Books
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The Old Man and the Sea
He was asleep in a short time and he dreamed of Africa when he was a boy and the long golden beaches and the white beaches, so white they hurt your eyes, and the high capes and the great brown mountains…. He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. Santiago is an old fisherman living…
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Slaughterhouse-Five
In Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. tells the semi autobiographical story of Billy Pilgrim, a man who has come unstuck in time. Much of Billy’s time is spent during World War II. As an new soldier, Billy is sent to the front, where he is captured at the Battle of the Bulge by the Germans, and sent to Dresden as a P.O.W. Billy is not prepared for war, had just gotten through his training when his father died. He was furloughed home for the funeral, and is sent to the front so quickly after his return that he is wearing dress shoes in combat. Because he travels through time, he understands…
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Neverwhere
Richard Mayhew is on his way to dinner with his fiancee’ Jessica, an important dinner where he will be meeting her boss for the first time. When a young girl steps through a door in a wall and collapses in front of them, bleeding, Jessica is all for ignoring her and moving on to impress her boss, but Richard vows to help the girl. She begs to not be taken to the hospital, to be taken somewhere safe from her attackers, so he takes her home with him, infuriating Jessica in the process. In getting help for the girl, Door, Richard finds himself in a labyrinthine version of London below…
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Don’t Analyze, Act!
I’ve heard a few things about Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, “Bright Sided“, though I haven’t read it. But the idea has intrigued me, because it’s the idea that our world of positive thinking is too much, and it’s somewhat dangerous. She says that when someone gets cancer, and is told that positive thinking can heal them, they’re lying in a very cruel and dangerous way to those people. And really, they’re blaming that person for not being positive enough. If they don’t get better, it’s then their fault, for not keeping up that sunny disposition all of the time. This reminds me of those who say some variation of, “God never…
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Gift from the Sea
“Herein lies one key to the problem. If women were convinced that a day off or an hour of solitude was a reasonable ambition, they would find a way of attaining it. As it is, they feel so unjustified in their demand that they rarely make the attempt. One has only to look at those women who actually have the economic means or the time and energy for solitude yet do not use it, to realize that the problem is not solely economic. It is more a question of inner convictions than of outer pressures, though, of course, the th outer pressures are there and make it more difficult. As…
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Broken For You
Immediately following her diagnoses of a fatal brain tumor, Margaret Hughes stops in at a small pastry shop in Seattle, and orders four desserts. Sort of a ‘what the hell’ approach, because really, if you only have a year to live, who cares what you eat? She strikes up a conversation with the shop girl, a painfully thin girl with black lipstick and a nose-ring. Margaret asks, “If you found out you had only a short while to live, maybe a year or two, how would you spend your time?” The answer surprises her. “I suppose I’d think about whatever it is that scares me the most – relationshipwise, I…
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Changing The Rules
I’ve decided to switch out a few of the books on my reading lists. There are only three months left in the year, and I keep getting distracted from the books that I’ve ‘challenged’ myself to read. Maybe I’ll get to some of the books I had originally planned to read, and maybe I won’t. So there. I thought of being all sneaky and just changing the list on my sidebar, since no one seems to read my book posts, and the people holding these challenges couldn’t care less if I switch my books or not. But then I thought, hey, I can get a blog post out of this.…
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Saving Fish From Drowning
I could see the details of the world they passed through. Now that I had the gifts of the Buddha, I could flow unimpeded by safety concerns, and the hidden forms of life revealed themselves: a harmless snake with iridescent stripes, myriad fungi, flowering parasites of colors and shapes that suggested sexual turgidity – a wealth of waxy flora and moist fauna endemic to this hidden spot of the earth, as yet undiscovered by humans, or at least those who assigned taxonomic labels. I realized then that we miss so much of life while we are part of it. We fail to see ninety-nine percent of the glories of nature,…
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The Time Traveler’s Wife
I read the novel version of The Time Traveler’s Wife a few years ago, and I loved it. It was really well done. This weekend, we finally got around to going to see the film version, and I loved it too, just not quite as much. I think that happens most of the time with books that are turned into films. So much of the story has to be left out when you change the medium, it’s rare to find a film version that really works. And I would say, this one did. The premise of the story is that Henry has a genetic disorder that causes him to travel…
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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Dear Sidney, How comforting it was to hear you say, “God damn, oh God damn.” That’s the only honest thing to say, isn’t it? Elizabeth’s death is an abomination and it will never be anything else. This short paragraph struck my heart, because it’s almost what my dad said when I told him that my mom had died. Everyone else was mostly sad for me, worried for me, and said kind things like, “I’m so sorry”, or “Oh, no”, or whatever wonderful and caring things they said. But my dad, he and my mom were part of their own group in High School, their own society that railed against the…
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Julie & Julia
Julie and Julia (link is to my review from a few years ago), the book, is a memoir written by New Yorker Julie Powell, who in 2002 found herself coming up on the big 3-0 in the midst of serious career angst. Her aspirations of becoming a writer were not panning out for her, and she found herself in that horrible quadrant of the work spectrum that I like to call, bored and stressed. She had an emotionally stressful job (talking to people about the memorial for the victims of September 11th…many of the people who called had lost loved ones that day) that was at the same time the…
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Reading Kim
Or, more accurately, not reading Kim. Even more accurately, reading everything else except Kim. I’ve been trying to get into Rudyard Kipling’s adventure story, Kim, for awhile now. As seems to happen when I read 19th century literature, I’m having a bit of trouble getting going. The pacing and language are over 100 years old, and British to boot, so it’s not as accessible as most modern literature. Which is part of the allure…to look back at another time and place, to sort of get into the head of the author, get into the pacing of the time, all of that. But still. I’m at that early part in the…
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Fortunate Son
Fortunate Son is Walter Mosley’s parable of color and class in America, exemplified by two boys, one black, one white, who live together for a few years as children, and consider themselves to be brothers. Tommy is the black brother, who was born with a hole in his lung, which curses his health and strength his entire life. He spends his first 6 months of life in the hospital, visited every day by his devoted single mother, who comes to see him as soon as she gets off of work. Eric is the same age as Tommy, and is born in the same hospital. He is described over and over…
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The Solace of Leaving Early
Langston Braverman walked out on her PhD oral exams, and came home to small town Indiana to recover from that which ails her. She is so wrapped up in her own pain that she has no energy left to pay attention to what is going on around her, and there’s a lot going on. Her childhood friend Alice has died, leaving two young children behind, and Langston is so self-absorbed that she isn’t even the least bit interested in how her friend died, doesn’t want to attend the funeral, just wants to hide in her parents’ attic and try to figure out what to do with her life. While Langston’s…
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Out Stealing Horses
In the meantime, I am spending my days getting this place in order. There is quite a lot that needs doing. I did not pay much for it. In fact, I had been prepared to shell out a lot more to lay my hands on the house and the grounds, but there was not much competition. I do understand why now, but it doesn’t matter. I am pleased anyway. I try to do most of the work myself, even though I could have paid a carpenter, I am far from skint, but then it would have gone too fast. I want to use the time it takes. Time is important…