a thousand Books with Quotes

207. the DESCENDANTS (and some pictures from Oahu)

2012-02-23T09:30:00.000-05:00

Kaui Hart Hemmings 2007

The Book Blurb:

Fortunes have changed for the King family, descendants of Hawaiian royalty and one of the state's largest landowners. Matthew King's daughters - Scottie, a feisty ten-year-old, and Alex, a seventeen-year-old recovering drug addict - are out of control, and their charismatic, thrill-seeking mother, Joanie, lies in a coma after a boat-racing accident. She will soon be taken off life support. As Matt gathers his wife's firends and family to say their final goodbyes, a difficult situation is made worse by the sudden discovery that there's one person who hasn't been told: the man with whom Joanie had been having an affair. Forced to examine what they owe not only to the living but to the dead, Matt, Scottie, and Alex take to the road to find Joanie's lover, on a memorable journey that leads to unforeseen humor, growth, and profound revelations.

What Hooked Me:

I would like to think that this book found me at the Honolulu Airport, just before I boarded the airplane that took me back home. And that somewhere in Honolulu is Matt King, exhausted but patient, and successfully raising his two challenging but awesome daughters Alex and Scottie. For if there ever was a realistic portrayal of a contemporary family in the midst of grief and impending loss, this book is it. The clarity in which the author presented the events that lead to the transformation of Matt King from uninvolved husband and father to a sensitive and sensible father, a loyal husband and a responsible Hawaiian descendant was just right for me. This was a very enjoyable book at the end of a very enjoyable vacation. Now I just have to see the movie.

The Quotes:

'The sun is shining, mynah birds are chattering, palm trees are swaying, so what. I'm in the hospital and I'm healthy. My heart is beating as it should. My brain is firing off messages that are loud and clear. My wife is on the upright hospital bed, positioned the way people sleep on airplanes, her body stiff, head cocked to the side. Her hands on her lap.'(opening lines)

'I tell Esther she should ease up on lard. There's no need to mix lard in with Scottie's rice, chicken, and beans. I tell her she hasn't read the blogs. I've read the blogs. I know what Scottie should eat.'(19)

'I have inheritance issues. I belong to one of those Hawaii families who make money off of luck and dead people. My great-grandmother happened to be a princess. A small monarchy decided what land was theirs, and she came in to a lot of it. My great-grandfather, a haole businessman, was doing pretty well himself. He was a good land speculator, good banker. All of their descendants, as well as Hawaii's missionary descendants, sugar plantation descendants and so on, are still benefiting from these old transactions. We sit back and watch as the past unfurls millions into our laps. My grandfather, my father, and I rarely touch the money we've made off the trust. I've never liked the fact that how much I have is public knowledge. I'm an attorney, and I use only the money I earn from being an attorney, not what I have inherited. My father always said it was the right thing to do, and in the end I'll have more to pass down. Anyway, I don't like legacies. I think everyone should start from scratch.'(22-23)

'I look at my wife. I need you, I think. I need you here to keep our daughters and me. I don't know how to talk to people. I don't know how to live correctly.'(52)

'A sea of red lights, and I slow down. My job now is to gather everyone together and tell them we have to let her go. I won't tell anyone over the phone, because I didn't like hearing the news from the doctor that way. I have maybe a week to handle the arrangements, as the doctor said, but the arrangements are overwhelming. How do I learn how to run a family? How do I say goodbye to someone I love so much that I've forgotten just how much I love her?'(75)

'What about him? I have never considered that he could be the one who knows and loves her best. I never considered that this is what she wants most of all. He doesn't know what's happening, and this is unfair. If I put my emotions aside, I can see the pain his unawareness could bring -- to him, to her, and possibly, eventually, to me. Now I know who's missing and what I need to do. I need to tell him to return from Kuai to say goodbye to Joanie. I need to write him onto my map. I need to bring him home to her.'(143)

'We walk until there aren't more houses, all the way to the part of the beach where the current makes the waves come in then rush back out so that the two waves clash, water casting up like a geyser. We watch that for a while and then Scottie says, "I wish Mom was here." I'm thinking the exact same thought. That's how you know you love someone, I guess, when you can't experience anything without wishing the other person were there to see it, too. Every day I kept track of anecdotes, occurrences, and gossip, bullet-pointing the news in my head and even rehearsing my stories before telling them to Joanie in bed at night.'(171)

'A chink of Honolulu floats into view, and I can see lights coursing up the hills, then a black dark space and another long row of house lights. It's always strange to be reminded of other lives still moving along. For every light I see, there's a person or a family, or someone like myself, enduring something.'(224)

'Why is it so hard to articulate love yet so easy to express disappointment?(236)

'I forgot that death for a doctor is failure. He has been unsuccessful. He has failed Joanie and he has failed us.'(254)

'I'm still not sure how the girls said goodbye, what their moment was like, and I don't want to ask because it will hurt me too much to know.'(276)

'Alex turns and Scottie shows Alex her fingers. Alex shakes her head and gives Scottie this look that seems to say, Get used to it. She'll be there for the rest of your life. She'll be there on birthdays, at Christmastime, when you get your period, when you graduate, have sex, when you marry, have children, when you die. She'll be there and she won't be there.'(282)

a Random House Trade Paperback edition
283 pages
Book owned

Some pictures from the trip:

view from our hotel room at Ko Olina (Oahu's west side)

view of Waikiki Beach (at sunrise) from the top of the Diamond Head crater

Byodo In Temple

USS Arizona Memorial that straddles on top of the sunken ship at Pearl Harbor

sunset over Waikiki Beach

my only photo capture while Whale watching

READING AWAY, February 12-23, 2012

2012-02-12T09:00:00.001-05:00

in Oahu, Hawaii

(photos from Google Search)

My Book Companions:

Be Back Soon!

206. TRAVELS with CHARLEY

2012-02-09T07:30:00.000-05:00

John Steinbeck 1962

Book Synopsis from Barnes and Noble:

To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light—these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years.

With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. And he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, on a particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and on the unexpected kindness of strangers that is also a very real part of our national identity.

What Hooked Me:

There is much depth to this travel memoir. The author's power of observation and great writing skill blend supremely well together to bring us America of the sixties, the land and its people. Sadly, and after fifty years, it seems hardly different from our America now. Although he writes with much humor, one cannot help feel the seriousness of the thought-provoking passages that fill this classic novel. And along with a feeling of satisfaction of having just read a brilliant book, it, however, also left me a little bit unsettled.

The Quotes:

When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that immaturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked.'(opening lines)

'Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process; a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike.'(4)

'... I took one companion on my journey -- an old French gentleman poodle known as Charley. Actually his name is Charles le Chien. He was born in Bercy on the outskirts of Paris and trained in France, and while he knows a little poodle-English, he responds quickly only to commands in French. Otherwise he has to translate and that slows him down. He is a very big poodle, of a color called bleu, and he is blue when he is clean. Charley is a born diplomat.'(8)

(image of John and Charley from Google images search)

'Under the big oak trees of my place at Sag Harbor sat Rocinante, handsome and self-contained, and neighbors came to visit, some neighbors we didn't even know we had. I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation -- a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here.'(10)

'I knew that ten or twelve thousand miles driving a truck, alone and unattended, over every kind of road, would be hard work, but to me it represented the antidote for the poison of the professional sick man. And in my own life I am not willing to trade quality for quantity. If this projected journey should prove too much then it was time for me to go anyway. I see too many men delay their exits with a sickly, slow reluctance to leave the stage.'(20)

'I pulled Rocinante into a small picnic area maintained by the state of Connecticut and got my book of maps. And suddenly the United States became huge beyond belief and impossible ever to cross. I wondered how in hell I'd got myself mixed up in a project that couldn't be carried out. It was like starting to write a novel.'(23)

'I drove as slowly as custom and the impatient law permitted. That's the only way to see anything. Every few miles the states provided places of rest off the roads, sheltered places sometimes near dark streams. There were painted oil drums for garbage, and picnic tables, and sometimes fireplaces or barbecue pits. At intervals I drove Rocinante off the road and let Charley out to smell over the register of previous guests. Then I would heat my coffee and sit comfortably on my back step and contemplate wood and water and the quick-rising mountains with crowns of conifers and the fir trees high up, dusted with snow.'(34)

'The new American finds his challenge and his love in traffic-choked streets, skies nested in smog, choking with the acids of industry, the screech of rubber and houses leashed in against one another while the townlets wither a time and die.'(65)

'I feel that there are too many realities. What I set down here is true until someone else passes that way and rearranges the world in his own style. In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself.'(69)

'I became aware that each state had also its individual prose style, made sharply evident in its highways signs. Crossing state lines one is aware of this change of language. The New England states use a terse form of instruction, a tight-lipped, laconic style sheet, wasting no words and few letters. New York State shouts at you the whole time. Do this. Do that. Squeeze left. Squeeze right. Every few feet an imperious command. In Ohio the signs are more benign. They offer friendly advice, and are more like suggestions. Some states use a turgid style which can get you lost with the greatest ease. These are states which tell you what you might expect to find out for yourself.'(72)

'I don't think for a second that the people I had seen and talked to in New England were either unfriendly or discourteous, but they spoke tersely and usually waited for the newcomer to open communication. Almost on crossing the Ohio line it seemed to me that people were more open and more outgoing. ... Strangers talked freely to one another without caution. I had forgotten how rich and beautiful is the countryside -- the deep topsoil, the wealth of great trees, the lake country of Michigan handsome as a well-made woman, and dressed and jeweled. It seemed to me that the earth was generous and outgoing here in the heartland, and perhaps the people took a cue from it.'(95)

'The first note says: "Relationship Time to Aloneness." And I remember about that. Having a companion fixes you in time and that the present, but when the quality of aloneness settles down, past, present, and future all flow together. A memory, a present event, and a forecast all equally present.'(123)

'Can I say that the America I saw has put cleanliness first, at the expense of taste? And -- since all our perspective nerve trunks including that of taste are not only perfectible but also capable of trauma -- that the sense of taste tends to disappear and that strong, pungent, or exotic flavors arouse suspicion and dislike and so are eliminated?'(127)

'The night was loaded with omens. The grieving sky turned the little water to a dangerous metal and then the wind got up -- not the gusty, rabbity wind of the seacoasts I know but a great bursting sweep of wind with nothing to inhibit it for a thousand miles in any direction. Because it was a wind strange to me, and therefore mysterious, it set up mysterious responses in me. In terms of reason, it was strange only because I found it so. But a goodly part of our experience which we find inexplicable must be like that. To my certain knowledge, many people conceal experiences for fear of ridicule. How many people have seen or heard or felt something which so outraged their sense of what should be that the whole thing was brushed quickly away like a dirt under a rug?(137)

'For it is not true that an uneventful time in the past is remembered as fast. On the contrary, it takes the time-stones of events to give a memory past dimension. Eventlessness collapses time.'(161)

'The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time. They have the mystery of ferns that disappeared a million years ago into the coal of carboniferous era. They carry their own light and shade. The vainest, most slap-happy and irreverent of men, in the presence of redwoods, goes under a spell of wonder and respect.'(168-169)

'If I were to prepare one immaculately inspected generality it would be this: For all of our enormous geographic range, for all of our sectionalism, for all of our interwoven breeds drawn from every part of the ethnic world, we are a nation, a new breed. Americans are much more Americans than they are Northerners, Southerners, Westerners, or Easterners.'(185-186)

'The power of an attitude is amazing.'(204)

'There's absolutely nothing to take the place of a good man.'(208)

'Beyond my failings as a racist, I knew I was not wanted in the South. When people are engaged in something they are not proud of, they do not welcome witnesses. In fact, they come to believe the witnesses causes the trouble.'(219)

'I tossed about until Charley grew angry with me and told me "Ftt" several times. But Charley doesn't have our problems. He doesn't belong to a species clever enough to split the atom but not clever enough to live in peace with itself. He doesn't even know about race, nor is he concerned with his sister's marriage. It's quite the opposite. Once Charley fell in love with a dachsund, a romance racially unsuitable, physically ridiculous, and mechanically impossible. But all of these problems Charley ignored. He loved deeply and tried dogfully. It would be difficult to explain to a dog the good and moral purpose of a thousand humans gathered to curse one tiny human. I've seen a look in dog's eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.'(237-238)

a Viking Press edition
246 pages
Book owned

205. the LOCK ARTIST

2012-02-06T09:00:00.000-05:00

Steve Hamilton 2009

The Book Blurb:

Michael is no ordinary young man. Mute since a childhood tragedy, at age eighteen he discovers that he possesses a skill he would never have expected. Whether it's a locked door without a key, a padlock with no combination, or even an eight-hundred-pound safe ... he can open them all.
It's a talent that will make Michael a hot commodity with the wrong people, and whether he likes it or not, push him closer to a life of crime. Until one day, when he finally sees his chance to escape, and decided to risk everything to return home to the only person he ever loved, and to unlock the secret that has kept him silent for so long.

What Hooked Me:

I found this subtle thriller highly crafted and very original. The protagonist, a mute eighteen-year-old lock artist, is very effective as a narrator. The way he communicates with his new-found love Amelia, by way of comic strip drawings is very imaginative. The 'Ghost' as Michael's unlikely safe-cracking mentor who helps him hone his craft is weirdly interesting. And the unraveling of the mystery behind Michael's muteness is haunting and dramatic. I even liked the alternating flashback that I found worked really well to slowly build up its intriguing plot. I say it deserves the Edgar Allan Poe Award best mystery novel for 2011!

The Quotes:

'You may remember me. Think back. The summer of 1990. I know that's a while ago, but the wire services picked up the story and I was in every newspaper in the country. Even if you didn't read the story, you probably heard about me. From one of your neighbors, somebody you worked with, or if you're younger, from somebody at school. They called me 'the Miracle Boy." A few other names, too, names thought up by copy editors or newscasters trying to outdo one another. I saw "Boy Wonder" in one of the old clippings. "Terror Tyke," that was another one, even though I was eight years old at the time. But it was the Miracle Boy that stuck.'(opening lines)

'Here though, on the page ... it can be like we're sitting together at a bar somewhere, just you and me, having a long talk. Yeah, I like that. You and me sitting at a bar, just talking. Or rather me talking and you listening. What a switch that would be. I mean, you'd really be listening. Because I've noticed how most people don't know how to listen. Believe me. Most of the time they're just waiting for the other person to shut up so they can start talking again. But you ... hell, you're just as good a listener as I am. You're sitting there, hanging on every word I say. When I get to the bad parts, you hang in there with me and let me get it out. You don't judge me right off the bat. I'm not saying you're going to forgive everything. I sure as hell don't forgive it all myself. But at least you'll be willing to hear me out, and in the end try to understand me. That's all I can ask, right?'(2)

'This is why they called me. This is why they waited around for a kid they'd never met before to ride halfway across the country. Because with me on the job, they leave absolutely no trace behind them. The owner of this house would come back the next day, open the door, and find everything exactly as he had left it. He would go upstairs, take some clothes out of his closet, turn the light back off. Only when it was time to go into that safe would he dial his combination and open that door and see .... Nothing.'(11)

'I sometimes wonder how my life would have gone if not for that one old lock on that one back door. If it hadn't gotten stuck so much, or if Uncle Lito had been too lazy to replace it ... Would I have ever found that moment? Those metal pieces, which are so hard and unforgiving, so carefully designed not to move ... Yet somehow with just the right touch it all lines up and God, that one second when it opens. That smooth, sudden, metallic release. The sound of it turning, and the way it feels in your hands. The way it feels when something is locked up so tight in a metal box, with no way to get out.
When you finally open it ...
When you finally learn how to unlock that lock ...
Can you even imagine how that feels?'(37)

'I took a deep breath and started. I turned the dial, clearing the wheels so I could count them. She watched me carefully. I knew that she knew everything I was doing. It was a strange feeling for me, and yet comforting. She knew.
Four wheels. Park at 0. Go to the contact area. My familiar rhythm now. She watched intently, but as I closed my eyes and felt for the slightest tiny difference, I knew I was leaving her behind. There was no way she could see this part.'(91)

'There were at least a dozen lock picks to choose from. Three different diamond picks, two ball picks, one double ball pick, at least four or five hook picks. I didn't know their names yet. I wouldn't learn that until later.'(123)

'That's when the whole setup started to become clear to me. The whole seemingly insane yet totally brilliant idea behind what Julian and his gang were doing. You don't wait for the target to put the money in the safe. You make the target put the money in the safe. You get close to him. You get to know him. You find out what he wants. You tell him he can have it. You tell him that you know somebody who knows somebody else who knows exactly how to get it. You tell him you'll arrange the deal so that everybody comes out ahead. You do all of this in such a way as to make him believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's smarter than you. That in the end, he's the one who's going to come out ahead.'(157)

'That's the one thing prison teaches you. You can close your eyes and dream about the way you wish things could be. Then you wake up and everything comes back to you at once. The isolation and the locked doors and the crushing weight of the stone walls all around you. It all comes back and it feels worse than ever.
So maybe you shouldn't dream at all if you're in a place like this. Not that kind of dream, anyway. Don't dream that kind of dream unless you don't plan on waking up.'(165)

'I didn't know that once you've proven yourself useful to the wrong people, you'll never be free again.'(187)

'The greatest puzzle in the world, young man, the greatest challenge a man can face, is solving the riddle of a woman's heart.'(231)

'Now there's a certain code I'm probably going against here. The Ghost passed this information down to me, and made it clear that I should keep it to myself. That I should keep it between fellow artists. Maybe one day, if I found the right person, I'd be able to pass it on, but only to that one person. Somebody I'd choose very carefully. Somebody who could handle such a burden. Look what it had done to me, after all. What price this unforgivable skill.'(232)

'We stood back and looked over what we had done. The panels started in the room where the safe had been. They wrapped around three walls and out into the hallway. They continued into the living room and finished on the wall opposite the front door, right where the couch had been. The last panel was the biggest of all.'(258-259)

... how everything in your life can change if you just do one small, specific thing perfectly well.'(261)

a Minotaur book edition
304 pages
Book borrowed from my dear friend, Denise N. (thanks!) who introduced me to this Michigan native author!

204. The FAULT in OUR STARS

2012-02-03T07:30:00.000-05:00

John Green 2012

The Book Jacket Blurb:
Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.

What Hooked Me:

There is enough authenticity to Hazel and Augustus' life and love story for my liking. Hazel's anger and her parent's angst feel real to me. Although I usually stay away from the topic of cancer, I had to read this because John Green wrote it. In my twenty-five years of being a pediatrician, I cannot even count the many nights that cancer and the fear of it has kept me up at night. It is foremost on my mind when I see a patient with an unusual presentation or an atypical clinical course. For I know very well that the diagnosis completely changes everything. As a resident physician, I saw the disease rob away the twinkle in many children's eyes, slash many teenager's energetic joy and dampen many parent's dreams. And although in my practice, of my own patients, I belong to the rare group that have been very fortunate and blessed (as I knock on wood!!) to have given that diagnosis only twice (both the children now in complete remission and doing well,) this novel has once again reminded me to be very thankful of my good luck and that the fault in everyone's stars, which I interpret as one's fate? is hovering above us all.

The Quotes:

'Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.'(opening lines)

'I looked over at Augustus Waters, who looked back at me. You could almost see through his eyes they were so blue. "There will come a time," I said, "when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this" -- I gestured encompassingly-- will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe its millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does.'(12-13)

'... I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence.'(16)

'I followed him inside. A wooden plaque in the entryway was engraved in cursive with words Home Is Where the Heart Is, and the entire house turned out to be festooned in such observations. Good Friends Are Hard to Find and Impossible to Forget read an illustration above the coatrack. True Love Is Born from Hard Times promised a needlepointed pillow in their antique-furnished living room. Augustus saw me reading. "My parents call them Encouragements," he explained. "They're everywhere."'(26-27)

'Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.'(33)

'I like my mom, but her perpetual nearness sometimes made me feel weirdly nervous.'(45)

"Sometimes people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said.
Isaac shot me a look. "Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is."'(60-61)

'Everyone in this tale has a rock-solid hamartia: hers, that she is so sick, yours, that you are so well. Were she better or you sicker, then the stars would not be so terribly crossed, but it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he had Cassius not, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves." Easy enough to say when you're a Roman nobleman (or Shakespeare!), but there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars.'(111-112)

"Our city has a rich history, even though many tourists are only wanting to see the Red Light District. ... Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin."(157)

"But to be perfectly frank, this childish idea that the author of a novel has some special insight into the characters in the novel ... it's ridiculous. That novel was composed of scratches on a page, dear. The characters inhabiting it have no life outside of those scratches. What happened to them? They all ceased to exist the moment the novel ended."191-192)

'I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased toward consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance of being observed.'(223)

'... the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again.'(305)

'The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention.'(312)

a Dutton Hardcover edition
313 pages
Book borrowed from the library
For more great quotes, check out Melissa's review @ The Avid Reader's Musings.

203. CAT's CRADLE

2012-01-31T17:30:00.000-05:00

Kurt Vonnegut 1963

The Book Blurb:

Cat's Cradle is Vonnegut's satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet's ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist; a complete, original theology created by a Calypso singer; and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny.

What Hooked Me:

Any book that portrays some of humankind's absurdity is a must-read for me. And any book that shows what stupidity men do (or say) in the name of religion makes it even more compelling for me. This brilliant satire was written fifty years ago, and yet I feel as though the ideas were taken from today's headlines. Another timeless classic!

The Quotes:

'Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.
Jonah -- John -- if I had been a Sam, I would have been a Jonah still -- not because I have been unlucky for others, but because somebody or something has compelled me to be certain places at certain times, without fail. Conveyances and motives, both conventional and bizarre, have been provided. And, according to plan, at each appointed second, at each appointed place this Jonah was there.'(1)

'We Bokonists believe that humanity is organized into teams, teams that do God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a karass by Bokonon, and the instrument, the kan-kan, that brought me into my own particular karass was the book I never finished, the books to be called The Day the World Ended.'(2)

'New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.'(41)

'Pure research men work on what fascinates them, not on what fascinates other people.'(49)

'A wrang-wrang, according to Bokonon, is a person who steers people away from a line of speculation by reducing that line, with the example of the wrang-wrang's own life, to an absurdity.'(78)

"Americans, ... are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier."(97)

'A pissant is somebody who thinks he's so damn smart, he never can keep his mouth shut. No matter what anybody says, he's got to argue with it. You say you like something, and, by God, he'll tell you why you're wrong to like it. A pissant does his best to make you feel like a boob all the time. No matter what you say, he knows better.'(130)

"I always knew, ... that, if I waited long enough, somebody would come and envy me. I kept telling myself to be patient, that, sooner or later, somebody envious would come along.'(151)

'Newt remained curled in the chair. He held out his painty hands as though a cat's cradle were strung between them. "No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's ..."
"And?"
"No damn cat, and no damn cradle."(166)

'People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order, so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.'(169)

'... when it became evident that no government or economic reform was going to make the people much less miserable, the religion became the one real instrument of hope. Truth was the enemy of the people, because the truth was so terrible, so Bokonon made it his business to provide the people with better and better lies.'(172)

'Science is magic that works.'(218)

'I turned to Castle the elder. "Sir, how does a man die when he's deprived of the consolations of literature?"
"In one of two ways," he said, "petrescence of the heart or atrophy of the nervous system."(232)

'Think of what a paradise this world would be if men were kind and wise.'(256)

'Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end,
And our God will take things back that He to us did lend.
And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God,
Why go right ahead and scold Him. He'll just smile and nod.'(270)

'Each person here has some specialty, something to give the rest.'(278)

'Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. ... He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.'(281)

a Delta Book Edition
287 pages
Book owned

202. 11/22/63

2012-01-26T11:30:00.000-05:00

Stephen King 2011

The Book Jacket Blurb:

   It begins with Jake Epping, a thirty-five-year-old English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching GED classes. He asks his students to write about an event that changed their lives, and one essay blows him away -- a gruesome, harrowing story about the night more than fifty years ago when Harry Dunning's father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a sledgehammer.
   Reading the essay is a watershed moment for Jake, his life -- like Harry's, like America's in 1963 -- turning on a dime. Not much later his friend Al, who owns the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958. And Al enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession -- to prevent the Kennedy assassination.
   So begins Jake's life as George Amberson, in a different world of Ike and JFK and Elvis, of big American cars and sock hops and cigarette smoke everywhere. From the dank little city of Derry, Maine (where there's Dunning business to conduct), to the warmhearted small town of Jodie, Texas, where Jake falls dangerously in love, every turn is leading eventually, of course, to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and to Dallas, where the past becomes heart-stoppingly suspenseful, and where history might not be history anymore.
   Time travel has never been so believable . Or so terrifying.

What Hooked Me:

I just realized that I have only read a handful of books about time travel. And judging from how much I love this one, I should probably read more on the subject. I should also read more novels by Stephen King, that is, if I can find the right mix just like this one: not too gory nor terrifying, suspenseful and convoluted, but also sweet and sentimental. Masterfully written, this book is dazzling and so totally engrossing, you will hardly notice that it is almost 900 pages. During the weekend that I read this book, I was totally back in the 60's and just like Jack Epping a.k.a. George Amberson, a good part of me wanted to stay.

The Quotes:

'I have never been what you'd call a crying man.
My ex-wife said that my "nonexistent emotional gradient" was the main reason she was leaving me (as if the guy she met in her AA meetings was beside the point).'(opening lines)

'I had not yet entered the fog of unreality that would soon swallow me, but the first tendrils were seeping around me, and I felt them. It wasn't a summer cold that had caused the hoarseness I'd heard in Al's voice, nor the croaking cough. Not the flu, either. Judging by the sign, it was something more serious.'(15)

'You know how, on a bright day, you can close your eyes and see an afterimage of whatever you were just looking at? It was like that. When I looked at my foot, I saw it on the floor. But when I blinked -- either a millisecond before or a millisecond after my eyes closed, I couldn't tell which -- I caught a glimpse of my foot on a step. And it wasn't in the dim light of a sixty-watt bulb, either. It was in bright sunshine.'(27)

"Two minutes. I told you, it's always two minutes. No matter how long you stay. He coughed, a spat into a fresh wad of napkins, and folded them away in his pocket. "And when you go down the steps, it's always 11:58 A.M. on the morning of September ninth, 1958. Every trip is the first trip."(45)

"And every person you meet is meeting you for the first time, no matter how many times you've met before."(45)

'Life turns on a dime, and when it does, it turns fast.'(212)

"The past is obdurate, Al. It doesn't want to be changed. ... But what I think now is that the resistance to change is proportional to how much the future might be altered by any given act."(232)

'The Book Depository wasn't a ruin, but it conveyed the same sense of sentient menace. I remembered coming on that submerged, soot-blackened smokestack, lying in the weeds like a giant prehistoric snake dozing in the sun. I remembered looking into its dark bore, so large I could have walked into it. And I remembered feeling that something was in there. Something alive. Something that wanted me to walk into it. So I could visit. Maybe for a long, long time.'(293)

'...life's simplest answers are often the easiest to overlook.'(303)

'Want to know the best thing about teaching? Seeing that moment when a kid discovers his or her gift. There's no feeling like on earth like it.'(322)

'Artistic talent is far more common than the talent to nurture artistic talent. Any parent with a hard hand can crush it, but to nurture it is much more difficult.'(330)

'Home is watching the moon rise over the open, sleeping land and having someone you can call to the window, so you can look together. Home is where you dance with others, and dancing is life.'(399)

'Sometimes a man and a woman reach a crossroads and linger there, reluctant to take either way, knowing the wrong choice will mean the end .. and knowing there's so much worth saving.'(411)

"Excellent, dude,' that's what you said. I think maybe you better tell where you heard that. And kick out the jams. And boogie shoes. And shake your bootie. Chill and freaking out. I want to know where you heard those, too. Why you say them and no one else does. I want to know why you were scared of that stupid Jimla chant that you talked about in your sleep. I want to know where Derry is and why it's like Dallas. I want to know when you were married, and to who, and for how long. I want to know where you were before you were in Florida, because Ellie Dougherty says she doesn't know, that some of your references are fake. 'Appear to be fanciful' is how she put it."(427)

'I know life is hard, I think everyone knows that in their hearts, but why does it have to be cruel, as well? Why does it have to bite?'(581)

'For a moment everything was clear, and when that happens you see that the world is barely there at all. Don't we all secretly know this? It's a perfectly balanced mechanism of shouts and echoes pretending to be wheels and cogs, a dreamclock chiming beneath a mystery-glass we call life. Behind it? Below it and around it? Chaos, storms. Men with hammers, with knives, men with guns. Women who twist what they cannot dominate and belittle what they cannot understand. A universe of horror and loss surrounding a single lighted stage where mortals dance in defiance of the dark.'(615-616)

'It's because the brain can't help to reconcile all those thin overlays of reality. The strings create multiple images of the future. Some are clear, most are hazy.'(797)

'The past is obdurate for the same reason a turtle's shell is obdurate: because the living flesh inside is tender and defenseless.
And something else. The multiple choices and possibilities of daily life are the music we dance to. They are like strings on a guitar. Strum them and you create a passing sound. A harmonic. But then start adding strings. Ten strings, a hundred strings, a thousand, a million. Because they multiply! Harry didn't know what that watery ripping sound was, but I'm pretty sure I do; that's the sound of too much harmony created by too many strings.'(827)

First Shribner hardcover edition
849 pages
Book owned
Personal Note: My URL has changed to athousandbookswith quotes.com.

201. SALVAGE the BONES

2012-01-23T10:30:00.000-05:00

Jesmyn Ward 2011

The Book Jacket Blurb:

   A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn't show interest in much else. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets; she's fifteen and pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pit bull's new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child's play and short on parenting.
   As the twelve days that make up the novel's framework yield to a dramatic conclusion, the unforgettable family at the novel's core -- motherless children sacrificing for one another as they can, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce -- pulls itself up to face another day. A bighearted novel about familial love and community against all odds, and a wrenching look at the lonesome and restrictive realities of rural poverty, Salvage the Bones is muscled with poetry, revelatory, and real.


What Hooked Me:

A motherless poverty-stricken family. Teenage pregnancy. Pit bull dog-fights. Hurricane Katrina. This book has all the elements of what sounds like a very depressing book, and that it is. In fact, it made me cry, one of a handful of books on my list that made me really cry.  Its' wonderful lyrical prose, strong characters (including the dog China), and powerful imagery will stay with me for a while. And instead of thought-provoking quotes, the quotes below are a few of the vivid scenes I will remember from this book.

The Quotes:

'China's turned on herself. If I didn't know, I would think she was trying to eat her paws. I would think that she was crazy. Which she is, in a way. Won't let nobody touch her but Skeet. When she was a big-headed pit bull puppy, she stole all the shoes in the house, all our black tennis shoes Mama bought because they hide dirt and hold up until they're beaten soft. Only Mama's forgotten sandals, thin-heeled and tinted pink with so much red mud seeped into them, looked different. China hid them all under furniture, behind the toilet, stacked them in piles and slept on them. When the dog was old enough to run and trip down the steps on their own, she took the shoes outside, put them in shallow ditches under the house. She'd stand rigid as a pine when we tried to take them away from her. Now China is giving like she once took away, bestowing where she once stole. She is birthing puppies.'(opening lines)

'Mornings after birth should be quiet; the air should muffle sounds. But quiet comes and goes here on the Pit like the pack of stray dogs that Daddy used to run off with his gun before Skeetah brought China here to stay. When Daddy kept hogs, in the morning the sows squealed at their sticky piglets. The chickens hatched the chicks from their hidden eggs, and they woke us with flapping and clucking. China's pups first day in the world was no different. I woke up to the hammering.'(20)

'We worm our way through the woods as we watch the house for movement. We slide on our stomachs under bushes so tangled and overgrown that we cannot crouch or crawl through them. We slither like snakes, grab dirt and pine straw with our elbows, and pull. Skeetah stops often, straw and twigs sliding off his slick head to catch on his shoulders like holiday tinsel, and he listens. I stop, too, try my hardest to be so still, to hear the threat, but the blood beats through my ears so strongly I cannot hear anything over that and the whooshing of my breath. Skeetah crawls through a stand, and we start again.'(69-70)

'They cannot tell, but it is there. Perhaps Skeetah saw when I walked from the water and put on my clothes. I do not know, but I will not give him the chance to see me again now. I will not let him see until none of us have any choices about what can be seen, what can be avoided, what is blind, and what will turn us into stone.'(88)

'I am glad to be sitting in the backseat by the window in the car, Junior's bony rump squirming on my lap, Skeetah in the middle pulling at the blunt, Marquise next to him at the other window, opaque through the cloud of smoke. Big Henry's head could be any other boy's head under his baseball cap, and Randall leans on the headrest, his eyes closed, everything still but his eyelids jumping like dragonflies. I do not think that he is dreaming. Junior shifts, and I hold him tight; he is my shield.'(140)

'On the court, Randall is already blinking hard at the sweat blinding him. His shirt sticks to him on his sides, close as a bud. He goes up for a rebound, rises up out of the cluster of players, but they buzz angrily, and he falls. The referee whistles, and Randall walks to the foul line, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Nothing about him seems to touch anything else: the court, the ball, his shirt that he picks at so that his skin can breathe. He is a bayou crane, alighting so he doesn't even sink into the black marsh before taking off in flight.'(143)

'I've crossed the threshold out of the bathroom three times, and each time I think I am done crying, that I can go back into the game to sit next to my brothers as if nothing has happened, my eyes start leaking and my chest burns, hotter than the bright air with the bees drowning in the crape myrtle, and I have to go back into the bathroom. I go in the other stall, pull my feet up, squat on the toilet. Smash my face into my salty knees. When I can breathe, I leave the stall to splash cold water on my face, but my eyes still look red, my eyelids swollen in the funhouse mirror. And then I think that Manny saw me, and that he turned away from me, from what I carry, pulling his burnt gold face from my hands, and then I am crying again for what I have been, for what I am, and what I will be, again.'(146-147)

'The few dirt-scratched yards and thin-siding houses and trailers of Bois Sauvage seem a sorry match to the woods, like pitting a puppy against a full grown dog. Here, there are swimming holes that are fat puddles and some the size of swimming pools fed by skinny clear creeks, but the earth makes the holes black, and the trees make them as filthy with leaves as a dog is with fleas. There are clusters of magnolias that are so tall and green and glossy, they are impossible to climb, and the air around them always smells like peaches. There are oaks so big and old that their arms grow out black and thick as trunks, which rest on the ground. There are ponds that are filled with slime and tall yellow grasses, and at night, frogs turn them teeming, singing a burping chorus. There are clearings where deer feed, startle white, and kick away. There are turtles plowing through pine straw, mud, trying to avoid the pot.(158)

'Skeetah stands in the sun, the only boy in the yellow clearing who braves the light with the dogs. He ignores us and looks off as well, standing, never sitting. I wonder if he has trained her to do this, to stand at his side, to not dirty even her haunches with sitting so that they gleam. China is as white as the sand that will become a pearl, Skeetah black as an oyster, but they stand as one before these boys who do not know what it means to love a dog the way that Skeetah does.'(162)

'When Mama first explained to me what a hurricane was, I thought that all the animals ran away, that they fled the storms before they came, that they put their noses to the wind days before and knew. That maybe they stuck their tongues out, pink and warm, to taste, to make sure. That the deer looked at their companions and leapt. That the foxes chattered to themselves, rolled their shoulders, and started off. And maybe the bigger animals do. But now I think that other animals, like the squirrels and the rabbits, don't do that at all. Maybe the small don't run. Maybe the small pause on their branches, the pine-lined earth, nose up, catch that coming storm air that would smell like salt to them, like salt and clean burning fire, and they prepare like us. The squirrels pack feathers, pack pine straw, pack shed fur and acorns from the oaks in the bowels of their trees, line them so that they are buried deep in the trunks, so safe they can hardly hear the storm cracking around them. The rabbits stand in profile, shank to shank, smell that storm smell that hits them all at once like a loud sound and they tunnel down through the red clay and the sand, down until the earth turns black and cold, down past all the roots, until they have dug great halls so deep that they sit right above the underground reservoirs we tap into with our wells, and during the hurricane, they hear water lapping above and below while they are safe in the hand of the earth.'(215-216)

'It is terrible. It is the flailing wind that lashes like an extension cord used as a beating belt. It is the rain, which stings like stone, which drives into our eyes and bids them shut. It is the water, swirling and gathering and spreading on all sides, brown with an undercurrent of red to it, the clay of the Pit like a cut that won't stop leaking. It is the remains of the yard, the refrigerators and lawn mowers and the RV and mattresses, floating like a fleet. It is trees and branches breaking, popping like Black Cat fire crackers in an endless crackle of explosions, over and over and again and again.'(230-231)

'She left us as dark Gulf and salt-burned land. She left us to learn to crawl. She left us to salvage. Katrina is the mother we will remember until the next mother with large, merciless hands, committed to blood, comes.'(255)

a Bloomsbury Hardcover Edition
258 pages
Book borrowed from the library

GIVEAWAY NOTES: After determining the valid entries and assigning numbers to the comments in the order that they posted, the winners are:

#14 - Suko and #21 - Cialina

Congratulations!!

My 'every 50th Best Book Post Giveaway'

2012-01-19T09:20:00.019-05:00

I just posted my 200th book so it is time for a giveaway!

$25.00 gift card from Amazon.com

$25.00 worth of books from the Book Depository

Valid entries should have the following TWO elements:

1. a book recommendation of a book that is not on my list but you think should be
2. your e-mail or blog address

Deadline for the giveaway: January 22, 2012, 8:00 PM EST
There will be TWO winners.
All valid entries will be assigned nuumbers according to when they posted
and the winning numbers will be determined through Random.org.

200. NEITHER HERE nor THERE

2012-01-16T10:30:00.002-05:00

Bill Bryson 1992

The First Page Book Blurb:

Anyone who has been to Europe -- or just dreamed of going -- will be engaged by the blend of awe and bewilderment that Bill Bryson brings to this uproariously funny memoir of a trip around the Continent. Deciding to get a jump on a budding midlife crisis, he loads a bag with maps and old clothes and sets off to retrace the journey he took as a young backpacker in the 1970s, accompanied by an unforgettable sidekick named Stephen Katz (who will be gloriously familiar to readers of Bryson's A Walk in The Woods). Interweaving his comic misadventures from the first trip with the razor-sharp insights of his older self, Bryson wanders through Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Rome, Geneva, Vienna, and other great cities of Europe. With affection and wit he explains why the French are constitutionally incapable of "queuing," why Yugoslavian beer encourages your legs to "go in for a little involuntary moonwalking," and asks: Why didn't the armistice treaty require the Germans to lay down their accordions along with their arms?

What Hooked Me:

I suppose any book by Bill Bryson hooks me. This one is my favorite so far. Except for Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, and thanks to my husband's 'travel bug' I have been very lucky to have gone to all the countries that the author traveled to in this book. It is quite amazing to me that his thoughts are so parallel to mine, in particular, how he feels about Bruges in Belgium and Florence in Italy. And I also happen to adore the title of this book. It is so perfect, and so Bill Bryson!

The Quotes:

'In the winter, Hammerfest is a thirty-hour ride by bus from Oslo, though why anyone would want to go there in winter is a question worth considering. It is on the edge of the world, the northernmost town in Europe, as far from London as London is from Tunis, a place of dark and brutal winters, where the sun sinks into the Arctic Ocean in November and does not rise again for ten weeks.(opening lines)

'I knew from my reading that the Northern Lights are immensely high up in the atmosphere, something like two hundred miles up, but this show seemed to be suspended just above the town. There are two kinds of Northern Lights -- the curtains of shimmering gossamer that everyone has seen in pictures, and the rather rarer gas clouds that I was gazing at now. They are never the same twice. Sometimes they shoot wraithlike across the sky, like smoke in a wind tunnel, moving at enormous speed, and sometimes they hang like luminous drapes or glittering spears of light, and very occasionally -- perhaps once or twice in a lifetime -- they creep out from every point on the horizon and flow together overhead in a spectacular, silent explosion of light and color.'(32)

'One of the small marvels of my first trip to Europe was the discovery that the world could be so full of variety, that there were so many different ways of doing essentially identical things, like eating and drinking and buying movie tickets. It fascinated me that Europeans could be at once so alike -- that they could be so universally bookish and cerebral, and drive small cars, and live in little houses in ancient towns, love soccer, and be relatively unmaterialistic and law-abiding, and have chilly hotel rooms and cozy inviting places to eat and drink -- and yet be so endlessly, unpredictably different from each other as well. I loved the idea that you could never be sure of anything in Europe.'(35)

'But that's the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don't want to know what people are talking about. I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can't read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can't even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.'(36)

'I wanted to be puzzled and charmed, to experience the endless, beguiling variety of continent where you can board a train and an hour later be somewhere where the inhabitants speak a different language, eat different foods, work different hours, live lives that are at once so different and yet so oddly similar. I wanted to be a tourist.'(38)

'By eight-thirty Paris is a terrible place for walking. There's too much traffic. A blue haze of uncombusted diesel hangs over every boulevard. I know Baron Haussmann made Paris a grand place to look at, but the man has no concept of traffic flow. At the Arc de Triomphe alone, thirteen roads come together. Can you imagine? I mean to say, here you have a city with the world's most pathologically aggressive drivers -- drivers who in other circumstances would be given injection of Valium from syringes the sizes of bicycle pumps and confined to their beds with leather straps -- and you give them an open space where they can all try to go in any of thirteen directions at once. Is that asking for trouble or what?'(44)

'It is a rare place. I walked for a day with my mouth open. I looked in at the Groeninge Museum and visited the famous Beguinage, its courtyard lawns swimming in daffodils, but mostly I just walked the streets, agog at such a concentration of perfection. Even the size of Bruges was perfect -- big enough to be a city, to have bookstores and interesting restaurants, but compact enough to feel contained and friendly. You could walk every street within its encircling canal in a day or so. I did just that and never once saw a street I wouldn't want to live on, a bar I wouldn't like to get to know, a view I wouldn't wish to call my own. It was hard to accept that the place was real -- that people came home to these houses every night and shopped in these shops and walked their dogs on these streets and went through life thinking that this is the way of the world.'(61)

'Is there anything, apart from a really good chocolate cream pie and receiving a large unexpected cheque in the post, to beat finding yourself at large in a foreign city on a fair spring evening, loafing along unfamiliar streets in the long shadows of a lazy sunset, pausing to gaze in shop windows or at some church or lovely square or tranquil stretch of quayside, hesitating at street corners to decide whether that cheerful and homey restaurant you will remember fondly for years is likely to lie down this street or that one? I just love it. I could spend my life arriving each evening in a new city.'(106)

'I made a circuit of the colossal royal palace (and I mean colossal -- it has six hundred rooms), which may be one of the most boring buildings ever constructed. It's not ugly or unpleasant, just boring, featureless, like the buildings children make by cutting window holes in cardboard boxes. Still, I enjoyed the sentries, who must be the most engagingly wimpish-looking in the world. Sweden has been at peace for 150 years and remains determinedly unmilitaristic, so I suppose they don't want their soldiers to look too macho and ferocious, and as a result they make them wear a white helmet that looks disarmingly like a bathing cap and white spats straight out of Donald Duck. It's very hard not to go up to one and say, out of the side of the mouth, "You know, Lars, you look quite ridiculous."'(129)

'Traveling is more fun -- hell, life is more fun -- if you can treat it as a series of impulses.'(131)

'I love the way the Italian parks. You turn any street corner in Rome and it looks as if you've just missed a parking competition for blind people. Cars are pointed in every direction, half on the sidewalks and half off, facing in, facing sideways blocking garages and side streets and phone booths, fitted into spaces so tight that the only possible way out would be through the sun roof. Romans park their cars the way I would park if I had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid on my lap.'(134)

'Isn't it strange how wealth is wasted on the rich?(152)

'It is really the most unattractive language for foodstuffs. If you want whipped cream on your coffee in much of the German-speaking world, you order it mit Schlag. Now, does that sound like a frothy and delicious pick-me-up, or does that sould like the sort of thing smokers bring up the first thing in the morning? Here the menu was filled with items that brought to mind the noises of a rutting pig: Knoblauchbrot, Schweinskotelett ihrer Wahl, Portion Schlagobers (and that was a desert).'(179-180)

'Most people are unaware of the rich beauty of Yugoslavia's interior. It is as green as England and as stunningly serene as Austria, but almost wholly untouristed. Within an hour or two of leaving the hot coastline, with its teeming resorts and cereal-box hotels, you find yourself descending from the empty mountains into this farmhouses and snug villages -- a corner of Europe lost to time. In the fields people cut and gather hay by hand, with scythes and wooden pitchforks, and cross their fields behind horse-drawn plows. In the villages elderly women are almost all dressed in black with scarves around their heads. It is like a picture out of the distant past.'(223)

'The farther you roam in Sofia the better everything gets. I took to going for daylong walks out into the hilly districts on the southeast side of the city, an area of forests, parks, neighborhoods of rather grand apartment buildings, winding tranquil streets, some nice homes. As I was walking back into the city center, over a footbridge across the Slivnica River and down some anonymous residential street, it struck me that this really was quite a beautiful city. More than that, it was the most European-looking of all the cities I had been to. There were no modern shopping centers, no big gas stations, no McDonalds'ses or Pizza Huts, no revolving signs for Coca Cola. No city I had visited had more thoroughly resisted the blandishments of American culture. It was completely, comprehensively European. This was, I realized with a sense of profound unease, the Europe I had dreamed of as a child.'(238)

"Istanbul isn't a city. It is a collective delirium. I had never seen such activity -- people rushing, pushing carts, carrying trays of food or coffee, hefting huge and ungainly loads (I saw one man with a ten-foot-long sofa on his back moving through the crowds as easily as if he were carrying a deck of cards), people every five feet selling something: lottery tickets, wristwatches, cigarettes, replica perfumes. Every few paces someone comes up to you wanting to shine your shoes, sell you postcards or guidebooks, take your photograph, weigh you, lead you to his brother's carpet shop, or otherwise induce you to part with some trifling sum of money. Nowhere else on earth can there be a city where the visitor's every sense is so relentlessly tugged and shaken. It is an experience that is at once confusing, mildly unnerving, and strangely exciting.'(243)

'There is something about the momentum of travel that makes you want to just keep moving, to never stop.'(245)

Perennial Edition 2001
245 pages
Book Owned

199. READING LOLITA in TEHRAN: a Memoir in Books

2012-01-11T09:30:00.001-05:00

Azar Nafisi 2003

The Book Blurb:

Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic expression, the girls in Azar Nafisi's living room risked removing their veils and immersed themselves in the worlds of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov. In this extraordinary memoir, their stories become intertwined with the ones they are reading. Reading Lolita in Tehran is a remarkable exploration of resilience in the face of tyranny and a celebration of the liberating power of literature.

What Hooked Me:

The author's unique perspective and analysis of great literature and the way she relates the novels to her life, her book club and the history of Iran is truly impressive. She shows us glimpses of the past and present Iran as only a person who truly misses and longs for her country can.

The Quotes:

'In the fall of 1995, after resigning from my last academic post, I decided to indulge myself and fulfill a dream. I chose seven of my best and most committed students and invited them to come to my home every Thursday morning to discuss literature.'(opening lines)

'Our class was shaped within this context, in an attempt to escape the gaze of the blind censor for a few hours each week. There, in that living room, we rediscovered that we were also living, breathing human beings; and no matter how repressive the state became, no matter how intimidated and frightened we were, like Lolita we tried to escape and to create our own little pockets of freedom. And like Lolita, we took every opportunity to flaunt our insubordination: by showing a little hair from under our scarves, insinuating a little color into the drab uniformity or our appearances, growing our nails, falling in love and listening to forbidden music.'(25-26)

'Whoever we were -- and it was not really important what religion we belonged to, whether we wished to wear the veil or not, whether we observed certain religious norms or not -- we had become the figment of someone else's dream. A stern ayatollah, a self-proclaimed philosopher-king, had come to rule our land. He had come in the name of a past, he claimed, had been stolen from him. And he now wanted to re-create us in the image of that illusory past. Was it any consolation, and did we even wish to remember, that what he did to us was what we allowed him to do?'(28)

'Every fairy tale offers the potential to surpass present limits, so in a sense the fairy tale offers you freedoms that reality denies. In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. This affirmation lies in the way the author takes control of reality by retelling it in his own way, thus creating a new world. Every great work of art, I would declare pompously, is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life. The perfection and beauty of form rebels against the ugliness and shabbiness of the subject matter. This is why we love Madame Bovary and cry for Emma, why we greedily read Lolita as our heart breaks for its small, vulgar, poetic and defiant orphaned heroine.'(47)

'These students, like the rest of their generation, were different from mine in one fundamental aspect. My generation complained of a loss, the void in our lives that was created when our past was stolen from us, making us exiles in our own country. Yet we had a past to compare with the present; we had memories and images of what had been taken away. But my girls spoke constantly of stolen kisses, films they had never seen and the wind they had never felt on their skin. This generation has no past. Their memory was of a half-articulated desire, something they never had. It was this lack, their sense of longing for the ordinary, taken-for-granted aspects of life, that gave their words a certain luminous quality akin to poetry.'(76)

'The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed too immutable.'(94)

'Don't go chasing after the grand theme, the idea, ... as if it is separate from the story itself. The idea or ideas behind the story must come to you through the experience of the novel and not as something tacked into it.'(109)

'A novel is not an allegory, ... It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in the destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience.'(111)

'When I left the class that day, I did not tell them what I myself was just beginning to discover: how similar our own fate was becoming to Gatsby's. He wanted to fulfill his dream by repeating the past, and in the end he discovered that the past was dead, the present a sham, and there was no future. Was this not similar to our revolution, which had come in the name of our collective past and had wrecked our lives in the name of a dream?'(144)

'Turning points always seem so sudden and absolute, as if they have come bolt out of the blue. That is not true, of course. A whole slow process goes into their making.'(176)

'Modern fiction brings out the evil in domestic lives, ordinary relations, people, like you and me -- Reader! Bruder! as Humbert said. Evil in Austen, as in most great fiction, lies in the inability to "see" others, hence to empathize with them. What is frightening is that this blindness can exist in the best of us (Eliza Bennet) as well as the worst (Humbert). We are all capable of becoming the blind censor, of imposing our visions and desires on others.'(315)

'Memories have ways of becoming independent of the reality they evoke. They can soften us against those we were deeply hurt by or they can make us resent those we once accepted and loved unconditionally.'(317)

'Other people's sorrows and joys have a way of reminding us of our own; we partly empathize with them because we ask ourselves: What about me? What does that say about my life, my pains, my anguish?'(325)

'You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place, I told him, like you'll not miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and place, because you'll never be this way again.'(336)

'I have a recurring fantasy that one more article has been added to the Bill of Rights: the right to free access to imagination. I have come to believe that genuine democracy cannot exist without the freedom to imagine and the right to use imaginative works without any restrictions. To have a whole life, one must have the possibility of publicly shaping and expressing private worlds, dreams, thoughts and desires, of constantly having access to a dialogue between the public and private worlds. How else do we know that we have existed, felt, desires, hated, feared?'(338-339)

a Random House Trade paperback edition
347 pages
Book Owned

198. The WIZARD of OZ

2012-01-05T17:00:00.003-05:00

L. Frank Baum 1900

The Book Blurb:

When a cyclone hits her Kansas home, Dorothy and her dog Toto are whisked to the magical land of Oz. To find her way back to Kansas, she must follow the yellow brick road to where the great Wizard lives. Together with her companions the Tin Woodman, Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion, Dortohy embarks on a strange and enchanting adventure, and a journey that takes her to the city of Emeralds.

What Hooked Me:

Although I have watched the movie, I have to admit that this is the first time I have actually read this original book that started it all. It is no wonder that such an imaginative American fairy tale has won the hearts of so many and has gone to spin so many other book prequels and sequels as well as hundreds of Movie, Musical and Play adaptations. I just wish there were more scenes with Glinda in this book!

The Quotes:

'Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles.'(opening lines)

'The cyclone had set the house down, very gently -- for a cyclone -- in the midst of a country of marvelous beauty. There were lovely patches of greensward all about, with stately trees bearing rich and luscious fruits. Banks of gorgeous flowers were on every hand, and birds with rare and brilliant plumage sang and fluttered in the trees and bushes. A little way off was a small brook, rushing and sparkling along between green banks, and murmuring in a voice very grateful to a little girl who had lived so long on the dry, grey prairies.'(7-8)

'No matter how dreary and grey our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home.'(27)

"All the same," said the Scarecrow, "I shall ask for brains instead of a heart; for a fool would not know what to do with a heart if he had one."
"I shall take the heart," returned the Tin Woodman, "for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world."(41)

"It's a mystery," replied the Lion. "I suppose I was born that way. All the other animals in the forest naturally expect me to be brave, for the Lion is everywhere thought to be the King of Beasts. I learned that if I roared very loudly every living thing was frightened and got out of my way. Whenever I've met a man I've been awfully scared; but I just roared at him, and he has always run away as fast as he could go."(44-46)

'You see, Oz is a great Wizard, and can take on any form he wishes. So that some say he looks like a bird; and some say he looks like an elephant; and some say he looks like a cat. To others he appears as a beautiful fairy, or a brownie, or in any form that pleases him. But who the real Oz is, when he is in his own form, no living person can tell.'(77)

'Even with eyes protected by the green spectacles Dorothy and her friends were at first dazzled by the brilliancy of the wonderful City. The streets were lined with beautiful houses all built of green marble and studded everywhere with sparkling emeralds. They walked over a pavement of the same green marble, and where the blocks were joined together were rows of emeralds, set closely and glittering in the brightness of the sun. The window panes were of green glass; even the sky above the City had a green tint, and the rays of the sun were green.'(83)

'The Wicked Witch was both surprised and worried when she saw the mark on Dorothy's forehead, for she knew well that neither the Winged Monkeys nor she, herself, dare hurt the girl in any way. She looked down at Dorothy's feet, and seeing the Silver Shoes, began to tremble with fear, for she knew what a powerful charm belonged to them.'(109)

'Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge, and the longer you are on earth the more experience you are sure to get.'(140)

'All you need is confidence in yourself. There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid, and that kind of courage you have in plenty.'(140)

'Dorothy now took Toto up solemnly in her arms, and having said one last good-bye she clapped the heels of her shoes together three times, saying:
"Take me home to Aunt Em!"'(187)

a Puffin Books Essentials Collection Edition
188 pages
Book Owned

197. the FIVE PEOPLE you MEET in HEAVEN

2012-01-02T11:01:00.002-05:00

Mitch Albom 2003

The Book Jacket Blurb:

   Eddie is a grizzled war veteran who feels trapped in a meanigless life of fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. As the park has changed over the years -- from the Loop-the-Loop to the Pipeline Plunge -- so, too, has Eddie changed, from optimistic youth to embittered old age. His days are a dull routine of work, loneliness, and regret.
   Then, on his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in a tragic accident, trying to save a little girl from a falling cart. With his final breath, he feels two small hands in his -- and then nothing. He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden, but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it. These people may have been loved ones or distant strangers. Yet each of them changed your path forever.
   One by one, Eddie's five people illuminate the unseen connections of his earthly life. As the story builds to a stunning conclusion, Eddie desperately seeks redemption in the still-unknown last act of his life: Was it a heroic success or a devastating failure? The answer, which comes from the most unlikely of sources, is as inspirational as a glimpse of heaven itself.

What Hooked Me:

I find myself gravitating towards inspirational books every January. There is something about the start of the new year that gets me every time. Could it be because it is my birthday month? And getting old makes me seek the wisdom that I am supposed to have by now? Whatever the reasons may be, this highly recommended book is perfect. For it is hard not to be swept away by Eddie's story, albeit some parts are too melodramatic even for me. It is hard not to be amazed in the reality that people we meet casually or bump into accidentally do affect and change our lives everyday. And as one finishes the book, it is equally hard not to indulge in that one pondering moment: of that awesome possibility that there are indeed five people in heaven who will explain one's life's meaning here on earth.

The Quotes:

'This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun. It might seem strange to start a story with an ending. But all the endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.'(opening lines)

'Every life has one true-love snapshot.'(9)

'People often belittle the place where they were born. But heaven can be found in the most unlikely corners.'(34)

"There are five people you meet in heaven," the Blue Man suddenly said. "Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not know the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth."(35)

"That there are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind."(48)

"It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed."(48)

'Young men go to war. Sometimes because they have to, sometimes because they want to. Always, they feel they are supposed to. This comes from the sad, layered stories of life, which over the centuried have seen courage confused with picking up arms, and cowardice confused with laying them down.'(57)

'War could bond men like a magnet, but like a magnet it could repel them, too. The things they saw, the things they did. Sometimes they just wanted to forget.'(65)

"Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else.'(94)

'All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.'(104)

'Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them -- a mother's approval, a father's nod -- are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishemnts, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.'(126)

"Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves."(141)

"Lost love is still love, Eddie. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken, another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it.'(173)

'... the secret of heaven: that each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.'(closing lines)

a Hyperion First Edition
196 pages
Book owned

2012 Must-Read List: the Best Books of 2011

2012-01-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

These books from 2011 seemed to have had great reviews by both bloggers and critics alike,
so I am adding them to my must-read books for 2012.

Have and Happy and Healthy New Year !!!

CHRISTMAS HIATUS: December 17-31, 2011

2011-12-16T17:00:00.002-05:00

(Santa Tree in the Living Room)

(Our cat Jimmy posing with the Snowman Tree in the Family Room)

Happy Holidays from our home to yours!!!

Unpacking and wrapping!!

2011-12-14T18:00:00.003-05:00

We came back from San Diego last night to a pile of Internet-shopped packages which our cat sitter neatly organized in our foyer. So the gifts for the family are waiting to be wrapped while our suitcases are waiting to be unpacked.

But first, and before my Christmas hiatus post in a few days, here are a few pictures from our San Diego trip.

at the Navy Shipyard

at the San Diego Zoo

BTW, Rereading was great. I fell in love with the books all over again.

reREADING AWAY December 8-13, 2011

2011-12-08T07:00:00.000-05:00

(photo from Wikipedia)

My husband and I are revisiting SAN DIEGO in CALIFORNIA,

and I am suddenly feeling nostalgic for familiar books.

So it is going to be a reread of three of my favorite books for this trip.

Maybe I can redo/edit/update my old posts for these books when I come back.

Be back soon!!

196. WHISKY SOUR

2011-11-30T19:17:00.003-05:00

J.A. Konrath 2004

Synopsis from the Author's Website:

Lt. Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels is having a VERY bad week...

Jack's live-in boyfriend has left her for his personal trainer, chronic insomnia has maxed out her credit cards with late-night home shopping purchases, and a frightening killer who calls himself "The Gingerbread Man" is dumping mutilated bodies in her district.
Between avoiding the FBI and their moronic profiling computer, joining a dating service, mixing it up with street thugs, and parrying the advances of an uncouth PI, Jack and her binge-eating partner Herb must catch the maniac before he kills again...and Jack is next on his murder list..

What Hooked Me:

For somebody who watches as many detective/cop/crime shows like I do (my favorites: all the CSIs, both NCIS, the Mentalist, Blue Blood and Bones), I found this book's simple plot still fresh, enjoyable and truly suspenseful. I also like that the author infused humor to the very serious subject matter and that Jack Daniels is a tough female detective.

The Quotes:

'There were four black and whites already at the 7-eleven when I arrived. Several people had gathered in the parking lot behind the yellow police tape, huddling close for protection against the freezing Chicago rain. They weren't there for the Slurpees.'(opening lines)

"This was stapled to her chest."
Benedict handed me a plastic evidence bag. In it was a three-by-five-inch piece of paper, crinkled edges on one end indicating it had been ripped from a spiral pad. It was spotty with blood and rain, but the writing on it was clear:

you can't catch ME

IM THE GINGERBREADMAN' (2)

'If this wasn't such a somber situation, the image of two detectives flashing around the picture of the gingerbread man and asking "Have you seen him?" would be pretty funny.'(8)

'I eyed the half-finished drink in my hand. When Jacqueline Streng married Alan Daniels, she became Jack Daniels. Ever since, people have given me bottles of the stuff as gifts, each probably thinking they were being clever. I was forced to develop a taste for it, or else open up my own liquor store.'(18)

'DO, or disorganized criminal, usually have little or no planning stage. Their crimes are spur of the moment, either lust-or rage-induced. Signs of guilt or remorse can usually be found at the scene, such as something covering the victim's face; an indication the killer doesn't like the accusation of a staring pair of eyes. Clues in the form of physical and circumstantial evidence abound, because the DO type doesn't stop to cover them up, or only does as an afterthought.'(32)

'Two months wasn't enough time to get over the death of a parent. Some people never get over it.'(60)

'Both Coursey and Daile chuckled. Exactly three chuckles each, and then they stopped simultaneously. Eerie.'(66)

'No one likes an asshole, Jack, until you have to move your bowels.'(101)

'I knew an ex-cop who used an expression whenever something bad happened. He was a real creep, but as the years passed I've come to respect the honesty of his words. Whenever he'd failed a test, or gotten a reprimand, he always said, "It's just one more layer on the shit cake. ... With all the layers I'd buily up over my life, I suppose one more didn't matter too much."'(110)

'But my mom ... my mom was everything to me. She was my best friend, my mentor, my hero. She was the reason I became a cop.' ... Mothers shouldn't be allowed to get old and fragile.'(119)

"I have some things to say, and then afterward I can answer a few questions," I told the crowd, giving them a chance to switch on their cameras and focus. "First of all, I was shot by the criminal that the press is calling the Gingerbread Man. He'd broken into my apartment last night. As you can see, my injury isn't serious. He couldn't aim the gun properly, because he was hysterical, crying for his mama."
Herb gave me a slight nudge in the ribs, but I was just warming up.
"Besides the obvious emotional problems, the killer is also very stupid. The only reason we haven't caught him yet is because he's been lucky, and because he's a coward who runs away when confronted."(133)

"I wish I was like that. More carefree."
"Anyone can be. People aren't carved out of marble. We're all works in progress. The trick is to define ourselves, rather than let outside influences define us."(191)

"He clubs, which means that the ends of his pen strokes are thicker than the beginnings. That's a characteristic usually found in sadistic personalities. You can see it on the down strokes of his t, l, f, i and on the bottoms of the y and b."(200)

'His pressure and angularity are very extreme. Again, indicators of violent behavior and aggression. The d is the social self-image letter. His d's are slanted to the right and clubbed. This usually means an inflated ego, along with a desire to control situations.'(200)

'You're the total of all the choices you've made in your life, Jack. This is what you have because this is what you chose.'(207)

First eBook Edition
279 pages
Book owned (on my Kindle)
Book qualifies for: 100 + Reading Challenge
Book idea from Petty Witter @ Pen and Paper. She always has such funny and interesting posts. So when I saw her review I thought I should take the book with me on my last trip four months ago. She promised a good entertaining read, and that it was. Her review is HERE.

195. NIGHT CIRCUS

2011-11-19T23:00:00.005-05:00

Erin Morgenstern 2011

The Book Jacket Blurb:

    The circus arrives without warning. No announcements preceded it, no paper notices plastered on lampposts and billboards. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.
    Within these nocturnal black-and-white-striped tents awaits an utterly unique experience, a feast for the senses, where one can get lost in a maze of clouds, meander through a lush garden made of ice, stare in wonderment as the tattooed contortionist folds herself into a small glass box, and become deliciously tipsy from the scents of caramel and cinnamon that waft through the air.
    Welcome to Le Cirque des Reves.
    Beyond the smoke and mirrors, however, a fierce competition is under way -- a contest between two young illusionists, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood to compete in a "game" to which they have been irrevocably bound by their mercurial masters. Unbeknownst to the players, this is a game in which only one can be left standing and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will.
    As the circus travels around the world, the feats of magic gain fantastical new heights with every stop. The game is well under way and the lives of all those involved -- the eccentric circus owner, the elusive contortionist, the mystical fortune teller, and a pair of red-headed twins born backstage among them -- are swept up in a wake of spells and charms.
    But when Celia discovers that Marco is her adversary, they begin to think of the game not as a competition but as a wonderful collaboration. With no knowledge of how the game must end, they innocently tumble headfirst into love. A deep, passionate, and magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm wherever they so much as brush hands.
    Their masters will pull the strings, however, and this unforeseen occurrence forces them to intervene with dangerous consequences, leaving the lives of everyone from the performers to the patrons hanging in the balance.

What Hooked Me:

Perhaps it helped that I read this book slowly and leisurely, for there are lots to imagine and visualize in this highly creative debut novel. I found each inspired illusion, each magical tent (i.e. the Labyrinth, Celia's Feats of Illustrious Illusions, Widget's Anthology of Memory, the Hall of Mirrors, the Carousel, the Ice Garden, the Cloud Maze, the Pool of Tears) and each character truly enchanting and imaginative. I definitely would love to see a movie that would dare capture this amazing Night Circus.

The Quotes:

'The circus arrives without warning. ... No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. ... The towering tents are striped in white and black, no gold and crimsons to be seen. No color at all, save for the neighboring trees and the grass of the surrounding fields.'(opening lines)

'And the black sign painted in white letters that hangs upon the gates, the one that reads:

Opens at Nightfall

Closes at Dawn.'(3)

'People see what they wish to see. And in most cases, what they are told that they see.'(28)

'Chandresh relishes reactions. Genuine reactions, not mere polite applause. He often values the reactions over the show itself. A show without an audience is nothing after all. In the response of the audience, that is where the power of the performance lives. ... He was raised in the theater, sitting in boxes at the ballet. Being a restless child, he quickly grew bored with the familiarity of the dances and chose instead to watch the audiences. To see when they smiled and gasped, when the women sighed and when the men began to nod off.'(45)

'The face of the clock becomes a darker grey, and then black, with twinkling stars where the numbers had been previously. The body of the clock, which has been methodically turning itself inside out and expanding, is now entirely subtle shades of white and grey. And it is not just pieces, it is figures and objects, perfectly carved flowers and planets and tiny books with actual paper pages that turn. There is a silver dragon that curls around part of the now visible clockwork, a tiny princess in a carved tower who paces in distress, awaiting an absent prince. Teapots that pour into teacups and minuscule curls of steam that rise from them as the seconds tick. Wrapped presents open. Small cats chase small dogs. An entire game of chess is played.'(69)

'Celia smiles. "You are looking for someone who can perform in the midst of a crowd?" she asks Chandresh. He nods. "I see," Celia says. Then, so swiftly she appears not even to move, she picks up her jacket from the stage and flings it out over the seats where, instead of tumbling down, it swoops up, folding into itself. In the blink of an eye folds of silk are glossy black feathers, large beating wings, and it is impossible to pinpoint the moment when it is fully raven and no longer cloth. The raven swoops over the red velvet seats and up into the balcony where it flies in curious circles.'(75)

'Word spreads quickly in such select circles, and so begins a tradition of reveurs attending Le Cirque des Reves decked in black or white or grey with a single shock of red: a scarf or hat, or, if the weather is warm, a red rose tucked into a lapel or behind an ear. It is also quite helpful for spotting other reveurs, a simple signal for those who know. ... There are those who have the means, and even some who do not but creatively manage anyway, to follow the circus from location to location. There is no set itinerary that is public knowledge. The circus moves from place to place every few weeks, with the occasional extended break, and no one truly knows where it might appear until the tents are already erected in a field in a city or a countryside, or somewhere in between.'(142)

'They seek each other out, these people of such specific like mind. They tell how they found the circus, how those first few steps were like magic. Like stepping into a fairy tale under a curtain of stars. They pontificate upon the fluffiness of the popcorn, the sweetness of the chocolate. They spend hours discussing the quality of the light, the heat of the bonfire.'(143)

'Life takes us to unexpected places sometimes. The future is never set in stone, remember that.'(169)

"Secrets have power," Widget begins. "And the power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it's really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours."(173)

"It is too difficult to see a situation for what it is when you are in the midst of it." Tsukiko says. "it is too familiar. Too comfortable."(188)

'The past stays on you the way powdered sugar stays on your fingers. Some people can get rid of it but it's still there, the events and things that pushed you to where you are now.'(199)

'He looks around at the jars and bottles, intrigued but hesitant to open another. He picks up a frosted-glass mason jar and unscrews the silver metal lid. The jar is not empty but contains a small amount of white sands which shifts at the bottom. The scent that wafts from it is the unmistakable smell of the ocean, a bright summer day at the seashore. He can hear the sound of waves crashing against the sand, the cry of a seagull. There is something mysterious as well, something fantastical. The flag of a pirate ship on the far horizon, a mermaid's tail flipping out of sight behind a wave. The scent and feeling are adventurous and exhilarating with the salty tinge of a sea breeze.'(238)

'The striped canvas sides of the tent stiffens, the soft surface hardening as the fabric changes to paper. Words appear over the walls, typeset letters overlapping handwritten text. Celia can make out snatches of Shakespearean sonnets and fragments of hymns to Greek goddesses as the poetry fills the tent. It covers the walls and the ceiling and spreads out over the floor. ... And then the tent begins to open, the paper folding and tearing. The black striped stretch out into empty space as their white counterparts brighten, reaching upward and breaking apart into branches.'(259)

'Memories begin to creep forward from hidden corners of your mind. Passing disappointments. Lost chances and lost causes. Heartbreaks and pain and desolate, horrible loneliness. ... Sorrows you thought long forgotten mingle with still-fresh wounds. ... the stone feels heavier in your hand. ... When you drop it in the pool to join the rest of the stones, you feel lighter. As though you have released something more than a smooth polished piece of rock.'(282-283)

"Love is fickle and fleeting," Tsukiko continues. "It is rarely a solid foundation for decisions to be made upon, in any game."(306)

'Old stories have a habit of being told and retold and changed. Each subsequent storyteller puts his or her marks upon it. Whatever truth the story once has is buried in bias and embellishment. The reasons do not matter as much as the story itself.'(345)

"It is important," the man in the grey suit interrupts. "someone needs to tell those tales. When the battles are fought and won and lost, when the pirates find the treasures and the dragons eat their foes for breakfast with a nice up of Lapsang souchong, someone needs to tell their bits of overlapping narrative. There's magic in that. It's in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict. From the mundane to the profound. You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it..."(381)

a Doubleday Hardcover First Edition
387 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100 + Reading Challenge

194. FRANNY and ZOOEY

2011-11-09T09:00:00.002-05:00

J. D. Salinger 1961

Synopsis from Goodreads:

The short story, "Franny", takes place in an unnamed college town and tells the tale of an undergraduate who is becoming disenchanted with the selfishness and inauthenticity she perceives all around her.
The novella, Zooey, is named for Zooey Glass, the second-youngest member of the Glass family. As his younger sister, Franny, suffers a spiritual and existential breakdown in her parents' Manhattan living room – leaving Bessie, her mother, deeply concerned – Zooey comes to her aid, offering what he thinks is brotherly love, understanding, and words of sage advice.

What Hooked Me:
There is a lot to be learned from this novella about siblings Franny and Zooey. It has been a while since I have read such a touching brother-sister story. And who knew that a young, smart Alec, loudmouth, know-it-all Zooey can actually remind me to never forget to continue to sing to the Fat Lady?

The Quotes:
'Though brilliantly sunny, Saturday morning was overcoat weather again, not just topcoat weather, as it had been all week and as everyone had hoped it would stay for the big weekend -- the weekend of the Yale game. Of the twentysome young men who were waiting at the station for their dates to arrive on the ten-fifty-two, no more than six or seven were out on the cold, open platform.'(opening lines)

'All I know is I'm losing my mind," Franny said. "I'm just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else's. I'm sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It's disgusting -- it is, it is.'(29-30)

"I'm not afraid to compete. It's just the opposite. Don't you see that? I'm afraid I will compete -- that's what scares me."(30)

'To resume: The long, typewritten, four-year-old letter that Zooey had checked into the bathtub with, on this Monday morning in November, 1955, had obviously been taken out of the envelope and unfolded and refolded on too many private occasions during the four years, so that now it not only had an over-all unappetitlich appearance but was actually torn in several places, mostly among the creases. The author of the letter, as stated earlier, was Zooey's eldest brother, Buddy. The letter itself was virtually endless in length, overwritten, teaching, repetitious, opinionated, remonstrative, condescending, embarrassing -- and filled, to a surfeit, with affection. In short, it was exactly the kind of letter that a recipient, whether he wants to or not, carries around for some time in his hip pocket. And that professional writers of a type love to reproduce:...'(55-56)

'Much, much more important, though, Seymour had already begun to believe (and I agreed with him, as far as I was able to see the point) that education by any name would smell as sweet, and maybe much sweeter, if it didn't begin with a quest for knowledge at all but with a quest, as Zen would put it, for no-knowledge.'(65)

'"All right, all right, young man," Mrs Glass said. Whatever her taste in television-play titles, or her aesthetics in general, a flicker came into her eyes -- no more than a flicker, but a flicker -- of connoiseurlike, if perverse, relish for her youngest, and only handsome, son's style of bullying. For a split second, it displaced the look of all-round wear and, plainly, specific worry that had been on her face since she entered the bathroom.'(81)

'You can't live in this world with such strong likes and dislikes.'(99)

"I don't know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn't make you happy."(118)

"It's us," Zooey repeated, overriding her. "We're freaks, that's all. Those two bastards got us nice and early and made us into freaks with freakish standards, that's all. We're the Tattooed Lady, and we're never going to have a minute's peace, the rest of our lives, till everybody else is tattooed, too."... "On top of everything else," he said immediately, "we've got "Wise Child" complexes. We've never really got off the goddam air. Not one of us. We don't talk, we hold forth. We don't converse, we expound. At least I do. The minute I'm in a room with somebody who has the usual number of ears, I either turn into a goddam seer or a human hatpin."(139-140)

'I mean, treasure is treasure, for heaven's sake. What's the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge? It all seemed like exactly the same thing to me, if you take off the wrapping -- and it still does! Sometimes I think that knowledge -- when it's knowledge for knowledge's sake anyway -- is the worst of all.'(146)

" Don't you think I have sense enough to worry about my motives for saying the prayer? That's exactly what's bothering me so. Just because I'm choosy about what I want -- in this case, enlightenment, or peace, instead of money or prestige or fame or any of those things -- doesn't mean I'm not as egoistical and self-seeking as everybody else."(149)

"...there isn't any prayer in any religion in the world that justifies piousness.'(160)

"Why are you breaking down, incidentally? I mean if you're able to go into a collapse with all your might, why can't you use the same energy to stay well and busy?"(166-167)

'Every inch of visible surface of the board had been decorated, with four somewhat gorgeous-looking columns of quotations from a variety of the world's literature. The lettering was minute, but jet-black and passionately legible, if just a trifle fancy in spots, and without blots or erasures. The workmanship was no less fastidious even at the bottom of the board, near the doorsill, where the two penmen, each in his turn, had obviously lain on their stomachs. No attempt whatever had been made to assign quotations or authors to categories or groups of any kind. So that to read the quotations from top to bottom, column by column, was rather like walking through an emergency station set up in a flood area, where, for example, Pascal had been unribaldly bedded down with Emily Dickinson and where, so to speak, Baudelaire's and Thomas a Kempis's toothbrushes were hanging side by side.'(176-177)

'... Even if you went out and searched the whole world for a master -- some guru, some holy man -- to tell you how to say your Jesus prayer properly, what good would it do you? How in hell are you going to recognize a legitimate holy man when you see one if you don't even know a cup of consecrated chicken soup when it's right in front of your nose?'(196)

'An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.'(199)

'Seymour's told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Waker. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn't going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said that they couldn't see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady.'(200)

'Franny took in her breath slightly but continued to hold the phone to her ear. A dial tone, of course, followed the formal break in the connection. She appeared to find it extraordinarily beautiful to listen to, rather as if it were the best possible substitute for the primordial silence itself. But she seemed to know, too, when to stop listening to it, as if all of what little or much wisdom there is in the world were suddenly hers.'(202)

A Bantam mass paperback edition
202 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for : 100+ Reading Challenge

193. INTO THIN AIR

2011-11-01T17:20:00.001-04:00

Jon Krakauer 1997

The Book Jacket Blurb:

   When Jon Krakauer reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the early afternoon of May 10, 1996, he hadn't slept in fifty-seven hours and was reeling from the brain-altering effects of oxygen depletion. As he turned to begin his long, dangerous descent from 29,028 feet, twenty other climbers were still pushing doggedly toward the top. No one had noticed that the sky had begun to fill with clouds. Six hours later and 3,000 feet lower, in 70-knot winds and blowing snow, Krakauer collapsed in his tent, freezing, hallucinating from exhaustion and hypoxia, but safe. The following morning he learned that six of his fellow climbers hadn't made it back to their camp and were in a desperate struggle for their lives. When the storm finally passed, five of them would be dead, and the sixth so horribly frostbitten that his right hand would have to be amputated.
    Into Thin Air is the definitive account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest by the acclaimed journalist and author of the bestseller Into The Wild. On assignment for Outside magazine to report on the growing commercialization of the mountain, Krakauer, an accomplished climber, went to the Himalaya as a client of Rob Hall, the most respected high-altitude guide in the world. A rangy, thirty-five-year-old New Zealander, Hall had summited Everest four times between 1990 and 1995 and led thirty-nine climbers to the top. Ascending the mountain in close proximity to Hall's team was a guided expedition led by Scott Fischer, a forty-year-old American with legendary strength and drive who had climbed the peak without supplemental oxygen in 1994. But neither Hall nor Fischer survived the rogue storm that struck in May 1996.
    Krakauer examines what it is about Everest that has compelled so many people -- including himself -- to throw caution to the wind, ignore the concerns of loved ones, and willingly subject themselves to such risk, hardship, and expense. Written with emotional clarity and supported by his unimpeachable reporting, Krakauer's eye-witness account of what happened on the roof of the world is a singular achievement.

What Hooked Me:

The author wrote this book as an act of catharsis soon after the 1996 Mt. Everest climbing disaster, and as such, it is highly compelling and very emotional. It is remarkably written and includes enough background information to understand the sport of climbing and climbing the Everest, in particular.

The Quotes:

'Straddling the top of the world, one foot in China and the other in Nepal, I cleared the ice from my oxygen mask, hunched a shoulder against the wind, and stared absently down at the vastness of Tibet. I understood on some dim, detached level that the sweep of earth beneath my feet was a spectacular sight. I'd been fantasizing about this moment, and the release of emotion that would accompany it, for many months. But now that I was finally here, actually standing on the summit of Mount Everest, I just couldn't summon the energy to care.'(opening lines)

'And climbing provided a sense of community as well. To become a climber was to join a self-contained, rabidly idealistic society, largely unnoticed and surprisingly uncorrupted by the world at large. The culture of ascent was characterized by intense competition and undiluted machismo, but for the most part, its constituents were concerned with impressing only one another. Getting to the top of any given mountain was considered much less important than how one got there: prestige was earned by tackling the most unforgiving routes with minimal equipment, in the boldest style imaginable. Nobody was admired more than so-called free soloists: visionaries who ascended alone, without rope or hardware.'(20)

'The ink black wedge of the summit pyramid stood out in stark relief, towering over the surrounding ridges. Thrust high into the jet stream, the mountain ripped a visible gash in the 120-knot hurricane, sending forth a plume of ice crystals that trailed to the east like a long silk scarf. As I gazed across the sky at this contrail, it occurred to me that the top of Everest was precisely the same height as the pressurized jet bearing me through the heavens. That I proposed to climb to the cruising altitude of an Airbus 300 jetliner stuck me, at that moment, as preposterous, or worse. My palms felt clammy.'(30)

(photo from Wikepedia, Mt Everest)

'I didn't doubt the potential value of paying attention to subconscious cues. As I waited for Rob to lead the way, the ice underfoot emitted a series of loud cracking noises, like small trees being snapped in two, and I felt myself wince with each pop and rumble from the glacier's shifting depths. Problem was, my inner voice resembled Chicken Little: it was screaming that I was about to die, but it did that almost every time I laced up my climbing boots. I therefore did my damnedest to ignore my histrionic imagination and grimly followed Rob into the eerie blue labyrinth.'(77)

'The slopes of Everest did not lack for dreamers in the spring of 1996; the credentials of many who'd come to climb the mountain were as thin as mine, or thinner. When it came time for each of us to assess our own abilities and weigh them against the formidable challenges of the world's highest mountain, it sometimes seemed as though half the population at Base Camp was clinically delusional. But perhaps this shouldn't have come as a surprise. Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics, and others with a shaky hold on reality.'(88)

'People who don't climb mountains -- the great majority of humankind, that is to say -- tend to assume that the sport is reckless, Dionysian pursuit of escalating thrills. But the notion that climbers are merely adrenaline junkies chasing a righteous fix is a fallacy, at least in the case of Everest. What I was doing up there had almost nothing in common with bungee jumping or skydiving or riding a motorcycle at 120 miles per hour. ... Above the comforts of Base Camp, the expedition in fact became almost a Calvinistic undertaking. The ratio of misery to pleasure was greater by an order of magnitude than any other mountain I'd been on; I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain. And in subjecting ourselves to week after week of toil, tedium, and suffering, it struck me that most of us were probably seeking, above all else, something like a state of grace.'(136)

'Unfortunately, the sort of individual who is programmed to ignore personal distress and keep pushing for the top is frequently programmed to disregard signs of grave and imminent danger as well. This forms the nub of a dilemma that every Everest climber eventually comes up against: in order to succeed you must be exceedingly driven, but if you're too driven you're likely to die. Above 26,000 feet, moreover, the line between appropriate seal and reckless summit fever becomes grievously thin. Thus the slopes of Everest are littered with corpses.'(177)

'Climbing along the blade of the summit ridge, sucking gas into my ragged lungs, I enjoyed a strange, unwarranted sense of calm. The world beyond the rubber mask was stupendously vivid but seemed not quite real, as if a movie were being projected in slow motion across the front of my goggles. I felt drugged, disengaged, thoroughly insulated from external stimuli. I had to remind myself over and over that there was 7,000 feet on sky on either side, that everything was at stake here, that I would pay for a single bungled step with my life.'(179-180)

(photo from Wikepedia, Mt Everest)

'Reaching the top of Everest is supposed to trigger a surge of intense elation; against all odds after all, I had just attained a goal coveted since childhood. But the summit was really only the halfway point. Any impulse I might have felt toward self-congratulation was extinguished by overwhelming apprehension about the long, dangerous descent that lay ahead.'(181)

'Confronted with this tally, my mind balked and retreated into a weird almost robotic state of detachment. I felt emotionally anesthetized yet hyperaware, as if I had fled into a bunker deep inside my skull and was peering out at the wreckage around me through a narrow, armored slit. As I gazed numbly at the sky, it seemed to have turned a preternaturally pale shade of blue, bleached of all but the faintest remnant of color. The jagged horizon was lined with a coronalike glow that flickered and pulsed before my eyes. I wondered if I had begun the downward spiral into the nightmarish territory of the mad.'(245)

'I'd always known that climbing mountains was a high-risk pursuit. I accepted that danger was an essential component of the game -- without it, climbing would be little different from a hundred other trifling diversions. It was titillating to brush up against the enigma of mortality, to steal a glimpse across its forbidden frontier. Climbing was a magnificent activity, I firmly believed, not it spite of the inherent perils, but precisely because of them.'(270-271)

'In the midst of all the postmortem ratiocination, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that climbing mountains will never be a safe, predictable, rule-bound enterprise. This is an activity that idealizes risk-taking; the sport's most celebrated figures have always been those who stick their necks out the farthest and manage to get away with it. Climbers, as a species, are simply not distinguished by an excess of prudence. And that holds especially true for Everest climbers: when presented with a chance to reach the planet's highest summit, history shows, people are surprisingly quick to abandon good judgment.'(275)

a Villard Books edition
288 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

192. the MARRIAGE PLOT

2011-10-23T10:00:00.000-04:00

Jeffrey Eugenides 2011

The Book Jacket Blurb:

    It's the early 1980's -- the country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. In the cafe of College Hill, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels.
    As Madeleine tries to understand why "it became laughable to read writers like Cheever and Updike, who wrote about the suburbia Madeleine and most of her friends had grown up in, in favor of reading the Marquis de Sade, who wrote about deflowering virgins in eighteenth-century France," real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead -- charismatic loner, college Darwinist, and lost Portland boy -- suddenly turns up in a semiotics seminar, and soon Madeleine finds herself in a highly charged erotic and intellectual relationship with him. At the same time, her old "friend" Mitchell Grammaticus -- who's been reading Christian mysticism and generally acting strange -- resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his mate.
    Over the next year, as the members of the triangle in this amazing, spellbinding novel graduate from college and enter the real world, events force them to reevaluate everything they learned in school. Leonard and Madeleine move to a biology laboratory in Cape Cod, but can't escape the secret responsible for Leonard's seemingly inexhaustible energy and plunging moods. And Mitchell, traveling around the world to get Madeleine out of his mind, finds himself face-to-face with ultimate questions about the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the true nature of love.
   Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, prenups, and divorce? With devastating wit and an abiding and understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the Novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it read like the intimate journal of our own lives.

What Hooked Me:

I finished reading this book a few days ago, and equally pondered as many days on what rating I would give it. I knew I liked it a lot. I was not sure I loved it. Having just posted Middlemarch a few weeks ago, a book which impressed me exactly as a book that explored the various facets of marriage, I found the depiction of the contemporary marriages in this book much more difficult and sad. And marriage as a plot seemed secondary to the three major characters' search for themselves and their paths shortly after graduating from college. In the end, the book won me over for its marvelous writing and not its plot. I continue to love the way the author gently forces me to take my time and read each word, just so I don't get lost when he mentions and expounds on it a few chapters later.  I also love that this book has encouraged me to put the book, A Lover's Discourse, on my TBR.

The Quotes:

'To start with, look at all the books. There were her Edith Wharton novels, arranged not by title but date of publication; there was the complete Modern Library set of Henry James, a gift from her father on her twenty-first birthday; there were the dog-eared paperbacks assigned in her college courses, a lot of Dickens, a smidgen of Trollope, along with good helpings of Austen, George Eliot, and the redoubtable Bronte sisters.'(opening lines)

'She's become an English major for the purest and dullest reasons: because she loved to read. The University's British and American Literature Course Catalog" was, for Madeleine, what its Bergdorf equivalent was for her roommates. A course listing like "English 274: Lyly's Euphues" excited Madeleine the way a pair of Fiorucci cowboy boots did Abby. "English 405A: Hawthorne and James" filled Madeleine with an expectation of sinful hours in bed not unlike what Olivia got from wearing Lycra skirt and leather blazer to Danceteria. ... And yet sometimes she worried about what those musty old books were doing to her.'(20-21)

'Books aren't about 'real life.' Books are about other books.'(28)

'My theory is that the problem Handke was trying to solve here, from a literary standpoint, was how do you write about something, even something real and painful -- like suicide -- when all of the writing that's been done on that subject has robbed you of any originality of expression?'(28)

'Whereas Madeleine was perfectly happy with the idea of genius. She wanted a book to take her places she couldn't get to herself. She thought a writer should work harder writing a book than she did reading it.'(42)

'And it was during this period that Madeleine fully understood how the lover's discourse was of an extreme solitude. The solitude was extreme because you felt it while in the company of the person you loved. It was extreme because it was in your head, that most solitary of places.'(65)

'A Lover's Discourse was the perfect cure for lovesickness. It was a repair manual for the heart, it's one tool the brain. If you used your head, if you become aware of how love was culturally constructed and began to see your symptoms as purely mental, if you recognized that being "in love" was only an idea, then you could liberate yourself from it's tyranny.'(79)

'People don't save other people. People save themselves.'(124)

"It's a funny thing. You're born in America. You grow up and what do they tell you? They tell you that you have a right to the pursuit of happiness. And that the way to be happy is to get a lot of nice stuff, right? I did all that. Had a house, a job, a boyfriend. But I wasn't happy. I wasn't happy because all I did was think about myself. I thought that the world revolved around me. But guess what? It doesn't."(215)

'That was when Leonard realized something crucial about depression. The smarter you were, the worse it was. The sharper your brain, the more it cut you up.'(254)

'As he answered the doctor's questions, Leonard felt as though he were being interrogated for a crime. He tried, when he could, to tell the truth, but when the truth didn't serve his cause he embellished it, interpreting it as either favorable or unfavorable, and shifting his next response accordingly. Often he had the impression that the person answering questions from the scratchy armchair was a dummy he was controlling, that this has been true throughout his life, and that his life had become so involved with operating the dummy that he, the ventriloquist, had ceased to have a personality, becoming just an arm stuffed up the puppet's back.'(255)

'One thing I learned, between addiction and depression? Depression a lot worse. Depression ain't something you just get off of. You can't get clean from depression. Depression be like a bruise that never goes away. A bruise in your mind. You just got to be careful not to touch where it hurts. It always be there, though.'(259-260)

'The worst part was that, as the years passed, these memories became, in the way you kept them in a secret box in your head, taking them out every so often to turn them over and over, something like dear possessions. They were the key to your unhappiness. They were the evidence that life wasn't fair. If you weren't a lucky child, you didn't know you weren't lucky until you got older. And then it was all you ever thought about.'(283)

'When you talked about marriage (I mean in the abstract) you had a theory that people got married in one of three stages. Stage One are the traditional people who marry their college sweethearts, usually the summer after graduation. People in Stage Two get married around 28. And then there are the people in Stage Three who get married in a final wave, with a sense of desperation, around 36, 37, or even 39.'(324-325)

Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, First Edition
406 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

191. a LITTLE PRINCESS

2011-10-18T17:00:00.003-04:00

Frances Hodgson Burnett 1904

The Book Blurb:

Ten-year-old Sara Crewe wasn't really a princess. But she seemed like one when she first arrived at Miss Minchin's London boarding school. Her father had given her all sorts of beautiful clothes before he had returned to India, as well as a pony, a French maid, and a wonderful doll named Emily. Sara wasn't spoiled, though -- almost everyone wanted to be her friend.
Suddenly a terrible misfortune left Sara penniless -- and she thought, forgotten. She had to wear old rags, live in a dingy attic, and work for her living. It wasn't a very happy life for a young girl. The mysterious changes begun, showing Sara she had never really been all alone.

What Hooked Me:

I needed a dose of a straight-forward, old-fashioned children's story with a happy ending.

The Quotes:

'Once on a dark winter's day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking little girl sat in a cab with her father and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfares.'(opening lines)

"I am not in the least anxious about her education," Captain Crewe said, with his gay laugh, as he held Sara's hand and patted it. "The difficulty will be to keep her from learning too fast and too much. She is always sitting with her little nose burrowing into books. She doesn't read them, Miss Minchin; she gobbles them up as if she were a little wolf instead of a little girl. She is always starving for new books to gobble, and she wants grown-up books -- great, big, fat ones -- French and German as well as English -- history and biography and poets, and all sorts of things.'(9)

"Things happen to people by accident," she used to say. "A lot of nice accidents have happened to me. It just happened that I always liked lessons and books and could remember things when I learned them. It just happened that I was born with a father who was beautiful and nice and clever, and could give me everything I liked. Perhaps I have not really a good temper at all, but if you have everything you want and everyone's kind to you, how can you help but be good-tempered? I don't know" -- looking quite serious -- "how I shall ever find out whether I am really a nice child or a horrid one. Perhaps I'm a hideous child, and no one will ever know, just because I never have any trials."(33)

'Of course the greatest power Sara possessed and the one which gained her even more followers than her luxuries and the fact that she was "the show pupil," the power that Lavinia and certain other girls were most envious of, and at the same time most fascinated by in spite of themselves, was her power of telling stories and of making everything she talked about seem like a story, whether it was one or not.'(42)

'Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment.'(58)

'If Nature has made you a giver, your hands are born open, and so is your heart; and though there may be times when your hands are empty, your heart is always full and you can give things out of that -- warm things, kind things, sweet things -- help and comfort and laughter -- and sometimes gay, kind laughter is the best help of all.'(63)

'Everything's a story. You are a story -- I am a story.'(114)

'Perhaps kind thoughts reach people somehow, even through windows and doors and walls. Perhaps you feel a little warm and comforted...'(142)

'On this very afternoon, while Sara was out, a strange thing happened in the attic. Only Melchisedec saw and heard it, and he was so much alarmed and mystified that he scuttled back to his hole and hid there, and really quaked and trembled as he peeped out furtively and with great caution to watch what was going on.'(162)

'Imagine, if you can, what the rest of the evening was like. How they crouched by the fire which blazed and leaped and made so much of itself in the little grate. How they removed the covers of the dishes, and found rich, hot, savory soup, which was a meal in itself, and sandwiches and toast and muffins enough for both of them.'(196)

First Harper Trophy Book edition 1987
245 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

190. SHAKESPEARE: The World as Stage

2011-10-09T14:57:00.002-04:00

Bill Bryson 2007

The Book Jacket Blurb:

    William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition arranged around scant facts. With a steady hand and his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself.
    Bryson documents the efforts of earlier scholars, from today's most respected academics to eccentrics like Delia Bacon, an American who developed a firm but unsubstantiated conviction that her namesake, Francis Bacon, was the true author of Shakespeare's plays. Emulating the style of his famous travelogues, Bryson records episodes in his research, including a visit to a bunkerlike room in Washington, D.C., where the world's largest collection of First Folios is housed.
    Bryson celebrates Shakespeare as a writer of unimaginable talent and enormous inventiveness, a coiner of phrases ("vanish into thin air,""foregone conclusion,""one fell swoop") that even today have common currency. His Shakespeare is like no one else's -- the beneficiary of Bryson's genial nature, his engaging skepticism, and a gift for storytelling unrivaled in our time.

What Hooked Me:

There is no better author to make the daunting task of relating William Shakespeare's life so reader-friendly than Bill Bryson. The author's ever enlightening, organized and systematic telling of major known occurrences in Shakespeare's life, the 17th century England (and interesting people) of his days, and his enormous contributions to literature and the English language itself is highly satisfying.

The Quotes:

'Before he came into a lot of money in 1839, Richard Plantagenet Temple Nugent Brydges Chandos Grenville, second Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, led a largely uneventful life.'(opening lines)

'So we are in the curious position with William Shakespeare of having three likenesses from which all others are derived: two that aren't very good by artists working years after his death and one that is rather more compelling as a portrait but that may well be someone else altogether. The paradoxical consequence is that we all recognize a likeness of Shakespeare the instant we see one, and yet we don't really know what he looked like. It is like this with nearly every aspect of his life and character: He is at once the best known and least known of figures.'(7)

'It is because we have so much of Shakespeare's work that we can appreciate how little we know of him as a person. If we had only his comedies, we would think him a frothy soul. If we had just the sonnets, he would be a man of darkest passions. From a selection of his other works, we might think him variously courtly, cerebral, metaphysical, melancholic, Machiavellian, neurotic, lighthearted, loving, and much more. Shakespeare was of course all these things -- as a writer. We hardly know what he was as a person.'(19)

'Shakespeare's early life is really little more than a series of occasional sightings. So when we note that he was now about to embark on what are popularly known as his lost years, they are very lost indeed.'(44)

'Shakespeare's genius had to do not really with facts, but with ambition, intrigue, love, suffering -- things that aren't taught in school. He had a kind of assimilative intelligence, which allowed him to pull together lots of disparate fragments of knowledge, but there is almost nothing that speaks of hard intellectual application in his plays -- unlike, say, those of Ben Johnson, where learning hangs like burning on every word.'(109)

'Anyway, and obviously, it wasn't so much a matter of how many words he used, but what he did with them -- and no one has ever done more. It is often said that what sets Shakespeare apart is his ability to illuminate the workings of the soul and so on, and he does that superbly, goodness knows, but what really characterizes his work -- every bit of it, in poems and plays and even dedications, throughout every portion of his career -- is a positive and palpable appreciation of the transfixing power of language. A Midsummer Night's Dream remains an enchanting work after four hundred years, but few would argue that it cuts to the very heart of human behavior. What it does do is take, and give, a positive satisfaction in the joyous possibilities of verbal expression.'(110)

'He coined -- or, to be more carefully precise, made the first recorded use of -- 2,035 words, and interestingly he indulged the practice from the very outset of his career. Titus Andronicus and Love's Labour Lost, two of his earliest works, have 140 new words between them.'(113)

'Among the words first found in Shakespeare are abstemious, antipathy, critical, frugal, dwindle, extract, horrid, vast, hereditary, critical, excellent, eventful, barefaced, assassination, lonely, leapfrog, indistinguishable, well-read, zany, and countless others (including countless). Where would be without them?'(114)

'His real gift was as a phrasemaker. "Shakespeare's language," says Stanley Wells, "has the quality, difficult to define, of memorability that has caused many phrases to enter the common language." Among them: one fell swoop, vanish into thin air, bag and baggage, play fast and loose, go down the primrose path, to be in a pickle, budge an inch, the milk of human kindness, more sinned against than sinning, remembrance of things past, beggar all description, cold comfort, to thine own self be true, more in sorrow than in anger, the wish is father to the thought, salad days, flesh and blood, foul play, be cruel to be kind, blinking idiot, with bated breath, tower of strength, pomp and circumstance, foregone conclusion -- and many others so repetitiously irresistible that we have debased them into cliches.'(115)

'After his death William Shakespeare was laid to rest in the chancel of Holy Trinity, a large, lovely church beside Avon. As we might by now expect, his life concludes with a mystery -- indeed, with a small series of them. His gravestone bears no name, but merely a curious piece of doggerel:

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare,

To digg the dust encloased heare.

Bleste be the man that spares the stones

And curst be he that moves the bones.'(178)

'There is an extraordinary -- seemingly an insatiable -- urge on the part of quite a number of people to believe that the plays of William Shakespeare were written by someone other that William Shakespeare. The number of published books suggesting -- or more often insisting -- as much is estimated now to be well over five thousand.'(181)

'When we reflect upon the works of William Shakespeare it is of course an amazement to consider that one man could have produced such a sumptuous, wise, varied, thrilling, ever-delighting body of work, but that it is of course the hallmark of genius. Only one man had the circumstances and gifts to give such incomparable works, and William Shakespeare of Stratford was unquestionably that man -- whoever he was.'(closing lines)

HarperCollins First Edition book
196 pages
Book borrowed from the library
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

189. MIDDLEMARCH

2011-10-01T13:40:00.000-04:00

George Eliot 1874

The Book Blurb:

     Middlemarch is a town on the rise. With its old country gentry, middle classes, and tradesmen, it is ever growing and changing with the times, circa 1830. Vast and crowded, rich in irony and suspense, the novel Middlemarch is richer still in psychological insight. One of the best loved works of the nineteenth century, it introduces two of the era's most enduring characters -- Dorothea Brooke, a passionately idealistic woman who traps herself in a loveless marriage, and Tertius Lydgate, an ambitious young doctor betrayed by his wife's egoism and his own weakness -- and explores the complex social relationships in a town that moves and breathes with a life of its own.

What Hooked Me:

     I was astounded as to how much this classic, which explores the many facets of marriages in the provincial town of Middlemarch amazingly parallels the different marriages that still exist today: the Rosamonds who seek the prestige of marrying a man like Lydgate to find wealth and inch up higher on their social standing; the Dorotheas who remain trapped in a loveless marriage, married to a man like Mr. Causabon; and the Harriet Bulstrodes who stand by their husbands amidst scandals and ruined reputations. Truly timeless and worth the time you need to invest on reading it's almost thousand pages! I also particularly love the unique foreshadowing of each chapter with fabulous quotes from both the author and other famous writers.

The Quotes:

'Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of St. Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand in hand with her still smaller brother to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors?' (Prelude, opening lines)

'We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinnertime, keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us, and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts -- not to hurt others.'(64)

'After all, people may really have in them some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may they not? They may seem idle and weak because they are growing. We should be very patient with each other, I think.'(86)

'She is grace itself; she is perfectly lovely and accomplished. That is what a woman ought to be; she ought to produce the effect of exquisite music.'(99)

'Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae in her hand.'(100)

'That basket held small savings from her more portable food, destined for the children of her poor friends among which she trotted on fine mornings, fostering and petting all needy creatures being so spontaneous a delight to her that she regarded it much as if it had been a pleasant vice that she was addicted to. Perhaps she was conscious of being tempted to steal from those who had that she might give to those who had nothing and carried in her conscience the guilt of that repressed desire. One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!'(179-180)

"Don't you think men overrate the necessity for humouring everybody's nonsense till they get despised by the very fools they humour?" said Lydgate ... "The shortest way is to make your value felt so that people must put up with you whether you flatter them or not."(185)

'I suppose it was that in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not within sight -- that; in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.'(209)

'Art is an old language with a great many artificial, affected styles, and sometimes the chief pleasure one gets out of knowing them is the mere sense of knowing.'(220)

'Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.'(237)

'It is an uneasy lot at best to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy; to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small, hungry, shivering self -- never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardour of passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dimsighted.'(299)

'Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.'(446)

'Was never true love loved in vain,
For truest love is the highest gain.
No art can make it: it must spring
Where elements are fostering.'(497)

"I still think that the greater part of the world is mistaken about many things. Surely one may be sane and yet think so, since the greater part of the world has often had to come round from its opinion.'(570)

"You must be sure of two things: you must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work and think it would be more honourable to you to be doing something else. You must have pride in your own work and in learning to do it well, and not be always saying there's this and there's that -- if I had this or that to do, I might make something of it. No matter what a man is, I wouldn't give twopence for him... whether he was the prime minister or the rick-thatcher if he didn't do well what he undertook to do.'(595-596)

'News is often dispersed as thoughtlessly and effectively as that pollen which the bees carry off (having no idea how powdery they are) when they are buzzing in search of their particular nectar.'(635-636)

'The terror of being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitable glare over that long-unvisited past which has been habitually recalled only in general phrases. Even without memory, the life is bound into one by a zone of dependence in growth and decay; but intense memory forces a man to own his blameworthy past. With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outward preparation of the present; it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life; it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavours and the tinglings of a merited shame.'(653-654)

'In marriage, the certainty, "She will never love me much," is easier to bear than the fear, "I shall love her no more."(693)

'Who can know how much of his most inward life is made up of the thoughts he believes other men to have about him, until the fabric of opinion is threatened with ruin?'(733)

'Ou deeds still travel with us from afar,
And what we have been makes us what we are.'(748)

'... an old friend is not always the person whom it is easiest to make a confidant of: there was the barrier of remembered communication under other circumstances -- there was the dislike of being pitied and informed by one who had been long wont to allow her the superiority.'(795)

'Men and women make sad mistakes about their own symptoms, taking their vague, uneasy longings sometimes for genius, sometimes for religion, and oftener still for a mighty love.'(801)

'Oh, all the troubles of all people on the face of the earth...'(825)

"Trouble is so hard to bear, is it not? How can we live and think that anyone has trouble -- piercing trouble -- and we could help them, and never try?"(844)

'Marriage, which has been bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic -- the gradual conquest of irremediable loss of that complete union which makes the advancing years a climax and age the harvest of sweet memories in common.'(883)

a Signet Classics Edition, December 2003
890 pages
Book borrowed from the library
Book qualifies for: 2011 Victorian Literature Challenge
                                 100+ Reading Challenge

188. the IMMORTAL LIFE of HENRIETTA LACKS

2011-09-26T14:30:00.001-04:00

Rebecca Skloot 2010

The Book Jacket Blurb:

     Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells -- taken without her knowledge -- became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they'd weigh more than 50 million metric tons -- as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb's effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.
     Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.
     Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the "colored" ward of John Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells, from Henrietta's small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia -- a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo -- to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.
     Henrietta's family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had lanched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family -- past and present -- is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.
     Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family -- especially Henrietta's daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother's cells. Deborah was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Had they killed her to harvest her cells? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn't her children afford health insurance?

What Hooked Me:

Remarkably written, Henrietta's story is one that I should know... we ALL should know it!!

The Quotes:

'There's a photo on my wall of a woman I've never met, its left corner torn and patched together with tape. She looks straight into the camera and smiles, hands on hips, dress suit neatly pressed, lips painted deep red. It's the late 1940s and she hasn't yet reached the age of thirty. Her light brown skin is smooth, her eyes still young and playful, oblivious to the tumor growing inside her -- a tumor that would leave her five children motherless and change the future of medicine. Beneath the photo, a caption says her name is "Henrietta Lacks, Helen Lane or Helen Larson."'(opening lines)

'After three straight days of grilling, Patillo finally decided to give me Deborah's phone number. But first, he said, there were a few things I needed to know. He lowered his voice and rattled off a list of dos and dont's for dealing with Deborah Lacks: Don't be aggressive. Do be honest. Don't be clinical, don't try to force her into anything, don't talk down to her, she hates that. Do be compassionate, don't forget that she's been through a lot with these cells, do have patience. "You'll need that more than anything," he told me.'(51)

'He sent shipments of HeLa cells to researchers in Texas, India, New York, Amsterdam, and many places in between. Those researchers gave them to more researchers, who gave them to more still. Henrietta's cells rode into the mountains of Chile in the saddlebags of pack mules. As Gey flew from one lab to another, demonstrating his culturing techniques and helping to set up new laboratories, he always flew with tubes of Henrietta's cells in his breast pocket.'(57)

'Not long after Henrietta's death, planning began for a HeLa factory -- a massive operation that would grow to produce trillions of HeLa cells each week. It was built for one reason: to help stop polio.'(93)

'Scientists knew they had to keep their cultures free from bacterial and viral contamination, and they knew it was possible for cells to contaminate one another if they got mixed up in culture. But when it came to HeLa, they had no idea what they were up against. It turned out Henrietta's cells could float through the air on dust particles. They could travel from one culture to the next on unwashed hands or used pipettes; they could ride from lab to lab on researchers' coats and shoes, or through ventilation systems. And they were stong: if just one HeLa cell landed in a culture dish, it took over, consuming all the media and filling all the space.(153)

"You know what is a myth?" Bobette snapped from the recliner. "Everybody always saying Henrietta Lacks donated these cells. She didn't donate anything. They took them and didn't ask." She inhaled a deep breath to calm herself. "What really would upset Henrietta is the fact that Dr. Gey never told the family anything -- we didn't know nothing about those cells and he didn't care. That just rubbed us the wrong way. I just keep asking everybody, 'Why didn't they say anything to the family?' They knew how to contact us. If Dr. Gey wasn't dead, I think I would have killed him myself."(169)

'When I talked to Howard Jones fifty years after he found the tumor on Henrietta's cervix, he was in his early nineties and had seen thousands of cervical cancer cases. But whan I asked if he remembered Henrietta, he laughed. "I could never forget that tumor," he said, "Because it was unlike anything I've ever seen."
I talked to many scientists about HeLa, and none could explain why Henrietta's cells grew so powerfully when so many others didn't even survive. Today it's possible for scientists to immortalize cells by exposing them to certain viruses or chemical, but very few cells have become immortal on their own as Henrietta's did.'(213)

'Cristoph taught Deborah and Zakariyya how to use the microscope, saying, "Look through this ... take your glasses off ... now turn this knob to focus." Finally the cells popped into view for Deborah. And through the microscope, for that moment, all she could see was an ocean of her mother's cells, stained an ethereal fluorescent green.(266)

(Images from Google search)

'They're beautiful," she whispered, then went back to staring at the slide in silence. Eventually, without looking away from the cells, she said, "God, I never thought I'd see my mother under a microscope -- I never dreamed this day would ever come."(266)

'As we left Cronsville, Deborah thanked Lurz for the information, saying, "I've been waiting for this a long, long time, Doc." When asked if she was okay, her eyes welled with tears and she said, "Like I'm always telling my brothers, if you gonna go into history, you can't do it with a hate attitude. You got to remember, times was different."'(276)

'In that moment, reading those passages, I understood completely how some Lackses could believe, without doubt, that Henrietta had been chosen by the Lord to become an immortal being. If you believe the Bible is the liberal truth, the immortality of Henrietta's cells makes perfect sense. Of course they were growing and surviving decades after her death, of course they floated through the air, and of course, they'd led to cures for diseases and been launched into space. Angels are like that. The Bible tells us so.'(296)

Crown Publishing Edition

310 pages

Book borrowed from the library

Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

187. the COMPLETE BEATLES LYRICS.

2011-09-21T08:42:00.003-04:00

the Beatles 1982

A treasure to keep bought from our library's used bookstore for a dollar, this awesome book has all the lyrics of 181 songs the Beatles created. I am a huge fan and love that I can now sing all their songs to my heart's content. The songs are presented in the order of their release from 1962 to 1977. If you love the Beatles and love to sing, this book will bring you joy. My favorite quotes are from my favorite songs.

From Me To You (p.25)
If there's anything that you want,
If there's anything I can do,
Just call on me and I'll send it along,
With love from me to you.

Do You Want To Know A Secret? (p.30)
Listen, do you want to know a secret,
Do you promise not to tell, Whoa .....
Closer let me whisper in your ear,
Say the words you long to hear,
I'm in love with you, oo .....

All My Loving (p.40)
Close you eyes, and I'll kiss you, Tomorrow I'll miss you,
Remember I'll always be true, And then while I'm away,
I'll write home every day, And I'll send all my loving to you.

If I Fell (p.52)
If I fell in love with you would you promise to be true, And help me understand?
'Cos I've been in love before, and I found that love was more, Than just holding hands.
If I give my heart to you, I must be sure from the very start,
That you would love me more than her.

And I Love Her (p.54)
I give her all my love, That's all I do,
And if you saw my love, You'd love her too. I love her.
She gives me ev'rything, And tenderly, The kiss my lover brings,
She brings to me, And I love her.

Ticket To Ride (p.73)
I think I'm gonna be sad, I think it's today, yeh,
The girl that's driving me mad, Is going away. She's got a ticket to ride,
She's got a ticket to ri-hi-hide, She's got a ticket to ride, but she don't care.

Help (p. 76)
When I was younger, so much younger than today, I never needed anybody's help in any way,
But now these days are gone I'm not so self assured,
Now I find I've changed my mind I've opened up the doors.
Help me if you can, I'm feeling down, And I do appreciate you being around,
Help me get my feet back on the ground, Won't you please please help me?

Yesterday (p.87)
Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away, Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh I believe in yesterday.
Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be, There's a shadow hanging over me,
Oh yesterday came suddenly.....

Michelle (p.95)
Michelle ma belle These are words that go together well, My Michelle
Michelle ma belle, Sont les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble, Tres bien ensemble
I love you, I love you, I love you, That's all I want to say,
Until I find a way, I will say the only words I know you'll understand.

Girl (p.97)
Is there anybody going to listen to my story, All about the girl came to stay?
She's the kind of girl you want so much it makes you sorry,
Still you don't regret a single day. Ah girl, girl.

In My Life (p.99)
But of all these friends and lovers, There is no one compared with you,
And these memories lose their meaning, When I think of love as something new
Though I know I'll never lose affection, For people and things that went before,
I know I'll often stop and think about them, In my life, I'll love you more.

We Can Work It Out (p. 105)
Life is very short, and there's no time, For fussing and fighting, my friend,
I have always thought that it's a crime, So I will ask you once again.

Here There And Everywhere (p.113)
There, running my hands through her hair, Both of us thinking how good it can be.
Someone is speaking but she doesn't know he's there.
I want her ev'rywhere, and if she's beside me I know I need never care,
But to love her is to meet her ev'rywere

For No One (p.118)
Your day breaks, your mind aches,
There will be times when all the things she said will fill your head, You won't forget her.
And in her eyes you see nothing, No sign of love behind the tears cried for no one,
A love that should have lasted years.

With A Little Love From My Friends (p. 128)
What would you do if I sang out of tune, Would you stand up and walk out on me.
Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song, And I'll try not to sing out of key.
I get by with a little help from my friends, I get high with a little help from my friends,
I'm gonna try with a little help from my friends.

When I'm Sixty Four (p.135)
Send me a postcard, drop me a line, Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say, Yours sincerely, wasting away
Give me your answer, fill in a form, Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, When I'm sixty-four.

The Fool On The Hill (p.147)
Day after day, alone on a hill, The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still
But nobody wants to know him, They can see that he's just a fool
And he never gives an answer. But the fool on the hill sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head see the world spinning around.

Hey Jude (p.152)
Hey Jude, don't make it bad, Take a sad song and make it better,
Remember, to let her into your heart, Then you can start to make it better.
Hey Jude, don't be afraid, You were made to go out and get her,
The minute you let her under your skin, Then you begin to make it better.

I Will (p.170)
Who knows how long I've loved you. You know I love you still
Will I wait a lonely lifetime, If you want me to - I will.
For if I ever saw you, I didn't catch your name.
But it never really mattered I will always feel the same.

Here Comes The Sun (p.200)
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, And I say it's all right.
Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter,
Little darling it feels like years since it's been here.
Her comes the sun, here comes the sun, And I say it's all right.

Let It Be (p.211)
When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness, She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

The Long And Winding Road (p.221)
Many times I've been alone and many times I've cried,
Anyways you'll never know the many ways I've tried, but
Still they lead me back to the long winding road,
You left me standing here a long, long time ago
Don't leave me waiting here, lead me to your door.

Omnibus Press Edition
222 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for:100+ Reading Challenge
Good post idea from JRMD!!

186. CRIME and PUNISHMENT

2011-09-17T23:00:00.000-04:00

Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866

Set in St. Petersburg Russia, this classic's protagonist is Rodion Raskolnikov, a young man in the prime of his life who premeditate the murder of money-lender Alyona Ivanovna just for the mere fact that he believes he can get rid of a vile person he considers not fit to live. He commits the brutal crime and suffers the consequences of his guilty conscience, constantly vacillating between remorse and self-justification for the horrible act. His acquaintance with investigator Porfiry Petrovich who suspects him of the murder and love interest Sonia further complicates this conflict and compounds this highly thought-stimulating psychological thriller.

'On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. Bridge.'(opening lines)

'This evening, however, on coming out into the street, he became acutely aware of his fears.
"I want to attempt at thing like that and am frightened by these trifles," he thought, with an odd smile. "Hm ... yes, all is in a man's hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that's an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most ...'(2)

'Trifles, trifles are what matter! Why, it's just such trifles that always ruin everything...'(3)

'There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.'(9)

'In order to understand any man one must be deliberate and careful to avoid forming prejudices and mistaken ideas, which are very difficult to correct and get over afterwards.'(31)

'In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a singular actuality, vividness and extraordinary semblance of reality. At times monstrous images are created, but the setting and the whole picture are so truthlike and filled with details so delicate, so unexpected, but so artistically consistent, that the dreamer, where he an artist like Pushkin or Turgenev even, could never have invented them in the waking state. Such sick dreams always remain long in the memory and make a powerful impression on the overwrought and deranged nervous system.'(48)

'He was in full possession of his faculties, free from confusion or giddiness, but his hands were still trembling. He remembered afterwards that he had been particularly collected and careful, trying all the time not to get smeared with blood...'(69)

'Fear gained more and more mastery over him, especially after this second, quite unexpected murder. He longed to run away from the plaace as fast as possible. And if at that moment he had been capable of seeing and reasoning more correctly, if he had been able to realise all the difficulties of his position, his hopelessness, the hideousness and the absurdity of it, if he could have understood how many obstacles and, perhaps, crimes he had still to overcome or to commit, to get out of that place to make his way home, it is very possible that he would have flung up everything, and would have gone to give himself up, and not from fear, but from simple horror and loathing of what he had done. ... But a sort of blankness, even dreaminess, had begun by degrees to take possession of him; at moments he forgot himself, or rather forgot what was of importance and caught at trifles.'(71-72)

'Where is it I've read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he'd only room to stand, and the oceans, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live than to die at once! Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!'(139)

'Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen. And a fine thing, too, in it's way ... To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's. In the first case you are a man, in the second you're no better that a bird. Truth won't escape you, but life can be cramped.'(176)

'Again that awful sensation he had known of late passed with deadly chill over his soul. Again it became suddenly plain and perceptible to him that he had just told a fearful lie -- that he would never now be able to speak of anything to anyone.'(200)

'If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his punishment...'(230)

'Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth...'(230)

'You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid, that if others are stupid -- and I know they are -- yet I won't be wiser? Then I saw, Sonia, that if one waits for everyone to get wiser it will take too long ... Afterwards I understood that that would never come to pass, that men won't change and that nobody can alter it and that it's not worth wasting effort over it. Yes, that's so. That's the law of nature, Sonia ... that's so ... And I know now, Sonia, that whoever is strong in mind and spirit will have power over them. Anyone who is greatly daring is right in their eyes. He who despises most things will be a law-giver among them and he who dares most in the right! So it has been till now and so it will always be.'(359)

'... do you know to what a point of insanity a woman can sometimes love?'(407)

a Bantam Classic Edition
472 pages
Book owned. Read in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Book qualifies for: 2011 Victorian Challenge
100+ Reading Challenge

185. the LOVER'S DICTIONARY

2011-09-11T21:20:00.001-04:00

David Levithan 2011

I read this in between two giant, wordy books. Because of this, I was amazed that such a short novel, consisting of seemingly-random definition of words, could contain such a poignant love story.

aberrant, adj.
"I don't normally do this kind of thing," you said.
"Neither do I," I assured you. ...
Measure the hope of that moment, that feeling.
Everything else will be measured against it.(opening word)

abstraction, n.
Love is a kind of abstraction. And then there are those nights when I sleep alone, when I curl into a pillow that isn't you, when I hear the tiptoe sounds that aren't yours. It's not as if I can conjure you there completely. I must embrace the idea of you instead.(5)

abyss, n.
There are times when I doubt everything. When I regret everything you've taken from me, everything I've given you, and the waste of all the time I've spent on us.(6)

autonomy, n.
I want my books to have their own shelves," you said, and that's how I knew it would be okay to live together.(22)

awhile, adv.
I love the vagueness of words that involve time. ...
It is easy for me to say it took me awhile to know. That is about as accurate as I can get. There were sneak previews of knowing, for sure. Instances that made me feel, oh, this could be right. But the moment I shifted from a hope that needed to be proven to a certainty that would be continually challenged? There's no pinpointing that.
Perhaps it never happened. Perhaps it happened while I was asleep. Most likely, there's no single event. There's just the steady accumulation of awhile.(24)

basis, n.
There has to be a moment at the beginning when you wonder whether you're in love with the person or in love with the feeling of love itself.
If the moment doesn't pass, that's it -- you're done.
And if the moment does pass, it never goes that far. It stands in the distance, ready for whenever you want it back. Sometimes it's even there when you thought you were searching for something else, like an escape route, or your lover's face.(28)

corrode, v.
I spent all this time building a relationship. Then one night I left the window open, and it started to rust.(64)

daunting, adj.
Really, we should use this more as a verb. You daunted me, and I daunted you. Or would it be that I was daunted by you, and you were daunted by me? That sounds better. ... The key is to never recognize these imbalances. To not let the dautingness daunt us.(67)

flux, n.
The natural state. Our moods change. Our lives change. Our feeling for each other change. Our bearings change. The song changes. The air changes. The temperature of the shower changes.
Accept this. We must accept this.(98)

ineffable, adj.
These words will ultimately end up being the barest of reflections, devoid of the sensations words cannot convey. Trying to write about love is ultimately like trying to have a dictionary represent life. No matter how many words there are, there will never be enough.(120)

juxtaposition, n.
It scares me how hard it is to remember life before you. I can't even make the comparisons anymore, because my memories of that time have all the depth of a photograph. It seems foolish to play games of better and worse. It's simply a matter of is and is no longer.(128)

posterity, n.
I try not to think about us growing old together, mostly because I try not to think about growing old at all. Both things -- the years passing, the years together -- are too enormous to contemplate. But one morning, I gave in. You were asleep, and I imagined you older and older. Your hair graying, your skin folded and creased, your breath catching. And I found myself thinking: If this continues, if this goes on, then when I die, your memories of me will be my greatest accomplishment. Your memories will be my most lasting impression.(161)

punctuate, v.
Cue the imaginary interviewer:
Q: So when all is said and done, what have you learned here?
A: The key to a successful relationship isn't just in the words, it's the choice of punctuation. When you're in love with someone, a well-placed question mark can be the difference between bliss and disaster, and a deeply respected period or a cleverly inserted ellipsis can prevent all kinds of exclamations.(162)

First Edition, 2011
211 pages
Book borrowed from the library
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge
Book idea from Rummanah @ Books in the Spotlight. Thanks! I should have read it sooner than I did. Her convincing review is HERE

184. ROMEO and JULIET

2011-09-05T20:30:00.007-04:00

William Shakespeare 1597

Romeo. Juliet. From the feuding Montague and Capulet family. Is there anything else more tragic and dramatic than the story of this young love? The prologue explains it all. The audiobook is a sure winner, the best form to enjoy Shakespeare for a novice like me.

PROLOGUE
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona (where we lay our scene),
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life;
Whose misadventures piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents' strife.
That fearful passage of their death-marked love,
And the continuance of their parent's rage,
Which but their children's end nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend. (opening lines)

ROMEO Alas that Love, whose view is muffled still,
                Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will!
               Where shall we dine? O me! what fray was here?
                Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all:
                Here's much to do with hate, but more with love:
               Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate,
                O any thing of nothing first create! (Act I Scene 1)

NURSE His name is Romeo, and a Montague,
               The only son of your great enemy.
JULIET My only love sprung from my only hate!
              Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
              Prodigious birth of love it is to me,
              That I must love a loathed enemy. (Act I Scene 5)

ROMEO He jests at scars that never felt a wound.
               But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
               It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
               Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
               Who is already sick and pale with grief
               That thou, her maid, since she in envious;
               Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
               And none but fools do wear it; cast it off. (Act II Scene 2)

JULIET O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
              Deny they father and refuse thy name;
              Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
              And I'll no longer be a Capulet.
ROMEO Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?
JULIET 'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
              Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
              What's Montague? It is nor hand nor foot,
              Nor arm nor face, nor any other part
              Belonging to a man. O be some other name!
              What's in a name? That which we call a rose
              By any other word would smell as sweet;
              So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called,
              Retain thar dear perfection which he owes
              Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
              And for thy name, which is no part of thee,
              Take all myself. (Act II Scene 2)

JULIET Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow,
              That I shall say good night till it be morrow. (Act II Scene 2)

MERCUTIO Without his roe, like a dried herring:
                     O flesh, flesh, how art thou finished!
                     Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in.
                     Laura to his lady was a kitchen wench
                     (marry, she had a better love than to berhyme her),
                     Dido a dowdy, Cleopatra a gipsy,
                     Helen and Hero hildings and harlots,
                     This be a grey eye or so, but not to the purpose.
                     Signior Romeo, 'bon jour'! there's a French salutation to your French slop.
                     You gave us the counterfeit fairly last night. (Act II Scene 4)

FRIAR LAWRENCE These violent delights have violent ends,
                                   And in their triumph die like fire and powder,
                                   Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey
                                   Is loathsome in his own deliciousness,
                                   And in the taste confounds the appetite.
                                   Therefore love moderately, long love doth so;
                                   Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow. (Act II Scene 6)

JULIET 'Romeo is banished' : to speak that word,
              Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet,
              All slain, all dead. 'Romeo is banished!'
              There is no end, no limit, measure, bound,
              In that word's death, no words can that woe sound. (Act III Scene 2)

JULIET O Fortune, Fortune, all men call thee fickle;
              If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him
              That is renowned for faith? Be fickle, Fortune:
              But send him back. (Act III Scene 5)

FRIAR LAWRENCE Unhappy fortune! By my brotherhood,
                                   That letter was not nice but full of charge
                                   Of dear import, and the neglecting it
                                   May do much danger. Friar John, go hence,
                                   Give me an iron crow and bring it straight
                                   Unto my cell. (Act V Scene 2)

PRINCE Where be these enemies? Capulet, Montague?
                See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
                That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love!
                And I for winking at your discords too
                Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punished. (Act V Scene 3)

PRINCE For never was a story of more woe
               Than this of Juliet and her Romeo. (Closing lines)

BBC Audiobooks America audiobook edition
Fully Dramatized Recording
Audiobook borrowed from the library
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

Finding the Balance

2011-09-02T15:15:00.008-04:00

(a sculpture at Frogner Park, Oslo, Norway)

As some of you may know, I am a practicing Pediatrician and have been for the past 25 years. Over the past year, I had reduced my hours in anticipation of an early retirement. I am now loving my new hours and have realized how much I would miss my patients, especially the children whom I have taken care of since they were born. I have even started to see some of my patient's own babies! So I've decided to continue working for a while.

Unfortunately, it also means that I have to take a re-certification examination that is soon to expire. Maintenance of certification every ten years is highly recommended for Pediatricians in the US and is an absolute requirement of the health care system I work for. It means it is time for me to exchange the literary books for medical textbooks and journals to prepare for this exam. Not that I am worried, I just like being prepared. This will be the third time (and the last time) I am taking the test.

So study I must! And blogging, I have to do less of. Which will explain my sporadic presence in the networking and commenting part of blogging from now onwards. I know my comments (and followers) will dwindle down because of this, but that is just how things go. Perhaps the right balance will come to me in time.

Please know that even if I may not be commenting consistently, I will still be visiting blogs from time to time. And although I can only do it sparingly, I will continue to read some story books, post quotes and count my way up to my goal of a thousand books.

Addendum: I have a lot of quotes from books I recently read from my recent travels to post in the coming days, so rest assured, this blog will go on!!

183. MIDNIGHT in the GARDEN of GOOD and EVIL

2011-08-31T17:30:00.006-04:00

John Berendt 1994

In the center of this novel is a very informative and tantalizing view of Savannah, Georgia. When the author, originally from New York decided to spend time in Savannah as his experiment in bi-urban living, he ends up loving the place and staying for eight years. During his stay, he followed the multiple trials of wealthy antiques dealer Jim Arthur Williams who was accused of killing Danny Hansford, a young man of questionable character at his residence, the now famous Mercer House. As a high-profile resident of Savannah, his trials attracted everyone's attention over many years. There are a lot of unforgettable and eccentric characters in this book, but most memorable are Lady Chablis, a drag queen, and Minerva, a voodoo priestess, two women with distinct eccentric personalities that livened up the plot so much, you will have to constantly remind yourself that, yes, you are reading a true story.

'He was tall, about fifty, with darkly handsome, almost sinister features: a neatly trimmed moustache, hair turning silver at the temples, and eyes so black they were like the tinted windows of a sleek limousine -- he could see out, but you couldn't see in.'(opening lines)

Jim Arthur Williams

(photo from Google search - Website trutv.com)

'Jim Williams's Christmas party was, in the words of the Georgia Gazette, the party that Savannah socialites "lived for." Or lived without for Williams enjoyed changing his guest list from year to year. He wrote names on file cards and arranged them in two stacks: an In stack and an Out stack. He shunted the cards from one stack to the other and made no secret of it. If a person had displeased him in any way during the year, that person would do penance come Christmas. "My Out stack," he once told the Gazette, "is an inch thick."'(8)

'These, then, were the images in my mental gazetteer of Savannah: rum-drinking pirates, strong-willed women, courtly manners, eccentric behavior, gentle words, and lovely music. That and the beauty of the name itself: Savannah.'(27)

Mercer William House is now a museum

"Oh, that's a lovely song," said Emma. "Kurt Weil, 1941." She played it, and from that time on, Emma always played "my Ship" whenever I came into the bar. "Bartenders know customers by the drinks they order," she said. "I know them by the songs they ask me to play. Whenever regulars walk in the door, I like to play their favorites. It tickled them and makes them feel they're home."(82)

'Traffic on Congress Street slowed to a crawl in order to take in the glittering procession. The air was filled with honks and whistles and shouts in a mixture of good-natured cheer and lusty derision. The motorists were unaware, of course, that the spectacle they were witnessing was that of the Grand Empress of Savannah parading every wig, gown, and gaff in her imperial wardrobe. Chablis waved to her subjects. "Sistuh's movin' out!" she shouted.'(123)

'At this point in my experiment in bi-urban living, I found myself spending more time in Savannah than New York. The weather alone would have been reason enough for the tilt. By late April, New York was still struggling to free itself from the clutches of winter, and Savannah was well into the unfolding pageantry of a warm and leisurely spring. Camellias, jonquils, and paperwhites had bloomed in December and January. Wisteria and redbuds had followed, and then in mid-March the azaleas burst forth in gigantic pillows of white, red, and vermilion. White dogwood blossoms floated like clouds of confectioner's sugar above the azaleas. The scent of honeysuckle, Confederate jasmine, and the first magnolia blossoms were already beginning to perfume the air. Who needed the chill of New York?'(166)

Savannah Historic District

(photo from Google search - Design2share website)

"Okay. Now, you know how dead time works. Dead time lasts for one hour -- from half an hour before midnight to half an hour after midnight. The half-hour before midnight is for doin' good. The half hour after midnight is for doin' evil." ... "Seems like we need a little of both tonight," said Minerva, "so we best be on our way. Put the paper in your pocket where the dimes is, and take your bottle of water. We goin' to the flower garden"(245)

'Dr. Lindsley told me that an old house will defeat you if you try to restore it all at once -- from roof to windows, weatherboarding, jacking it up, central heating, wiring. You must think of doing one thing at a time. ... You must do it in sections, because that's the way it was built. And then suddenly you find the whole thing completed. Otherwise, it will defeat you.'(297)

'I, too , had become enchanted by Savannah. But after having lived there for eight years, off and on, I had come to understand something of its self-imposed estrangement from the outside world. Pride was part of it. Indifference was too, and so was arrogance. But underneath all that, Savannah had only one motive: to preserve a way of life it believed to be under siege from all sides.'(384-385)

'Savannah spurned all suitors -- urban developers with grandiose plans and individuals (the "Gucci carpetbaggers," as Mary Harty called them) who moved to Savannah and immediately began suggesting ways of improving the place, Savannah resisted every one of them as if they had been General William Tecumseh Sherman all over again. Sometimes that meant throwing up bureaucratic roadblocks; at other times it meant telling tourists only what was good for them to know. Savannah was invariably gracious to strangers, but it was immune to their charms. It wanted nothing so much as to be left alone.'(385)

First Vintage Books Edition, July 1999
386 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge
Book idea from JRMD, thanks!!

182. DIVERGENT

2011-08-28T18:30:00.001-04:00

Veronica Roth 2011

First in yet another dystopian young adult Trilogy, this novel managed to catch my attention with its familiar Chicago setting, promising premise, intense action-packed scenes, seeming absence of the predictable love triangle (at least in this first book) and its fearless heroine, Beatrice. Raised by Abnegation parents, she has reached the appointed day to take the Aptitude test that will clearly show the faction she should belong to forever: Abnegation (the selfless), Candor (the honest), Erudite (the intelligent), Amity (the peaceful) or Dauntless ( the brave). But the results of her test shows she is none of those. She is Divergent, a fact she needs to keep a secret. So she chooses the Dauntless faction and goes through its grueling initiation. Will being Divergent help her or destroy her?

'There is one mirror in my house. It is behind a sliding panel in the hallway upstairs. Our faction allows me to stand in front of it on the second day of every third month, the day my mother cuts my hair.'(opening lines)

'"Yes and no. My conclusion," she explains, "is that you display equal aptitude for Abnegation, Dauntless, and Erudite. People who get this kind of result are..." She looks over her shoulder like she expects someone to appear behind her. "... are called... Divergent." She says the last word so quietly that I almost don't hear it, and her tense, worried look returns.'(22)

'The reason for the simplicity isn't disdain for uniqueness, as the other factions have sometimes interpreted it. Everything -- our houses, our clothes, our hairstyles -- is meant to help us forget ourselves and to protect us from vanity, greed, and envy, which are just forms of selfishness. If we have little, and want for little, and we are all equal, we envy no one.'(27-28)

'In the last circle are five metal bowls so large they could hold my entire body, if I curled up. Each one contains a substance that represents each faction: gray stones for Abnegation, water for Erudite, earth for Amity, lit coals for Dauntless, and glass for Candor.
When Marcus calls my name, I will walk to the center of the three circles. I will not speak. He will offer me a knife. I will cut my hand and sprinkle my blood into the bowl of the faction I choose.
My blood on the stones. My blood sizzling on the coals.'(40)

'Decades ago our ancestors realized that it is not political ideology, religious belief, race, or nationalism that is to blame for a warring world. Rather, they determined that it was the fault of human personality -- of humankind's inclination toward evil, in whatever form that is. They divided into factions that sought to eradicate those qualities they believed responsible for the world's disarray.'(42)

'Those who blamed aggression formed Amity. ... Those who blamed ignorance became the Erudite. ... Those who blamed duplicity created Candor. ... Those who blamed selfishness made Abnegation. ... And those who blamed cowardice were the Dauntless.'(42-43)

'My father says that those who want power and get it live in terror of losing it. That's why we have to give power to those who do not want it.'(68)

'Would I even be strong enough to hold on to her? Would it be worth my effort to try to help her if I know I'm too weak to do any good?
I know that those questions are: excuses. Human reason can excuse any evil; that is why it's important that we don't rely on it.'(102)

'I believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.'(207)

'I sob again, and force myself forward, stretching out on the grass, which prickles against my skin. I extend my arms and breathe. Crows push and prod at my sides, worming their way beneath me, and I let them. I let the flapping of wings and the squawking and the pecking and the prodding continue, relaxing one muscle at a time, resigning myself to becoming a pecked carcass.'(235)

'But becoming fearless isn't the point. That's impossible. It's learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it, that's the point.'(239)

'The rhythm of his breaths slows, and I prop myself up to see if he is asleep. He lies on his stomach with one arm around his head. His eyes are closed, his lips parted. For the first time, he looks as young as he is, and I wonder who he really is. Who is he when he isn't Dauntless, isn't an instructor, isn't Four, isn't anything in particular?'(288)

'I am not Abnegation. I am not Dauntless.
I am Divergent.
And I can't be controlled.'(442)

a Katherine Tegen Book Edition
487 pages
Book borrowed from the Library
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

181. ALL the KING'S MEN

2011-08-25T10:30:00.002-04:00

Robert Penn Warren 1946

It has been 4 months since I've rated a book 5/5. This book deserves it for so many reasons. The plot is multi-layered and very absorbing. The prose is deceptively simple but so profound and enthralling. Supposedly based on the real life story of politician Huey Long of Louisiana, the novel traces the life of Willie Stark as he rose from an unknown to a powerful governor as chronicled by his political aide Jack Burden, the novel's narrator. But as much as this classic is about Willie Stark's politics and the power (and corruption) it brings, it is more about the story of Jack Burden and his complicated relationships with his mother, and his childhood friends Adam and Anne. Great literature at its best!

'MASON CITY.
To get there you follow Highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new. Or was new, that day we went up.'(opening lines)

'We would go down the Row -- the line of houses facing the bay -- and that was the place where all my pals had been. Anne who was an old maid, or damned near it. Adam, who was a famous surgeon... And Judge Irwin, who lived in that last house, and who had been a friend of my family and who used to take me hunting with him and taught me to shoot and taught me to ride and read history to me from the leather-bound books in the big study in his house.'(40)

"Dirt's a funny thing," the Boss said. "come to think of it, there ain't a thing but dirt on this green God's globe except under water, and that's dirt too. It's dirt makes the grass grow. A diamond ain't a thing in the world but a piece of dirt that got awful hot. And God-a-Mighty picked up a handful of dirt and blew on it and made you and me and George Washington and mankind blessed in faculty and apprehension. It all depends on what you do with the dirt. That right?"(45)

'Or is it possible that fellows like Willie Stark are born outside of luck, good or bad, and luck, which is what about makes you and me what we are, doesn't have anything to do with them, for they are what they are from the time they first kick in the womb until the end. And if that is the case, then their life history is a process of discovering what they really are, and not, as for you and me, sons of luck, a process of becoming what luck makes us. And if that is the case, then Lucy wasn't Willie's luck. Or his unluck either. She was part of the climate in which the process of discovering the real Willie was taking place.'(63)

'There is nothing more alone than being in a car at night in the rain. I was in the car. And I was glad of it. Between one point on the map and another point on the map, there was the being alone in the car in the rain. They say you are not you except in terms of relation to other people. If there weren't any other people there wouldn't be any you because what you do, which is what you are, only has meaning in relation to other people. That is a very comforting thought when you are in the car in the rain at night alone, for then you aren't you, and not being you or anything, you can really lie back and get some rest. It is a vacation from being you. There is only the flow of the motor under your foot spinning that frail thread of sound out of its metal gut like a spider, that filament, that nexus, which isn't really there, between the you which you have just left in one place and the you which you will be when you get to the other place.'(128-129)

"No," the Boss corrected, "I'm not a lawyer. I know some law. ... But I'm not a lawyer. That's why I can see what the law is like. It's like a single-bed blanket on a double bed and three folks in the bed and a cold night. There ain't ever enough blanket to cover the case, no matter how much pulling and hauling, and somebody is always going to nigh catch pneumonia. Hell, the law is like the pants you bought last year for a growing boy, but it is always this year and the seams are popped and the shankbone's to the breeze. The law is always too short and too tight for growing humankind. The best you can do is do something and then make up some law to fit and by the time that law gets on the books you would have done something different.'(136)

'But is any relationship a relationship in time and only in time? I eat a persimmon and the teeth of a tinker in Tibet are put on edge. The flower-in-the-crannied-wall theory. We have to accept it because so often our teeth are on edge from persimmons we didn't eat.'(221)

'The Friend of Your Youth is the only friend you will ever have, for he does not really see you. He sees in his mind a face which does not exist any more, speaks a name -- Spike, Bud, Snip, Red, Rusty, Jack, Dave -- which belongs to that now nonexistent face but which by some inane and doddering confusion of the universe is for the moment attached to a not too happily met and boring stranger. But he humors the drooling doddering confusion of the universe and continues to address politely that dull stranger by the name which properly belongs to the boy face and to the time when the boy voice called thinly across the late afternoon water or murmured by a campfire at night or in the middle of a crowded street said, "Gee, listen to this -- 'On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble; His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves --'" the Friend of Your Youth is your friend because he does not see you anymore.'(234-235)

'... for when you get in love you are made all over again. The person who loves you has picked you out of the great mass of uncreated clay which is humanity to make something out of, and the poor lumpish clay which is you wants to find out what it had been made into. But at the same time, you, in the act of loving somebody, become real, cease to be part of the continuum of the uncreated clay and get the breath of life in you and rise up. So you create yourself by creating another person, who, however, has also created you, picked up the you-chunk of clay out of the mass. So there are two you's, the one you yourself create by loving and the one the beloved creates by loving you. The farther those two you's are apart the more the world grinds and grudges on its axis. But if you loved and were loved perfectly then there wouldn't be any difference between the two you's or any distance between them. They would coincide perfectly, there would be a perfect focus...'(282)

'If you believe the dream you dream when you go there.'(311)

"Jack", he said, "politics is always a matter of choices, and a man doesn't set up the choices himself. And there is always a price to make a choice. You know that. You've made a choice, and you know how much it cost you. There is always a price."(343)

'... by the time we understand the pattern we are in, the definition we are making for ourselves, it is too late to break out of the box. We can only live in terms of the definition, like the prisoner in the cage in which we cannot lie or stand or sit, hung up in justice to be viewed by the populace. Yet the definition we have made of ourselves is ourselves. To break out of it, we must make a new self. But how can the self make a new self when the selfness which it is, is the only substance from which the new self can be made?'(351)

'A time comes when you think you cannot bear another thing, but it happens to you, and you can bear it.'(424)

Second Harvest Book edition 1996
438 pages
Book borrowed from the library
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge
Book idea from Shelley @ Book Clutter. Thank you so much. Her awesome review is HERE.
BTW, I have found my favorite passage to date: passage in red from p.282.

180. A KIND of INTIMACY

2011-08-22T08:55:00.002-04:00

Jenn Ashworth 2009

From the very beginning of this book, one feels that all is not right with Annie Fairhurst, the 28 year old narrator of this psychological thriller. Guided by her self-help books and armed with a highly embellished past, she moves into a new neighborhood and quickly makes new friends with next-door neighbors Lucy and Neil, and the Neighborhood watch leader Sangita and her husband Barry Choudry. But all is not well with Annie. So when she fools herself into thinking that Neil is in love with her, she obsesses about destroying his relationship with his girlfriend, Lucy. And the little shred of goodwill she may have managed to instill in the reader is quickly ruined by the slow unraveling of her sordid self.

'After the van had been loaded and sent on its way I took off all my clothes and kicked the sofa I was about to abandon. Not just a little kick either. I really belted it.'(opening lines)

'I was angry, to tell you the truth. To have to stand there in the sanctuary of my own garden, doing nothing more sinister than enjoying a warm evening, and then suffer the verbal assault of a woman I'd never even met, well, it was more than I could take.'(Chap.2, Loc.270)

'Although I was nervous, I smiled as I waited, flitting about the house making sure everything was straight and wishing my old neighbours could see me. I wasn't that traumatized naked woman hysterically kicking a sofa anymore: I was the hostess of a housewarming party, wearing a fancy party dress and patiently waiting her guests.'(Chap.3, Loc.398)

'The new books I'd been reading said that asking questions of people at parties made them think you were interesting but that didn't really make sense, and the book also said not to make the questions too personal, but they didn't tell what too personal was.'(Chap.3, Loc.440)

'The thing about Lucy, really, was the way she looked. It revealed a lot about who she was on the inside, to my mind. All that female flapping and concern didn't wash with me. She really did have the most feline features: wide square nails polished like claws, that stretched skin over her face, and no, I'm not embellishing, curious, clever eyes so green it didn't matter that they weren't almond-shaped at all. Her irises were contracted small in the bright light from the fluorescent strip on the ceiling and she blinked once before pouncing. I like cats, I do, but I know what they're capable of and I wasn't about to let Lucy paw me about like an injured bird while she was a guest in my house.'(Chap.5, Loc.772)

'I can only explain my behaviour as an adolescent outpouring of exuberance; a long postponed eruption of youthful enthusiasm that had been cut short by my early marriage. When it was over, I awoke from it dazed and exhausted, nauseous and somewhat shamefaced. At twenty-eight, most people would expect me to have grown out of such things, but, as I said, most people were not aware of the special circumstances attached to my case.'(Chap.7, Loc.1104)

'You're exactly right,' I said, 'there's no point making yourself unhappy for the sake of someone else. You've got to go out and make it happen, there's no point staying where you are and hoping that things will change when they won't.'(Chap.8, Loc.1257)

'It was very important to me that this house, which represented a new life and a new start, did not become associated with the problems of my past. As I lay there I realised, with an increasing sense of irritation, that my previous life was still trailing its influence over my current one. The house-warming party, which had seemed like such a good idea at the time, had actually been the occasion when these people had started to embed themselves in my life and I had allowed them to become unnecessarily embroiled in my history.'(Chap.10, Loc.1690)

'Loving Yourself: Tips for the Single Woman had contained a whole chapter about the effects personal grooming and fashion could have on a person's self-esteem, and had suggested that a woman who makes the effort to present herself in the best possible light would exude confidence and therefore become more attractive to others.'(Chap.11, Loc.1803)

'They say that falling in love is the same as being scared,' I said simply, 'the men on the rope bridge were scared, and they mistook it for falling in love. Most people have it all tangled up in their heads.'...'Some people get it all mixed up.'(Chap.12, Loc.2368)

'He looked uncertain, and didn't meet my eye. A sure sign he was shy too. And that was good: it showed that he thought of me and cared about the impression he was making so much it was making him self-conscious. I was worth being shy around, as far as Neil was concerned.'(Chap.15, Loc.2987)

'I rechecked the periwinkle on my eyelids, fixed a smudge and was ready to go when I heard the knock at the door. I wasn't surprised at the interruption, fate has a way of making us work hard for the things that we want, and I've come to realise it is so we value our dreams all the more dearly when they finally come to fruition.'(Chap.19, Loc.3597)

'The thing is, I'd decided already that Neil needed help, that I was the person to help him, and for his own good all traces of the woman had to be removed from his home. How else would he have the room to think? How else would he have room for me?'(Chap.20, Loc.3855)

Kindle Edition, 2011
4421 Locations
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge
Book idea from Diane @ Bibliophile by the Sea. I had to read the book she mentioned as her best read so far in 2011. Her very convincing review is HERE.

Back for a While, Finally!

2011-08-20T22:30:00.008-04:00

I had to take her picture!

Daniel Radcliffe was amazing in the Broadway play, How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying

Sculpture Garden in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Minnehaha Falls at Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Thanks to those who stopped by while I was away.

I have lots of books to quote!!

READING AWAY, August 11 - 22, 2011

2011-08-10T22:00:00.006-04:00

Going on a road trip!!

Central Park, New York, New York

the Bean at Millennium Park, Chicago, Illinois

Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis, Minnesota

(this photo courtesy of Wikepedia)

A long car ride means over 2000 miles of listening to Audio Books.

My Audio Book Companions are:

and my Book Companions are:

Be back soon!

179. ENDER'S GAME

2011-08-08T09:30:00.001-04:00

Orson Scott Card 1985

In this intense and captivating science/fantasy fiction, Andrew 'Ender' Wiggins is only six years old when he is chosen by the futuristic government to defeat the aliens who have previously attacked earth twice. He is forced to leave his parents, brother Peter (whom he hates) and sister Valentine (whom he loves), to train with all the other new recruits called 'launchies' in the space station known as the Battle Room. Ender immediately feels and endures the escalating isolation and hardship the training entails. Does he have what it takes to become commander and finally defeat the 'buggers'?

"I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one. Or at least as close as we're going to get."(opening lines)

'I'm sorry if you're lonely and afraid. But the buggers are out there. Ten billion, a hundred billion, a million billion of them, for all we know. With as many ships, for all we know. With weapons we can't understand. And a willingness to use those weapons to wipe us out. It isn't the world at stake, Ender. Just us. Just humankind. As far as the rest of the biosphere is concerned, we could be wiped out and it would adjust, it would get on with the next step in evolution. But humanity doesn't want to die. As a species, we have evolved to survive. And the way we do it is by straining and straining and, at last, every few generations, giving birth to genius. The one who invents the wheel. And light. And flight. The one who builds a city, a nation, an empire.'(35)

'Dap came to the door that night and moved quietly among the beds, touching a hand there, a forehead there. Where he went there was more crying, not less. The touch of kindness in this frightening place was enough to push some over the edge into tears. Not Ender, though. When Dap came, his crying was over, and his face was dry. It was the lying face he presented to Mother and Father, when Peter had been cruel to him and dared not to let it show. Thank you for this, Peter. For dry eyes and silent weeping. You taught me how to hide anything I felt. More than ever. I need that now.'(45)

'And instead of pushing his face into one of the liquids, he kicked one over, then the other, and dodged the Giant's huge hands as the Giant shouted, "Cheater, cheater!" He jumped at the Giant's face, clambered up his lip and nose, and began to dig in the Giant's eye. The stuff came away like cottage cheese, and as the Giant screamed, Ender's figure burrowed into the eye, climbed right in, burrowed in and in.'(64-65)

"Colonel Graff, the games have always been run fairly before. Either random distribution of stars, or symmetrical."
"Fairness is a wonderful attribute, Major Anderson. It has nothing to do with war."(97)

"It doesn't mean he's crazy, Dink."
"I know, you've been here a year, you think these people are normal. Well, they're not. We're not. I look in the library, I call up books on my desk. Old ones, because they won't let us have anything new, but I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares. Children aren't in armies, they aren't commanders, they don't rule over forty other kids, it's more than anybody can take and not get crazy.'(108)

'You've been isolating the boy. Maybe he's writing for the end of this world, the Battle School. Or maybe it's about the end of the world he grew up with us a little boy, his home, coming here. Or maybe it's his way of coping with having broken up so many other kids here. Ender's sensitive kid, you know, and he's done some pretty bad things to people's bodies, he might be wishing for the end of that world."
"Or none of the above."
"The mind game is a relationship between the child and the computer. Together they create stories. The stories are true, in the sense that they reflect the reality of the child's life. That's all I know.'(121)

'Writing was something Val did better than Peter. They both knew it. Peter had even named it once, when he said that he could always see what other people hated most about themselves, and bully them, while Val could always see what other people liked best about themselves, and flatter them. It was a cynical way of putting it, but it was true. Valentine could persuade other people to her point of view -- she could convince them that they wanted what she wanted them to want, Peter, on the other hand, could only make them fear what he wanted them to fear.'(127)

'Isolation -- is the optimum environment for creativity.'(149)

'And the despair filled him again. Now he knew why. Now he knew what he hated so much. He had no control over his own life. They ran everything. They made all the choices. Only the game was left to him, that was all, everything else was them and their rules and their plans and lessons and programs, and all he could do was go this way or that way in battle. The one real thing, the one precious real thing was his memory of Valentine, the person who loved him before he ever played a game, who loved him whether there was a bugger was or not...'(151)

'Well, what I've done to you this day, Bean, I've done. But I'll be watching you, more compassionately than you know, and when the time is right you'll find that I'm your friend, and you are the soldier you want to be.'(168)

"Two faces of the same coin. And I am the metal in between." Even as she said it, she wondered if it was true. She had shared so much with Peter these last few years that even when she thought she despised him, she understood him. While Ender had been only a memory till now. A very small, fragile boy who needed her protection. Not this cold-eyed, dark-skinned manling who killed wasps with his fingers. Maybe he and Peter and I are all the same, and have been all along. Maybe we only thought we were different from each other out of jealousy.'(236)

"In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in the very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in the very moment when I love them --"(238)

'Billions of those connections between human beings. That's what you're fighting to keep alive.'(244)

'He had long since learned that when something unusual was going on, something that was part of someone else's plan and not his own, he would find out more information by waiting than by asking. Adults almost always lost their patience before Ender did.'(260)

'Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is to choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you.'(313)

a Tor Book edition
324 pages
Book borrowed from the library
Book qualifies for: 100 + Reading Challenge
Book idea from Jillian @ Random Ramblings (thanks!). Her review is HERE.

Back for a Few Days

2011-08-06T09:00:00.004-04:00

I thought I'd check-in and share a few photo highlights.

the Church of the Spilled Blood, St. Petersburg, Russia was built in 1883

on the exact spot where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated.

the statue of the Little Mermaid, inspired by the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen

is a landmark icon in the harbor of Copenhagen, Denmark

the medieval streets of Gamla Stan in Old Town, Stockholm, Sweden

the Lutheran Cathedral in Helsinki, Finland

Gustav Ernesaks statue overlooking the Song Festival Arena in Estonia.

This site commemorates the Singing Revolution, the non-violent path

the Estonians took to free themselves from the Soviet Union

Flower Vigil in Oslo, Norway to commemorate the tragic killings

the flower path that led to the Royal Palace

I am still working on finishing Middlemarch and Wives and Daughters.

St. Petersburg inspired me to add and read Crime and Punishment.

A Kind of Intimacy,

Ender's Game,

Crime and Punishment,

Midnight at the Garden of Good and Evil,

Tall Story,

and Whisky Sour

are the books that are going on my list.

I am hoping to post a few before I leave for my next trip which will be in a few days.

Thanks for stopping by.

READING AWAY, July 20 - August 7, 2011

2011-07-19T22:00:00.003-04:00

at the NORTHERN CAPITALS

Copenhagen, Denmark

Oslo, Norway

Stockholm, Sweden

Helsinki, Finland

St. Petersburg, Russia

(All city photos from Wikipedia)

My Book Companions

are books that came highly recommended by my favorite bloggers.
Except for two books, they are all on my Kindle.

(I know, it's a lot, but I am a fast reader and I always want to have choices.)

Be Back Soon!!!

178. NUMBER the STARS

2011-07-18T12:00:00.001-04:00

Lois Lowry 1989

Another children's book that drives home a big sigh!! Based on real events that happened during the evacuation of Jews from Denmark, WWII, this short story is very touching. On the street of Osterbrogade, in a small neighborhood in northeast Copenhagen, live best friends Annemarie Johansen and Ellen Rosen. Over the last three years, they have lived under the Nazi eyes. Aware of the Rosen family's impending capture and relocation, the Johansens pretend Ellen is Annemarie's sister. Later, an elaborate escape from Denmark to Sweden is set into motion, (with the help of Annemarie's mother, her Uncle Henrik, and her late sister's fiance Peter Nielsen) and ten-year old Annemarie's bravery shines through.

'"I'll race you to the corner, Ellen!" Annemarie adjusted the thick leather pack on her back so that her schoolbooks balanced evenly. "Ready?" She looked at her best friend.'(opening lines)

'Annemarie stared up. There were two of them. That meant two helmets, two sets of cold eyes glaring at her, and four tall shiny boots planted firmly on the sidewalk, blocking her path to home.... And it meant two rifles, gripped in the hands of the soldiers. She stared at the rifles first. Then,finally, she looked into the face of the soldier who had ordered her to halt.... "Why are you running?" the harsh voice asked. His Danish was very poor. Three years, Annemarie thought with contempt. Three years they've been in our country, and still they can't speak the language.'(3)

"When will there be cupcakes again?"
"When the war ends," Mrs. Johnson said. She glanced through the window, down to the street corner where the soldiers stood, their faces impassive beneath the metal helmets. "When the soldiers leave."(10)

"Who is that man who rides past here every morning on his horse?" the German soldier had asked.
Papa said he had smiled to himself, amused that the German soldier did not know. He listened while the boy answered.
"He is our king," the boy told the soldier. "He is the King of Denmark."
"Where is his bodyguard?" the soldier had asked.... "The boy looked right at the soldier, and he said, "All of Denmark is his bodyguard."(13-14)

'Annemarie relaxed the clenched fingers of her right hand, which still clutched Ellen's necklace. She looked down, and saw that she had imprinted the Star of David into her palm.'(49)

'Annemarie looked around and nodded her head in agreement. The house and the meadows that surrounded it were so much a part of her childhood, a part of her life, that she didn't often look at them with fresh eyes. But now she did, seeing Ellen's pleasure. And it was true. They were beautiful.
The little red-roofed farmhouse was very old, its chimney crooked and even the small, shuttered windows tilted at angles. A bird's nest, wispy with straw, was half hidden in the corner where the roof met the wall above a bedroom window. Nearby, a gnarled tree was still speckled with a few apples now long past ripe.'(60)

'The words were unfamiliar to her, and she tried to listen, tried to understand, tried to forget the war and the Nazis, tried not to cry, tried to be brave. The night breeze moved the dark curtains at the open windows. Outside she knew, the sky was speckled with stars. How could anyone number them one by one, as the psalm said? There were too many. The sky was too big.'(87)

'Light woke her. But it was not really morning, not yet. It was only the first hint of a slightly lightening sky: a pale gleam at the edge of the meadow, a sign that far away somewhere, to the east where Sweden still slept, morning would be coming soon. Dawn would creep across the Swedish farmland and coast; then it would wash little Denmark with light and move across the North Sea to wake Norway.'(98)

'Mama spoke quickly, her voice tense. "Annemarie, go into the house and get the small basket on the table. Quickly, quickly. Put an apple into it, and some cheese. Put this packet underneath; do you understand? Hurry."'(104)

'Surely that gift -- the gift of a world of human decency -- is the one that all countries hunger for still. I hope that this story of Denmark, and its people, will remind us all that such a world is possible.'(Afterword, p.137)

a Random House Children's Book edition
132 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

177. BLINDNESS

2011-07-13T07:30:00.004-04:00

Jose Saramago 1997
Translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero

If you are weak in your heart (or in your stomach), this magnificently written book may not be for you. It is hard enough that you will be groping for the conversations buried within the lengthy paragraphs and the chapters that are undesignated. But harder still is where the story takes you: the dreadful abyss of the haunting life after an epidemic of 'white blindness' hits a city and the entire population (except one) goes blind. The main characters are the first people to go blind, led by the sole exception, the doctor's wife. She becomes the eyes for the doctor, the wife of the first blind man, the boy with the squint, the old man with the black eyepatch, the girl with the dark glasses, and later, the dog of tears. Vivid, detailed and organized, this atmospheric book exposes the frailness of humanity in a way that is both disturbing and thought-provoking. Is there anything we can't bear or won't do when the unimaginable thing happens?

'The amber light came on. Two of the cars ahead accelerated before the red light appeared. At the pedestrian crossing the sign of a green man lit up. The people who were waiting began to cross the road, stepping on the white stripes painted on the black surface of the asphalt, there is nothing less like a zebra, however, that is what it is called.'(opening lines)

'Who would have believed it. Seen merely at a glance, the man's eyes seem healthy, the iris looks bright, luminous, the sclera white, as compact as porcelain. The eyes wide open, the wrinkled skin of the face, his eyebrows suddenly screwed up, all this, as anyone can see, signifies that he is distraught with anguish. With a rapid movement, what was in sight has disappeared behind the man's clenched fists, as if he were still trying to retain inside his mind the final image captured, a round red light at the traffic lights. I am blind, I am blind, he repeated in despair as they helped him to get out of the car, and the tears welling up made those eyes which he claimed were dead, shine even more.'(2)

'Like most people, he had often played as a child at pretending to be blind, and, after keeping his eyes closed for five minutes, he had reached the conclusion that blindness, undoubtedly a terrible affliction, might still be relatively bearable if the unfortunate victim had retained sufficient memory, not just of the colours, but also of forms and planes, surfaces and shapes, assuming of course, that this one was not born blind. He had even reach the point of thinking that the darkness in which the blind live was nothing other than the simple absence of light, that what we call blindness was something that simply covered the appearance of being the things, leaving them intact behind their black veil. Now, on the contrary, here he was, plunged into a whiteness so luminous, so total, that it swallowed up rather than absorbed, not just the colours, but the very things and beings, thus making them twice as invisible.'(6)

'The shouting had died down, now a confusion of sounds was coming from the hallway, these were the blind, driven like sheep, bumping into each other, crammed together in the doorways, some lost their sense of direction and ended up in other wards, but the majority, stumbling along, huddled into groups or dispersed one by one, desperately waving their hands in the air like people drowning, burst into the ward in a whirlwind, as if being pushed from the outside by a bulldozer.'(67)

'... if, before every action, we were to begin by weighing up the consequences, then the probable, then the possible, then the imaginable ones, we should never move beyond the point where our first thought brought us to a halt. The good and evil resulting from our words and deeds go on apportioning themselves, one assumes in a reasonably uniform and balanced way, throughout all the days to follow, including those endless days, when we shall not be here to find out, to congratulate ourselves or ask for pardon, indeed there are those who claim that this is the much-talked-of immortality.'(78)

'If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals, words she repeated so often that the rest of the ward ended up by transforming her advice into a maxim, a dictum, into a doctrine, a rule of life, words which deep down were so simple and elementary, probably it was just that state of mind, propitious to any understanding of needs and circumstances, that contributed, even if only in a minor way to the warm welcome the old man with the black eyepatch found there when he peered through the door and asked those inside, Any chance of a bed here.'(116)

'How can we play a game if we cannot see what we are playing, asked the wife of the first blind man, Well, not a game exactly, each of us must say what we saw at the moment we went blind, That could be embarrassing, someone pointed out, Those who do not wish to take part in the game can remain silent, the important thing is that no one should try to invent anything, Give us an example, said the doctor, Certainly, replied the old man with the black eyepatch, I went blind when I was looking at my blind eye, What do you mean, It's very simple, I felt as if the inside of the empty orbit were inflamed and I removed the patch to satisfy my curiosity '(127)

'We're in an impossible situation, it has been impossible ever since we came into this place, yet we go on putting up with it, You're an optimist, doctor, No, I'm not an optimist, but I cannot imagine anything worse than our present existence, Well, I'm not entirely convinced that there are limits to misfortune and evil,'(144)

'Little by little, under the murky yellowish light of the dim lamps, the ward descended into a deep slumber, bodies comforted by the three meals consumed that day, as had rarely happened before. If things continue like this, we'll end up once more reaching the conclusion that even in the worst misfortune it is possible to find enough good to be able to bear the aforesaid misfortune with patience,'(151)

'Fortunately, as human history has shown, it is not unusual for good to come of evil, less is said about the evil that can come out of good, such are the contradictions of this world of ours, some warrant more consideration than others,'(213)

'Today is today, tomorrow will bring what tomorrow brings, today is my responsibility,'(252)

'what is right and what is wrong are simply different ways of understanding our relationships with the others, not that which we have with ourselves, one should trust the latter, forgive this moralising speech, you do not know, you cannot know, what it means to have eyes in the world in which everyone else is blind, I am not a queen, no, I am simply the one who was born to see this horror, you can feel it, I both feel and see it,'(276)

'If I ever regain my sight, I shall look carefully at the eyes of others, as if I were looking into their souls, Their souls, asked the old man with the eyepatch, Or their minds, the name does not matter, it was then that, surprisingly, if we consider that we are dealing with a person without much education, the girl with the dark glasses said, Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.'(276)

'Words are like that, they deceive, they pile up, it seems they do not know where to go, and suddenly, because of two or three or four that suddenly come out, simple in themselves, a personal pronoun, an adverb, a verb, an adjective, we have the excitement of seeing them coming irresistibly to the surface through the skin and the eyes and upsetting the composure of our feelings, sometimes the nerves that cannot bear it any longer, they put up with a great deal, they put up with everything, it was as if they were wearing armours, we might say.'(281)

'What is your name, Blind people do not need a name, I am my voice, nothing else matters,'(290)

'The difficult thing is not living with other people, it's understanding them,'(301)

a Harvest Book edition
326 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge
Book idea from Bethany @ Subtle Melodrama (thanks!). Her awesome review is HERE.

a Look Back!!

2011-07-11T18:58:00.004-04:00

I just wanted to remember this too:

A look back at all the Harry Potter movies!!

I feel so happy that the final movie is coming out in a few days,

But I also feel very sad that the final movie is coming out in a few days...

176. the COUNT of MONTE CRISTO

2011-07-10T12:00:00.007-04:00

Alexandre Dumas 1844-1846

An intricate web of melodrama awaits the reader as Edmond Dantes finally puts his cunning plan of revenge into action against Danglars, Fernand and Villefort, the three people responsible for sending him to prison for fourteen years. The year was 1815, in Marseilles, when he was falsely accused of treason and arrested on the day he was to be wed to his beloved Mercedes. Saved from eternal doom by fellow prisoner Abee Faria, who paves the way for his escape and bestows him with massive fortune, he returns around 1838 to take vengeance as the Count of Monte Cristo. Revenge is not the only thing that rules his good heart, however, as he uses his wealth to protect M. Morell (the one person who believed in his innocence and fought for his freedom) and his family.

'On the 24th of February, 1815, the watch-tower of Notre-Dame de la Garde signalled the arrival of the three-master Pharaon, from Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples. The usual crown of curious spectators immediately filled the quay of Fort Saint-Jean, for at Marseilles the arrival of a ship is always a great event, especially when that ship, as was the case with the Pharaon, has been built, rigged, and laden in the dockyard of old Phocacea and belongs to a shipowner of their own town.'(opening lines)

"That is just what alarms me," said Dantes. "I cannot help thinking it is not man's lot to attain happiness so easily. Good fortune is like the palaces of the enchanted isles, the gates of which were guarded by dragons. Happiness could only be obtained by overcoming these dragons, and I, I know not how I have deserved the honour of becoming Mercedes' husband."(21)

'Perhaps you have no enemies, but you may have aroused feelings of jealousy. At the early age of nineteen you are about to receive a captaincy, you are going to marry a beautiful girl who loves you; these two pieces of good fortune may have been the cause of envy.'(33)

'Danglars alone felt no pang of remorse or restlessness: he was even happy, for had he not avenged himself on an enemy and assured for himself the position on board the Pharaon he was in danger of losing? He was one of those calculating men who was born with a pen behind their ears and an ink pot in place of a heart. He went to bed at the usual hour and slept peacefully.'(47)

'In spite of his prayers, however, Dantes still remained a prisoner.
His gloom gave way to wrath. He began to roar out blasphemies which made even his gaoler recoil with horror, and dashed himself in a paroxysm of fury against the walls of the prison. Then there recurred to his mind the informer's letter which Villefort had shown him. Each line of it was reflected on the walls in fiery letters. He told himself it was the hatred of men and not the vengeance of God that had thrust him into this dark abyss. He doomed these unknown men to the most cruel torments his fiery imagination was capable of conjuring up, but, even so, the most awful of these torments seemed to him too mild and too short for them, for after the torment would come death, and in death they would find, if not repose, at all events that insensibility which so nearly resembles repose.'(58-59)

'... that I have buried in a spot he knows and has visited with me -- that is, in the caves of the small isle of Monte Cristo -- all I possess in ingots, gold, money, jewels, diamonds, gems; that alone I know the existence of this treasure, which may amount to about two million Roman crowns and which he will find on raising the twentieth rock from the small creek to the East in a straight line.'(89)

'Now farewell to kindness, humanity, gratitude," said he. "Farewell to all the sentiments which rejoice the heart. I have played the part of Providence in recompensing the good, may the god of vengeance now permit me to punish the wicked!'(154)

"It is fortunate that we still have some conscience left, otherwise we should be very unhappy." said Monte Cristo. "After any vigorous action it is conscience that saves us, for it furnishes is with a thousand and one excuses of which we alone are judges, and however excellent these reasons may be to lull as to sleep, before a tribunal they would most likely avail us little in preserving our lives."(242)

'At first sight the exterior of Monte Cristo's houae at Auteuil presented nothing magnificent, nothing of what one would have expected of a house chosen for such a grand personage as the Count of Monte Cristo. But no sooner was the door opened that the scene changed.... The library was divided into two parts and contained about two thousand books; one complete section was devoted to modern novels, and even one that had only been published the day before was to be seen in its place, proudly displaying its red and gold binding.'(274-275)

"My friends, you will no doubt admit," said he, "that, arrived at a certain degree of fortune, the superfluous takes the place of the necessary, and, as you ladies will admit, arrived at a certain degree of exaltation, the ideal takes the place of the real. Now to continue this argument, what is marvelous? That which we do not comprehend. What is truly desirable? That which we cannot have. Now to see things I cannot understand, to procure things impossible of possession, such is the plan of my life. I can realize it by two means: money and will."(279)

'It was an imposing sight to behold this old man, to all appearances a useless mass, now become the sole protector and support of two young handsome lovers just entering life. Imprinted on his face was a noble and remarkably austere expression which filled Morrel with awe. He related how he had learned to love her, and how in her unhappiness and solitude Valentine had welcomed his offer of devotion; he gave full information regarding his birth and position, and more than once when he questioned the paralytic's eye, it said to him: "that is well! Continue!"'(325)

"Behold my dear friend, how God punishes the most boastful and unfeeling for their indifference in the face of terrible disasters," he said. "I looked on unmoved and curious. I watched this grim tragedy developing, and, like one of those fallen angels, laughed at the evil committed by men under the screen of secrecy. And now my turn has come, and I am bitten by the serpent whose tortuous course I have been watching -- bitten to the core.'(425)

'Women have infallible instincts, and by means of an algebra unknown to man, they can explain the most marvelous things.'(467)

'He is a noble-hearted soul who realizes that every man owes a tribute to his country; some their talents, others their industry, others their blood.'(495)

'Live and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget that, until the day comes when God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these words: Wait and hope!'(508)

a Penguin book 2001 Edition
509 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 2011 Victorian Challenge
100+ Reading Challenge

175. 84, CHARING CROSS ROAD

2011-07-08T07:45:00.008-04:00

Helene Hanff 1970

Such a gem!! What started as a casual correspondence to inquire about a rare book slowly became a friendship spanning twenty years. Even in pure epistolary form, we are able to grasp the heart-warming relationship that developed soon after the initial business transaction that transpired between the author (working as a writer in New York City) and the staff (notably Frank Doel) of Marks and Company, a small bookshop located at 84 Charing Cross Road in London . So endearing!

'Your ad in the Saturday Review of Literature says that you specialize in out-of-print books. The phrase "antiquarian booksellers" scare me somewhat, as I equate "antique" with expensive. I am a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books and all the things I want are impossible to get over here except in very expensive rare editions, or in Barnes & Noble's grimy marked-up schoolboy copies.'(1)

'Please write and tell me about London, I live for the day when I step off the boat-train and feel its dirty sidewalks under my feet. I want to walk up Berkeley Square and down Wimpole Street and stand in St. Paul's where John Donne preached and sit on the step Elizabeth sat on when she refused to enter the Tower, and like that. A newspaper man I know, who was stationed in London during the war, says tourists go to England with preconceived notions, so they always find exactly what they go looking for. I told him I'd go looking for the England of English literature, and he said: "Then it's there."'(13)

'The Newman arrived almost a week ago and I'm just beginning to recover. I keep it on the table with me all day, every now and then I stop typing and reach over and touch it. Not because it's a first edition; I just never saw a book so beautiful. I feel vaguely guilty about owning it. All the gleaming leather and gold stamping and beautiful type belongs in the pine-panelled library of an English country home; it wants to be read by the fire in a gentleman's leather easy chair -- not on a secondhand studio couch in a one-room hovel in a broken-down brownstone front.'(17)

'Yorkshire pudding out of this world, we have nothing like it, I had to describe it to somebody as a high, curved, smooth, empty waffle.'(21)

'I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages some one long gone has called my attention to.'(27)

'It's the loveliest old shop straight out of Dickens, you would go absolutely out of your mind over it.
There are stalls outside and I stopped and leafed through a few things just to establish myself as a browser before wandering in. It's dim inside, you smell the shop before you see it, it's a lovely smell, I can't articulate it easily, but it combines must and dust and age, and walls of wood and floors of wood.'(28)

'you better watch out. i'm coming over there in 54 if ellery is renewed. i'm gonna climb up that victorian book-ladder and disturb the dust on the top of the shelves and everybody's decorum. Or didn't I ever tell you I write arty murders for Ellery Queen on television? All my scripts have artistic backgrounds -- ballet, concert hall, opera -- and all the suspects and corpses are cultured. maybe i'll do one about the rare book business in your honor, you want to be the murderer or the corpse?'(47)

'My friends are peculiar about books. They read all the best sellers, they get through them as fast as possible, I think they skip a lot. And they NEVER read anything a second time so they don't remember a word of it a year later. But they are profoundly shocked to see me drop a book in the wastebasket or give it away. The way they look at it, you buy a book, you read it, you put it on the shelf, you never open it again for the rest of your life but YOU DON'T THROW IT OUT! NOT IF IT HAS A HARD COVER ON IT! Why not? I personally can't think of anything less sacrosanct than a bad book or even a mediocre book.'(54)

'There's a building going up across the street, the sign over it says:

One and Two Bedroom Apartments

At Rents That Make Sense

Rents do NOT make sense. And prices do not sit around being reasonable about anything, no matter what it says in the ad -- which isn't an ad any more it's A Commercial.... i go through life watching the english language being raped before me face. like miniver cheevy, i was born too late.... and like miniver cheevy i cough and call it fate and go on drinking.'(69)

'I used to go to English movies just to look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English literature, and he nodded and said "It's there."... Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. Looking around the rug one thing's for sure: it's here.'(94)

'If you happen to pass by 84 Charing Cross Road, kiss it for me? I owe it so much.'(94)

a Penguin books edition

97 pages

Book borrowed from the library

Book qualifies for : 100+ Reading Challenge

174. FIGHT CLUB

2011-07-06T07:50:00.001-04:00

Chuck Palahniuk 1996

Yes, this novel is different. Yes, it is a read out of my comfort zone. And yes, it is crude, raw and at times bizarre. After all, it is about an unnamed narrator in search of a meaningful life, whose idea of managing his chronic insomnia is joining support groups for terminal illnesses he does not have. There he meets and falls for Marla, a fellow faker. His best friend is Tyler Durden, inventor of Fight Club (a group of men who beat each other up for fun in the basement of bars) and Project Mayhem (a group of men who commit crimes intentionally to cause havoc). And yet, buried within this chaos is a significant life lesson, the unraveling of which I found to be so original, entertaining, and surprisingly moving. So yes, I like this book very much!

'Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die. For a long time though, Tyler and I were best friends. People are always asking, did I know about Tyler Durden.'(opening lines)

'"You cry," Bob says and inhales and sob, sob, sobs. " Go on now and cry."
The big wet face settles down on top of my head, and I am lost inside. This is when I'd cry. Crying is right at hand in the smothering dark, closed inside someone else, when you see how everything you can ever accomplish will end up as trash.'(17)

'Walking home after a support group, I felt more alive than I'd ever felt. I wasn't host to cancer or blood parasites; I was the little warm center that the life of the world crowded around.'(22)

'"No" Marla says. No, she wants it all. The cancers, the parasites. Marla's eyes narrow. She never dreamed she could feel so 'smarvelous. She actually felt alive. Her skin was clearing up. All her life, she never saw a dead person. There was no real sense of life because she had nothing to contrast it with. Oh, but now there was dying and death and loss and grief. Weeping and shuddering, terror and remorse. Now that she knows where we're all going, Marla feels every moment of her life.'(38)

'The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club.'(48)

"The second rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club.'(48)

'You don't say anything because fight club exists only in the hours between when fight club starts and when fight club ends.'(48)

'That's the third rule in fight club, when someone say stop, or goes limp, even if he's just faking it, the fight is over... Only two guys to a fight. One fight at a time. They fight without shirts or shoes. The fights go on as long as they have to. Those are the other rules of fight club.'(49)

'After a night in fight club, everything in the real world gets the volume turned down. Nothing can piss you off. Your word is law, and if other people break that law or question you, even that doesn't piss you off.'(49)

'At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.'(52)

'This is why I loved the support groups so much, if people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention.
If this might be the last time they saw you, they really saw you. Everything else about their checkbook balance and radio songs and messy hair went out the window.
You had their full attention.
People listened instead of just waiting for their turn to speak.
And when they spoke, they weren't telling you a story. When the two of you talked, you were building something, and afterward you were both different than before.'(107)

'You don't ask questions is the first rule in Project Mayhem... the second rule of Project Mayhem is you don't ask questions... The third rule is no excuses.... The fourth rule is no lies.'(122)

'It's Project Mayhem that's going to save the world. A cultural ice age. A prematurely induced dark age. Project Mayhem will force humanity to go dormant or into remission long enough for the Earth to recover.... Like fight club does with clerks and box boys, Project Mayhem will break up civilization so we can make something better out of the world.'(125)

'You have a class of young strong men and women, and they want to give their lives to something. Advertising has these people chasing cars and clothes they don't need. Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don't really need.
We don't have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression.'(149)

1st Owl Book Edition
208 pages
Book owned
Book idea from JRMD, thanks!
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

173. WASHINGTON SQUARE

2011-07-03T08:30:00.005-04:00

Henry James 1880

Set during the Victorian period in Washington Square, New York, this short classic depicts an era gone by (thank goodness) of women subservience. Catherine is the devoted only child of a wealthy and successful widower, Dr. Sloper. They live with Dr. Sloper's sister Mrs. Penniman. When she meets and falls in love with Morris Townsend, a carefree and handsome fellow, she finds herself manipulated by two conflicting views toward Morris: her father who dislikes him and suspects that he is only after her inheritance, and her Aunt who simply adores him. The battle of wills between all of these four main characters renders the read a bit of a gentle suspense.

'During a portion of the first half of the present century, and more particularly during the latter part of it, there flourished and practised in the city of New York a physician who enjoyed perhaps an exceptional share of the consideration which, in the United States, has always been bestowed upon distinguished members of the medical profession.'(opening lines)

'It is well known that in New York it is possible for a young girl to occupy a primary one. Catherine, who was extremely modest, had no desire to shine, and on most social occasions, as they are called, you would have found her lurking in the background. She was extremely fond of her father, and very much afraid of him; she thought him the cleverest and handsomest and most celebrated of men. The poor girl found her account so completely in the exercise of her affections that the little tremor of fear that mixed itself with her filial passion gave the thing an extra relish rather than blunted its edge.'(9)

'In front of them was the Square, containing a considerable quantity of inexpensive vegetation, enclosed by a wooden paling, which increased its rural and accessible appearance; and round the corner was the more august precinct of Fifth Avenue, taking its origin at this point with a spacious and confident air which already marked it for high destinies. I know not whether it is owing to the tenderness of early associations, but this portion of New York appears to many persons the most delectable. It has a kind of established repose which is not of frequent occurrence in other quarters of the long, shrill city; it has a riper, richer, more honourable look than any of the upper ramifications of the great longitudinal thoroughfare -- the look of having had something of a social history.'(13)

'He learned what he had asked some three or four days later, after Morris Townsend, with his cousin, had called in Washington Square. Mrs. Penniman did not tell her brother, on the drive home, that she had intimated to this agreeable young man, whose name she did not know, that, with her niece, she should be very glad to see him; but she was greatly pleased, and even a little flattered, when, late on a Sunday afternoon, the two gentleman made their appearance.'(21)

'The reason Catherine has received so little attention is that she seemed to all the young men to be older then themselves. She is so large, and she dresses -- so richly. They are rather afraid of her, I think; she looks as if she had been married already, and you know they don't like married women. 'And if our young men appear disinterested,' the Doctor's wiser sister went on, 'it is because they marry, as a general thing, so young, before twenty-five, at the age of innocence and sincerity, before the age of calculation. If they only waited a little, Catherine would fare better.'(30-31)

'You women are all the same! But the type to which your brother belongs was made to be the ruin of you, and you were made to be its handmaids and victims. The sign of the type in question is the determination -- sometimes terrible in its quiet intensity -- to accept nothing of life but its pleasures, and to secure these pleasures chiefly by the aid of your complaisant sex. Young men of this class never do anything for themselves that they can get other people to do for them, and it is the infatuation, the devotion, the superstition of others that keeps them going. These other in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred are women. What our young friends chiefly insist upon is that someone else shall suffer for them; and women to that sort of thing, as you must know, wonderfully well.'(65)

'She will cling," said Mrs. Almond, 'she will certainly cling.'
'Yes; as I say, she will stick.'
'Cling is prettier. That's what those very simple natures always do, and nothing could be simpler than Catherine. She doesn't take many impressions; but when she takes one she keeps it. She is like a copper kettle that received a dent, you may polish up the kettle, but you can't efface the mark.'(95)

'"She would touch me if she didn't irritate me. That's the effect she has upon me now. I have tried everything upon her; I really have been quite merciless. But it is of no use whatever; she is absolutely glued. I have passed, in consequence, into the exasperated stage. At first I had a good deal of a certain genial curiosity about it; I wanted to see if she really would stick. But, good Lord, one's curiosity is satisfied! I see she is capable of it, and now she can let go."
"She will never let go," said Mrs. Almond.'(122)

a Wordsworth Edition Limited 1995
162 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for : 100+ Reading Challenge
The Victorian Challenge 2011

Happy July 4th to everyone!!!

172. TUCK EVERLASTING

2011-06-30T08:00:00.004-04:00

Natalie Babbitt 1975

This is definitely a charming older children's fantasy book!! Winnie Foster's family owns the Treegap Wood, and is unaware that there-in lies a spring whose water when consumed imparts everlasting life. The Tucks (Angus, Mae, Miles and Jesse) know this secret and would like to keep the knowledge (for good reasons) away from others... except maybe Winnie. Will Winnie take advantage of this amazing chance? Would you?

'The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot.'(opening lines)

'But things come together in strange ways. The wood was a the center, the hub of the wheel. All wheels must have a hub. A Ferris wheel has one, as the sun is the hub of the wheeling calendar. Fixed points they are, and best left undisturbed, for without them nothing holds together. But sometimes people find this out too late.'(4)

'Nothing ever seems interesting when it belongs to you -- only when it doesn't.'(7)

'In the end, however, it was the cows who were responsible for the wood's isolation, and the cows, through some wisdom they were not wise enough to know that they possessed, were very wise indeed. If they had made their road through the wood instead of around it, then the people would have followed the road. The people would have noticed the giant ash trees at the center of the wood, and then, in time, they'd noticed the little spring bubbling up among its roots in spite of the pebbles piled there to conceal it. And that would have been a disaster so immense that this weary old earth, owned or not to its fiery cone, would have trembled on its axis like a beetle on a pin.'(8)

'Mae Tuck didn't need a mirror, though she had one propped up on the washstand. She knew very well what she would see in it; her reflection had long since ceased to interest her. For Mae Tuck, and her husband, and Miles and Jesse, too, had all looked exactly the same for eighty-seven years.'(12)

'For the wood was full of light, entirely different from the light she was used to. It was green and amber and alive, quivering in splotches on the padded ground, fanning into sturdy stripes between the tree trunks. There were little flowers she did not recognize, white and palest blue; and endless, tangled vines; and here and there a fallen log, half rotted but soft with patches of sweet green-velvet moss.
And there were creatures everywhere. The air fairly hummed with their daybreak activity: beetles and birds and squirrels and ants, and countless other things unseen, all gentle and self-absorbed and not in the least alarming. There was even, she saw with satisfaction, the toad.'(24)

"We don't know how it works, or even why," said Miles.
"Pa thinks it's something left over from -- well, from some other plan for the way the world should be," said Jesse. "Some plan that didn't work out too good. And so everything was changed. Except that the spring was passed over, somehow or other."(41)

"Life's got to be lived, no matter how long or short," she said calmly. "You got to take what comes. We just go along, like everybody else, one day at a time."(54)

"Know what happens then?" said Tuck. "To the water? The sun sucks some of it up right out of the ocean and carries it back in clouds, and then it rains, and the rain falls into the stream, and the stream keeps moving on, taking it all back again. It's a wheel, Winnie. Everything's a wheel, turning it, and the bugs, and the fish, and the wood thrush, too. And people. But never the same ones. Always coming in new, always growing and changing, and always moving on. That's the way it's supposed to be. That's the way it is."(62)

"The way I see it," Miles went on, "it's no good hiding yourself away, like Pa and lots of other people. And it's no good just thinking of your own pleasure, either. People got to do something useful if they're going to take up space in the world."(86-87)

First Square Fish Edition 2007
139 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge
Book idea from Melissa@ The Avid Reader's Musings (thanks!!)
______________________________________________

Literary Giveaway Blog Hop Winner:

After assigning numbers 1-187 to the valid entries (comments with an e-mail address) in the order that they were posted (minus any duplications), the winning number picked through Random.org is:

#115 - stacybuckeye

Congratulations!! Thanks to all who participated.

171. CRY, the BELOVED COUNTRY

2011-06-23T07:26:00.004-04:00

Alan Paton 1948

In this sublime and poetic novel, we meet Stephen Kumalo, a black Anglican priest who travels from his small village of Ixtapo (Ndotsheni) to Johannesburg, to look for his younger sister Gertrude and son Absalom. Tragically, he soon learns that Absalom has been accused of killing Arthur Jarvis, the son of their white neighbor James Jarvis. Arthur is in Johannesburg to fulfill his dream of fighting racial inequality. It is his through his writings, as read by his father Jarvis after his death, that the author's passionate love for his country of South Africa shines through. A very moving and thought-provoking book.

'There is a lovely road that runs from Ixtapo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it. The road climbs seven miles into them, to Carisbrooke; and from there, if there is no mist, you look down on one of the fairest valleys of Africa.'(opening lines)

'All roads lead to Johannesburg. Through the long nights the trains pass to Johannesburg. The lights of the swaying coach fall on the cutting-sides, on the grass and the stones of a country that sleeps. Happy the eyes that can close.'(11)

'They must go on, said Msimangu gravely. You cannot stop the world from going on. My friend, I am a Christian. It is not in my heart to hate a white man. It was a white man who brought my father out of darkness. But you will pardon me if I talk frankly to you. The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that they are not mended again.'(25)

'Yes, there are a hundred, and a thousand voices crying. But what does one do, when one cries this thing, and one cries another? Who knows how we shall fashion a land of peace where black outnumbers white so greatly? Some say that the earth has bounty enough for all, and that more for one does not mean less for another, that the advance of one does not mean the decline of another.'(78)

'Who knows how we shall fashion such a land? For we fear not only the loss of our possessions, but the loss of our superiority and the loss of our whiteness. Some say it is true that crime is bad, but would this not be worse? Is it not better to hold what we have, and to pay the price of it with fear? And others say, can such fear be endured? For is it not this fear that drives men to ponder these things at all?'(79)

'Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.'(80)

'And while there is life, there is hope for amendment of life.'(106)

'It was permissible to allow the destruction of a tribal system that impeded the growth of the country. It was permissible that its destruction was inevitable. But it is not permissible to watch its destruction, and to replace it by nothing, or by so little, that a whole people deteriorates, physically and morally.'(146)

'The truth is that our Christian civilization is riddled through and through with dilemma. We believe in the brotherhood of man, but we do not want it in South Africa. We believe that God endows men with diverse gifts and that human life depends for its fullness on their employment and enjoyment, but we are afraid to explore this belief too deeply. We believe in help for the underdog, but we want him to stay under.'(154)

'One can hear, as I heard when I was a boy, that there are more Afrikaners than English-speaking people in South Africa, and yet knowing nothing, see nothing, of them at all. One can read, as I read when I was a boy, the brochures about lovely South Africa, that land of sun and beauty sheltered from the storms of the world, and feel pride in it and love it, and yet know nothing about it at all. It is only as one grows up that one learns that there are other things here than sun and gold and oranges. It is only then that one learns of the hates and fears of our country. It is only then that one's love grows deep and passionate, as a man may love a woman who is true, false, cold, loving, cruel and afraid.'(174)

'Therefore I shall devote myself, my time, my energy, my talents, to the service of South Africa. I shall no longer ask myself if this or that is expedient, but only if it is right. I shall do this, not because I am noble or unselfish, but because life slips away, and because I need for the rest of my journey a star that will not play false to me, a compass that will not lie. I shall do this, not because I am a negrophile and a hater of my own, but because I cannot find it in me to do anything else. I am lost when I balance this against that, I am lost when I ask if this is safe, I am lost when I ask if men, white men or black men, Englishmen or Afrikaners, Gentiles or Jews, will approve. Therefore I shall try to do what is right, and to speak what is true.'(175)

'At those dread words the boy fell on the floor, he was crouched in the way that some of the Indians pray, and he began to sob, with great tearing sounds that convulsed him. For a boy is afraid of death. The old man, moved to it by that deep compassion which was there within him, knelt by his son, and ran his hand over his head.
-- Be of courage, my son.'(207)

'Yes, it is the dawn that has come. The titihoya wakes from sleep, and goes about its work of forlorn crying. The sun tips with light the mountains of Ingeli and East Griqualand. The great valley of the Umzimkul is still in darkness, but the light will come there. Ndotsheni is still in darkness, but the light will come there also. For it is the dawn that has come, as it has come for a thousand centuries, never failing. But when that dawn will come, of our emancipation, from the fear of bondage and the bondage of fear, why, that is a secret.'(closing lines)

First Scribner Classic/Collier Edition 1986
277 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for:100+ Reading Challenge

170. WHERE SHE WENT

2011-06-21T07:30:00.003-04:00

Gayle Forman 2011

This is an equally engaging and emotional sequel to the YA book, If I Stay (which of course one must read first in order to enjoy this second book). Effectively told through Adam's voice, three years after his traumatic break-up with Mia, this book definitely delivers and completes the series. Now living on opposite sides of the country, Adam in Los Angeles and Mia in New York, pursuing their opposite musical careers, Adam a rock vocalist/songwriter and Mia a classical Cellist, they meet by chance one powerful night...

'Every morning I wake up and I tell myself this: It's just one day, one twenty-four-hour period to get yourself through. I don't know when exactly I started giving myself this daily pep talk -- or why.'(opening lines)

'Science of agita-rock? This self-important wankjob deconstructionist crap was something that really threw me in the beginning. As far as I was concerned, I wrote songs: chords and beats and lyrics, verses and bridges and hooks. But then, as we got bigger, people began to dissect the songs like a frog from biology class until there was nothing left but guts -- tiny parts, so much less than the sum.'(13)

'I throw down my credit card and enter the cool, dim theater. I slide into my seat and close my eyes, remembering the last time I went to a cello concert somewhere this fancy. Five years ago, on our first date. Just as I did that night, I feel this mad rush of anticipation, even though I know that unlike that night, tonight I won't kiss her. Or touch her. Or even see her up close. ... Tonight, I'll listen. And that'll be enough.'(38)

'My first impulse is not to grab her or kiss her or yell at her. I simply want to cut through the space that separates us, measured in feet -- not miles, not continents, not years -- and to take a callused finger to her face... But I can't touch her. This is a privilege that's been revoked.'(52)

'Ever hear the one about the dog that spent its life chasing cars and finally caught one -- and had no idea what to do with it? ... I'm that dog.'(91)

'I've never been to the Statue of Liberty. Too many crowds. Aldous once invited me on a private helicopter tour, but I don't do choppers. But now that she's right here, I can see why this is on Mia's list. In pictures, the statue always looks kind of grim, determined. But up close, she's softer. She has a look on her face, like she knows something you don't.'(156)

'She said it was because one day I was going to have to go through a metamorphosis like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly and that scared me, so butterflies scared me.'(174)

'Quitting's not hard. Deciding to quit is hard. Once you make that mental leap, the rest is easy.'(182)

'And there it is. A hollow blown through my heart, confirming what some past of me has always known.
She knows.'(188)

'Letting go. Everyone talks about it like it's the easiest thing. Unfurl your fingers one by one until your hand is open. But my hand has been clenched into a fist for three yeas now; it's frozen shut. All of me is frozen shut. And about to shut down completely.'(189)

'Mick Jagger is crooning away and I practically have to bite my lip to keep from singing along. It used to be I never went anywhere without my tunes. And then it was like everything else, take it or leave it. But now I'll take it. Now I need it.'(202)

'But I'd do it again. I know that now. I'd make that promise a thousand times over and lose her a thousand times over to have heard her play last night or to see her in the morning sunlight. Or even without that. Just to know that she's somewhere out there. Alive.'(215)

'I look around for my favorite mug, the one with the dancing coffeepots on it, and I am so damn happy to find it's still there. It's almost like having my picture on the wall, too. A little piece of me still exists, even if the largest part of me can't.'(225)

'First you inspect me
Then you dissect me
Then you reject me
I wait for the day
That you'll resurrect me
"ANIMATE"
COLLATERAL DAMAGE, TRACK 1'(255)

Dutton Books First Hardcover Edition
260 pages
Book borrowed from the library
Book qualifies for:100+ Reading Challenge
______________________________________

2011 Reading from My Shelves Project Giveaway Winner:

SUKO

Congratulations and hope you enjoy the books.

169. IN COLD BLOOD

2011-06-15T08:00:00.001-04:00

Truman Capote 1965

The scariest part of reading this true-crime masterpiece (credited to have started the genre of investigative journalism) is the fact that it IS non-fiction and therefore, a mind boggling reminder that truly evil people do exist around us. On one ordinary day, November 15, 1959, the safety and tranquility of the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, ceases to exist forever. Two ex-convicts, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, in search of easy money, brutally murder the innocent Clutter family --devoted husband and successful farmer, Herb, his fragile wife, Bonnie, and their innocent teenage children, Nancy and Kenyon.

'The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas call "out there." Some seventy miles east of the Colorado border, the countryside, with its hard blue skies and desert-clear air, has an atmosphere that is rather more Far West than Middle West.'(opening lines)

'Until one morning in mid-November of 1959, few Americans -- in fact, few Kansans -- had ever heard of Holcomb. Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there. The inhabitants of the village, numbering two hundred and seventy, were satisfied that this should be so, quite content to exist inside ordinary life -- to work, to hunt, to watch television, to attend school socials, choir practice, meetings of the 4-H club. But then, in the earliest hours of that morning in November, a Sunday morning, certain foreign sounds impinged on the normal nightly Holcomb noises -- on the keening hysteria of coyotes, the dry scrape of scuttling tumbleweed, the racing, receding wail of locomotive whistles. At the time not a soul in sleeping Holcomb heard them -- four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives. But afterward the townspeople, theretofore sufficiently unfearful of each other to seldom trouble to lock their doors, found fantasy re-creating them over and again -- those somber explosions that stimulated fires of mistrust in the glare of which many neighbors viewed each other strangely, and as strangers.'(5)

'Perry described a murder, telling how, simply for "the hell of it," he had killed a colored man in Las Vegas -- beaten him to death with a bicycle chain. The anecdote elevated Dick's opinion of Little Perry; he began to see more of him, and like Willie-Jay, though for dissimilar reasons, gradually decided that Perry possessed unusual and valuable qualities. Several murderers, or men who boasted of murder or their willingness to commit it, circulated inside Lansing; but Dick became convinced that Perry was that rarity, " a natural killer" -- absolutely sane, but conscienceless, and capable of dealing, with or without motive, the coldest-blooded deathblows. It was Dick's theory that such a gift could, under his supervision, be profitably exploited.'(54-55)

'If there's somebody loose around here that wants to cut my throat, I wish him luck. What difference does it make? It's all the same in eternity. Just remember: If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got tham all on the other side, that would only be the beginning of eternity.'(69)

"Around here," according to the proprietor of one Garden City hardware store, "locks and bolts are the fastest-going item. Folks ain't particular what brand they buy; they just want them to hold." Imagination, of course, can open any door -- turn the key and let terror walk right in. Tuesday, at dawn, a carload of pheasant hunters from Colorado -- strangers, ignorant of the local disaster -- were startled by what they saw as they crossed the prairies and passed through Holcomb: windows ablaze, almost every window in almost every house, and in brightly lit rooms, fully clothed people, even entire families, who had sat the whole night wide awake, watchful, listening. Of what were they frightened? "It might happen again." That, with variations, was the customary response.'(88)

'But Herb was gone. And Bonnie too. Her bedroom window overlooked the garden, and now and then, usually when she was "having a bad spell," Mr. Helm had seen her stand long hours gazing into the garden, as though what she saw bewitched her. ("When I was a girl," she had once told a friend, "I was terribly sure trees and flowers were the same as birds or people. That they thought things, and talked among themselves. And we could hear them if we really tired. It was just a matter of emptying your head of all other sounds. Being very quiet and listening very hard. Sometimes I still believe that. But one can never get quiet enough...')'(121-122)

'There is no shame -- having a dirty face -- the shame comes when you keep it dirty.'(140)

'Prognosis: correspondence between you and your sister cannot serve anything but a purely social function. Keep the theme of your letters within the scope of her understanding. Do not unburden your private conclusions. Do not put her on the defensive and not permit her to put you on the defensive. Respect her limitations to comprehend your objectives, and remember that she is touchy towards the criticism of your Dad. Be consistent in your attitude towards her and do not add anything to the impression she has that you are weak, not because you need her good-will but because you can expect more letters like this, and they can only serve to increase your already dangerous anti-social instincts.'(145)

'"What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is a breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset." -- Said by Chief Crowfoot, Blackfoot Indian Chief.

This last entry was written in red ink and decorated with a border of green-ink stars; the anthologist wished to emphasize its "personal significance." "A breath of a buffalo in the wintertime" -- that exactly evoked his view of life. Why worry? What was there to "sweat about"? Man was nothing, a mist, a shadow absorbed by shadows.'(147)

'Cullivan probed, trying to gauge the depth of what he assumed would be Perry's condition. Surely he must be experiencing a remorse sufficiently profound to summon a desire for God's mercy and forgiveness? Perry said, "Am I sorry? If that's what you mean -- I'm not. I don't feel anything about it. I wish I did. But nothing about it bothers me a bit. Half an hour after it happened, Dick was making jokes and I was laughing at them. Maybe we're not human. I'm human enough to feel sorry for myself.'(291)

First Vintage International Edition, February 1994

343 pages

Book owned

Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

168. IF I STAY

2011-06-12T16:00:00.003-04:00

Gayle Forman 2009

Another YA book I thoroughly enjoyed, a book so simple and yet so capable of exploring bittersweet emotions. Mia is a seventeen year old gifted cellist who is the lone survivor of a tragic accident that kills her entire family. She sees herself in a coma and on death's bed. She recalls touching scenes and memories of her musical family, her loving parents and her brother Teddy. She sees her family, friends, and her boyfriend Adam's grief as they realize the uncertainty that they might also lose her. And she is faced with the decision: to fight to stay, or to let go.

'Everyone thinks it was because of the snow. And in a way, I suppose that's true. '(opening lines)

'Just like the Shooting Star's meteoric rise, my admission to Juilliard -- if it happens -- will create certain complications, or, more accurately, would compound the complications that have already cropped up in the last few months.'(6-7)

"I've never seen anyone get as into music as you do. It's why I like to watch you practice. You get the cutest crease in your forehead, right there." Adam said, touching me above the bridge of my nose. "I'm obsessed with music and even I don't get transported like you do."(33)

'And it's while contemplating this that I think about what the nurse said. She's running the show. And suddenly I understand what Gramps was really asking Gran. He had listened to that nurse, too . He got it before I did.
If I stay. If I live. It's up to me.'(73)

'My aversion to Adam's shows had nothing to do with music or groupies or envy. It had to do with the doubts. The same niggling doubts I always had about not belonging. I didn't feel like I belonged with Adam, except unlike my family, who was stuck with me, Adam had chosen me, and this I didn't understand. Why had he fallen for me? It didn't make sense. I knew it was music that brought us together in the first place, put us in the same space so we could even get to know each other. And I knew that Adam liked how into music I was. And that he dug my sense of humor, "so dark you almost miss it," he said. And, speaking of dark, I knew he had a thing for dark-haired girls because all of his girlfriends had been brunettes. And I knew that when it was the two of us alone together, we could talk for hours, or sit reading side by side for hours, each one plugged into our own iPod, and still feel completely together. I understood all that in my head, but I still didn't believe it in my heart. When I was with Adam, I felt picked, chosen, special, and that just made me wonder why me? even more.'(78)

'Kim and I have this theory that almost everything in the world can be divided into two groups.
There are people who like classical music. People who like pop. There are city people. And country people. Coke drinkers. Pepsi drinkers. There are conformists and free-thinkers. Virgins and nonvirgins. And there are the kind of girls who have boyfriends in high school, and the kind of girls who don't.'(90-91)

'Kim looked at my red and teary face and her expression softened into a gentle smile. "We know that, Mia. But we're from different parts of your life, just like music and me are from different parts of your life. And that's fine. You don't have to choose one or the other, at least not as far as I'm concerned."'(97)

'I don't know exactly what's happened to me, and for the first time today, I don't really care. I shouldn't have to work this hard. I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard.'(146)

'Gramps doesn't wipe his face or blow his nose. He just lets the tears fall where they may...
"It's okay," he tells me. "If you want to go. Everyone wants you to stay. I want you to stay more than I've ever wanted anything in my life."... "But that's what I want and I could see why it might not be what you want. So I just wanted to tell you that I understand if you go. It's okay if you have to leave us. It's okay if you have to stop fighting.'(151-152)

'Dad's lyrics were not just rhymes. They were something else. There was one song in particular called "Waiting for Vengeance" that I listened to it so much that I started singing it to myself without even realizing it....

Well, what was that?

What's that sound that I hear?

It's just my lifetime

It's just whistling past my ear

And when I look back

Everything seems smaller than life

The way it's been for so long

Since last night...'(158)

'Adam is mumbling something now. In a low voice. Over and over he is saying: Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please Please. Please. Please. Finally he stops and looks at my face. "Please, Mia," he implores. "Don't make me write a song."'(165-166)

"Just listen," he says with a voice that sounds like shrapnel.

I open my eyes wide now. I sit up as much as I can. And I listen.

"Stay." With that one word, Adam's voice catches, but he swallows the emotion and pushes forward.'(192)

'It is Yo-Yo-Ma playing. Andante con poco e moto rubato. The low piano plays almost as it in warning. In comes the cello, like a heart bleeding. And it's like something inside of me implodes.'(193-194)

Dutton Books Edition

196 pages

Book borrowed from the library

Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

167. CATCH-22

2011-06-09T21:30:00.004-04:00

Joseph Heller 1961

Set during WWII in the fictional island of Pianosa, Italy, this hilarious satirical novel follows the lives of Yossarian (the protagonist) and other enlisted men and officers (notable characters for me: Milo, Doctor Daneeka, Major Major, Colonel Cathcart, Snowden and Chaplain Tappman) of the U.S. Army Air Forces 256th Bombardment Squadron. Under the guise of laugh-out-loud scenes with superb contradicting and absurd dialogues are the many themes that the book deals with - heroism, faith, justice, greed, power, personal integrity, morality and American bureaucracy.

'It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell in love with him.'(opening lines)

'The colonel dwelt in a vortex of specialists who were still specializing in trying to determine what was troubling him. They hurled needles into nerves to hear if he could feel. There was a urologist for his urine, a lymphologist for his lymph, an endocrinologist for his endocrines, a psychologist for his psyche, a dermatologist for his derma; there was a pathologist for his pathos, a cytologist for his cysts, and a bald and pedantic cetologist from the zoology department at Harvard who had been shanghaied ruthlessly into the Medical Corps by a faulty mode in an I.B.M. machine and spent his sessions with the dying colonel trying to discuss Moby Dick with him.'(15)

'Clevinger conceded unwillingly in s subdued tone. "Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?"
"I do," Dunbar told him.
"Why?" Clevinger asked.
"What else is there?"(39)

'There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more mission and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them., If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.'(46)

'Everyone agreed that Clevinger was certain to go far in the academic world. In short, Clevinger was one of those people with lots of intelligence and no brains, and everyone knew it except those who soon found it out. In short, he was a dope.'(68)

'Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three. Even among men lacing all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.
Major Major had three strikes on him from the beginning -- his mother, his father and Henry Fonda, to whom he bore a sickly resemblance almost form the moment of his birth.'(83)

'What can you possibly say to him? Major Major wondered forlornly. One thing he could not say was that there was nothing he could do. To say there was nothing he could do would suggest he would do something if he could and imply the existence of an error or injustice in Colonel Korn's policy. Colonel Korn had been most explicit about that. He must never say there was nothing he could do.
"I'm sorry," he said. "But there's nothing I can do."'(103)

'The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don't you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live."(124)

'The soldier in white was constructed entirely of gauze, plaster and a thermometer, and the thermometer was merely an adornment left balanced in the empty dark hole in the bandages over his mouth early each morning and late afternoon by Nurse Cramer and Nurse Duckett right up to the afternoon Nurse Cramer read the thermometer and discovered he was dead.'(167)

'"I see everything twice!"... Pandemonium broke loose in the ward again. The specialists came running up from all directions...
The leader of this team of doctors was a dignified, solicitous gentleman who held one finger up directly in front of Yossarian and demanded, "How many fingers do you see?"
"Two," said Yossarian.
"How many fingers do you see now?" asked the doctor, holding up two.
"Two," said Yossarian.
"And how many now?" asked the doctor, holding up none.
"Two," said Yossarian.
The doctor's face wreathed with a smile. "By jove, he's right," he declared jubilantly. "He does see everything twice."'(180-181)

'The colonel sat back when he had finished and was extremely pleased with himself for the prompt action he had just taken to meet this sinister crisis. Yossarian -- the very sight of the name made him shudder. There were so many esses in it. It just had to be subversive. It was like the word subversive itself. It was like seditious and insidious too, and like socialist, suspicious, fascist and Communist. It was an odious, alien, distasteful name, a name that just did not inspire confidence. It was not at all like such clean, crisp, honest, American names as Cathcart, Peckem and Dreedle.'(210)

'There's an international Polish sausage exchange in Geneva. I'll just fly the peanuts into Switzerland and exchange them for Polish sausage at the open market rate. They'll fly the peanuts back to Cracow and I'll fly the Polish sausage back to you. You buy only as much Polish sausage as you want through the syndicate. There'll be tangerines too, with only a little artificial coloring added. And eggs from Malta and Scotch from Sicily. You'll be paying the money to yourself when you buy from the syndicate, since you'll own a share, so you'll really be getting everything you buy for nothing. Doesn't that make sense?'(252)

'Just pass the work I assign you along to somebody else and trust to luck. We call that delegation of responsibility. Somewhere down near the lowest level of this coordinated organization I run are people who do get the work done when it reaches them, and everything manages to run along smoothly without too much effort on my part. I suppose that's because I am a good executive. Nothing we do in this large department of ours is really very important, and there's never any rush. On the other hand, it is important that we let people know we do a great deal of it. Let me know if you find yourself shorthanded. I've already put in a requisition for two majors, four captains and sixteen lieutenants to give you a hand. While none of the work we do is very important, it is important that we do a great deal of it.'(320)

'The chaplain had sinned, and it was good. Common sense told him that telling lies and defecting from duty were sins. On the other hand, everyone knew that sin was evil and no good could come from evil. But he did feel good; he felt positively marvelous. Consequently, it followed logically that telling lies and defecting from duty could not be sins. The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine institution, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.'(363)

'When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don't see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.'(445)

Simon and Schuster Paperbacks
452 pages
Book borrowed from the library
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge