READING AWAY, May 1-24, 2012

in CHINA

May 1-24, 2012

These photos are from Wikipedia. I am hoping I can capture the same images!!!

Great wall of China

Forbidden City

Yangtze River

Terracota Warriors

My Book Companions:

 Be back soon!!!

221. EAST of EDEN

John Steinbeck 1952

The Book Jacket Blurb:

   In his journal, John Steinbeck called East of Eden "the first book," and indeed it has the primodial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families - the Trasks and the Hamiltons - whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.
   Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new, rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives, nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness, enveloped by a mysterious darkness.
   First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most endearing themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.

What Hooked Me:

I am totally astounded by how good this book is! It is definitely going up on my top dozen, pushing one other book back down a notch. What is amazing is the depth of the complexity of the stories of the two main families, the Hamiltons and the Trasks, as well as the depth and complexity of the characters that support them. Cathy (a selfish woman with a sordid evil past who married Adam Trask) and Lee (who was Adam's Chinese servant and who later raised Adam's twin boys and became his good friend, confidante and adviser) represented two opposing extremes in the spectrum of the human heart, and they totally fascinated and enthralled me. Against this wondrous saga is the story of Salinas Valley itself, always a nice place to revisit. And on a lighter note, on p.62, I learned a new description I intend to use a lot from now on to refer to the severe form of pneumonia as a 'galloping pneumonia,' as opposed to the description I always use for the milder form, 'walking pneumonia.'

The Quotes:

'The Salinas Valley is in Northern California. It is a long narrow swale between two ranges of mountains, and the Salinas River winds and twists up the center until it falls at last into Monterey Bay.
   I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer -- and what trees and seasons smelled like -- how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.'(opening lines)

'Samuel had no equal for soothing hysteria and bringing quiet to a frightened child. It was the sweetness of his tongue and the tenderness of his soul. And just as there was a cleanness about his body, so there was a cleanness in his thinking. Men coming to his blacksmith shop to talk and listen dropped their cursing for a while, not from any kind of restraint but automatically, as though this were not the place for it.'(11)

'When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods; they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.'(19-20)

'Maybe -- maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure -- never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself? I can see it pretty clearly. I can see how you loved him and what it did to you. I did not love him. Maybe he loved me. He tested me and hurt me and punished me and finally he sent me out like a sacrifice, maybe to make up for something. But he did not love you, and so he had faith in you. Maybe -- why, maybe it's a kind of reverse.'(69)

'Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential conscience. A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people who find him strange. Having never had arms, he cannot miss them. Sometimes when we are little we imagine how it would be to have wings, but there is no reason to suppose it is the same feeling birds have. No, to a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself. To the inner monster it must even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others. To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.
   It is my belief that Cathy Ames was born with the tendencies, or lack of them, which drove and forced her all of her life. Some balance wheel was misweighted, some gear out of ratio. She was not like other people, never was from birth. And just as a cripple may learn to utilize his lack so that he becomes effective in a limited field than the uncrippled, so did Cathy, using her difference, make a painful and bewildering stir in her world.'(72-73)

'And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wished, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the universe beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.'(131)

'The words struck into her understanding like lead shot dropped in water. She made a great effort. And it gave him a shivering to see her face change, the steel leave her eyes, the lips thicken from line to brow, and the corners turn up. He noticed a movement of her hands, the fists unclench, and the fingers turn pinkly upward. Her face became young and innocent and bravely hurt. It was one magic-lantern slide taking the place of another.'(190)

'Sometimes your opponent can help you more than your friend.'(259)

'Samuel said, "Apply that to the Cain-Abel story.' ...
"I think I can," Lee answered Samuel. "I think this is the best-known story in the world because it is everybody's story. I think it is the symbol story of the human soul. I'm feeling my way now -- don't jump on me if I'm not clear. The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt -- and there is the story of mankind."(268)

"I didn't know anyone could see it," Samuel said. "You know, Lee, I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody. And my life has not been a full orchestra for a long time now. A single note only -- and that note unchanging sorrow. I'm not alone in my attitude, Lee. It seems to me that too many of us conceive of a life as ending in defeat."
   Lee said, "Maybe everyone is too rich. I have noticed that there is no dissatisfaction like that of the rich. Feed a man, clothe him, put him in a good house, and he will die of despair."(306)

'I believe there are techniques of the human mind whereby, in its dark deep, problems are examined, rejected or accepted. Such activities sometimes concern facets a man does not know he has. How often one goes to sleep troubled and full of pain, not knowing what causes the travail, and in the morning a whole new direction and a clearness is there, maybe the result of the black reasoning. And again there are mornings when ecstasy bubbles in the blood, and the stomach and chest are tight and electric with joy, and nothing in the thoughts to justify or cause it.'(324)

"Adam went on, astonished at his own thoughts, "but you -- yes, that's right -- you don't know about the rest. You don't believe I brought you the letter because I don't want your money. You don't believe I loved you. And the men who come to you here with their ugliness, the men in the pictures -- you don't believe those men could have goodness and beauty in them. You see only one side, and you think -- more than that, you're sure -- that's all there is."(381-382)

'In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
   We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.'(412-413)

'In the darkness he saw Lee's face and heard Lee's soft speech. Lee had built very well. Having a respect that amounted to reverence for the truth, he had also its natural opposite, a loathing of a lie. He had made it very clear to the boys exactly what he meant. If something was untrue and you didn't know it, that was error. But if you knew a true thing and changed it to a false thing, both you and it were loathsome.
   Lee's voice said, "I know that sometimes a lie is used in kindness. I don't believe it ever works kindly. The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost. That's a running sore." And Lee had worked patiently and slowly and he had succeeded in building Adam as the center, the foundation, the essence of truth.'(427)

'Will's face contorted and a memory swept over him like a chilling wind. He did not move slowly over the past, it was all there in one flash, all of the years, a picture, a feeling and a despair, all stopped the way a fast camera stops the world. There was the flashing Samuel, beautiful as dawn with a fancy like a swallow's flight, and the brilliant, brooding Tom who was dark fire, Uma who rode the storms, and lovely Mollie, Dessie of laughter, George handsome and with a sweetness that filled a room like the perfume of flowers, and there was Joe, the youngest, the beloved. Each one without effort brought some gift into the family.
   Nearly everyone has his box of secret pain, shared with no one.'(475)

'I was thinking about that time when Sam Hamilton and you and I had a long discussion about a word,' said Adam. "what was the word?'
   "Now I see. The word was timshel.'
   "Timshel -- and you said --
   "I said that word carried a man's greatness if he wanted to take advantage of it."
   "I remember Sam Hamilton felt good about it."
   "It set him free," said Lee. "It gave him the right to be a man, separate from every other man."
   "That's lonely."
   "All great and precious things are lonely."
   "What is the word again?"
   "Timshel -- thou mayest."

a Penguin Book edition
601 pages
Book borrowed from the library
Dianne @ Bibliophile by the Sea's very convincing review is HERE.

220. the MEASURE of a MAN

Sidney Poitier 2000


Synopsis from Goodreads:

   In this luminous memoir, a true American icon looks back on his celebrated life and career. His body of work is arguable the most morally significant in cinematic history, and the power and influence of that work are indicative of the character of the man behind the many storied roles. Here, Sidney Poitier explores these elements of character and personal values to take his own measure - as a man, as a husband, and father, and as an actor.
   Poitier was uncompromising as he pursued a personal and public life that would honor his upbringing and the invaluable legacy of his parents. Committed to the notion that what one does for a living articulates who one is, Poitier played only forceful and affecting characters who said something positive, useful, and lasting about the human condition.
   Here, finally, is Poitier's own introspective look at what has informed his performances and his life. Poitier explores the nature of sacrifice and commitment, pride and humility, rage and forgiveness, and paying the price for artistic integrity. What emerges is a picture of a man seeking truth, passion, and balance in the face of limits his own and the world's. A triumph of the spirit, The Measure of a Man captures the essential Poitier.

What Hooked Me:

Lately, I have been fascinated with iconic people's stories. I like to read about their pasts, seemingly starting the same as everyone else's and then somehow, their talent comes through, unique opportunities open up, and they manage to circumvent what ordinary people struggle with to attain the top of their goals. What do they have that is special? Is it hard work, luck or destiny? Or a little of all of the above? I also like reading transformative and soul-searching quests. When one's young carefree outlook in life  is replaced by deep pondering wisdom, something they then impart on us, in the hopes that we will learn. This autobiography is spiritual, hence wanting on the details of Sidney Poitier's personal family stories, but his honest reflections of himself and humanity make this a solid memoir for me.

The Quotes:

'It's late at night as I lie in the blue glow of the television set. I have the clicker in my hand, the remote control, and I go from 1 to 97, scrolling through the channels. I find nothing that warrants my attention, nothing that amuses me, so I scroll up again, channel by channel, from bottom to top. But already I've given it the honor of going from 1 to 97, and already I've found nothing. This vast, sophisticated technology and ... nothing. It's given me not one smidgen of pleasure. It's informed me of nothing beyond my own ignorance and my own frailties.'(opening lines)

'On that tiny split island they call Cat Island, life was indeed very simple, and decidedly preindustrial. Our cultural "authenticity" extended to having neither plumbing nor electricity, and we didn't have much in the way of schooling or jobs, either. In a word, we were poor, but poverty there was very different from poverty in a modern place characterized by concrete. It's not romanticizing the past to state that poverty on Cat Island didn't preclude gorgeous beaches and a climate like heaven, cocoa plum trees and sea grapes and cassavas growing in the forest, and bananas going wild.'(3)

'But children still have to try to make some sense of everything they're bombarded with. They have to assume something, correctly or incorrectly, factual or otherwise. They have to encode all these distractions into the self that they're slowly, day by day, building. Child psychologists have demonstrated that our minds are actually constructed by these thousands of tiny interactions during the first few years of life. We aren't just what's directed by our genes, and we certainly aren't just what we're taught. It's what we experience during those early years -- a smile here, a jarring sound there -- that creates the pathways and connections of the brain. We put our kids to fifteen years of quick-cut advertising, passive television watching, and sadistic video games, and we expect to see emerge a new generation of calm, compassionate, and engaged human beings?'(6-7)

'This watchful way extended to human nature -- words, motivations, actions, and consequences. The quiet and simple atmosphere of my childhood enabled me to focus down to the level of the subtle body language that came at me from my parents and my siblings. On that tiny island I had gotten to know these signals really, really well. I had learned to read them just as I had learned to read the cliffs and the tides. I didn't understand them all, but over time I could use them as a reference point in trying to understand what others are saying, what they were doing, what they were behaving toward me as they were. I think that this is the basis for what has come to be called "emotional intelligence." It's a capacity that's nurtured by silence and by intimacy, and by the freedome to roam.'(13)

'Young blacks coming up in America were frequently subjected to parental lectures, almost all of which carried the same message: "Face this reality. You're gonna have to be twice as good as the white folks in order to get half as much." That was drilled into them. Bahamian lectures had another ring. "Get that education. Get out there and work. Get out there and hustle. Take whatever opportunities there are, and use them as stepping-stones.''(43)

'I always saw things differently than other people. I heard things differently. I viewed the future differently. Most times I asked myself much more that I was able to give. I came close to self-destruction on any number of occasions. I unquestionably had to be lucky, since my struggle for survival was no more than a patchwork of trial-and-error. And I've got to tell you, there was a satisfaction, a pleasure -- no, a thrill -- in whatever successes happened as a result of dancing close to the flame and beating the odds. In just being lucky.
   Telling myself I would probably lose took the edge off being afraid to lose. "Prepare for the worst; hope for the best." I did that a lot. That was the credo that enabled me to get from crisis to crisis.'(80)

'Balance is what he was looking for, but he hadn't yet learned its name. In time he will come to know it as a state of being. It can only be found at a place that is widely believed not to exist. Truth is that there is a place of space that does exist between two opposites everywhere, and somewhere therein dwells a point at which balance can be found.'(91)

'Of all my father's teachings, the most enduring was the one about the true measure of a man. The true measure was how well he provided for his children, and it stuck with me as it if were etched in my brain.'(100)

'Greed and cruelty are pretty widely distributed throughout humanity, as are their victims. You can have oppression of one sort or another all across the board culturally speaking, and all across the board racially speaking, and all across the board religiously speaking.'(103)

from the movie, The Defiant Ones

'By the end of the movie the two characters had each made peace with that part of the self that they'd come to terms with in the other. Tony's character was lying there in my arms in bad shape, but making jokes about our situation, an he pulled the whole thing togehter by saying, in effect, "There's much about you that is me, and there's much about me that is you, and I'm comfortable with that."

'For myself, I rarely have the desire to stick it to people. It's enough for me to know that I've held myself in good standing with me, you see. It's enough for me to be able to look at the film and say, "That represents me well. That's how I would like people to see me. I would like them to see me as a person who has some value unto himself, and there it is."'(105)

'When you genuinely and sincerely apologize for harm and pain, it's a sign that your life has taken you to another place from where you were when you caused the harm and pain and had no apologies to make. But the process is never simple, and words can never undo lives destroyed.'(106)

'We have a history whose centuries are replete with genocide and attempted genocide.
   What humanity has prepetrated goes by different names at different names. What began in Central and South America in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella culminated at the Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee. We called it "exploring the New World," but it caused millions of deaths and the absolute elimination of cultures.
   Today, maybe the majority of countries aren't involved in such cruelties, but the majority of countries rarely have been. It's generally one country, and then another, and then maybe a war between three or four countries. So here we are at the dawn of the new millenium, and how closer are we to the enlightenment that would take us beyond such behavior?'(106-107)

'In essence, I was being taken to task for playing exemplary human beings: the young engineer turned schoolteacher in To Sir, with Love,

the Philadelphia homicide detective far from home in In The Heat of the Night,

and the young doctor who comes courting the daughter of Tracy and Hepburn in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.'(118)

'Anguish and pain and resentment and rage are very human forces. They can be found in the breasts of most human beings at one time or another. On very rare occasions there comes a Gandhi, and occasionally there comes a Martin Luther King, Jr., and occasionally there comes a guy like Paul Roberson or a guy like Nelson Mandela. When these people come along, their anger, their rage, their resentment, their frustration -- these feelings ultimately mature by will of their own discipline into a positive energy that can be used to fuel their positive healthy exclusions in life.'(124)

'Whenever there's a configuration in which there are the powerful and the powerless, the powerful, by and large, aren't going to feel much of anything about their imbalance. After a while the powerful become accustomed to experiencing the power to their benefit in ways that are painless. It's the air they breathe, the water they swim in.'(126)

'Living consciously involves being genuine; it involves listening and responding to others honestly and openly; it involves being in the moment. This is all equally true of effective acting. Acting isn't a game of "pretend." It's an exercise in being real.'(147)

'The laws of economics don't promote idealism or higher consciousness. The logic of profit and loss in a market-driven culture reduces the grandeur of the human species down to one role, that of "consumers." And all along, the pleasure principle is saying, "I have products I can sell you to take care of all that. You can get in online. Come, come, I have even more thrills for you."'(180)

'I also drew some conclusions about the educabiltiy of human beings. I had tended to believe in the essential nobility of man, had seen man as a Noble Beast, and had thought that education could bring about change. Anything good and necessary that wasn't happening was missing, I had thought, because of someone who didn't understand yet. But I came to believe that, while there are in fact some people who haven't yet been shown, there are far more who are never, ever going to see, regardless of what they're shown, and how often.'(223)

'We're all of us a little greedy. (Some of us are plenty greedy.) We're all somewhat courageous, and we're all considerably cowardly. We're all imperfect, and life is simply a perpetual, unending struggle against those imperfections.'(closing lines)

a Harper Collins book edition
243 pages
Book owned
Photos from Google Image Searches

219. the ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY of a PART-TIME INDIAN

Sherman Alexie 2007
Art by Ellen Forney


The Book Blurb:

   Junior is a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian reservation. Born with a variety of medical problems, he is picked on by everyone but his best friend. Determined to receive a good education, Junior leaves the rez to attend an all-white school in the neighboring farm town where the only Indian is the school mascot. Despite being condemned as a traitor to his people and enduring great tragedies, Junior attacks life with wit and humor and discovers a strength inside of himself that he never knew existed.
   Inspired by his own experiences growing up, award-winning author Sherman Alexie chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one unlucky boy trying to rise above the life everyone expects him to live.

What Hooked Me:

Having had an unintentional run of depressing (but really good) books lately, I was looking for a funny and light story and this book was a welcome change and the perfect choice. However, I do have to admit that I would have laughed harder, if fourteen-year-old Junior's unique predicament of living in both worlds (with his family at the rez in Wellpinit and his new friends at the all-white school in Reardan) wasn't also quite sad and touching.  The art sketches are outstanding and really compliment Junior's wity personality and his memorable story.

The Quotes:

'I was born with water on the brain.
   Okay, so that's not exactly true. I was actually born with too much cerebral spinal fluid inside my skull. But cerebral spinal fluid is just the doctor's fancy way of saying brain grease. And brain grease works inside the lobes like car grease works inside an engine. It keeps things running smooth and fast. But weirdo me, I was born with too much grease inside my skull, and it got all thick and muddy and disgusting, and it only mucked up the works. My thinking  and breathing and living engine slowed down and flooded.'(opening lines)

'My brain damage left me nearsighted in one eye and farsighted in the other, so my ugly glasses were all lopsided because my eyes were so lopsided.

   I get headaches because my eyes are, like, enemies, you know, like they use to be married to each other but now hate each other's guts.'(3)

' I draw cartoons of my mother and father; my sister and grandmother; my best friend, Rowdy; and everybody else on the rez.
   I draw because words are too unpredictable.
   I draw because words are too limited.
   If you speak and write in English, or Spanish, or Chinese, or any other language, then only a certain percentage of human beings will get you meaning.
   But when you draw a picture, everybody can understand it.'(5)

'But we reservation Indians don't get to realize our dreams. We don't get those chances. Or choices. We're just poor. That's all we are.'(13)

"You've been fighting since you were born." he said. "You fought off that brain surgery. You fought off those seizures. You fought off all the drunks and drug addicts. You kept your hope. And now, you have to take your hope and go somewhere where other people have hope.'(41)

'Getting to school was always an adventure.'(87)

'Okay, so it's like each of these books is a mystery. Every book is a mystery. And if you read all the books ever written, it's like you've read one giant mystery. And no matter how much you learn, you just keep on learning there is so much more you need to learn.'(97)

'Traveling between Reardan and Wellpinit, between the little white town and the reservation, I always felt like a stranger.
  I was half Indian in one place and half white in the other.

   It was like being an Indian was my job, but it was only a part-time job. And it didn't pay well at all.'(118)

'I've learned that the worst thing a parent can do is to ignore their children.'(153)

"I used to think the world was broken down by tribes." I said. "By black and white. By Indian and white. But I know that isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: The people who are assholes and the people who are not."(176)

'I made a list of my favorite books:
1. Grapes of Wrath
2. Catcher in the Rye
3. Fat Kid Rules the World
4. Tangerine
5. Feed
6. Catalyst
7. Invisible Man
8. Fools Crow
9. Jar of Fools ...
   I kept making list after list of the things that made me feel joy. And I kept drawing cartoons of the things that made me angry. I keep writing and rewriting, drawing and redrawing, and rethinking and revising and reediting. It became my grieving ceremony.'(177)

'Do you understand how amazing it is to hear that from an adult? It's one of the simplest sentences in the world, just four words, but they're the four hugest words in the world when they're put together.
   You can do it.'(189)

'I'm fourteen years old and I've been to forty-two funerals.
   That's really the biggest difference between Indians and white people.'(199)

'Gordy gave me this book by a Russian dude named Tolstoy, who wrote: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Well, I hate to argue with a Russian genius, but Tolstoy didn't know Indians. And he didn't know that all Indian families are unhappy for the same exact reason: the fricking booze.'(200)

'The reservation is beautiful.
   I mean it.
   Take a look.
   There are pine trees everywhere. Thousands of ponderosa pine trees. Millions. I guess maybe you can take pine trees for granted. They're just pine trees. But they're tall and thin and green and brown and big.
   Some of the pines are ninety feet tall and more than three hundred years old.
   Older than the United States.'(219)

a Little, Brown first paperback edition,March 2009
230 pages
Book owned
An awesome review of this book by Adam @ The Roof Beam Reader is HERE

218. STEVE JOBS

Walter Isaacson 2011

The Book Jacket Blurb:

   Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years -- as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues -- Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

   At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.

   Although Jobs cooperated with this book,  he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.

   Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple's hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character leadership and values.

What Hooked Me:

Once in a rare while a real genius comes along and changes the world. For this  fast-changing technological era, that person was Steve Jobs. I imagine that if Steve Jobs would have read this book, he would have liked all the technical details that successfully, albeit tediously outlined the development and fruition of the incredible Apple products that he innovated. I would also imagine, that as seemingly insensitive and blunt his personality and ways were, he would have loved the touching, albeit sparse personal stories about his deep affection for family and friends.

The Quotes:

'When Paul Jobs was mustered out of the Coast Guard after World War II, he made a wager with his crewmates. They had arrived in San Francisco, where their ship was decommissioned, and Paul bet that he would find himself a wife within two weeks.'(opening lines)

'Jobs also became deeply influenced by an emphasis that Buddhism places on intuition. "I begun to realize than an intuitive understanding and consciousness was more significant than abstract thinking and intellectual logical analysis," he later said. His intensity however, made it difficult for him to achieve inner peace; his Zen awareness was not accompanied by an excess of calm, peace of mind, or interpersonal mellowness.'(35)

'Coming back after seven months in Indian villages, I saw the craziness of the Western world as well as its capacity for rational thought. If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there' s room to hear more subtle things -- that's when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It's a discipline; you have to practice it.'(49)

'The Atari experience helped shape Job's approach to business and design. He appreciated the user-friendliness of Atari's insert-quarter-avoid-Klingons games. "That simplicity rubbed off on him and made him a very focused product person," said Ron Wayne. Hobs also absorbed some of Bushnell's take-no-prisoners attitude. "Nolan wouldn't take no for an answer," according to Alcorn, "and this was Steve's first impression of how things get done. Nolan was never abusive, like Steve sometimes is. But he had the same driven attitude. It made me cringe, but dammit, it got things done. In that way Nolan was a mentor for Jobs."
  Bushnell agreed. "There is something indefinable in an entrepreneur, and I saw that in Steve," he said. "He was interested not just in engineering, but also the business aspects. I taught him that if you act like you can do something, then it will work. I told him, 'Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.'"'(54-55)

'Markkula wrote his principles in a one-page paper titled "The Apple Marketing Philosophy" that stressed three points. The first was empathy, an intimate connection with the feelings of the customer: "We will truly understand their needs better than any other company." The second was focus: "In order to do a good job of those things that we decide to do, we must eliminate all the unimportant opportunities." The third and equally important principle, awkwardly named, was impute. It emphasized that people form an opinion about a company or product based on the signals that it conveys. "People DO judge a book by its cover," he wrote. "We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software etc.; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities."'(78)

'The Apple raid on Xerox PARC is sometimes described as one of the biggest heists in the chronicles of industry. Jobs occasionally endorsed this view, with pride. As he once said, "Picasso had a saying -- 'good artists copy, great artists steal' -- and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."'(98)

'When members of the Mac team got ensnared in his reality distortion field, they were almost hypnotized. "He reminded me of Rasputin," said Debi Coleman. "He laser-beamed in on you and didn't blink. It didn't matter if he was serving purple Kool-Aid. You drank it." But like Wozniak, she believed that the reality distortion field was empowering: It enabled Jobs to inspire his team to change the course of computer history with a fraction of the resources of Xerox or IBM. "It was a self-fulfilling distortion," she claimed. "You did the impossible, because you didn't realize it was impossible."'(118-119)

'... Jobs most poignant ruminations were about growing old and facing the future:
   Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get stuck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them.
   I'll always stay connected with Apple. I hope that throughout my life I'll sort of have the thread of my life and the thread of Apple weave in and out of each other, like a tapestry. There may be a few years when I'm not there, but I'll always come back...'(189-190)

'Jobs has told Egan, as he had a few other friends, about his premonition that he would not live a long life. That was why he was driven and impatient, he confided. "He felt a sense of urgency about all he wanted to get done," Egan later said.'(262)

'By this point, based on his dating history, a matchmaker could have put together a compromise sketch of the woman who would be right for Jobs. Smart, yet unpretentious. Tough enough to stand up to him, yet Zen-like enough to rise about turmoil. Well-educated and independent, yet ready to make accommodations for him and a family. Down-to-earth, but with a touch of the ethereal. Savvy enough to know how to manage him, but secure enough to not always need to. And it wouldn't hurt to be beautiful, lanky blonde, with an easygoing sense of humor who like organic vegetarian food.'(267-268)

(with wife Laurene Powell)

'For all his willfulness and insatiable desire to control things, Jobs was indecisive and reticent when he felt unsure about something. He craved perfection, and he was not always good at figuring out how to settle for something less. He did not like to wrestle with complexity or make accommodations. ... This attitude arose partly out of his tendency to see the world in binary terms. A person was either a hero or a bozo, a product was either amazing or shit. But he could be stymied by things that were more complex, shaded, or nuanced: getting married, buying the right sofa, committing to run a company. In addition, he didn't want to be set up for failure.'(315-316)

'But those who could stand up to Jobs, including Clow and his teammates Ken Segall and Craig Tanimoto, were able to work with him to create a tone poem that he liked. In its original sixty-second version it read:

   Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.'(329)

'The result was that Apple engineers and managers suddenly became sharply focused on just four areas. For the professional desktop quadrant, they would work on making the Power Macintosh G3. For the professional portable, there would be the PowerBook G3. For the consumer desktop, work would begin on what would become the iMac. And for the consumer portable, they would focus on what would become the iBook. The "i," Jobs later explained, was to emphasize that the devices would be seamlessly integrated with the Internet.'(338)

'That was the fundamental principle Jobs and Ive shared. Design was not just about what a product looked like on the surface. It had to reflect the product's essence. "in most people's vocabularies, design means veneer," Jobs told Fortune shortly after retaking the reins at Apple. "But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers."'(343)

'In the process, however, he became friends with Miyake and would visit him regularly. He also came to like the idea of having a uniform for himself, because of both its daily convenience (the rationale he claimed) and its ability to convey a signature style. "so I asked Issey to make me some of his black turtlenecks that I liked, and he made me like a hundred of them." Jobs noticed my surprise when he told this story, so he gestured to them stacked up in the closet. "That's what I wear." he said. "I have enough to last for the rest of my life."'(362)

'Suddenly everything had fallen into place: a drive that would hold a thousand songs; an interface and scroll wheel that would let you navigate a thousand songs; a FireWire connection that could sync a thousand songs in under ten minutes; and a battery that would last through a thousand songs. "We suddenly were looking at one another and saying. "This is going to be so cool," Jobs recalled. "we know how cool it was, because we knew how badly we each wanted one personally. And the concept became so beautifully simple: a thousand songs in your pocket." One of the copywriters suggested they call it a "Pod." Jobs was the one who, borrowing from the iMac and iTunes names, modified that to iPod.'(390)

'As competitors stumbled and Apple continued to innovate, music became a larger part of Apple's business. In January 2007 iPod sales were half of Apple's revenues. The device also added luster to the Apple brand. But an even bigger success was the iTunes Store. Having sold one million songs in the first six days it was introduced in April 2003, the store went on to sell seventy million songs in its first year. In February 2006 the store sold its one billionth song when Alex Ostrovsky, sixteen, of West Bloomfield, Michigan, bought Coldplay's "Speed of Sound" and got a congratulatory call from Jobs, bestowing upon him ten iPods, an iMac, and a $10,000 music gift certificate.'(410)

'Although he rarely gave speeches other than his staged product demonstrations, he accepted Stanford's invitation to give its June 2005 commencement address. He was in a reflective mood after his health scare and turning fifty. ... The students were unusually attentive, despite a plane circling overhead with a banner that exhorted "recycle all e-waste," and it was his third tale that enthralled them. It was about being diagnosed with cancer and the awareness it brought:

   Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

   The artful minimalism of the speech gave it simplicity, purity, and charm. Search where you will, from anthologies to YouTube, and you won't find a better commencement address.'(457)

  

"Well, I'd give a lot to have Steve's taste," Gates answered. There was a bit of nervous laughter; Jobs had famously said, ten years earlier, that his problem with Microsoft was that it had absolutely no taste. But Gates insisted he was serious. Jobs was a "natural in terms on intuitive taste." He recalled how he and Jobs used to sit together reviewing the software that Microsoft was making for the Macintosh. "I'd see Steve make the decisions based on a sense of people and product that, you know, is hard for me to explain. The way he does things is different and I think it's magical. And in that case, wow."'(464)

'THE  iPHONE

Three revolutionary products in One

An iPod That Makes Calls'(465)

'It hit me that, for young people, this whole world is the same now. When we're making products, there is no such thing as a Turkish phone, or a music player that young people in Turkey would want that's different from one young people elsewhere would want. We're just one world now."(528)

'He has never, in two years, asked anything about what I was putting in the book or what conclusions I had drawn. But now he looked at me and said, "I know there will be a lot in your book I won't like." It was more a question than a statement, and when he stared at me for a response, I nodded, smiled, and said I was sure that would be true. "That's good," he said. "Then it won't seem like an in-house book. I won't read it for a while, because I don't want to get mad. Maybe I will read it in a year -- if I'm still around." By then, his eyes were closed and his energy gone, so I quietly took my leave.'(557)

'The unified field theory that ties together Job's personality and products begins with his most salient trait: his intensity. His silences could be searing as his rants; he had taught himself to stare without blinking. Sometimes his intensity was charming, in a geeky way, such as when he was explaining the profundity of Bob Dylan's music or why whatever product he was unveiling at that moment was the most amazing thing Apple had ever made. At other times it could be terrifying, such as when he was fulminating about Google or Microsoft ripping off Apple.'(561)

'Some people say, "Give the customers what they want." But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do.'(567)

'He admitted that, as he faced death, he might be overestimating the odds out of a desire to believe in an afterlife. "I like to think that something survives after you die," he said. "It's strange to think that you accumulate all this experience, and maybe a little wisdom, and it just goes away. So I really want to believe that something survives, that maybe your consciousness endures."

   He fell silent for a very long time. "But on the other hand, perhaps it's like an on-off switch," he said. "Click! And you're gone."

   Then he paused again and smiled slightly. "Maybe that's why I never liked to put an on-off switched on Apple devices."(closing lines)

First Simon and Schuster hardcover edition November 2011

571 pages

Book borrowed from the Library

All photos are from Google image searches

217. TALL STORY

Candy Gourlay 2010

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Be careful what you wish for ...Andi is short. And she has lots of wishes. She wishes she could play on the school basketball team, she wishes for her own bedroom, but most of all she wishes that her long lost half brother, Bernardo, could come and live in London, where he belongs. Then Andi's biggest wish comes true and she's minutes away from becoming someone's little sister. As she waits anxiously for Bernardo to arrive from the Philippines, she hopes he'll turn out to be tall and just as mad as she is about basketball. When he finally arrives, he's tall all right. But he's not just tall ...he's a GIANT. In a novel packed with humour and quirkiness, Gourlay explores a touching sibling relationship and the clash of two very different cultures.


What Hooked Me:

This début novel for children and teens is very sweet and touching. There are a lot of superstitions and folklores that Filipinos take seriously as the themes are mostly geared to what they value most - their love of family and country, a passion instilled and alive no matter if they have actually taken roots in far away lands. Filipinos are also passionate about basketball, a sport that allows them to overcome their lack of height with their innate speed and creative talent. So I really like that, through the alternating voices of Andi and Bernardo, the author was able to successfully forge all these elements together to tell one solid and refreshing story of brotherly sisterly friendship and love. 
   

The Quotes:

'Rush hour.
   So many armpits, so little deodorant. The whole world is heading out to Heathrow to meet long-lost relatives. I am wedged between the tummies of the two fattest men in the world." (opening lines)

'Does she think I needed impressing? I mean, Mum isn't exactly God's gift to the human race in the height department. I'm the smallest in Year Eight and I'm still taller than her. She's so short she needs an ID to prove she's old enough to buy wine at the supermarket. 'I don't understand,' she always argues at the Tesco Express. 'Where I come from, there's never any problem.'
   Well, London isn't the Philippines, Mum.'(2)

'Then I finally get why Mum goes on and on about Bernardo being tall.
   Rocky, the captain of my basketball team, is TALL.
   Michael Jordan is TALL.
   But Bernardo is no way tall like Rocky or Michael Jordan.
   Bernardo is a GIANT.'(3)

"We are a village usually noticed not for what we have but for what we don't.  We have no square, no supermarket, no bar, no church -- the nearest confessional being over the next hill in the barrio of San Isidro. The houses don't have much either: no clay-tiled roofs, not much paint left on the old planked walls, no tidy pavements outside each rusty garden gate."(7)

'The spirit of Bernardo Carpio has returned in you, Nardo,' Old Tibo, the barber, told me. 'San Andres has always prayed for Bernardo Carpio to return, and now he has.'
   And it was Tibo who pointed out the absence of earthquakes. 'Since the boy began to grow, the earthquakes have stopped. This boy has saved the barrio.'
   And the people came.
   And they brought gifts.
   And they made me their hero.'(13-14)

'Height isn't everything, Dad says. And don't I know it!
   'I'm taking a risk, Andi,' Coach said. 'Seeing as you're the shortest and the youngest on the team.'
   True. I was the shortest and the youngest.
   But he still picked me.
   I was point guard!'(15)

'So though her wish came true, it took Bernardo away from her.
   Maybe that's the way wishes work.
   I wished for point guard.
   Mum wished for a house.
   We both got our wishes. But one good thing deleted the other, like a finger falling on the wrong computer key.
   Oops.'(30)

'There was a picture in pen and ink of a giant standing between two cliff sides, muscles bulging as he strained to push them apart. The caption said: Villagers await the return of a giant legend named Bernardo Carpio. Folklore has it that only the giant can truly save the village from destruction.
   So imagine what a big deal it was when people discovered a boy amongst them named Bernardo who was shooting a giant bamboo.'(61)

'He flexed his shoulder muscles and pushed the ball into the sky. It arced high but I reached up at just the right moment and tipped it gently into the basket. It bounced on the yellow floor with a satisfying thunk.
   Jabby caught it after the bounce.
   'Ace!'
   It was the one move I could do on the basketball court. Jabby and I spent a lot of time practising variations on it. Under the basket. To the right. To the left. It wasn't proper basketball, but at least it was something we could do together, since with my big feet and my brittle knees, I couldn't run to save myself.'(73)

'OK, this is the thing about me and basketball: I may be small and I could be faster... But I never miss.
   I. Never. Miss.
   It's some kind of weight-versus-strength-versus-balance thing. I just don't miss. I shoot and the ball swishes through the basket. Hook shot. Set shot. Turn-around-jump shot. Lay-up. Under the basket. From the free-throw line. And even way, way out, from the three-point line.
   It all goes in.
   Swish.
   Swish.
   Swish.'(87)

'The other day I spotted a piece in a magazine about Neutralizing Flashpoints. I only read it because it was a new film at the cinema.
   But it turned out that Flashpoints referred to good old-fashioned family rows. And Neutralizing was just fancy jargon for telling everyone to stay cool. The secret? Information. Apparently parents could Neutralize Flashpoints by simply keeping their teenagers informed about what was going on.
   Mum would get an F in Neutralizing Flashpoints,'(133)

'It was noon in London. The Philippines was eight hours ahead, so it would be 8 p.m. in San Andres. This being Sunday, Auntie would have made lunch of some pork belly deep-fried in chicken oil so that the crackling popped like popcorn. She would have made soup with steamed milkfish belly, tamarind juice and swamp cabbage, seasoned with lime.
   My mouth watered at the thought.'(175)

'It was a habit, I guess.
   How many times did I go through the set-up with Jabby? Jabby simply threw a high ball -- he didn't even need to aim -- and I stepped towards the goal at the last moment to tip into the basket.
   So when the boy with hair like a toilet brush threw that high ball, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to step into the court and tip it in."(189)

'While Bernardo was talking, I had stared hard at his face. It's funny how you could spend time with someone and not look closely at him. I mean, really closely.
   With Bernardo you looked everywhere but his face.
   Mostly because he was so tall, there was so much to take in.
   But also because you were afraid of what you might see.'(207)

'I thought my heart would burst.
   We talked from school gate to front door, from front door to kitchen table. We made a pizza, has some supper and then went upstairs to Andi's room and talked. The years of being apart seemed to fall away. I thought my heart would burst.'(210)

'In a funny way, I think I do get a lot of Tagalog. Language is just like a film soundtrack. I've heard Mum and Dad say, Hey, that piece of music was the soundtrack of my childhood! Well. Bernardo's barok English was just him singing his soundtrack in another key. Not his key. My key. When I thought about it that way, it wasn't the funny, broken English that I heard but the story he wanted to tell.
   And what a story it was.'(222)

'Everything pales into insignificance.'(230)

A David Fickling Book Kindle Edition
298 pages
Book owned
Book idea from Jinky @ Jinky is Reading, and her review is HERE.

216. the BOOK of JONAS

Stephen Dau 2012


Book Overview from Barnes and Noble:

   An exceptional debut novel about a young Muslim war orphan whose family is killed in a military operation gone wrong, and the American soldier to whom his fate, and survival, is bound.

   Jonas is fifteen when his family is killed during an errant U.S. military operation in an unnamed Muslim country. With the help of an international relief organization, he is sent to America, where he struggles to assimilate-foster family, school, a first love. Eventually, he tells a court-mandated counselor and therapist about a U.S. soldier, Christopher Henderson, responsible for saving his life on the tragic night in question.

   Christopher's mother, Rose, has dedicated her life to finding out what really happened to her son, who disappeared after the raid in which Jonas' village was destroyed. When Jonas meets Rose, a shocking and painful secret gradually surfaces from the past, and builds to a shattering conclusion that haunts long after the final page.
  
What Hooked Me:

There is a surprising gentleness to this book, even though it talks about the brutality of war. Maybe it is a reflection of the remarkable way that the author told the story, aptly bereft of insignificant subplots to illustrate the lasting heartache and devastation war brings to both sides. Reading through the almost surreal recollection of Younis/Jonas memory and finally reading the conclusion of Christopher's diary has left me with a heavy heart and confirms my conviction that war is never the answer.

The Quotes:

'They arrived like a thought, tracing contrails across deep sky as though writing out their intentions in letters too big to be fully seen from the earth. Or they flowed low and fast over the hills, their great machines arcing silently from horizon to horizon, so fast that they were there and gone before the roar from their engines caught up, screaming the news of their arrival even as they disappeared.
   In the village they tried to make sense of it.
   The imam said that the Americans were like the lion who had stepped on a thorn, and then went about making a great noise, roaring at the world from his pain. But it would soon pass, he said, when the thorn dried up and fell out, when the pain ebbed, and then tranquility would be restored.' (opening paragraphs)

'What is it like to lose everything, they ask. The question takes various forms, and that day, sitting in plastic chairs beside a shattered house, he developed his one and only response.
   "What is it like to lose everything?" asked the man, the stranger who was there to help.
   And Younis fixed him with his pale green eyes and said, "What is it like not to?"'(11)

'They are known everywhere, whether they are welcomed at chic lounges by bartenders who are eager to add a touch of ethnicity to their ambiance, or they are the dark kids in the corner, most likely engineering students, who talk funny. Or maybe they are something in between, something more like their classmates, like everyone of a certain age: on their own, confident and self-absorbed and accomplished and immature and cruel and generous and smart and unconcerned and cavalier and sensitive and ambitious, and, and, and.'(46)

'But you are still human. Eventually you do reflect on it. The consequences make themselves known. The results of your actions persist. Eventually, you are struck by their meaning. At some point, an accounting is made. Eventually, if you are human, and sane, you examine what you have done.'(49)

'It gets in there, this thought, this way of thinking. They try to plant it, for sure, tend to it so that it grows, foster it, but it is in there to begin with. You're born with it, I suppose, and eventually life takes it out of you. The notion that you're invincible. No fear, they said. They don't want you to have any fear. Those other things, that invincibility, that aggression. They bring it out in you, show you how to do things, try to teach you how not to be stupid, how to protect each other. Protect each other. Be aggressive. Protect each other.
   And then one day you find out what that really means.'(56)

'Over the fireplace is a portrait that dominates the room, nearly the size of the fireplace itself. It is him. The face is so familiar but also different, younger and less worn than he remembers it. The crow's-feet have not yet developed around his eyes, and the hair is freshly shorn. He wears a dress blue uniform, and the American flag behind him is so crisp that Jonas can almost see it waving in the cool breeze that puffs in through the open windows. The face looks out at them from its place over the mantel as though presiding over a court.'(59)

'The room is bathed in a diffuse glow, the early-afternoon breeze, the grandfather clock ticking away in the corner. Rose's face has been forced into a mask, fixed in place by an endless cycle of yearning and disappointment, a calm exterior laid over a mix of curiosity and something else. Hope.'(60)

'The rooster crowed again in the distance, and Younis was nearly finished when he heard the noise.
   It cut sharply through the clear night, louder and louder. He will never be able to describe it adequately. It sounded like a lot of things: like paper ripping, amplified a hundred times, and overlaying that was the sound of a flag cracking rapidly in a strong wind, and some kind of engine noise, like a scooter with a broken tailpipe, and underneath it all was a low, long whistle, sounding for all the world like the whistle his father made when he called the sheep in from the far pasture. The entire cacophony grew louder and louder, but at the same time, in his memory, extended on until forever.'(62)

'This happened much faster that it takes to describe, only seconds, and later Younis will express his amazement at this, at how quickly everything changes, whether because of a decision you make or the decisions made by others, or just because of chance, and in a moment the entire path of your life, everything you knew and everything you will ever know, is altered. But in those few seconds all he recognized was the need to make a decision and, somewhere deep inside, the importance of his choice.'(65)

'Rose has heard stories like this before. Not this story, of course. This story is different. Each story is different. But all of them share a need to be told, to be heard, and Rose knows how to hear them. She knows that those gaps are important, that they mean something. She knows that often the gaps are nearly as important as the story itself.'(66)

'In a way, they're still there, now that I've seen them, set together by chance or fate under the African sun, safe, for the moment, from the surrounding cruelty, each one's life given meaning by the other's.(78)

'What if you become convinced that, even though you are there to help them, the locals are not only unappreciative, but might actively hate you? What if you start calling all the locals hajjis? What if you start to see them less and less as human beings and more and more as things to be categorized as either very threatening or less threatening?'(88)

'She had been told that once she arrived at the point of acceptance, she would be able to move forward. It would mark a turning point. And they were correct, whoever it was who told her this. It did mark the kind of turning point she had expected. She had come to think of her life as being on hold. She had an inkling that once she reaches the point of acceptance, everything could finally begin again. But looking back on it, she realizes that rather than marking the point her life restarted, the day she finally accepted loss marked the point when it all fell apart.'(89)

'An order is an order. We could not risk letting them go. I'm sorry it had to go the way it did. I really am. I would change it in an instant if I could. I would go back in time and do it differently. I would ask questions. I would raise objections. I would ask to see the intel. I would pay attention to the nagging sensation in the core of my brain that was trying to tell me that something was wrong. Truly I would.
   But we had orders, and they were very clear.
   An order is an order.
   We had orders.'(123)

'Occasionally Jonas hears the voice of his savior.
   It comes to him when he is unable to turn his thoughts to anything else. The voice he hears is gentle and deep. When he remembers it, he tries to get it right, tries to match the words exactly, but has the familiar feeling that he is adding and subtracting, substituting what should have been said for what he fails to remember accurately.
   What should have been said. What he fails to remember.
   He is haunted by both.'(134)

a Blue Rider Press Nook edition
152 pages
e-book Owned

215. DRACULA

Bram Stoker 1897

The Book Blurb:

   -Prince of the Damned-
   Nosferatu, vrolok, demon. For centuries he has ruled armies of wolves, hordes of rats, legions of walking undead. He becomes a bat, a shadow, a moonbeam. He corrupts the pure and destroys the innocent. He enters dreams and torments minds. Now he means to take our world and feast forever on our blood.
   But six people have faced his horror -- and lived. Six mortals desperate enough to hunt him, to dare his evil. Mina Harker, whose courage saved her husband from madness. Lawyer Jonathan Harker, who unwittingly set him loose. Millionaire adventurer Quincey Morris, Lord Godalming, and Dr. John Seward, who were forced to kill the woman they all loved ... twice.
   And Van Helsing. Prof. Abraham Van Helsing, who alone knows his immortal ways, who knows the true danger to the hunters' lives and souls, who alone knows what it means to challenge the evil of Dracula.

What Hooked Me:

It is utterly amazing how a frightening, evil and really gory story can be rendered so magnificently with the power of beautiful prose. It is also so satisfying for me to recognize that this classic has been enjoyed by so many people since 1897 and that it will be so forever.

The Quotes:

'JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL (Kept in shorthand)
3 May,. Bistritz. -- Left Munich at 8:35 P.m., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets.'(opening lines)

'"You may go anywhere you wish in the castle, except where the doors are locked, where of course you will not wish to go. There is reason that all things are as they are, and did you see with my eyes and know with my knowledge, you would perhaps better understand," I said I was sure of this, and then he went on: --
   "We are in Transylvania; and Transylvania is not in England. Our ways are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things. Nay, from what you have told me of your experiences already, you know something of what strange things there may be."(20)

'When later I saw him through the chink of the hinges of the door laying the table in the dining-room, I was assured of it; for if he does himself all these menial offices, surely it is proof that there is no one else to do them. This gave me a fright, for if there is no one else in the castle, it must have been the Count himself who was the driver of the coach that brought me here. This is a terrible thought; for if so, what does it  mean that he could control the wolves, as he did, by only holding up his hand in silence. How was it that all the people at Bistritz and on the coach had some terrible fear for me? What meant the giving of the crucifix, of the garlic, of the wild rose, of the mountain ash? Bless that good, good woman who hung the crucifix round my neck! for it is a comfort and a strength to me whenever I touch it. It is odd that a thing which I have been taught to regard with disfavour and as idolatrous should in a time of loneliness and trouble be of help. Is it that there is something in the essence of the thing itself, or that it is a medium, a tangible help, in conveying memories of sympathy and comfort?'(27)

'What I saw was the Count's head coming out of the window. I did not see the face, but I knew the man by the neck and the movement of his back and arms. In any case I could not mistake the hands which I had so many opportunities of studying. I was at first interested and somewhat amused, for it is wonderful how small a matter will interest and amuse a man when he is a prisoner. But my very feelings changed to repulsion and terror when I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over that dreadful abyss, face down with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings.'(32-33)

'I was conscious of the presence of the Count, and of his being as if lapped in a storm of fury. As my eyes opened involuntarily I saw his strong hand grasp the slender neck of the fair woman and with giant's power draw it back, the blue eyes transformed with fury, the white teeth champing with rage, and the fair cheeks blazing red with passion. But the Count! Never did I imagine such wrath and fury, even to the demons of the pit. His eyes were positively blazing. The red light in them was lurid, as if the flames of the hell-fire blazed behind them. His face was deathly pale, and the lines of it were hard like drawn wires; the thick eyebrows that met over the nose now seemed like a heaving bar of white-hot metal. With a fierce sweep of his arm, he hurled the woman from him, and then motioned to the others, as though he were beating them back;'(37)

'The great box was in the same place, close against the wall, but the lid was laid on it, not fastened down, but with the nails ready in their places to be hammered home. I knew I must reach the body for the key, so I raised the lid, and laid it back against the wall; and then I saw something which filled my very soul with horror. There lay the Count, but looking as if his youth had been half renewed, for the white hair and moustache were changed to dark iron-grey; the cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath; the mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran over the chin and neck. Even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches underneath were bloated. It seems as it the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood. He lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion. I shuddered as I bent over to touch him, and every sense in me revolted at the contact;'(49)

'R.M. Renfield, etat 59.-- Sanguine temperament; great physical strength; morbidity excitable; periods of gloom, ending in some fixed idea which I cannot make out. I presume that the sanguine temperament itself and the disturbing influence end in a mentally-accomplished finish; a possible dangerous man, probably dangerous if unselfish. In selfish men caution is as secure an armour for their foes as for themselves. What I think of on this point is, when self is the fixed point the centripetal force is balanced with the centrifugal; when duty, a cause, etc., is the fixed point, the latter force is paramount, and only accident or a series of accidents can balance it.'(59)

'My homicidal maniac is of a peculiar kind. I shall have to invent a new classification for him, and call him a zoophagous (life-eating) maniac; what he desires is to absorb as many lives as he can, and he has laid himself out to achieve it in a cumulative way. He gave many flies to one spider and many spiders to one bird, and then wanted a cat to eat the many birds. What would have been his later steps?'(68)

'LUCY WESTENRA's DIARY.
9 September. -- I feel so happy to-night. I have been so miserably weak, that to be able to think and move about is like feeling sunshine after a long spell of east wind out of a steel sky. Somehow Arthur feels very, very close to me. I seem to feel his presence warm about me. I suppose it is that sickness and weakness are selfish things and turn our inner eyes and sympathy on ourselves, whilst health and strength give Love rein, and in thought and feeling he can wander where he wills.'(122)

'I went back to the room, and found Van Helsing looking at poor Lucy, and his face was sterner than ever. Some change had come over her body. Death had given back part of her beauty, for her brow and cheeks had recovered some of their flowing lines; even the lips had lost their deadly pallor. It was as if the blood, no longer needed for the working of the heart, had gone to make the harshness of death as little rude as might be.

"We thought her dying whilst she slept,

And sleeping when she died."'(155)

"Oh, friend John, it is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles; and yet when King Laugh come he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall -- all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. And believe me, friend John, that he is good to come, and kind. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come; and, like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again; and we bear to go on with our labour, what it may be."(168)

'Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men's eyes, because they know -- or think they know -- some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs, which think themselves new; and which are yet but the old...'(183-184)

'To believe in things that you cannot. Let me illustrate. I heard once of an American who so defined faith: 'that faculty which enables us to believe things which we know to be untrue.' For one, I follow that man. He meant that we shall have an open mind, and not let a little bit of truth check the rush of a big truth like a small rock does a railway truck. We get the small truth first. Good! We keep him, and we value him; but all the same we must not let him think himself all the truth in the universe.'(185)

'When within a foot or two of the door, however, she stopped, as if arrested by some irresistible force. Then she turned, and her face was shown in the clear burst of moonlight and by the lamp, which had now no quiver from Van Helsing's iron nerve. Never did I see such baffled malice on a face; and never, I trust, shall such ever be seen again by mortal eyes. The beautiful colour became livid, the eyes seemed to show out sparks of hell-fire, the brows were wrinkled as though the folds of the flesh were the coils of Medusa's snakes, and the lovely, blood-stained mouth grew to an open square, as in the passion masks of the Greeks and Japanese. If ever a face meant death -- if looks could kill - we saw it at that moment.'(204)

'None of the others had met the Count at all at close quarters, and when I had seen him he was either in the fasting stage of his existence in his rooms or, when he was gloated with fresh blood, in a ruined building open to the air; but here the place was small and close, and the long disuse had made the air stagnant and foul. There was an earthy smell, as of some dry miasma, which came through the fouler air. But as to the odour itself, how shall I describe it? It was not alone that it was composed of all the ills of mortality and with the pungent, acrid smell of blood, but it seemed as though corruption had become itself corrupt. Faugh! it sickens me to think of it. Every breath exhaled by that monster seemed to have clung to the place and intensified its loathsomeness.'(241)

'Do you know what the place is? Have you seen that awful den of hellish infamy -- with the very moonlight alive with grisly shapes, and every peck of dust that whirls in the wind a devouring monster in embryo? Have you felt the Vampire's lips upon your throat?'(342)

'It is a wild adventure we are on. Here, as we are rushing along through the darkness, with the cold from the river seeming to rise up and strike us; with all the mysterious voices of the night around us, it all comes home. We seem to be drifting into unknown places and unknown ways; into a whole world of dark and dreadful things.'(344)

an Aerie Book paperback edition

366 pages

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