127. CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN

 Louis de Bernieres 1994

Captain Corelli is one of those unforgettable characters who will stay with me for a while. As a member of an Italian troop who invades the small island of Cephallonia in Greece during World War II, he captivates his delightful house host Dr. Iannis. As a musician, 'in love' with Antonia (his mandolin), he also slowly creeps into the heart of Dr. Iannis' feisty and earnest daughter Pelagia. And as a decent, humorous, sincere and honest man, he ends up inspiring everyone else around him. 

'Dr. Iannis had enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or got any worse. He had attended a surprisingly easy calving, lanced one abscess, extracted a molar, dosed one lady of easy virtue with Salvarsan, performed an unpleasant but spectacularly fruitful enema, and had produced a miracle by a feat of medical prestidigitation.'(opening lines)

'Just bring in the wood before she asks for it, and bring her a flower every time you come back from the field. If it's cold put a shawl around her shoulders, and if it's hot, bring her a glass of water. It's simple. Women only nag when they feel unappreciated. Think of her as your mother who has fallen ill, and treat her accordingly.'(43)

'This is how we should be. We should care for each other more than we care for ideas, or else we will end up killing each other. Am I not right?'(52)

'There was something too decisive about his movements, his unconsidered responses; can you trust someone who replies immediately, without thought? Someone whose actions and words are poetic rather than solidly cogitated?'(84)

'What I regret is having had to learn a most bitter lesson about the way in which personal ambitions can lead a man, against his will and against his nature, into playing a part in events that will cause history to reap him with opprobrium and contempt.'(91)

'A column of men, much smarter than most of the others, marched by unison. At their head perspired Captain Antonio Corelli of the 33rd Regiment of Artillery, and slung across his back was a case containing the mandolin that he had named Antonia because it was the other half of himself. He spotted Pelagia 'Bella bambina at nine o'clock,' he shouted, 'E-y-e-s left.'

In unison the heads of the troops snapped in her direction, and for one astonishing minute she endured a march-past of the most comical and grotesque antics and expressions devisable by man. There was a soldier who crossed his eyes and folded down his lower lip, who pouted and blew her a kiss, another who converted his marching into a Charlie Chaplin walk, another who pretended at each step to trip over his own feet, and another who twisted his helmet sideways, flared his nostrils, and rolled his eyes so high that the pupils vanished behind the upper lids. Pelagia put her hand to her mouth.'(157-158)

'I think that Corelli was able to find it so funny because music was the only thing he considered serious, until he met Pelagia... he was like one of those saprophytic orchids than can create harmony and wonder even as it grows and blossoms on a pile of shit, in a place of skulls and bones. He let his rifle rust, and even lost it once or twice, but he won battles armed with nothing but a mandolin.'(163)

'She watched wonderingly as the fingers of his left hand crawled like a powerful and menacing spider up and down the diapason. She saw the tendons moving and rippling beneath the skin, and then she saw that a symphony of expressions was passing over his face; at times serene, at times suddenly furious, occasionally smiling, from time to time stern and dictatorial, and then coaxing and gentle. Transfixed by this, she realized suddenly that there was something about music that head never been revealed to her before: it was not merely the production of sweet sound; it was, to those who understood it, an emotional and intellectual odyssey.'(186)

'Corelli looked at her silhouette against the light of the window, and a tune came into his head. He could visualize the patterned patrol of his fingers on the freeboard of the mandolin, he could hear the disciplined notes ringing from the treble, singing the praise of Pelagia as they also portrayed her wrath and her resistance. It was a march, a march of a proud woman who prosecuted war with hard words and kindnesses. He heard simple chords and a martial melody that implied a world of grace.'(239)

'I think of Pelagia in terms of chords... She plays with a cat and laughs, and it is sol. She raises an eyebrow when she catches me observing, and pretends to reproach me and reprove me for the guilt of admiration, and it is doh. She asks me a question, 'Haven't you anything useful to do?' and it is like re, requiring resolution.'(249)

'Love is a kind of dementia with very precise and oft-repeated clinical symptoms. You blush in each other's presence, you both hover in places where you expect the other to pass, you are both a little tongue-tied, you both laugh inexplicably and too long, you become quite nauseatingly girlish, and he becomes quite ridiculously gallant. You have also grown a little stupid.'(279-280)

'Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.'(281)

'Italians always act without thinking, it's the glory and the downfall of your civilisation. A German plans a month in advance what his bowel movements will be at Easter, and the British plan everything in retrospect, so it always looks as though everything occurred as they intended. The French plan everything whilst appearing to be having a party, and the Spanish..., well, God knows. Anyway, Pelagia is Greek, that's my point. So can it work?'(289)

Vintage Edition, 1998

435 pages

Book Owned

a FULL HOUSE and a Christmas Hiatus, December 11-28, 2010

Both Christmas trees are up, trimmed and in full gear.

The Santa tree in the Living Room.

The snowman tree in the Family Room.

Today and over the next few days, family members (the perks of a blended family) start trickling in from Chicago and New York, and the house will be full (fourteen total!!) of sons and daughters and husbands and boyfriends, and grandkids bouncing off the wall, staring at and tinkering with all the Christmas Hallmark motion and magic ornaments I have collected for twenty three years (yes, that is another conversation, and the reason why I have two trees), and everyone salivating on all the wrapped gifts under the tree.

For sure I will be busy entertaining, watching Disney and Harry Potter movies, playing board games, (Ticket to Ride and Dominion are my favorites), reading children's stories and cooking three meals a day, especially the grandkid's favorite ebelskievers for breakfast.

Photo taken from William-Sonoma Website

And in between this happy chaos is the fact that I am also working some hours and work is very busy during this season of merriment. Which is why the hiatus. But I will be back in no time, I am sure too soon for all of us, ready for the new year.

Happy holidays to everyone!

126. MEMOIRS of a GEISHA

Arthur Golden 1997

In this striking memoir that reads like a work of non-fiction, Sayuri sits with a translator and narrates her life as one of the most sought-after geisha in Gion around World War II. Now living in New York, she takes us back sixty years, from the time she is first sold to an okiya (a geisha house) to her training under a famous geisha Mameha. As we learn the art of being a geisha, including mastering dance, applying proper make-up, wearing the perfect kimono, serving tea, and making small talk, we also learn of the bitter geisha rivalries as well as the nuances of bidding for a geisha's mizuage (virginity) and acquiring a danna (permanent patron). The book's writing is effortless and gently philosophical, teaching quiet waiting, much like Sayuri's patience in her yearning for her true destiny.

'One evening in the spring of 1936, when I was a boy of fourteen, my father took me to a dance performance in Kyoto.'(opening line)

'White make-up causes all sorts of curious illusions; if a geisha were to paint the entire surface of her lips, her mouth would end up looking like two slices of tuna. So most geisha prefer a poutier shape, more like the bloom of a violet.'(66)

'We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course. If I'd never met Mr. Tanaka, my life would have been a simple stream flowing from our tipsy house to the ocean.'(105-106)

'The noise and the hubub of so many people living their lives of purpose around me seemed to stop; or at least, I ceased to be aware of it. And when I raised myself to look at the man who'd spoken, I had a feeling of leaving my misery behind me there on the stone wall.'(110-111)

'Now I understood the thing I've overlooked; the point wasn't to become a geisha, but to be one. To become a geisha... well, that was hardly a purpose in life. But to be a geisha... I could see it now as a stepping-stone to something else.'(114)

'I can see you have a great deal of water in your personality. Water never waits. It changes shape and flows around things, and finds the secret paths no one else has thought about -- the tiny hole through the roof or the bottom of the box. There's no doubt it's the most versatile of the five elements. It can wash away earth; it can put out fire; it can wear a piece of metal down and sweep it away. Even wood, which is its natural complement, can't survive without being nurtured by water. And yet, you haven't drawn on those strengths in living your life, have you?'(125)

'I'd never understood how closely things are connected to one another. and it isn't just the zodiac I'm talking about. We human beings are only a part of something very much larger. When we walk along, we may crush a beetle or simply cause a change in the air so that a fly ends up where it might never have gone otherwise. And if think of the same example but with ourselves in the role of the insect, and the larger universe in the role we've just played, it's perfectly clear that we're affected every day by forces over which we have no more control than the poor beetle has over our gigantic foot as it descends upon it. What are we to do? We must use whatever methods we can to understand the movement of the universe around us and time our actions so that we are not fighting the currents, but moving with them.'(127)

'That startling month in which I first came upon the Chairman again -- and met Nobu, and Dr. Crab, and Uchida Kosaburo -- made me feel something like a pet cricket that has at last escaped its wicker cage.'(223)

'... Mameha assured me that a man doesn't cultivate a relationship with a fifteen-year-old apprentice geisha unless he has her mizuage in mind.

"you can bet it isn't your conversation he's attracted to," she told me.'(233)

'Grief is a most peculiar thing; we're so helpless in the face of it. It's like a window that will simply open of its own accord. The room grows cold and we can do nothing but shiver. But it opens a little less each time, and a little less; and one day we wonder what has become of it.'(255)

'Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.'(348)

'But here I was again, like a girl trying to catch mice with her hands. Why couldn't I stop thinking about the Chairman?'(394)

'In the instant before that door opened, I could almost sense my life expanding just like a river whose waters have begun to swell; for I had never before taken such a drastic step to change the course of my own future. I was like a child tiptoeing along a precipice overlooking the sea. And yet somehow I hadn't imagined a great wave might come and strike me there, and wash everything away.'(406)

'Since the day I'd left Yorido, I'd done nothing but worry that every turn of life's wheel would bring yet another obstacle into my path; and of course, it was the worrying and the struggle that had always made life so vividly real to me. When we fight upstream against a rocky undercurrent, every foothold takes on a kind of urgency.'(419)

'But now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.'(closing lines)

Vintage Contemporaries Edition, February 1999

428 pages

Book owned

125. WILL GRAYSON, WILL GRAYSON

John Green & David Levithan 2010

An endearing young adult book about the friendship between Will Grayson who is straight and Tiny Cooper who is gay. After an unexpected twist of events, they meet another Will Grayson and all their lives change forever. The two authors of this book triumph in their collaboration and through alternating narration by the two Wills, the novel succeeds in highlighting today's modern teenage relationships. And as much as I like the two Will Graysons, I adore Tiny Cooper's character the most. I love that he is honest and warm-hearted and funny and talented and breathes music. With Tiny's fantabulous musical play as the perfect ending, I cannot help but recommend this book.

'When I was little, my dad used to tell me, "Will, you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose."(opening line)

'Tiny Cooper is not the world's gayest person, and he is not the world's largest person, but I believe he may be the world's largest person who is really, really gay, and also the world's gayest person who is really, really large."(3)

'i feel my life is so scattered right now. like it's all these small pieces of paper and someone's turned on the fan. but talking to you makes me feel like the fan's been turned off for a little bit. like things could actually make sense. you completely unscatter me, and i appreciate that so much.'(37)

"There aren't that many Will Graysons," he says. It's gotta mean something, one Will Grayson meeting another Will Grayson in a random porn store where neither Will Grayson belongs."(114)

'me: you know what sucks about love?

o.w.g. what?

me: that it's tied to truth.'(125)

"Like, do you believe that people's attitudes can change? One day you wake up and you realize something, you see something in a way that you never saw it before, and boom, epiphany. Something is different forever. Do you believe in that?"(130)

'with a dip of his head, tiny starts to hum a little to himself. once he's gotten the tune, he closes his eyes, opens his arms, and sings:

i thought you'd make my dreams come true

but it wasn't you, it wasn't you

i thought this time it would all be new

but it wasn't you, it wasn't you

i pictured all the things we'd do

but it wasn't you, it wasn't you'(143)

'after tiny has tried ballerina pose, swing-batter-batter pose, pump-up-the-jam pose, and top-of-the-mountain-sound-of-music pose in the reflection of the bean, he walks us to a bench overlooking lake shore drive. i think he'll be all sweaty because, let's face it, most fat people get sweaty just from lifting the twinkie to their mouth. but tiny is just too fabulous to sweat.'(146)

'when things break, it's not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. it's because a little piece gets lost -- the two remaining ends couldn't fit together even if they wanted to. the whole shape has changed.'((174)

'tiny: you know what's a great metaphor for love?

me: i have a feeling you're about to tell me. ...

tiny: sleeping beauty. ... because you have to plow through this incredible thicket of thorns in order to get to beauty, and even then, when you get there, you still have to wake her up.'(242)

"Being in a relationship, that's something you choose. Being friends, that's just something you are."(260)

'this is why we call people exes, i guess -- because the paths that cross in the middle end up separating at the end. it's too easy to see an X as a cross-out. it's not, because there's no way to cross out something like that. the X is a diagram of two paths.'(277)

'i lose track of how long it takes. then, when it's all over, the applause starts. the loudest applause you've ever heard.'(310)

a Dutton Book, hardcover First Edition

310 pages

Book owned

124. ETHAN FROME

Edith Wharton 1911

Ethan Frome catches the attention of an unnamed narrator who is new to the town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. The narrator ponders about Ethan's sullen demeanor, the circumstances surrounding the smash-up accident that caused his limp and his apparent devotion to the small town that seems always gray and wintry. In this remarkable novella, the mystery surrounding Ethan Frome vividly unfolds as we learn about his life as a struggling farmer, his loveless marriage to Zeena and his unspoken and unrealized passion for Matti.

'I had known something of New England village life long before I made my home in the same county as my imaginary Starkfield; though, during the years spent there, certain of its aspects became much more familiar to me.'(opening lines)

It was there that, several years ago, I saw him for the first time; and the sight pulled me up sharp. Even then he was the most striking figure in Starkfield, though he was but the ruin of a man... There was something bleak and unapproachable in his face, and he was so stiffened and grizzled that I took him for an old man and was surprised to hear that he was not more than fifty-two.'(3)

"Sickness and trouble: that's what Ethan's had his plate full up with, ever since the very first helping.'(13)

'He never turned his face to mine, or answered, except in monosyllables, the questions I put, of such slight pleasantries as I ventured. He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface; but there was nothing unfriendly in his silence. I simply felt that he lived in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access, and I had the sense that his loneliness was not merely the result of his personal plight, tragic as I guessed that to be, but had in it, as Harmon Gow had hinted, the profound accumulated cold of many Starkfield winters.'(14-15)

'The night was perfectly still, and the air so dry and pure that it gave little sensation of cold. The effect produced on Frome was rather of a complete absence of atmosphere, as though nothing less tenuous than ether intervened between the white earth under his feet and the metallic dome overhead. "It's like being in an exhausted receiver," he thought.'(27)

'Once or twice in the past he had been fairly disquieted by Zenobia's way of letting things happen without seeming to remark them, and then, weeks afterward, in a casual phase, revealing that she had all along taken her notes and drawn her inferences. Of late, however, there had been no room in his thoughts for such vague apprehensions. Zeena herself, from an oppressive reality, had faded into an unsubstantial shade. All his life was lived in the sight of sound of Mattie Silver, and he could no longer conceive of it being otherwise.'(39)

'These alterations of mood were the despair and joy of Ethan Frome. The motion of her mind were as incalculable as the flit of a bird in the branches. The fact that he had no right to show his feelings, and thus provoke the expression of hers, made him attach a fantastic importance to every change in her look and tone. Now he thought she understood him, and feared; now he was sure she did not, and despaired.'(46)

'"I've been in a dream, and this is the only evening we'll ever have together." The return to reality was as painful as the return to consciousness after taking an anaesthetic. His body and brain ached with indescribable weariness, and he could think of nothing to say or to do that should arrest the mad flight of the moments.'(95)

'With the sudden perception of the point to which his madness had carried him, the madness fell and he saw his life before him as it was.'(143)

"I know we can fetch it... It's waiting for us, it seems to know."(170)

A Penguin book Edition, 1987

181 pages

Book owned

A fantastic review of the book from Coffee and a Book Chick is here.