135. a WALK in the WOODS

Bill Bryson 1998

A highly informative book about the author's fond, hilarious, and totally entertaining experience while walking the Appalachian Trail. As he and his fellow unlikely hiker and traveling companion Stephen Katz walk the trails and commune with nature, in a funny, descriptive but sometimes satirical way, he also gives tidbits of information regarding some of his thoughts on America and the environment.

'Not long after I moved with my family to a small town in New Hampshire I happened upon a path that vanished into a wood on the edge of town.'(opening lines)

'Nearly everyone I talked to had some gruesome story involving a guileless acquaintance who had gone off hiking the trail with high hopes and new boots and come stumbling back two days later with a bobcat attached to his head or dripping blood from an armless sleeve and whispering in a hoarse voice, "Bear!" before sinking into a troubled unconsciousness.'(5)

'The path they built had no historical basis. It didn't follow any Indian trails or colonial post roads. It didn't even seek out the best views, highest hills, or most notable landmarks. In the end, it went nowhere near Mount Mitchell, though it did take in Mount Washington and then carried on another 350 miles to Mount Katahdin in Maine.'(29)

'It was hell. First days on hiking trips always are. I was hopelessly out of shape -- hopelessly. The pack weighed way too much. Way too much. I have never encountered anything so hard, for which I was so ill prepared. Every step was a struggle.'(35)

'Finally with a weary puff, you roll over, unhook yourself from your pack, struggle to your feet, and realize -- again in a remote, light-headed, curiously not-there way -- that the view is sensational: a homeless vista of wooded mountains, unmarked by human hand, marching off in every direction. This really could be heaven. It's splendid, no question, but the thought you cannot escape is that you have to walk this view, and this is the barest fraction of what you will traverse before you've finished.'(36)

'There is no point in hurrying because you are not going anywhere. However far or long you plod, you are always in the same place: in the woods. It's where you were yesterday, where you will be tomorrow. The woods is one boundless singularity. Every bend in the path presents a prospect indistinguishable from every other, every glimpse into the trees the same tangled mass. For all you know, your route could describe a very large, pointless circle. In a way, it would hardly matter.'(72)

'At the time of our hike, the Appalachian Trail was fifty-nine years old. That is, by American standards, incredibly venerable. The Oregon and Santa Fe Trails didn't last long. Route 66 didn't last long. The old coast-to-coast Lincoln Highway, a road that brought transforming wealth and life to hundreds of little towns, so important and familiar that it became known as "America's Main Street," didn't last long. Nothing in America does. If a product or enterprise doesn't constantly reinvent itself, it is superseded, cast aside, abandoned without sentiment in favor of something bigger, newer, alas, nearly always uglier. And then there is the good old AT, still quietly ticking along after six decades, unassuming, splendid, faithful to its founding principles, sweetly unaware that the world has quite moved on. It's a miracle really.'(104)

'I don't mean to suggest that hiking the AT drives you potty, just that it takes a certain kind of person to do it.'(114)

'That was the trouble with the AT -- it was all one immensely long place, and there was more of it, infinitely more of it, than I could ever conquer. It wasn't that I wanted to quit. Quite the contrary. I was happy to walk, keen to walk. I just wanted to know what I was doing out here.'(177)

'In America, alas, beauty has become something you strive to, and nature an either/or proposition -- either you ruthlessly subjugate it, as at Tocks Dam and a million other places, or you defy it, treat it as something holy and remote, a thing apart, as along the Appalachian Trail. Seldom would it occur to anyone on either side that people and nature could coexist to their mutual benefit -- that, say, a more graceful bridge across the Delaware River might actually set off the grandeur around it, that the AT might be more interesting and rewarding if it wasn't all wilderness, if from time to time it purposely took you past grazing cows and tilled fields.'(200)

'I still had my wits about me. Or at least I felt as if I did. Presumably, a confused person would be too addled to recognize that he was confused. Ergo, if you know that you are not confused then you are not confused. Unless, it suddenly occurred to me -- and here was an arresting notion -- unless persuading yourself that you are  not confused is merely a cruel, early symptom of confusion. Or even an advanced symptom. Who could tell? For all I knew I could be stumbling into some kind of helpless preconfusional state characterized by the fear on the part of the sufferer that he may be stumbling into some kind of helpless preconfusional state. That's the trouble with losing your mind; by the time it's gone, it's too late to get it back.'(225)

"Well, has it occurred to you what a ranger would say if he found you setting off the Hundred Mile Wilderness with a newspaper delivery bag? Do you know they have the power to detain anyone they think is not mentally or physically fit?" This was actually a lie, but it brought a promising hint of frown to his brow. "Also, has it occurred to you that maybe the reason paperboys don't get hernias is that they only carry the bag for an hour or so a day -- that maybe it might not be so comfortable lugging it for ten hours at a stretch over mountains -- that maybe it would bang endlessly against your legs and rub your shoulders raw?"(237)

'It is an extraordinary experience to find yourself face-to-face in the woods with a wild animal that is very much larger than you. You know these things are out there, of course, but you never expect any particular moment to encounter one, certainly not up close -- and this one was close enough that I could see the haze of flealike insects floating in circles about its head. We stared at each other for a good minute, neither of us sure what to do. There was a certain obvious and gratifying tang of adventure in this, but also something much more low-key and elemental -- a kind of respectful mutual acknowledgment that comes with sustained eye contact. It was this that was unexpectedly thrilling -- the sense that there was in some small measure a salute in our cautious mutual appraisal. I was smitten.'(241)

'I had come to realize that I didn't have any feelings towards the AT trail that weren't confused and contradictory. I was weary of the trail, but still strangely in its thrall; found the endless slog tedious but irresistible; grew tired of the boundless woods but admired their boundlessness; enjoyed the escape from civilization and ached for its comforts. I wanted to quit and to do this forever, sleep in a bed and in a tent, see what was over the next hill and never see a hill again. All of this all at once, every moment, on the trail or off.'(271)

Broadway Books, First Paperback edition 1999
274 pages
Book borrowed from the library
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

134. the WOMAN in WHITE

Wilkie Collins 1859-1860

Secrets and mysteries abound in this classic Victorian thriller. Even the scatter of foreshadowing of impending gloom did not seem to take away from the thrill of slowly and leisurely uncovering the layers of truth the story offers. A collection of narratives in epistolary form, explain the puzzling appearance and the later disappearance of Anne Catherick, the woman in white, and her important role in the future life of Laura Fairlie, a woman who also just happens to look like her.  Laura's half-sister, Marian Halcombe proves to be a very brave and persistent sleuth, a trait that even captivates the villain Count Fosco. Walter Hartwright, Laura's drawing teacher who later falls in love with her, is equally unyielding and determined to clear her good name.  A very enjoyable book. 

'This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.'(opening line)

'There in the middle of the broad, bright high-road -- there, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth or dropped from the heaven -- stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white garments, her face bent in grave inquiry on mine, her hand pointing to the dark cloud over London, as I faced her.'(47)

'At any time, and under any circumstances of human interest, is it not strange to see how little real hold the objects of the natural world amid which we live can gain on our hearts and minds? We go to Nature for comfort in trouble, and sympathy in joy, only in books.'(79)

'Yes, my hardly earned self-control was as completely lost to me as if I had never possessed it; lost to me, as it is lost every day to other men, in other critical situations, where women are concerned. I know, now, that I should have questioned myself from the first. I should have asked why any room in the house was better than home to me when she entered it, and barren as a desert when she went out again -- why I always noticed and remembered the little changes in her dress that I had noticed and remembered in no other woman's before -- why I saw her, heard her, and touched her (when we shook hands at night and morning) as I had never seen, heard, and touched any other woman in my life?'(90)

'The foreboding of some undiscoverable danger lying hid from us all in the darkness of the future was strong on me. The doubt whether I was not linked already to a chain of events which even my approaching departure from Cumberland would be powerless to snap asunder -- the doubt whether we any of us saw the end as the end would really be -- gathered more and more darkly over my mind. Poignant as it was, the sense of suffering caused by the miserable end of my brief, presumptuous love seemed to be blunted and deadened by the still stronger sense of something obscurely impending, something invisibly threatening, that Time was holding over our heads.'(101)

'When a sensible woman has a serious question put to her, and evades it by a flippant answer, it is a sure sign, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, that she has something to conceal.'(163)

'There are many varieties of sharp practitioners in this world, but I think the hardest of all to deal with are the men who overreach you under the disguise of inveterate good-humour.'(175)

'Men! They are the enemies of our innocence and our peace -- they drag us away from our parents' love and our sisters' friendship -- they take us body and soul to themselves, and fasten our helpless lives to theirs as they chain up a dog to his kennel. And what does the best of them give us in return?'(203)

'The unsolved mystery in connection with this unhappy woman is now rendered doubly suspicious, in my eyes, by the absolute conviction which I feel, that the clue to it has been hidden by Sir Percival from the most intimate friend he has in the world... There are many kinds of curiosity, I know -- but there is no misinterpreting the curiosity of blank surprise: if I ever saw it in my life I saw it in the Count's face.'(262)

'Women can resist a man's love, a man's fame, a man's personal appearance, and a man's money, but they cannot resist a man's tongue when he knows how to talk to them.'(278)

'Men little know when they say hard things to us how well we remember them, and much harm they do us.'(281)

'Any woman who is sure of her own wits is a match at any time for a man who is not sure of his own temper.'(332)

'That sublime self-forgetfulness of women, which yields so much and asks so little, turned all her thoughts from herself to me.'(565)

a Penguin Book Edition
646 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: Victorian Challenge
                               100+ Reading Challenge

at the WIZARDING WORLD of HARRY POTTER

Just a few of my favorite pictures from the magical Harry Potter land. A truly amazing, awesome trip!!!

Some pictures of Hogwarts castle:

Entrance to my favorite ride: the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey - a quidditch simulation

While waiting in line for the ride, you also feel like you are touring the Hogwarts castle:

some of these portraits talk to each other

at Honeydukes

Olivander at his Wand shop

Delicious Butterbeer which is root beer with foamy Butterschotch topping

READING AWAY

at the WIZARDING WORLD of HARRY POTTER
Universal Studios, Orlando, Florida
January 21-26, 2011

All pictures taken from Universal Studios Website

I am hoping to read The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson and continue rereading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I am so excited! Be back soon!!

133. CHARLOTTE'S WEB

E. B. White 1952
with illustrations by Garth Williams

If you've ever felt nostalgic for a really good, wholesome and hugely entertaining book, this is the book for you.  How can we forget the story of Fern's pet pig Wilbur, who found the most unlikely best friend in a delightful and skillful spider named Charlotte?  It's a  story of friendship and loyalty, set in a place where the children are truly innocent and carefree, where the changing seasons of country life are heralded by creatures such as crickets in the fall, birds in the summer and frogs in the spring, and where even the rat Templeton becomes a helpful and adorable hero.  I love this book now more than I ever did. It is so far my top favorite children's book. 

'"Where's Papa going with that ax?" said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.
"Out to the hoghouse," replied Mrs. Arable. "Some pigs were born last night.'(opening lines)

'The barn was very large. It was very old. It smelled of hay and it smelled of manure. It smelled of the perspiration of tired horses and the wonderful sweet breath of patient cows. It often had a sort of peaceful smell -- as though nothing bad could happen ever again in the world.'(13)

"What do you mean less than nothing?" replied Wilbur. "I don't think there is any thing as less than nothing. Nothing is absolutely the limit of nothingness. It's the lowest you can go. It's the end of the line. How can something be less than nothing? If there were something that was less than nothing, then nothing would not be nothing, it would be something -- even though it's just a very little bit of something. But if nothing is nothing, then nothing has nothing that is less than it is."(28)

'The early summer days on a farm are the happiest and fairest days of the year. Lilacs bloom and make the air sweet, and then fade. Apple blossoms come with the lilacs, and the bees visit around among the apple trees. The days grow warm and soft.'(42)

"What do people catch in the Queesborough Bridge --- bugs?" asked Wilbur.
"No," said Charlotte. "They don't catch anything. They just keep trotting back and forth across the bridge thinking there is something better on the other side. If they'd hang head-down at the top of the thing and wait quietly, maybe something good would come along. But no --- with men, it's rush, rush, rush, every minute. I'm glad I'm a sedentary spider."(60)

'Templeton, of course, was miserable over the loss of his beloved egg. But he couldn't resist boasting. "It pays to save things," he said in a surly voice. "A rat never knows when something is going to come in handy. I never throw anything away."(74)

'On foggy mornings, Charlotte's web was truly a thing of beauty. This morning each thin strand was decorated with dozens of tiny beads of water. The web glistened in the light and made a pattern of loveliness and mystery, like a delicate veil. Even Lurvy, who wasn't particularly interested in beauty, noticed the web when he came with the pig's breakfast. He noted how clearly it showed up and he noted how big and carefully built it was. And then he took another look and he saw something that made him set his pail down. There, in the center of the web, neatly woven in block letters, was a message. It said:

SOME PIG!'(77)

'Wilbur blushed. "But I'm not terrific, Charlotte. I'm just an average for a pig."

"You're terrific as far as I'm concerned," replied Charlotte, sweetly, "and that's what counts. You're my best friend, and I think you're sensational. Now stop arguing and go get some sleep."'(91)

"But for that matter I don't understand how a spider learned to spin a web in the first place. When the words appeared, everyone said they were a miracle. But nobody pointed out that the web itself is a miracle.'(109)

'It is not easy to look radiant, but Wilbur threw himself into it with a will. He would turn his head slightly and blink his long eye-lashes. Then he would breathe deeply. And when his audience grew bored, he would spring into the air and do a back flip with a half twist. At this the crowd would yell and cheer.'(114)

a Harper Trophy Edition

184 pages

Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

132. CLOCKWORK ANGEL

The INFERNAL DEVICES Book 1

Cassandra Clare 2010

This is my first venture to the supernatural world of Cassandra Clare, having not read the Mortal Instruments books and I can say that this part paranormal, part steampunk book is a nice and welcome change. Set in Victorian London 1878, 16 year old Tessa travels from New York to find her missing brother Nathaniel but instead is thrown into the world of Shadowhunters, warlocks and vampires. She also discovers that she herself is a Shape-changer. The first in a series of three books, the story is fast paced, action packed, with a subtle romantic angle and enough unanswered questions to keep me waiting for the next one.

'The demon exploded in a shower of ichor and guts. William Herondale jerked back the dagger he was holding, but it was too late. The viscous acid of the demon's blood had already begun to eat away at the shining blade'(opening lines)

'Tessa could not remember a time when she had not loved the clockwork angel. It had belonged to her mother once, and her mother had been wearing it when she died. After that it had sat in her mother's jewelry box, until her brother, Nathaniel, took it out one day to see if it was still in working order.'(6)

'If no one in the entire world cared about you, did you really exist at all?'(17)

'Suddenly she heard Aunt Harriet's voice in her head: When you find a man you wish to marry, Tessa, remember this: You will know what kind of man he is not by the things he says, but by the things he does.'(33)

'Charlotte nodded. 'I am one of the Nephilim -- the Shadowhunters. We are ... a race, if you will, of people, people with special abilities. We are stronger and swifter than most humans. We are able to conceal ourselves with magics called glamours. And we are especially skilled at killing demons."'(59)

'It was always the same: nothing at first, then the flicker of something at the back of her mind, like someone lighting a candle in a dark room. She groped her way toward it, as the Dark Sisters had taught her. It was hard to strip away the fear and the shyness, but she had done it enough times now to know what to expect -- the reaching forward to touch the light at the center of the darkness; the sense of light and enveloping warmth, as if she were drawing a blanket, something thick and heavy, around herself, covering every layer of her own skin; and then the light blazing up and surrounding her -- and she was inside it. Inside someone else's skin. Inside their mind.'(74)

'Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.'(87)

'Now that she had worn other faces, seen through other eyes, how could she ever say any face was really her own, even if it was the face she had been given at birth? When she Changed back to herself, how was she to know there wasn't some slight shift in her very self, something that made her not who she was anymore? Or did it matter what she looked like at all? Was her face nothing but a mask of flesh, irrelevant to her true self?'(111)

"I believe in good and evil," said Jem. "And I believe the soul is eternal. But I don't believe in the fiery pit, the pitchforks, or endless torment. I do not believe you can threaten people into goodness."(175)

"Sophie said to me once that she was glad she had been scarred. She said that whoever loved her now would love her true self, and not her pretty face. This is your true self, Tessa. This power is who you are. Whoever loves you now -- and you  must also love yourself -- will love the truth of you."(197)

"Whatever you are physically -- all those things matter less than what your heart contains. If you have a soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. Whatever the color, the shape, the design of the shade that conceals it, the flame inside the lamp remains the same."(283)

'Twenty bridges from Tower to Kew

Wanted to know what the River knew

For they were young and the Thames was old,

And this is the tale that the River told.

-Rudyard Kipliing, "The River's Tale"'(310)

a Margaret K McElderry Books First Edition

478 pages

Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

131. MADAME BOVARY

Gustave Flaubert  1857
Translated from French by Francis Steegmuller

In this classic book with wondrous prose, Emma Bovary is a madame with an absolutely restless heart. Intense feelings of disenchantment, unfulfillment and discontent surround her life.  She is forever in search of luxury, ardent love and passion and mistakenly assumes that a better lover and an altogether better life awaits her. And so she forgets her daughter Berthe and deceives her husband Charles, all in this endless search. What fraud, lies and cunning manipulations will she commit to attain it? Whose lives will she hurt ruin and destroy? 

'We were in the study-hall when the headmaster entered, followed by a new boy not yet in school uniform and by the handyman carrying a large desk.'(opening line)

'Before her marriage she had thought that she had love within her grasp; but since the happiness which she had expected this love to bring her hadn't come, she supposed she must have been mistaken. And Emma tried to imagine just what was meant, in life, by the words "bliss," "passion," and "rapture"--- words that had seemed so beautiful to her in books.'(40)

'She loved the sea for its storms alone, cared for vegetation only when it grew here and there among things; and she rejected as useless everything that promised no immediate gratification --- for her temperament was more sentimental than artistic, and what she was looking for was emotions, not scenery.'(42)

'She  might have been glad to confide all these things to someone. But how speak about so elusive a malaise, one that keeps changing its shape like the clouds and its direction like the winds?'(47)

'Indeed the closer to her things were, the further away from her thoughts turned. Everything immediately surrounding her --- boring countryside, inane petty bourgeois, the mediocrity of daily life --- seemed to her the exception rather than the rule. She had been caught in it all by some accident: out beyond, there stretched as far as eye could see the immense territory of rapture and passions. In her longing she made no difference between the pleasures of luxury and the joys of the heart, between elegant living and sensitive feeling.'(68)

'Deep down, all the while, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, she kept casting desperate glances over the solitary waste of her life, seeking some white sail in the distant mists of the horizon. She had no idea by what wind it would reach her, toward what shore it would bear her, or what kind of craft it would be--- tiny boat or towering vessel, laden with heartbreaks or filled to the gunwales with rapture.  But every morning when she awoke she hoped that today would be the day; she listened for every sound, gave sudden starts, was surprised when nothing happened; and then, sadder with each succeeding sunset, she longed for tomorrow.'(72-73)

"Have you ever had the experience," Leon went on, "of running across in a book some vague idea you've had, some image that you realize has been lurking all the time in the back of your mind and now seems to express absolutely your most subtle feelings?"(99)

'Future joys are like tropic shores: out into the immensity that lies before them they waft their native softness, a fragrant breeze that drugs the traveler into drowsiness and makes him careless of what awaits him on the horizon beyond his view.'(113)

'As for Emma, she never tried to find out whether she was in love with him. Love, to her, was something that comes suddenly, like a blinding flash of lightning --- a heaven-sent storm hurled into life, uprooting it, sweeping every will before it like a leaf, engulfing all feelings. It never occurred to her that if the drainpipes of a house are clogged, the rain may collect in pools on the roof; and she suspected no danger until suddenly she discovered a crack in the wall.'(119)

'He had had such things said to him so many times that none of them had any freshness for him. Emma was like all his other mistresses; and as the charm of novelty gradually slipped from her like a piece of her clothing, he saw revealed in all its nakedness the eternal monotony of passion, which always assumes the same forms and always speaks the same language.'(224)

'Whereas the truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.'(224)

'With her ever-changing moods, by turns brooding and gay, chattering and silent, fiery and casual, she aroused in him a thousand desires, awakening instincts or memories.'(313)

'Lying became a need, a mania, a positive joy --- to such a point that if she said that she had walked down the right-hand side of a street the day before, it meant that she had gone down the left.'(319)

'But casting aspersions on those we love always does something to loosen our ties. We shouldn't maltreat our idols: the gilt comes off on our hands.'(333)

'No matter: she wasn't happy, and never had been. Why was life so unsatisfactory? Why did everything she leaned on crumble instantly to dust?'(334)

First Vintage Classic Edition January 1992
411 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for : Victorian Challenge 
                               100+ Reading Challenge 

130. GIFT from the SEA

Anne Morrow Lindbergh 1955

This short,  uncomplicated but vastly inspiring book was written by the author while taking respite for two weeks alone in a simple cottage on the beach at Captiva island.  She collects five shells: channelled whelk, moon shell, double-sunrise shell, an oyster bed and a paper nautilus, all of which prove symbolic of the different stages in a woman's life. Her thoughts form this beautiful book--- her gift from the sea. Not surprisingly, I find this book so timeless and maybe even more relevant now during our busy days of multi-tasking. The one book I reread in January each year. 


'I began these pages for myself, in order to think out my own particular pattern of living, my own individual balance of life, work and human relationships.'(opening line)

'The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach---waiting for a gift from the sea.'(17)

'My shell is not like this, I think. How untidy it has become! Blurred with moss, knobby with barnacles, its shape is hardly recognizable any more. Surely, it had a shape once. It has a shape still in my mind. What is the shape of my life?'(22)

'But I want first of all---in fact, as an end to these other desires---to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can.'(23)

'I have learned by some experience, by many examples, and by the writings of countless others before me, also occupied in the search, that certain environments are more conducive to inner and outer harmony than others. There are, in fact, certain roads that one may follow. Simplification of life is one of them.'(24)

'What a circus act we women perform every day of our lives. It puts the trapeze artist to shame. Look at us. We run a tight rope daily, balancing a pile of books on the head.'(26)

'The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting; one is wearing a mask.'(32)

'Only when one is connected to one own's core is one connected to others, I am beginning to discover. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.'(44)

'Perhaps middle age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of  material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego. Perhaps one can shed at this stage of life as one sheds in beach-living; one's pride, one's false ambition, one's mask, one's armor.'(84-85)

'When each partner loves so completely that he has forgotten to ask himself whether  or not he is loved in return; when he only knows that he loves and is moving to music---then, and then only, are two people able to dance perfectly in tune to the same rhythm.'(106)

'For relationships, too, must be like islands. One must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits---islands, surrounded and abandoned by the tides. One must accept the security of the winged life, of ebb and flow, of intermittency.'(109)

'The waves echo behind me. Patience---Faith---Openness, is what the sea has to teach. Simplicity---Solitude---Intermittency ... But there are other beaches to explore. There are more shells to find. This is only a beginning.'(Closing lines)

a Pantheon book edition
128 pages
Book owned

129. CORALINE

Neil Gaiman 2002
with illustration by Dave McKean

An enjoyable and imaginative but spooky fairy tale with some eerie illustrations  perfect for older children. Soon after Coraline and her family moves into a new house, she discovers a secret door which leads to her other house, a better, livelier, and altogether more enjoyable replica of her current house, complete with her other neighbors and other parents all distinguishable as others because of their button eyes. She meets a wise black cat who helps her realize that the place isn't really what it seems to be and she soon discovers many appalling things including the fact that her parents have also disappeared. How does she plan her escape and be with her real parents again?

'Coraline discovered the door a little while after they moved into the house.'(opening line)

'..."The  mice have a message for you... The message is this. Don't go through the door." He paused. "Does that mean anything to you?"(16)

'Coraline wondered why so few of the adults she had met made any sense. She sometimes wondered who they thought they were talking to.'(20)

'She also wondered whether cats could all talk where she come from and just chose not to, or whether they could only talk when they were here---wherever here was.'(38)

'You ask your mother to make you a big old mug of hot chocolate and then give you a great big old hug. There's nothing like hot chocolate and a hug for making the nightmares go away.'(55)

'The cat wrinkled its nose and managed to look unimpressed. "Calling cats," it confided, "tends to be a rather overrated activity. Might as well call a whirlwind.'(65)

'She put the stone into the pocket of her jeans, and it was as if her head had cleared a little. As if she had come out of some sort of a fog.'(69)

'I'm an explorer, thought Coraline to herself. And I need all the ways out of here that I can get. So I shall keep walking.
The world she was walking through was a pale nothingness, like a blank sheet of paper or an enormous, empty white room. It had no temperature, no smell, no texture, and no taste. '(73)

'The cat dropped the rat between its two front paws. "There are those," it said with a sigh, in tones as smooth as oiled silk, "who have suggested that the tendency of a cat to play with its prey is a merciful one---after all, it permits the occasional funny little running snack to escape, from time to time. How often does your dinner get to escape?"'(76)

'The other mother smiled. "Mirrors," she said, " are never to be trusted. Now, what game shall we play?"(77)

'Coraline sighed. "You really don't understand, do you?" she said. "I don't want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. what kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted? Just like that, and it didn't mean anything, What then?"'(120)

First Harper Trophy edition, 2003
162 pages
Book owned

128. CATCH ME IF YOU CAN

Frank W. Abagnale 1980
with Stan Redding

An intriguing memoir of Frank W Abagnale, outlining his life as the ultimate fake and con man. As I read his life story as a swindler and check forger, posing his way as a pilot, a pediatrician, a lawyer, an author and whatever else he needs to be to amass thousands of dollars, I found myself in a dilemna: hate his guts or admire him? And it doesn't help that I so thoroughly love the movie and Frank's character as played by Leonardo di Caprio, and that in the book, unlike the movie, he did actually pay for his crime in the most horrid inhumane way at a French prison, and that he ultimately turned his life around and is instrumental in revamping bank and secure-document safety by working with the FBI Financial Crimes unit. I am still left with the nagging question:  in this book, in Frank's life, does crime pay?

'A man's alter ego is nothing more than his favorite image of himself. The mirror in my room in the Windsor Hotel in Paris reflected my favorite image of me -- a darkly handsome young airline pilot, smooth-skinned, bull-shouldered and immaculately groomed. Modesty is not one of my virtues. At the time, virtue was not one of my virtues.'(opening lines)

'Someone once said there's no such thing as an honest man. He was probably a con man.'(13)

'The baby had lost his doleful look. No one is really certain if newborn infants have thoughts or are aware of what is going on around them.  No one but me, that is. That kid knew I was a phony. I could see it in his face.'(95)

'The National Crime Information Center (NCIC) did not exist as a police tool during the period. Had I had to contend with the computerized police link, with its vast and awesome reservoir of criminal facts and figures, my career would probably have been shortened by years. And lastly, I was pioneering a scam that was so implausible, so seemingly impossible and so brass-balled blatant that it worked.'(62-63)

'And all day long I'd go around feeling like Hippocrates in my hypocrite's mantle.'(83)

'I hadn't even finished high school and had yet to step on college campus, but I was a certified lawyer! However, I regarded my actual lack of academic qualifications merely a technicality, and in my four months of legal cramming I'd learned the law is full of technicalities. Technicalities are what screw up justice.'(105)

'I have since learned something about Harvard men. They're like badgers. They like to stick together in their own barrows. A lone badger is going to find another badger. A Harvard man in a strange area is going to find another Harvard man. And they're going to talk about Harvard.'(108)

'The former police chief of Houston once said of me: "Frank Abagnale could write a check on toilet paper, drawn on the Confederate States Treasury, sign it 'U.R. Hooked' and cash it at any back in town, using a Hong Kong driver's license for identification."(116)

'The transaction also verified a suspicion I had long entertained: it's not how good a check looks but how good the person behind the check looks that influences tellers and cashiers.'(120)

'A con artist's only weapon is his brain.'(129)

'I learned later that I was the first check swindler to use the routing number racket. It drove bankers up the wall. They didn't know what the hell was going on. They do now and they owe me.'(156)

'Four months after taking up residence in Montpellier, I learned a bitter truth: when the hounds have help, there is no safe place for a fox to hide.'(221)

First Broadway Book movie tie-in edition 2002
277 pages
Book owned