but soon abandons it to pursue deep peace and happiness. Along the way, he becomes a Samana and forgoes all material possessions including those necessary for the vital pleasures and needs of life. He meets but does not follow Buddha, falls in love with beautiful Kamala and fathers a son. And yet he continues to feel unfulfilled and unhappy. Ultimately, he meets Vesudeva, a simple ferryman by the river and through him he finally discovers a truly unique perspective, one that is provocative, inspiring and utterly relevant in today's world.

'In the shade of the house, in the sunshine on the river bank by the boats, in the shade of the sallow wood and the fig tree, Siddhartha, the handsome Brahmin's son, grew up with his friend Govinda.'(opening line)

'Siddhartha had one single goal-- to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow-- to let the Self die. No longer to be Self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience pure thought-- that was his goal.'(14)

'What he said to the Buddha-- that the Buddha's wisdom and secret was not teachable, that it was inexpressible and incommunicable-- and which he had once experienced in an hour of enlightenment, was just what he had now set off to experience, what he has now beginning to experience. He must gain experience himself.'(47)

'Everyone takes, everyone gives. Life is like that.'(64)

"Most people, Kamala, are like a falling leaf that drifts and turns in the air, flutters, and falls to the ground. But a few others are like stars which travel one defined path: no wind reaches them, they have within themselves their guide and path.'(72)

'It was one of the ferryman's greatest virtues that, like few people, he knew how to listen. Without his saying a word, the speaker felt that Vasudeva took in every word, quietly, expectantly, that he missed nothing. He did not await anything with impatience and gave neither praise nor blame-- he only listened. Siddhartha felt how wonderful it was to have such a listener who could be absorbed in another person's life, his strivings, his sorrows.'(104)

'That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future?'(107)

'Within Siddhartha there slowly grew and ripened the knowledge of what wisdom really was and the goal of his long seeking. It was nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.'(131)

'They all belonged to each other: the lament of those who yearn, the laughter of the wise, the cry of the indignation and the groan of the dying. They were all interwoven and interlocked, entwined in a thousand ways. And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life.'(136)

'Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.'(142)

'Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. and yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another.'(145)

a Bantam Book edition, July 1971
152 pages
Book borrowed from the library

103. the HANDMAID'S TALE

Margaret Atwood 1986

In this ingenious futuristic novel of caution, the state of Maine is under Gileadian empire, a totalitarian regime where women are either handmaids, Commander's Wives, Aunts or Marthas and men are either Commanders, Angels, Guardians or Eyes. Offred, the narrator is a handmaid, one whose only function is to have babies of their Commander's for their wives. She has three chances to have a Keeper, or a normal baby. Otherwise, If she delivers an abnormal baby, a Shredder, she is salvaged or is considered Unwoman. This dystopian book full of scary possibilities certainly lives one with lots to think about and maybe pray for, for days.

'We slept in what had once been the gymnasium. The floor was of varnished wood, with stripes and circles painted on it, for the games that were formerly played there; the hoops for the basketball nets were still in place, though the nets were gone.'(opening lines)

'We learned to whisper almost without sound. In the semidarkness we could stretch our arms, when the Aunts weren't looking, and touch each other's hands across space. We learned to lipread, our heads flat on the beds, turned sideways, watching each other's mouths. In this way we exchanged names, from bed to bed: Alma. Janine. Dolores. Moira. June.'(4)

'Everything except the wings around my face is red: the color of blood, which defines us. The skirt is ankle-length, full gathered to a flat yoke that extends over the breasts, the sleeves are full. The white wings too are prescribed issue; they are to keep us from seeing, but also from being seen.'(8)

'Now we walk along the same street, in red pairs, and no man shouts obscenities at us, touches us. No one whistles. There is more than one kind of freedom, saint Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.'(24)

'The night is mine, my own time, to do with as I will, as long as I am quiet. As long as I don't move. As long as I lie still. The difference between lie and lay. (37)

'To be a man, watched by women. It must be entirely strange. To have them watching him all the time. To have them wondering, What's he going to do next? To have them flinch when he moves, even if it's a harmless enough move, to reach for an ashtray perhaps. To have them sizing him up. To have him thinking, He can't do it, he won't do, he'll have to do, this last as if he were a garment, out of style or shoddy, which must nevertheless be put on because there's nothing else available.'(87)

'Not a hope. I know where I am, and who, and what day it is. These are the tests, and I am sane. Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes.'(109)

'You are a transitional generation, said Aunt Lydia. It is the hardest for you. We know the sacrifices you are being expected to make. It is hard when men revile you. For the ones who come after you, it will be easier. They will accept their duties with willing hearts. She did not say: Because they will have no memories, of any other way. She said: Because they won't want things they can't have.'(117)

'I admired my mother in some ways, although things between us were never easy. She expected too much from me, I felt. She expected me to vindicate her life for her, and the choices she'd made. I didn't want to live my life on her terms. I didn't want to be the model offspring, the incarnation of her ideas. We used to fight about that. I am not your justification for existence. I said to her once. I want her back. I want everything back, the way it was. But there is no point to it, this wanting.'(122)

'She'll be allowed to nurse the baby, for a few months, they believe in mother's milk. After that she'll be transferred, to see if she can do it again, with someone else who needs a turn. But she'll never be sent to the Colonies, she'll never be declared Unwoman. That is her reward.'(127)

'Scrabble! I want to laugh, shriek with laughter, fall off my chair. This was once the game of old women, old men, in the summers or in retirement villas, to be played when there was nothing good on television. Or of adolescents, once, long long ago.... Now of course it's something different. Now it's forbidden, for us. Now it's dangerous. Now it's indecent. Now it's something he can't do with his Wife. Now it's desirable. Now he's compromised himself. It's as if he's offered me drugs.'(138)

'Nolite te bastardes carborundorum... Don't let the bastards grind you down.'(186)

'Every night when I go to bed I think, in the morning I will wake up in my own house and things will be back the way they were. It hasn't happened this morning, either.'(199)

'I would like to be without shame. I would like to be shameless. I would like to be ignorant. Then I would not know how ignorant I was.'(263)

'As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come and, try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our own day.'(311)

First Anchor Books Edition, April 1998
311 pages
Book owned

102. the EVOLUTION of CALPURNIA TATE

Jacqueline Kelly 2009

This book came highly recommended by a ten year old girl. I can see why she loves it. A heart-warming book set in 1899, Austin Texas about Calpurnia Tate, an endearing eleven year old budding scientist, at the helm of her Grandfather, a naturalist who lives at a make-shift laboratory at the back of her family's home. Amidst her mother's insistence that she learns to sew, knit, cook and tend house, she instead prefers to spend time with her Granddaddy. Together they develop the most wonderful relationship as they explore, collect samples, conduct experiments and discover their own natural world.

'By 1899, we had learned to tame the darkness but not the Texas heat. '(opening line)

'My name is Calpurnia Virginia Tate, but back then everybody called me Callie Vee. That summer, I was eleven years old, the only girl out of seven children. Can you imagine a worse situation? I was splice midway between three older brothers-- Harry, Sam Houston, and Lamar-- and three younger brothers-- Travis, Sul Ross, and the baby, Jim Bowie, whom we called J.B.'(2)

'It's amazing what you can see when you just sit quietly and look.'(35)

'I took the sandwich and Great Expectations and sank into my bed with the utmost feeling of luxuriousness. Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really.'(60)

"I must husband my hours and spend every one of them wisely. I regret that I didn't come to this realization until I reached fifty years of age. Calpurnia, you would do well to adopt such an attitude at an earlier age. Spend each of your allotted hours with care."(95)

"Mother's threatening to make me learn a new dish every week. It might not be so bad, except that you spend hours making it and then it's gone in fifteen minutes. Then you sweep up the kitchen and you scrub the counter and you have to start all over again without a single moment's rest. What do you have to show for it?"(157)

'And there-- right there-- was a small green clump of possible vetch. I fell to my knees, praying let this be it, this has to be it, please let this be it. I scrabbled in the hard-packed dirt with my fingernails, loosening the soil to free up the roots as much as possible, cursing myself as an idiot for not bringing a trowel and a jar of water.'(166)

'My mother had got one girl out of seven tries at it. I guess I wasn't exactly what she'd had in mind, a dainty daughter to help her bail against the rising tide of the rough-and-tumble boyish energy that always threatened to engulf the house. It hadn't occurred to me that she'd been hoping for an ally and then didn't get one.'(192)

'But then it happened. My father fell silent. And it was his silence, his long pause while he digested this information, that filled the hallway and my heart and soul with such a great whooshing pressure that I couldn't breathe. I had never classified myself with other girls. I was not of their species; I was different.'(219)

"It means that we should celebrate today's failure because it is a clear sign that our voyage of discovery is not yet over. The day the experiment succeeds is the the day the experiment ends. And I inevitably find that the sadness of ending outweighs the celebration of success."(234)

'We slowly plowed our way though the turkey, the giblet-and-smoked-oyster stuffing, the braised sweetbreads, peppery venison sausage, sweet glazed yams, crusty roasted potatoes in their jackets, buttered limas and wax beans, velvety corn pudding, tart stewed tomatoes with okra, cabbage with chunks of sugar-coated pork, puckery pickled beets, creamed spinach-and-onion compote. For dessert we had pecan pie, a lemon pie, a mincemeat pie, and a tart apple pie...'(271)

'"Pardon me," said Granddaddy, catching his mistake and bowing. "I meant of course, my only granddaughter." He calmly drank and then sat down. My brothers were in a snit, but I didn't care. My heart pumped gladness through my veins. I was all to him, wasn't I? And he was all to me.'(326)

First Edition,2009
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
338 pages
Book borrowed from the library

101. NEXT

James Hynes 2010

This noteworthy novel, the events of which happen all in eight hours, finds Kevin, a fifty year old, in mid-life crisis seeking a change. He flies to Austin, Texas from Ann Arbor, Michigan, in a job interview kept secret from his current younger live-in girlfriend Stella. He arrives early and is told to come back and kill time at a Starbucks. The next ensuing few hours shows him in minor nuances and, in a stream of consciousness format, we learn about his past life: his childhood, his family, past loves, entanglements, commitment issues and sexual exploits. At once sarcastic and sentimental, this novel and Kevin's character certainly is one that 'grows on you'. When he returns for his interview, when the next thing happens, and in a stunning ending, you can't help but feel for him.

'As the ground rushes up to meet him, Kevin thinks about missiles again.'(opening line)

'A Michigander can be every bit as prickly as a New Yorker, just not as loud. The midwesterner's credo: keep it to yourself.'(29)

'I can't believe,, he almost says aloud, I can't believe that I still let this get to me after twenty-five years. It's not like he still loves her-- he's seen her a couple, three times since then, he even went to her wedding with no ill effect-- but he still experiences that one moment, when she told him what she told him, as if it happened ten minutes ago. Love fades, but rage and humiliation endures forever.'(82)

'That's right, the sign's s telling Kevin, I'm talking to you, Mr. Royal Oak, Mr. Bachelor of General Studies, Mr. Non-Tenured Staffer, Mr. Maybe You'd Be Happier at Sam's Club. It's the same thing Kevin hears in his head every time he parks his five-year old Accord among the Volvos and Subarus at the Gaia in Ann Arbor out on Wastenaw, where there used to be cheap motels and discounts carpet emporia and the Ponderosa Steak House where his mother always took him to dinner when she came to visit him in college. It's the voice that's telling him that he's an underachiever in every way he can imagine, professionally, personally, financially.'(98)

'Of course, even if you were one of them, Ann Arbor's righteousness could be a pain in the ass.'(99)

'And because the brainy Chomsky readers who run the co-ops have a political analysis, they know exactly what's happening to them: it's the last reenactment of the Battle of Bertrand Russell-- first time as farce, second time as tragedy-- as the gentle vegans and pacifists who thought they could wear down corporate hegemony like water on a rock find instead that corporate hegemony has opened wide and is eating them alive, and they get to watch their own death, kicking and screaming like Robert Shaw in Jaws.'(101)

'He knew that look, and even now, when it shouldn't matter anymore what she thought of him, he hated it and feared it. It was the look she gave him when she was measuring him against some private standard in her head. It was a look that already held the expectation that he would disappoint her. The problem was that he never knew what the standard was, and she wouldn't tell him. It was a look that still made him angry-- not the implied judgment itself, but the fact that he still let it get to him.'(109)

'Now he knows why his father sang melancholy Sinatra in the shower, and the memory of his father's bass-baritone-- too low for Sinatra, he strained to the high notes-- unexpectedly tightens his throat. It kills Kevin to think he never put it together, the difference between what his father sang when he was alone and thought no once could hear, and what he sang when he was harmonizing with his SPEBSQA buddies two Saturdays a month, one hideous old chestnut after another:'(130)

'Kevin knows he's falling, but at the same time he knows there's nothing he can do about it. Events seem to slow and to become more inevitable all at once. It's a moment of a perfect, blissful contradiction: it feels like it could last forever, as if Kevin falling is something that has always happened and always will, but he also knows it's only an instant, and will be over almost before it started.'(137)

"Where I come from, or maybe I should say, where my father comes from, a man has to be, well tough is what people usually say, but a better word is, decisive... You have to judge how things really are, how people really are, take their measure very quickly, and then act accordingly. A man like that, once he decides what you are, and what you can and cannot do, he doesn't change his mind very easily."(185)

'What's going on with me today, he wonders-- is it the change of scene, or the slightly exotic, subtropical women he's met here, or is it just the heat? Or, now that he's fifty-two stories up, is it the altitude? Or is it because he's actually contemplating going back to Ann Arbor as if this whole episode in Austin never happened? Is it because he's thinking he might actually go back and be a father to Stella's child? Is this death of the old Kevin or the birth pangs of the new, and how can he tell the difference?'(250)

Reagan Arthur Books, First Edition: March 2010
308 pages
Book borrowed from the library

100. DR. SEUSS BOOKS

Theodur Seuss Gaisel

TEN Dr. Seuss books, my 100th best books post. These wonderful books we all grew up with. I just had to do it. For the children in all of us!!

(1957)
'And Sally and I
Did not know what to do.
So we had to shake hands
With Thing One and Thing Two.
We shook their two hands.
But our fish said, "No! No!
Those Things should not be
In this house! Make them go!'


(1958)
"Oh-oh!" Sally said.
"Don't you talk to that cat.
That cat is a bad one,
That Cat in the Hat.
He plays lots of bad tricks.
Don't you let him come near.
You know what he did
the last time he was here."


(1960)
'I would not, could not, in the rain.
Not in the dark. Not on a train.
Not in a car. Not in a tree.
I do not like them, Sam, you see.
Not in a house. Not in a box.
Not with a mouse. Not with a fox.
I will not eat them here or there.
I do not like them anywhere.'


(1960)
'When I wish to make a wish
I wave my hand with a big swish swish.
Then I say,"I wish for fish!"
And I get fish right on my dish.
So...
if you wish to wish a wish,
you may swish for fish
with my Ish wish dish.'


(1963)
'BIG J
little j
What begins with j?
Jerry Jordan's
jelly jar
and jam
begin that way.'



(1963)
'HILL
WILL
Will went up hill.
WILL
HILL
STILL
Will is
up hill still.'


(1965)
'When a fox is
in the bottle where
the tweetle beetles battle
with their paddles in a puddle on a
noddle-eating poodle
THIS is what they call...
...a tweetle beetle noddle poodle bottled
paddled muddled duddled fuddled wuddled
fox in socks, sir!'


(1970)
'He can go like a clock.
He can TICK
He can TOCK
He can go
like a hand
on a door... KNOCK KNOCK'



(1974)
'That's the
kind of house
I live in.
There's a nick
in the sink
and a zamp
in the lamp
And they're
rather nice...I think'

(1974)
'Up stairs!
Up ladders!
Up on stilts!
Great
day
for up
Mt. Dill-ma-dilts.

99. FAR from the MADDING CROWD

Thomas Hardy 1874

A stunning classic masterpiece about three men's devotion to Bathsheba Everdene, a proud, beautiful and strong-willed woman who inherits and becomes the owner of a big farm in Weatherbury, England. Gabriel Oak is a consistent hard-worker who oversees Bathsheba's farm, William Boldwood is a middle age obssessive wealthy farmer who is Bathsheba's neighbor and Frank Roy is an impulsive, dashing admirer who immediately captures Bathsheba's attention. Three ardent suitors from different backgrounds, wealth and temperaments come together in pursuit of Bathsheba and form the frenzy of this enticing novel full of dramatic twists and surprises.

'When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance to his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun.'(opening lines)

'Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness. Marriage transforms a distraction into a support, the power of which should be, and happily often is, in direct proportion to the degree of imbecility it supplants.'(21)

"It wouldn't do, Mr. Oak. I want somebody to tame me; I am too independent; and you would never be able to, I know,"(27)

'"I be his lawful wife!" continued the voice with greater prominence of manner and tone. This lady called herself five-and-twenty, looked thirty, passed as thirty-five, and was forty. She was a woman who never, like some newly married, showed conjugal tenderness in public, perhaps because she had none to show.'(71)

"Now mind, you have a mistress instead of a master. I don't yet know my powers or my talents in farming; but I shall do my best, and if you serve me well, so shall I serve you. Don't any unfair ones among you (if there are any such, but I hope not) suppose that because I'm a woman I don't understand the difference between bad goings-on and good."(74)

'It may be said that married men of forty are usually ready and generous enough to fling passing glances at any specimen or moderate beauty they may discern by the way. Probably, as with persons playing whilst for love, the consciousness of a certain immunity under any circumstances from that worst possible ultimate, the having to pay, makes them unduly speculative.'(82)

'To Boldwood women had been remote phenomena rather than necessary complements-- comets of such uncertain aspect, movement, and permanence, that whether their orbits were as geometrical, unchangeable, and as subject to laws as his own, or as absolutely erratic as they superficially appeared, he had not deemed it his duty to consider.'(104)

'Silence has sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied soul of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more impressive than speech. In the same way, to say a little is often to tell more than to say a great deal.'(112)

'In comparison with cities, Weatherbury was immutable. The citizen's Then is the rustic's Now. In London, twenty or thirty years are old times; in Paris ten years, or five; in Weatherbury three or four score years were included in the mere present, and nothing less than a century set a mark on its face or tone.'(130)

"Yes; victuals and drink is a cheerful thing, and gives nerves to the nerveless, if the form of words may be used. 'Tis the gospel of the body, without which we perish, so to speak it.'(136)

'He was a man to whom memories were an incumbrance, and anticipations a superfluity. Simply feeling, considering, and caring for what was before his eyes, he was vulnerable only in the present. His outlook upon time was a transient flash of the eye now and then: that projection of consciousness into days gone by and to come, which makes the past a synonym for the pathetic and the future a word for circumspection, was foreign to Troy. With him, the past was yesterday; the future, to-morrow; never, the day after.'(149)

'Such women as you a hundred men always covet-- your eyes will bewitch scores on scores into an unavailing fancy for you-- you can only marry one of that many. Out of these say twenty will endeavor to drown the bitterness of despised love in drink; twenty more will mope away their lives without a wish or attempt to make a mark in the world, because they have no ambition apart from their attachment to you; twenty more-- the susceptible person myself possibly among them-- will always be draggling after you, getting where they may just see you, doing desperate things. Men are such constant fools! The rest may try to get over their passion with more or less success. But all these but the ninety-nine women they might have married are saddened with them. There's my tale. That's why I say that a woman so charming as yourself, Miss Everdene, is hardly a blessing to her race."(156)

'It may safely be asserted with respect to the closeness of his cuts, that had it been possible for the edge of the sword to leave in the air a permanent substance wherever it flew past, the space left untouched would have been almost a mould of Bathsheba's figure.'(166)

A Bantam Book edition, October 1967
362 pages
Book owned

98. A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT

Sebastian Japrisot 1994
Translated from French by Linda Coverdale

Refusing to believe that her fiance Manech is really dead, this mystery love story finds Mathilde Donnay relentlessly seeking the circumstances and details of his death, when along with four other soldiers they were left at the German border to die during the first World War. Although she is unable to walk, she is fearless, methodical and determined to seek out the truth no matter what, until slowly, over a period of years, through little clues here and there, the truth unfolds.

'Once upon a time, there were five French soldiers who had gone off to war, because that's the way of the world.' (opening line)

'She was sixteen when they first made love, one April afternoon, and swore to marry as soon as he came back from the war. She was seventeen when they told her he was lost. She cried a great deal, because women take such things hard, but she did not overdo it, because women don't give up easily, either.'(20)

'It has been a long time since anything whatsoever to do with this war could shock Mathilde... knowing as she does that war breeds only infamy, futility, and excrement... and that nothing grows on desolate battlefields but the weed of hypocrisy or the pathetic flower of derision... because derision is the ultimate defiance, the only way to laugh in the teeth of every misfortune.'(28)

'She paints flowers, only flowers. She loves white, black, passionate red, sky blue, soft beige. She has problems with yellows, but after all, so did Vincent, who greatly admired Millet. She will always see Millet's flowers as tender and cruel and full of life in the mists of time.'(68)

'Five bound soldiers, dragged all the way to the front-line trench and tossed over the barbed wire to the enemy-- and in the snow, no less! It was outlandish, it was simply one of those morbid and unfortunately not always unprejudiced tales that had flourished like weeds all through the war.'(113)

'This casket contains the story of one of my lives. And you see, I tell it in the third person, exactly as though I were someone else. Do you know why? Because I'm afraid and I'm ashamed of being only me and of not being able to get to the end of it.'(141)

'... you take what comes, when it comes, you do not struggle against the war, or against life, or against death, you pretend, and the only master of the world is time.'(172)

'The summer of '14 remains for Mathilde the summer of those first kisses, and first deceptions. In front of Benedicte and Mama, she and Manech work so hard at appearing innocent they seem practically retarded. They talk to each other only about silly things, or about nothing at all, going off adventuring with Catapult instead.'(199)

'Now that she's grown up, Mathilde would be willing to tell all, but her father turns down the offer, saying, "spare me your memories. What I like about this place are the mimosas and this tree with the sentimental triple M that hints at what my fathers-- for I'm not the only one-- cannot bear to imagine. And then they get used to it."'(204)

'...whenever men get together, it doesn't matter if they're thirty years old or fifty, they can't help it, they behave like children.'(246)

First Picador Edition:November 2004
327 pages
Book owned