156. the PILLARS of the EARTH

Ken Follett 1989

Set in medieval England, this absorbing and immense historical fiction encompasses generations of church builders whose aim is to built the most magnificent Kingsbridge Cathedral. The intricate plot includes a tapestry of love, greed, power, war, religion, politics of government and church, and is told with a heavy but necessary dose of descriptive architectural information as well as memorable strong characters such as Prior Philip, the two church builders Tom and Jack, Ellen, Aliena and Prince William Hamleigh. An epic saga worth reading!

'The small boys came early to the hanging.'(opening line)

'The girl turned her hypnotic golden eyes on the three strangers, the knight, the monk and the priest, and then she pronounced her curse, calling out the terrible words in ringing tones:"I curse you with sickness and sorrow, with hunger and pain; your house shall be consumed by fire, and your children shall die on the gallows; your enemies shall prosper, and you shall grow old in sadness and regret, and die in foulness and agony...'(15)

'Any fool can get into a fight, but a wise man knows how to stay out of them.'(34)

'They were inside the walled cathedral close, which occupied the moment taking it in. Just seeing and hearing and smelling it gave him a thrill like a sunny day. As they arrived behind the cartload of stone, two more carts were leaving empty. In lean-to-sheds all along the side walls of the church, masons could be seen sculpting the stone blocks, with iron chisels and big wooden hammers, into the shapes that would be put together to form plinths, columns, capitals, shafts, buttresses, arches, windows, sills, pinnacles and parapets... To most people it was a scene of chaos, but Tom saw a large and complex mechanism which he itched to control. He knew what each was doing and he could see instantly how far the work had progressed. They were building the east facade.'(45)

'Hunger is the best seasoning.'(62)

'...excessive pride is a familiar sin, but a man may just as easily frustrate the will of God through excessive humility.'(136)

'William hated churches. They were cold and dim even in fine weather, and there was always that faintly corrupt smell lingering in the dark corners and the low tunnels of the ailes. Worst of all, churches made him think of the torments of hell, and he was frightened of hell.'(157)

'Tom designed the three levels of the nave wall -- arcade, gallery and clerestory -- strictly in the proportions 3:1:2. The arcade was half the height of the wall, and the gallery was one third of the rest. Proportion was everything in a church: it gave a subliminal feeling or rightness to the whole building. Studying the finished drawing, Tom thought it looked perfectly graceful. But would Phillip think so? Tom could see the tiers of arches marching down the length of the church, with their moldings and carvings picked out by an afternoon sun... but would Philip see the same?'(290)

'High-born people make poor servants. They are disobedient, resentful, thoughtless, touchy, and they think they're working hard even though they do less than everyone else -- so they cause trouble among the rest of the staff.'(364)

'To swear an oath is to put your soul at risk...  Never take an oath unless you're sure you would rather die than break it.'(376)

'Having faith in God did not mean sitting back and doing nothing. It meant believing that you would find success if you did your best honestly and energetically. Philip's holy duty was to do all he could to prevent the cathedral from falling into the hands of cynical and immoral people who would exploit it for their own aggrandizement.''(417)

'The first casualty of civil war was justice.'(475)

'... Jack was too absorbed in his work to hear the bell. He was mesmerized by the challenge of making soft, round shapes of hard rock. The stone had a will of its own, and if he tried to make it do something it did not want to do, it would fight him, and his chisel would slip, or dig in too deeply, spoiling the shapes. But once he had got to know the lump of rock in front of him he could transform it. The more difficult the task, the more fascinated he was. He was beginning to feel that the decorative carving demanded by Tom was too easy. Zigzags, lozenges, dogtooth, spirals and plain roll moldings bored him, and even these leaves were rather stiff and repetitive. He wanted to curve natural-looking foliage, pliable and irregular, and copy the different shapes of real leaves, oak and ash and birch...'(520)

'She stood in what would be the crossing and looked at the chancel. It was finished but for the roof, and the builders were getting ready for the next phase, the transepts: already the plan had been laid out on the ground on either side of her with stakes and string, and the men had started digging the foundations. The towering walls in front of her cast long shadows in the late-afternoon sun. It was a mild day, but the cathedral felt cold. Aliena looked for a long time at the rows of round arches, large at ground level, small above, and mid-sized on top. There was something deeply satisfying about the regular rhythm of arch, pier, arch, pier.'(614)

'He would never work on another church like Kingsbridge Cathedral, he thought as he sat in the warm Spanish afternoon, listening vaguely to the laughter of the women somewhere deep in the big cool house. He still wanted to build the most beautiful cathedral in the world, but it would not be a massive, solid, fortress-like structures. He wanted to use the new techniques, the rib-vaults and the pointed arches... A picture of a church was forming in his mind. The details were hazy but the overall feeling was very strong: it was a spacious, airy building, with sunlight pouring through its huge windows, and an arched vault so high it seemed to reach heaven.'(685)

'Aliena shaded her eyes. The sunlight coming through the windows at the east end of the church dazzled her. Like a vision, a figure walked her out of the blaze of colored sunshine. He looked as if his hair was on fire. He came closer. It was Jack... Aliena felt faint.'(696)

'The purpose of a wall is to force a delay on the enemy while he's in an exposed position, and enable the defender to bombard him from a sheltered position.'(745)

'Aliena felt an affinity for Ellen: they were both oddities, women who did not fit into the mold.'(788)

'... castles taken by cowardice, trickery or treachery.'(849)

'The more he thought about it, the better he liked it. He visualized the church from the west. The half-arches would look like the wings of a flight of birds, all in a line, just about to take off. They need not be massive. As long as they were well made they could be slender and elegant, light yet strong, just like a bird's wing. Winged buttresses, he thought, for a church so light it could fly.'(874)

'"The seventh step of humility is reached when a man not only confesses with his tongue that he is most lowly and inferior to others, but in his inmost heart believes so." Philip knew he had not yet reached that stage of humility. He had achieved a great deal in his sixty-two years, and he had achieved it through courage and determination and the use of his brain; and he needed to remind himself constantly that the real reason for his success was that he had enjoyed the help of God, without which all his efforts would have come to nothing.'(931)

'Was it possible?
There was something familiar about this situation, he realized. A mutilated corpse, a crowd of onlookers, and some soldiers in the distance: where had he seen this before? What should happen next, he felt, was that a small group of followers of the dead man would range themselves against all the power and authority of the mighty empire.
Of course. That was how Christianity started.'(960)

New American Library Deluxe Edition
973 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge
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Personal Note:
So sorry for the double posting. My new laptop is confusing me. I should remember to change the publish post date, to prevent these accidental premature postings. Is there anyway to delete a post completely so it does not show on the dashboard? Any other tips for a computer novice like me?

155. the SWEETNESS at the BOTTOM of the PIE

Alan Bradley 2009

This is the first of (hopefully) many more Flavia de Luce mystery books to come. Flavia is an adorable and spunky eleven-year-old sleuth who has a passion for chemistry, specifically poisons. Unlike her sisters Feely and Daffy, she devotes all her time studying them in her own laboratory. But when she finds a dead bird with an orange stamp on its beak, and soon after finds a dead man in her backyard, she must hurry and find the culprit. A brilliant simple mystery infused with enough charm, humor and suspense to keep me asking for more!

'It was as black in the closet as old blood. They have shoved me in and locked the door. I breathed heavily through my nose, fighting desperately to remain calm.'(opening lines)

'What intrigued me more than anything was finding out the way in which everything, all of creation -- all of it! -- was held together by invisible chemical bonds, and I found a strange, inexplicable comfort in knowing that somewhere, even though we couldn't see it in our own world, there was real stability.'(10)

'It was a bird, a jack snipe -- and it was dead. It lay on its back on the doorstep, its stiff wings extended like a little pterodactyl, its eyes rather unpleasantly filmed over, the long black needle of its bill pointing straight up into the air. Something impaled upon it shifted in the morning breeze -- a tiny scrap of paper. Not a scrap of paper, a postage stamp.'(15)

'I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn't. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.'(29)

'As I stood outside in Cow Lane, it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No... eight days a week.'(57-58)

'I brought to mind the image of the stranger lying there in the first light of dawn; the slight growth of whiskers on his chin, strands of his red hair shifting gently on the faint stirrings of the morning breeze, the pallor, the extended leg, the quivering fingers, that last, sucking breath. And the word, blown into my face ... "Vale."'(77)

'It's a fact of life that a girl can tell in a flash if another girl liked her. Feely says that there is a broken telephone connection between men and women, and we can never know which of us rang off. With a boy you never know whether he's smitten or gagging, but with a girl you can tell in the first three seconds. Between girls there is a silent and unending flow of invisible signals...'(85)

'Except for a handkerchief-scarf of grass at one side, Miss Mountjoy's willow filled the fenced-in yard. Even on the doorstep I could feel the dampness of the place: the tree's languid branches formed a green bell jar through which little light seemed to penetrate, giving me the odd sensation of being under water. Vivid green mosses made a stone sponge of the doorstep, and water stains stretched their sad and black fingers across the face of the orange plaster.'(136)

'... there are questions which need to be asked, and there are questions which need not be asked.'(142)

'It was downhill all the way, and I made good speed. When I backpedaled, the Sturmey-Archer three-speed hub on Glady's rear wheel gave off a noise like a den of enraged, vernon-dripping rattlesnakes. I pretended they were right there behind me, striking at my heels. It was glorious! I hadn't felt in such fine form since the day I first produced, by successive extraction and evaporation, a synthetic curare from the bog arum in the Vicar's lily pond.'(156)

'Here we are, Father and I , shut up in a plain little room, and for the first time in my life having something that might pass for a conversation. We were talking to one another almost like adults; almost like one human being to another; almost like father and daughter. And even though I couldn't think of anything to say, I felt myself wanting to go on and on until the last star blinked out.'(191)

'Unless some sweetness at the bottom lie,
Who cares for all the crinkling of the pie?'(223)

'Whenever one comes face-to-face with a killer in a novel or in a cinema, his opening words are always fripping with menace, and often from Shakespeare.'(302)

'It was a lie and I detected it at once. As an accomplished fibber myself, I spotted the telltale signs of an untruth before they were halfway out of his mouth: the excessive detail, the offhand delivery, and the wrapping-up of it all in casual chitchat.'(304)

a Delacorte Press Book, May 2009
370 pages
Book borrowed from the library
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

154. LIKE WATER for CHOCOLATE

Laura Esquivel 1961
Translated by Carol Christensen and Thomas Christensen

Presented in twelve chapters, designated by the twelve months of the year, this enchanting love story with a culinary twist, is sprinkled with recipes galore, one to start each chapter, and a lot more sprinklings in between (food recipes as exotic as Quail in Rose Petal Sauce, Ox-tail Soup and Champandongo, to non-food recipes such as how to make a matches, how to kill bed bugs and how to make ink). Tita, the protagonist, has the gift of cooking, perhaps made brilliant by the fact that she was born in the kitchen (after the crying from slicing onions induced her mother's labor). She is also the youngest of siblings, and according to tradition, she can never marry and must  devote her entire life taking care of her mother, Mama Ellen. But she is in love with Pedro, and Pedro is in love with her, but Pedro has to marry her sister Rosaura instead...

'PREPARATION:
Take care to chop the onion fine. To keep from crying when you chop it (which is annoying), I suggest you place a little bit on your head.'(opening lines)

'Despite the time that had passed since that evening, she remembered it perfectly: the sounds, the smells, the way her new dress had grazed the freshly waxed floor, the look Pedro gave her... That look! She had been walking to the table carrying a tray of egg-yolk candies when she first felt his hot gaze burning her skin. She turned her head, and her eyes met Pedro's. It was then she understood how dough feels when it is plunged into boiling oil. The heat that invaded her body was so real she ws afraid she would start to bubble -- her face, her stomach, her heart, her breasts, -- like batter...'(16)

'She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she didn't notice that all around her something very strange was taking place. The moment they took their first bite of the cake, everyone was flooded with a great wave of longing. ... But the weeping was just the first symptom of a strange intoxication -- an acute attack of pain and frustration -- that seized the guests and scattered them across the patio and the grounds and in the bathrooms, all of them wailing over lost love.'(39)

'It wasn't enough he'd made his wife jealous earlier, for when Pedro tasted his first mouthful, he couldn't help closing his eyes in voluptuous delight and exclaiming: "It is a dish for the gods!"'(51)

'Tita knew through her own flesh how fire transforms a tortilla, how a soul that hasn't been warmed by the fire of love is lifeless, like a useless ball of corn flour.'(67)

'She made her cuts through the rind with such mathematical precision that when she was done, she could pick up the watermelon and give it a single blow against a stone, in a particular spot, and like magic the watermelon rind would open like the petals of a flower, leaving the heart intact on the table. Unquestionably, when it came to dividing, dismantling, dismembering, desolating, detaching, dispossessing, destroying, or dominating, Mama Elena was a pro.'(96-97)

'Anything could be true or false, depending on whether one believed it.'(127)

'Whatever it was, it seemed his rage dominated his thoughts and actions for everyone in the house. Tita was literally "like water for chocolate" -- she was on the verge of boiling over. How irritable she was! Even the cooing she loved so much -- the sound made by the doves she had reestablished under the roof of the house, a sound that had given her so much pleasure since her return -- even that noise was annoying. She felt her head about to burst, like a kernel of popcorn.'(151)

'... the most elementary rules of good manners, which tell us that at a social gathering one does not bring up the subject of personalities, sad topics or unfortunate facts, religion, or politics.'(155)

'When the talk turns to eating, a subject of the greatest importance, only fools and sick men don't give it the attention it deserves.'(156-157)

'Something strange was going on. Tita remembered that Nacha had always said that when people argue while preparing tamales, the tamales won't get cooked. They can be heated day after day and still stay raw, because the tamales are angry. In a case like that, you have to sing to them, which makes them happy; then they'll cook.'(218-219)

'She remembered then the words that John had once spoken to her: "If a strong emotion suddenly lights all the candles we carry inside ourselves, it creates a brightness that shines far beyond our normal vision and then a splendid tunnel appears that shows us the way that we forgot when we were born and call us to recover our lost divine origin. The soul longs to return to the place it came from, leaving the body lifeless"... (244-245)

a Doubleday Hardcover Edition
246 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge
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Personal Note:
We are off to Chicago, April 20-26, 2011, to celebrate Easter with the family. I am really looking forward to eating (although not as exotic as Tita's dishes), and chatting, and playing (hopefully outside if the weather allows, although I heard it won't be, so probably boardgames inside), and easter-eggs hunting. I am so excited to give our kids and grandkids their Easter Baskets - candies, chocolates and for each of the little ones, a different HP wand (Harry, Hermione, Ron, Voldemort and Snape... and yes, I am a nerdy nana and we have an HP-obssessed family!!).Happy Easter Weekend to everyone!!
                          

153. the POISONWOOD BIBLE

Barbara Kingsolver 1998

In this highly absorbing novel, Nathan Price, a WWII veteran, now a Baptist Preacher uproots his family from Georgia to Belgian Congo, in his firm and naive belief that as a missionary, he has God's blessing to spread the word and convert the Congolese to Christianity. Told in seven sections, as though you are reading a bible, the book consists of alternating narratives of five women. Orleanna is the mother who is torn between obeying her husband and the welfare of her four daughters,  Rachel is the first born and at fifteen highly materialistic, Leah is the idealistic twin of Adah who is developmentally delayed and Ruth May, the innocent five year old. They speak of their struggles and frustrations as they try to make sense and later adapt to their new life amidst the poverty and political turmoil of the period. Will they change Congo, or will it change them?

'Imagine a ruin so strange it must never have happened.'(opening line)

'It lasted just a moment, whatever that is. One held breath? An ant's afternoon? It was brief, I can promise that much, for although it's been years now since my children ruled my life, a mother recalls the measure of the silences.'(7)

'Sunrise tantalize, evil eyes hypnotize: that is the morning, Congo pink. any morning, every morning. Blossomy rose-color birdsong air streaked sour with breakfast cookfires. a wide red plank of dirt -- the so-called road -- flat-out in font of us, continuous is theory from here to somewhere distant...  The parade never stops. Into the jangled pieces of road little jungle roosters step from the bush, karkadoodling.'(30)

'Silence has many advantages. When you do not speak, other people presume you to be deaf or feeble-minded and promptly make a show of their own limitations.'(34)

'Once every few years, even now, I catch the scent of Africa. It makes me want to ken, sing, clap up thunder, lie down at the foot of a tree and let the worms take whatever of me they can still use.
I find it impossible to bear.
Ripe fruits, acrid sweat, urine flowers, dark spices, and other things I've never even seen -- I can't say what goes into the composition, or why it rises up to confront me as I round some corner hastily, unsuspecting. It has found me here on this island, in our little town...'(87)

'How did he come to pass, this nommo Nathan Price? I do wonder. In the beginning was the word, the war, the way of the flesh. The mother, the Father, the son who was not, the daughters who were too many. The twins who brought down the house, indeed. In the beginning was the word the herd the blurred the turd the debts incurred the theatrical absurd. Our Father has a bone to pick with this world, and oh, he picks it like a sore. Picks it with the word. His punishment is the Word, and his deficiencies are failures of words ...'(213)

'Mama Mwanza shouted again and clapped her hands, bringing a reluctant son out of the house, dragging the flat, pinkish soles of his feet. Then I laughed, too, just because people young and old are more or less the same everywhere. I let myself breathe out, feeling like one of Anatole's schoolboys taking a scolding.
"Do you see that, Beene? That is Congo. Not minerals and glittering rocks with no hearts, these things that are traded behind our backs. The Congo is us."(231)

'If his decision to keep us here in the Congo wasn't right, then what else might he be wrong about? It has opened up in my heart a sickening world of doubts and possibilities, where before I had only faith in my father and love for the Lord. Without the rock of certainty underfoot, the Congo is a fearsome place to have to sink or swim.'(244)

'I may be a preacher's daughter, but I know a thing or two. And one of them is, when men want to kiss you they act like they are just on the brink of doing something that's going to change the whole wide world.'(294)

'Ants. We were walking on, surrounded, enclosed, enveloped, being eaten by ants. Every surface was covered and boiling, and the path like black flowing lava in the moonlight. Dark, bulbous tree trunks seethed and bulged. The grass had become a field of dark daggers standing upright, churning and crumpling in on themselves. We walked on ants and ran on them, releasing their vinegary smell to the weird, quiet night.''(299)

"I am telling you what I'm telling you. Don't try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you are good, bad things can still happen. And if you are bad, you can still be lucky."(309)

'The sting of a fly, the Congolese say, can launch the end of the world. How simply things begin.'(317)

'God doesn't need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.'(327)

'How can I ever love anyone but Anatole? Who else cam make the colors of the aurora borealis rise off my skin where he strokes my forearm? Or send needles of ice tinkling blue through my brain when he looks into my eyes? What else but this fever could commute my father's ghost crying, "Jezebel!" into a curl of blue smoke drifting the honey-colored ache of malaria and guilt from my blood? By Anatole I was shattered and assembled, by way of Anatole I am delivered not out of my life but through it.'(399)

'... how can there be so many kinds of things a person doesn't really need?
I can think of no honorable answer. Why must some of us deliberate between brands of toothpaste, while others deliberate between damp dirt and bone dust to quiet the fire of an empty stomach lining? There is nothing about the United States I can really explain to this child of another world.'(441)

'Our union has been difficult for both of us in the long run, but what union isn't? Marriage is one long fit of compromise, deep and wide. There is always one agenda swallowing another, a squeaky wheel crying out. But hasn't our life together meant more to the world than either of us could have meant alone?'(473)

'"Be kind to yourself," he says softly in my ear, and I ask him, How is that possible? I rock back and forth on my chair like a baby, craving so many impossible things: justice, forgiveness, redemption. I crave to stop bearing all the wounds of this place on my own narrow body. But I also want to be the person who stays, who goes on feeling anguish where anguish is due. I want to belong somewhere, damn it. To scrub the hundred years' war off this white skin till there's nothing left and I can walk out among my neighbors wearing raw sinew and bone, like they do.
Most of all, my white skin craves to be touched and held by the one man on earth I know has forgiven me for it.'(474)

'Everything you're sure is right can be wrong in another place.'(505)

First HarperPerennial edition 1999
543 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

152. the PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH

Norton Juster 1961
Illustrations by Jules Feiffer

A really smart children's book guaranteed to take you to Wordplay heaven as it gently satirizes the art of Rhetoric! After the always bored Milo receives a mysterious tollbooth, he drives through to the road of Expectation.  He soon meets Humbug and dog Tock who become his companions to the Land of Wisdom. This land has had two conflicting cities, Dictionopolis and Digitopolis, in chaos after the loss of the Princesses of Rhyme and Reason. They are off to their rescue and the adventure of visiting such charming places as: the Islands of Conclusions, the Valley of Sound, Mountains of Ignorance and the Sea of Knowledge; meeting fantastic characters such as: the not-so-wicked Which, Chroma, Dr. Kakofonous A. Dischord, the awful Dyne, the Soundkeeper, the Dodecahedron, the Half Boy, the Whether Man, Alec Bings, the Gorgons of Hate and Malice, the Everpresent Wordsnatcher; and encountering the demons: the demon of  Insincerity, the Overbearing Know-it-all, the Gross Exaggeration, the Threadbare Excuse, the Terrible Trivium, the Gelatinous Giant and the Ugly Dilemma.  See what I mean?

'There was once a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself -- not just sometimes but always.'(opening line)

"ONE GENUINE TURNPIKE TOLLBOOTH," it stated -- and then it went on:
EASILY ASSEMBLED AT HOME, AND FOR USE BY THOSE WHO NEVER TRAVELED IN LANDS BEYOND."(12)

'It shall be unlawful, illegal, and unethical to think, think of thinking, surmise, presume, reason, meditate, or speculate while in the Doldrums.'(24)

"Well," continued the watchdog impatiently, "since you got here by not thinking, it seems reasonable to expect that, in order to get out, you must start thinking."(31)

'"I never knew words could be so confusing," Milo said to Tock as he bent down to scratch the dog's ear.
"Only when you use a lot to say a little," answered Tock.'(44)

"Of course not," replied Alec, sitting himself down on nothing. "It's only mine, and you certainly can't always look at things from someone else's Point of View. For instance, from here that looks like a bucket of water," he said pointing to a bucket of water; " but from an ant's point of view, it's a vast ocean, from an elephant's just a cool drink, and to a fish, of course, it's home. So, you see, the way you see things depends on a great deal on where you look at them from."(107-108)

"I know one thing for certain: it's much harder to tell whether you are lost than whether you were lost, for, on many occasions, where you're going is exactly where you are. On the other hand, you often find that where you've been is not at all where you should have gone, and, since it's much more difficult to find your way back from someplace you've never left, I suggest you go there immediately and then decide.'(114)

"Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn?" she inquired. "Or the quiet and calm just as the storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause in a roomful of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're all alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful, if you listen carefully.'(151-152)

"But I wouldn't worry too much about it, for you can swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and still come out completely dry. Most people do.'(169-170)

"If you had high hopes, how would you know how high they were? And did you know that narrow escapes come in all different widths? Would you travel the whole wide world without ever knowing how wide it was? And how could you do anything at long last," he concluded, waving his arms over his head, "without knowing how long the last was? Why, numbers are the most beautiful and valuable things in the world."(177)

"I'm the demon of insincerity," he sobbed. "I don't mean what I say, I don't mean what I do, and I don't mean what I am. Most people who believe what I tell them go the wrong way, and stay there..."(217)

"I warned you; I warned you I was the Senses Taker," sneered the Senses Taker. "I help people find what they're not looking for, hear what they're not listening for, run after what they're not chasing, and smell what isn't even there. And, furthermore," he cackled, hopping around gleefully on his stubby legs, "I'll steal your sense of purpose, take your sense of duty, destroy your sense of proportion -- and, but for one thing, you'd be helpless yet."(230)

"You must never feel badly about making mistakes." explained Reason quietly, "as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons."(233)

'... so many things are possible just as long as you don't know they're impossible.'(247)

a Dell Yearling Book
255 pages
Book borrowed from JRMD
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

151. the COLOR PURPLE

Alice Walker 1982

Now I understand what the fuss was all about. In the heart of this novel, is the search for authentic love. A love that respects, redeems and inspires. Set in rural Georgia, against the backdrop of racial inequality and slavery, the book is presented in epistolary form, a format I particularly like. Celie writes to God about the sexual and physical abuses she has experienced from her Pa and her now husband, Mr. ____.  She writes of her oppressed life and how she misses her sister Nettie who she presumes is dead. She accepts her fate until she finds love, and later her true self and voice in the most unlikely character of Shug Avery, her husband's ex-girlfriend who has come to live with them.  A very powerful and moving read.

'You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy.'(opening line)

'She say, To tell the truth, you remind me of my mama. She under my daddy thumb. Naw, she under my daddy foot. Anything he say, goes. She never say nothing back. She never stand up for herself. Try to make a little half stand sometime for the children but that always backfire. More she stands up for us, the harder time he give her. He hate children and he hate where they come from. Tho from all the children he got, you'd never know it.'(46)

'I remember one time you said your life made you fell so ashamed you couldn't even talk about it to God, you had to write it, bad as you thought your writing was. Well, now I know what you meant. And whether God will read letters or no, I know you will go on writing them; which is guidance enough for me.'(122)

'There is always someone to look after the Olinka woman. A father. An uncle. A brother or nephew. Do not be offended, Sister Nettie, but our people pity women such as you who are cast out, we know not from where, into a world unknown to you, where you must struggle all alone, for yourself.'(149)

'There is a way that the men speak to women that reminds me too much of Pa. They listen just long enough to issue instructions. They don't even look at women when women are speaking. They look at the ground and bend their heads toward the ground. The women also do not "look in a man's face" as they say. To "look in a man's face" is a brazen thing to do. They look instead at his feet or his knees. And what can I say to this? Again, it is our own behavior around Pa.'(149)

'I think Africans are very much like white people back home, in that they think they are the center of the universe and that everything that is done is done for them.'(155)

'Maybe just living together, loving people makes them look like you, I said. You know how much some old married people look alike.'(158)

'...unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly.'(169)

'She say, Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.'(176)

'Here's the thing, say Shug. The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everything else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don't know what you looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit.'(177)

'Yeah, it. God ain't a he or a she, but a it.
But what do it look like? I ast.
Don't look like nothing, she say. It ain't a picture show. It ain't somethng you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself. I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you've found it.'(177-178)

'Well, us talk and talk bout God, but I'm still adrift. Trying to chase that old man out of my head. I been so busy thinking bout him I never truly notice nothing God make. Not a blade of corn (how it do that?) not the color purple (where it come from?). Not the little wildflowers. Nothing.'(179)

'There's something in all of us that wants a medal for what we have done. That wants to be appreciated.'(210)

'I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ast. And that in wondering bout the big things and asting bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things that you start out with. The more I wonder, he say, the more I love.
And people start to love you back, I bet, I say.'(247)

First Washington Square Press printing June, 1983
251 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge
__________________________________________________

'My every 50th Book Post' and 2011 Reading from My Shelves Project Giveaway Winners:

After the followers were entered twice, the comments inspected as valid (e-mail address, US or International), the entries were assigned the numbers 1-90,  and Random.org generated the winners:
      
First Winner, of $25.00 worth of book/s from Book Depository
                         or $ 25.00 e-certificate from Amazon:
                                      # 62 - Petty
Second winner, of 4 books: 

                                     # 17 - Letter4no1

                 
Congratulations to the winners and thanks to everyone who entered the giveaway. 

150. the HOUND of the BASKERVILLES

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 1902

This book superseded all my expectations. I enjoyed everything about it: the dark, foggy and ghostly setting in Devonshire, England,  the simple yet twisty plot, the lucid prose that describes the eerie scenes so perfectly, and the very amiable and brilliant Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Watson. After the horrifying death of Sir Charles Baskerville from what seems to be a diabolical beast, the masterful duo sets to solve a possible curse on the Baskerville family, the task rendered particularly urgent because there is but one last heir, Sir Henry, that remains. 

'Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table.'(opening lines)

"Really Watson, you excel yourself," said Holmes, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. "I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very  much in your debt."(3)

"You interest me very much, Mr. Holmes. I had hardly expected so dolicocephalic a skull or such well-marked supra-orbital development. Would you have any objection to my running my finger along your parietal fissure? A cast of your skull, sir, until the original is available, would be an ornament to any anthropological museum. It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull."(9)

'But it was not the sight of her body, nor yet was it that of the body of Hugo Baskerville lying near her, which raised the hair upon the heads of these three daredevil rosyterers, but it was that, standing over Hugo, and plucking at his throat, there stood a foul thing; a great black beast, shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever mortal eye has rested upon. '(16-17)

'I knew that seclusion and solitude were very necessary for my friend in those hours of intense mental concentration during which he weighed every particle of evidence, constructed alternative theories, balanced one against the other, and made up his mind as to which points were essential and which immaterial.'(35)

'As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor.'(43)

'Setting aside the whole grim story of Sir Charles's death, we had a line of inexplicable incidents all within the limits of two days, which included the receipt of the printed letter, the black-bearded spy in the hansom, the loss of the new brown boot, the loss of the old black boot, and now the return of the new brown boot. Holmes sat in silence in the cab as we drove back to Baker Street, and I knew from his drawn brows and keen face that his mind, like my own, was busy in endeavouring to frame some scheme into which all these strange and apparently disconnected episodes could be fitter. All afternoon and late into the evening he sat lost in tobacco and thought.'(68)

'The road in front of us grew bleaker and wilder over huge russet and olive slopes, sprinkled with giant boulders. Now and then we passed a moorland cottage, walled and roofed with stone, with no creeper to break its harsh outline. Suddenly we looked down into a cuplike depression, patched with stunted oaks and firs which had been twisted and bent by the fury of years of storm. Two high narrow towers rose over the trees. The driver pointed with his whip.
"Baskerville Hall," said he.'(81-82)

"As if in answer to his words there rose suddenly out of the vast gloom of the moor that strange cry which I had already heard upon the borders of the great Grimpen Mire. It came with the wind through the silence of the night, a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it died away. Again and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild, and menacing.'(137-138)

'And it was at this moment that there occurred a most strange and unexpected thing. We had risen from our rocks and were turning to go home, having abandoned the hopeless chase. The moon was low upon the right, and the jagged pinnacle of a granite tor stood up against the lower curve of its silver disc. There, outlined as black as an ebony statue on that shining background, I saw the figure of a man upon the tor.'(142)

'Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.'(200)

'One of Sherlock Holmes's defects -- if, indeed, one may call it a defect -- was that he was exceedingly loath to communicate his full plans to any other person until the instant of their fulfillment. Partly it came no doubt from his own masterful nature, which loved to dominate and surprise those who were around him. Partly also from his professional caution, which urged him to never take any chances.'(214)

The more outre and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined, and the very point which appears to complicate a case is, when duly considered and scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it.'(239)

'There are seventy-five perfumes, which it is very necessary that a criminal expert should be able to distinguish from each other, and cases have more than once within my own experience depended upon their prompt recognition.'(241)

First Aladdin Paperback edition 2000
246 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

149. ANIMAL FARM

George Orwell 1956

Not to be cynical, but why can't I stop feeling that this book that was written in 1956, is somehow portraying what is now the state of politicking and governing in our world today?  This highly provocative satire about animals rebelling against, and ultimately overthrowing humans, clearly spotlights what greed and power can do to anyone. Highly unsettling.

'Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes.(opening lines)

'Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short. We are born, we are given just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and those of us who are capable of it are forced to work in the last atom of our strength; and the very instant that our usefulness has come to an end we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty. No animal in England is free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery: this is the plain truth.'(28)

'Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.'(29)

"I have little more to say. I merely repeat, remember always your duty of enmity towards Man and all his ways. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. And remember also that in fighting against Man, we must not come to resemble him. Even when you have conquered him, do not adopt his vices. No animal must ever live in a house, or sleep in a bed, or wear clothes, or drink alcohol, or smoke tobacco, or touch money, or engage in trade. All  the habits of Man are evil. And, above all, no animal must ever tyrannise over his own kind. Weak or strong, clever or simple, we are all brothers. No animal must ever kill any other animal. All animals are equal.'(31-32)

'Boxer was the admiration of everybody. He had been a hard worker even in Jones's time, but now he seemed more like three horses than one; there were days when the entire work of the farm seemed to rest on his mighty shoulders.'(46)

'The animals listened first to Napoleon, then to Snowball, and could not make up their minds which was right; indeed, they always found themselves in agreement with the one who was speaking at the moment.'(66)

'Once again this argument was unanswerable. Certainly the animals did not want Jones back; if the holding of the debates on Sunday mornings was liable to bring him back, then the debates must stop. Boxer, who had now had time to think things over, voiced the general feeling by saying: "If Comrade Napoleon says it., it must be right." and from then on he adopted the maxim, "Napoleon is always right," in addition to his private motto of "I will work harder."'(70)

'The windmill was, in fact, Napoleon's own creation. Why, then, asked somebody, had he spoken so strongly against it? Here Squealer looked very sly. That, he said, was Comrade Napoleon's cunning. He had seemed to oppose the windmill, simply as a manoeuvre to get rid of Snowball, who was a dangerous character and a bad influence. Now that Snowball was out of the way, the plan could go forward without his interference. This, said Squealer, was something called tactics. He repeated a number of times. "Tactics, comrades, tactics!" skipping round and whisking his tail with a merry laugh. The animals were not certain what the word meant, but Squealer spoke so persuasively, and the three dogs who happened to be with him growled so threateningly, that they accepted his explanation without further questions.'(71-72)

'It was vitally necessary to conceal this fact from the outside world. Emboldened by the collapse of the windmill, the human beings were inventing fresh lies about the Animal Farm.... Napoleon was well aware of the bad results that might follow if the real facts of the food situation were known, and he decided to make use of Mr. Whymper to spread a contrary impression.'(85)

'It was a clear spring evening. The grass and the bursting hedges were gilded by the level rays of the sun. Never had the farm -- and with a kind of surprise they remembered that it was their own farm, every inch of it their own property -- appeared to the animals so desirable a place. As Clover looked down the hillside her eyes filled with tears. If she would have spoken her thoughts, it would have been to say that this was not what they had aimed at when they had set themselves years ago to work for the overthrow of the human race.'(95)

'Sometimes the older ones among them racked their dim memories and tried to determine whether in the early days of the Rebellion, when Jones's expulsion was still recent, things had been better or worse than now. They could not remember. There was nothing with which they could compare their present lives: they had nothing to go upon except Squealer's lists of figures, which invariably demonstrated that everything was better and better.'(129-130)

a Signet classic edition
139 pages
Book borrowed from JRMD
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge