Quotes and Passages

Wondrous Strange and Darklight by Lesley Livingston

2010-04-17T16:22:00.000-07:00

Wondrous Strange by Lesley Livingston

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Copyright: 2008

Pages: 336

Rating: 4 Crowns

Synopsis:17 year-old Kelly Winslow doesn’t believe in Faeries. Not unless they’re the kind that you find in a theatre, spouting Shakespeare—the kind that Kelley so desperately wishes she could be: onstage, under lights, with a pair of sparkly wings strapped to her shoulders. But as the understudy in a two-bit, hopelessly off-off-Broadway production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, wishing is probably the closest she’s going to get to becoming a Faerie Queen. At least, that’s what she thinks... In this fun, urban fantasy, Kelly's off-stage life suddenly becomes as complicated as one of Shakespeare’s plot twists when a nighttime trip to Central Park holds more than meets the mortal eye.

Review: I stumbled upon this book through an ad on Goodreads where I could read it free online for a limited amount of time. I enjoyed this story from the very beginning because it's a very cool twist of Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night Dream. With all of the faerie books out there aimed at the YA market this is one that truly captured my imagination. I like the main character Kelly...she came through as a real teen just looking to make it on her own in the Big Apple. Of course, there is always that handsome boy who steals your heart....I'm secretly in love with Sonny!!!! Very original story plot and great fun...I can't wait to get my hands on book #2 Darklight!

Darklight by Lesley Livingston

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Copyright: December 22, 2009

Pages: 312

Rating: 4 Crowns

Synopsis:"Much has changed since autumn, when Kelley Winslow learned she was Faerie royalty, fell in love with changeling guard Sonny Flannery, and saved New York City from a rampaging Faerie war band. When a terrifying encounter in Central Park sends Kelley tumbling into the Otherworld, her reunion with Sonny is joyful—but cut short. For they’ve been plunged into a game of Faerie deception and wavering allegiances in which the next move could topple a kingdom...or part them forever.

Review: Much has changed for Sonny and Kelley. They've been apart from each other for almost six months. Kelley can't stop thinking about Sonny and all she wants to do is let her power loose so that they can be together again. Unwittingly, she lets her guard down while walking through Central Park. There she is attacked by a mugger. In order to get away she summons help from one of the Janus crew and somehow cuts a portal into the Otherworld. She and Sonny meet back up and that is when they start to notice that an ancient magick is stirring and someone has plans for both Kelley and Sonny. The Winter King is sick and the faerie world is being threatened. Sonny is not who he thinks he is...nor does he have any clue. But Kelley does and she is forced to make a decision that will change both of their lives forever. Livingston has created another magical book with Darklight and I devoured this in one sitting. At times Otherworld is a bit difficult to understand...a lot of different characters with magical qualities and I'm never quite sure who is good and who is wicked!! But I guess that only adds to the fun with this series. I eagerly anticipate the next book in this series!!

Anthropology

2010-04-09T07:13:00.000-07:00

SHIPWRECK

After the shipwreck I was devastated and

cried for weeks. When I emerged from my

grief, I realized that my girlfriend's death

shouldn't be the end of me. I found someone

as pretty and nice as her and eventually I

invited her on a beach holiday. My old girlfriend

was washing up on the shore. She'd been cliinging

to a plank for fourteen months, living on raw fish,

rainwater and her love for me. I was

faced with a choice. My new girl won because

the old one was skinny and bedraggled, and

besides, the water had made her all crinkly.

The Pull of the Moon

2010-04-09T07:05:00.000-07:00

Not long ago, I saw a woman in a drugstore pick something up in her hand, delighted, and hold it out toward her husband. It was just a perfume bottle, but the shape of it was lovely. "See this, hon?" she said. And the man said, "yeah," but he had his back to her and was walking down the aisle away from her. The woman put the thing back, diminished.
p. 25
** I've felt like this on more than one occasion and after a while I wondered why I bother to show him anything that I find fascinating.

It feels like this is my time for coming into my own. Extraordinary to suddenly think of this as a time for gain. Martin used to say, imitating his funny old grandmother, "Oy, I can't vait to get home and take my goidle off." Well, my girdle's off. Flung into the wind. What luxury, the feel of one's true flesh beneath one's own hand.
p.38
**Why does it take so long for us to come into our own?

What is comparable for you, Martin? Would you tell me if something were? Do you know how much I long for you to lift the rock, to tell me about your underside? You once said, "Women are all the time asking what men are thinking about. We're not thinking about anything!" Well, maybe that's true. But we are. We are thinking about things. It seems to me that the working minds and hearts of women are just so interesting, so full of color and life. And one of the most tragic things I've seen is the way that's been overlooked, the way that if you try to discover what the women were doing at any given time in history, you are hard-pressed to find out. Why? I want to say to you that we are not silly, that what we think about and what drives us to talk, talk, talk, this is vital?
p.63

Nan is traveling across America without a plan and when she sees women outside of their homes, in their yards, or on their porches, she pulls into their driveways and starts a dialogue.I've often wanted to do this. Just stop and talk to women and learn their stories. Are they where they wanted to be? doing what they envisioned???? Maybe that is why I felt so connected to Nan's story?

And it was the nudge that got me to find this journal, and get going on this trip. And now, in my own stillness, I hear something. "Where have you been?" my inside boy whispers to my outside one. Its sense of outrage is present, but dulled by the grief of abandonment. "I had ideas. There were things to do. Where did you go?"
What can I answer? Oh, I had some errands to run. I had a few things to do. I needed to get married and have a child and go underground for twenty-five years, be pleasantly suffocated. I meant to come back. But the bread crumbs got blown away.
Now I'm away. And leaving no bread crumbs behind me.
Well. Perhaps I will be a bit of an archaeologist after all.
p.125

Girl Who Chased the Moon

2010-03-27T12:48:00.000-07:00

When Sawyer's stomach growled, he laughed. "I haven't had anything to eat since the cake I had for lunch," he said sheepishly.
"You had cake for lunch?"
"I'd have cake all the time if I could. You're going to laugh at this, but I'll tell you anyway. You know how some people have a sweet tooth? Well, I have a sweet sense. When I was a little boy, I could be playing across town and know exactly when my mother took a cake out of the oven. I could see the scent, how it floated through the air. All I had to do was follow it home. I will fiercely deny that if you ever say anything.
p.80

Hate List: A Novel

2009-10-18T17:23:00.000-07:00

"Do you think I would've done it?" I cried at one point. "If I had a gun, would I have shot Christy? Because when Nick said, "Let's go get this finished," and I thought he was going to, I don't know, embarrass her or maybe beat the crap out of her or something, I felt so good. So, like, relieved, I wanted him to take care of her."

p.204
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Slowly I dipped the brush into the black paint and made a stripe across the canvas, perpendicular to the purple.
"Hmmmm," she said, and then, "Ohhhh."
The best way I can describe the feeling was that it was miraculous. Or maybe soulful. Or maybe both. I don't know. All I know is that I couldn't stop at that one line or the next splotch or the tree-like dots I made along one border.

p.249
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I heard Mom's voice, so staccato it didn't belong in the studio at all, float up the aisle at me: "Time's up, Valerie."
When I looked up, I was surprised to see that Bea was standing next to me with her hand on my shoulder. Time's never up," she whispered, not looking at me, but at my canvas. "Just like there's always time for pain, there's always time for healing. Of course there is."

p.273
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"Will you ever forgive me? " I shot back, leveling my gaze directly into his eyes.
He stared into them for a few moments and then got up silently and headed for the door. He didn't turn around when he reached it. Just grabbed the doorknob and held it.
"No," he said, without facing me. "Maybe it makes me a bad parent, but I don't know if I can. No matter what the police found, you were involved in that shooting, Valerie. You wrote those names on that list. You wrote my name on that list. You had a good life here. You may not have pulled the trigger, but you helped cause the tragedy."

p.295

Woman Strangled News at Ten

2009-09-13T17:16:00.000-07:00

The van with Max and Tig rolled up beside them and slowed to a stop.
Tig powered the window halfway down. "Lucky the big dog got here in time."
"What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded, fist on hip.
"It means you're a Chihuahua-mix trying to enter yourself against Kennel Club purebreds. Look at you. you can't do the news looking like that."
"Already did."
Max wore the dumbfounded expression of a man who'd just thwarted a home invasion, only to be electrocuted as he grabbed a beer from the refrigerator to celebrate.
Tig's eyes blazed like black fire. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Rough."
She pivoted on one bare foot, making barking noises ruff-ruff-ruff all the way back to where Reggie now stood beside the van. When she yanked open the door, she yelled, "And I'm not a Chihuahua, you big, overgrown, story-stealing Rottweiler. I'm an Irish Terrier and I'm about to become First in Show.
p.153

The Last Bridge

2009-09-07T18:15:00.000-07:00

Two days after my father had a massive stroke my mother shot herself in the head. her suicide was a shock-not the fact that she killed herself but the way in which she did it. It was odd that my mother chose such a violent end to her own violent life. For someone who endured years of torture at my father's hand, I thought she would have choose a more quiet way of leaving. Perhaps she would take pills and put herself to bed in a silk nightgown, or she'd walk naked into the ocean at sunset. Instead, she cleaned the house, changed the linens, stuffed the freezer full of food, and blew her head off with my father's shotgun.

p.1
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I didn't have to look at her face to know it was my mother. I didn't even have to look any farther than her left hand that was dangling off the metal table. I nodded and turned away.
"That's her," I said.
"How do you know?" the coroner asked.
"The wedding band," Hal answered, looking at me for confirmation.
"The tip of her ring finger," I said.
Both men looked closely. "Ah," they said in unison as they noticed my mother's finger was missing the first joint and nail bed.
"Was that a birth defect?" Hal said.
"No...marriage," I replied, searching my bag for a cigarette.
"My mother tried to leave my father once. He found her, brought her home, and cut the tip of her finger off. He told her if she ever tried to leave again, he would cut her hand off. Needless to say, she never left after that. Anybody have a light?"

p.10

Sweeping Up Glass

2009-09-05T17:52:00.000-07:00

I tuck the boy in beside me. We lay in the dark looking at each other. Toward morning, I drift off till something brings me hard awake. I shove my feel in boots and wrap myself in a flannel robe. I move through the grocery and peek around the kitchen curtain. Bits of gnawed rope lay on the floor, and bloody strips of sheet. Blood streaks the linoleum and the windowsill. Glass has exploded out onto the snow. The gray is gone.
"Sweet Jesus."
p.11
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"Olivia, honey," he said. "We got a telegram from the hospital in Buelton. Your ma'am's coming home at the end of summer!"
I shook my head.
"We've got to start getting ready for her."
It was not possible. This woman who called herself Pap's wife belonged in Buelton, where she could not touch us. Well, as long as I lived I would neither love her nor call her my ma'am. Pad had betrayed me.
I twisted away and ran down the back steps to the garden, where I flung myself down. My face to the wet earth, I prayed that Junk's mama would claim me first. I begged God to let me eat chitlins without throwing up-to flatten my nose and kink my hair. I asked it in the name of the potato garden with its turned-up plants and rubbery stalks. I asked in the name of slice green tomatoes and cucumbers, summer squash and pickled watermelon. In the name of the Reverend Timothy Culpepper, I prayed to be colored. Yessir, Amen.
p.28
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Then Pap and I walked up to the Ridge and stood on the lip of the bluff, listening to Grandpap's wolves call down the night.
Pap was tall, with long arms and legs and a bony face. He was magic, could look a thing in the eye, and it'd settle right down. One timea half-grown bear ate out of his hand.
"Listen, girl," he'd say.
I loved this story.
"My pappy first saw 'em in the Alaska sun, stretched out, cleaning their paws, caring for their young. Then it came upon him that he either had to stay there or bring 'em home with him."
"Why didn't he stay?" I asked on cue.
" 'Cause me and your grand were here, and he loved us more." Pap looked at me. "The way I love you. So he built ages--and he covered them with brush. Put in meat and watched 'em all winter before he caught a male and a female."
"And he was careful to never look them in the eye," I said.
"that's right. Hitched up mules, hung the cages on poles. Hired a half dozen fellas and lit out for the south. You won't forget that story, will you, girl?"
"Nosir."
"There never were any wolves in Kentucky before these, but they did all right. That first spring, there was a half dozen pups with silver snouts. Nothing can happen to 'em-you understand?"
p.44
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Then, too, came the promised dog--ten months old, the owners driving up in their Ford, and bringing him to me at the back door. I hid my wounded face in his fur. Bud Ida said we could not take it, could not afford another mouth to feed, and finally they got back in the car and drove away. I hated her, and I told her so.
p.86
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She ate the food I brought her, and although she was allowed in our house at mealtime, she hardly ever came. As Will'm grew, I often sent him to take her tea, or a cup of coffee. Twice I eavesdropped and heard her conversation with him to be gentle and even wise. Will'm covered her when she fell asleep. More than once, he tamped out her pipe. At first it angered me that he could pull this from her while I could not. Truth was--Ida and I werre a roller coaster of hurts, a runaway ride that would never stop.
Will'm grew tall, with a soul as straight and as right as any I'd seen. He had his mama's yellow hair and great round eyes. He didn't fear work, and in the absence of a gun, which I would not let him have, he devised clever traps in which he caught rabbits and possum, the latter being stringy and tough in the stewpot--but I was grateful for the meat. He didn't bring home a single thing we couldn't eat. He loved to read, and he read aloud nights until I had heard all of Mark Twain and William Faulkner, while I sat the table embroidering squares.
Most of all, although I tried to steet him away from it, Will'm had an infinite capacity to care for hurt things. I suspect that, no matter how I worked at it, he could not separate them from himself. He was a quiet, generous child with a stubborn streak that I guess he got from me.
I was glad he never got a bee in his bonnet about the locked cellar door.
p.116
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Three more Alaskan silvers down. Before long, predators will find them, and only carcasses will be left. I wish, instead, it was the hunter lying here in the snow with his ear cut off. I'd leave him to the buzzards so they could sharpen their beaks on his scrawny bones. I can hardly make my way down to the truck. I'm fevered about the wolves, and sad for Wing, angry with Ida, and miserable for Will'm. The boy has no ma'am, he has only me. And I'm sure he sometimes feels just like one of the cubs.
p.145
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The one great disappointment is that I have not found Pap's doctoring books. I realize now that those books have become my personal crusade. I recall watching him make notes on the pages. Maybe it's his handwriting I need most--something to tell me he was really here.
p.154
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I turn in the rain and the muddy snow. "I apologize for not first getting your permission to look through you things, I call back to her. "But I'm mad as hell at your for throwing away Pap's things!"
"Why? What good were they?"
"They were his! And now they should be mine!" I shield my face with my hand. The rain has turned cold and it stings my cheeks. "There's nothing left to tell me what he was like! Or--or who I am."
"I can tell you who you are."
"You never stop telling me!"
p.157
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With Will'm beside me, I drive the pickup six miles to the graveyard. There'll be a crowd, and Miz Grace Harris will go into the earth knowing she's loved. She knew who she was. I, on the other had, know who I am when I'm selling vanilla and cardamon, or baking a brown sugar cake with Will'm. When I'm with Love Alice, I'm sure and strong. But something happens when I'm alone. When there are no other eyes to reflect my own, a great doubt blindsides me, and in those moments I wonder if I'm here at all.
p.181

Home Safe

2009-09-05T17:03:00.000-07:00

Immediately afterward, Helen heard Tessa yell, "Mom! Mom! Hey, Mom!" When Helen came to the door, she said, "Do you want to play with us?" Helen smiled and declined, even though she wanted nothing more than to abandon her housework to go outside with that group of free little beings. She regrets to this day the fact that she didn't do it.
p.26
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Dan came back to the car, beaming. The woman who lived there was most accommodating when she heard Helen was a writer (though she'd never heard of Helen, he reluctantly admitted) and she told Dan that he and Helen could go ahead and look around all they liked. She even told Dan how to get down to E.B. White's writing shed by the water, trusting them to be there alone. When Helen walked into that little shed with its slab of wooden desk and bare floors and open window that framed the blue waters of the bay, she burst into tears. She cried for the beautiful words White had written, and she cried because he was dead, and she cried for the privilege of being in this space, where he had looked out this very window and smoked and though and written lines full of such humor, intelligence and heart.
p.62
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The Box had become an annual tradition, each year going to a different member of their little family. And although the Box itself became softer and more misshapen with every year, it was always the most beautifully wrapped gift under the tree. The person who received it was supposed to talk about what was "in" the Box ---what tangible gifts were presently in his or her life: but that rarely worked. It seemed hard for people to say out loud the things that were most important to them, unless it was in retrospect.
p.113
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When Suzie introduced Helen, she told the audience that one of the best things about books is that they are an interactive art form; that while authors may describe in some detail how a character looks, it is the reader's imagination that completes the image, making it his or her own. "That's why we so often don't like movies made from books, right?" Suzie said. "We don't like someone else's interpretation of what we see so clearly." She talked, too, about how books educate and inspire, and how they soothe souls--"like comfort food without the calories," she said. She talked about the tactile joys of reading, the feel of a page beneath one's fingers; the elegance of typeface on a page. She talked about how people complain that they don't have time to read, and reminded them that if they gave up half an hour of television a day in favor of reading, they could finish twenty-five books a year. "Books don't take time away from us," she said. "They give it back. In this age of abstraction, of multitasking, of speed for speed's sake, they reintroduce us to the elegance--and the relief!-- of real, tick-tock time.
p.229
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City of Thieves

2009-09-05T16:45:00.000-07:00

We saw two women in their sixties walking very close together, their shoulders touching, eyes on the sidewalk looking for the patch of ice that could kill them. A man with a glorius walrus mustache carried a white bucket filled with black nails. A boy, no more than twelve, tugged a swled with a length of rope. A small body wrapped in blankets lay on the sled, a bloodless bare foot dragging along the hard-packed snow. Dragon's teeth studded the street, reinforced concrete blocks arrayed in rows to hinder the movement of enemy tanks. A printed sign on the wall read WARNING! THIS SIDE OF THE STREET IS THE MOST DANGEROUS DURING BOMBING.

p.42
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The boy sold what people called library candy, made from tearing the covers off of books, peeling off the binding glue, boiling it down, and reforming it into bars you could wrap in paper. The stuff tasted like wax, but there was protein in the glue, protein kept you alive, and the city's books were disappearing like the pigeons.

p.52
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That is the way we decided to talk, free and easy, two young men discussing a boxing match. That was the only way to talk. You couldn't let too much truth seep into your conversation, you couldn't admit with your mouth what your eyes had seen. If you opened the door even a centimeter, you would smell the rot outside and hear the screams. You did not open the door. You kept your mind on the tasks of the day, the hunt for food and water and something to burn, and you saved the rest for the end of the war.

p.63
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"You killed him yourself?"
I opened my mouth, fully prepared to lie, but the way she looked at me, her lips curled into that smirk that both angered me with its condescension and me want to kiss her...
"The cold killed him. I just saw him falling."

p.153
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Cannibals and Nazis didn't make Kolya nervous, but the threat of embarrassment did-the possibility that a stranger might laugh at the lines he'd written.

p.165
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I have never been much of a patriot. My father would not have allowed such a thing while he lived, and his death insured that his wish was carried out. Piter commanded far more affection and loyalty from me than the nation as a whole. But that night, running across the unplowed fields of winter wheat, with the Fascist invaders behind us and the dark Russian woods before us, I felt a surge of pure love for my country.

p.233
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"Don't look so sad. You saved my life tonight."
I shrugged. I was afraid that if I opened my mouth I would say something mawkish and stupid, or worse, that I would start to cry through a night like this one, and I was convinced that the sniper from Archangel was the only girl I would ever love.
Her gloved hand still rested on my cheek. "Tell me your last name."
"Beniov."
"I'll track you down, Lyova Beniov. All I need is the name." She leaned forward and kissed me on the lips. Her mouth was cold, her lips rough from the winter wind, and if the mystics are right and we are doomed to repoeat our squalid lives ad infinitum, at least I will always return to that kiss.

p.237

Neil Armstrong Is My Uncle & Other Lies Muscle Man McGinty Told Me

2009-09-05T16:38:00.000-07:00

"I made the swim team!" shouts Big Danny.
"Hey, good for you, Big Guy!" Muscle Man pats him on the back. "Making the swim team is not an easy thing to do."
"Yeah, congratulations," I mumble, not sure if Big Danny is talking to me yet.
"I heard there was a lot of competition," says Muscle Man.
Big Danny grins.
Muscle Man is wormy. He always stars with something nice before he slides into one of his whoppers.
I hold my breath, waiting for what comes next.
"Did I happen to mention I'm training for the Olympics in the same sport?" Muscle Man says.
Sure. And I'm waiting for Captain Kirk to beam me up to the starship Enterprise.

p.3
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By the time I finish writing the last word, I am so filled up with emptiness that my eyes grow blurry. I push everything inside me. The tears. The missing empty feeling. I seal up my misery the same way that I seal the envelope. No sense in getting all weepy about a girl who didn't even tell me where she was going.
When I get to where I write the address, I stop.
I don't know where to send it. All I can do is stare at a blank envelope.

p.27

While I'm Falling

2009-08-29T08:54:00.000-07:00

For some time, maybe minutes, maybe hours, I lay awake, eyes open, staring up into the darkness. Just two nights earlier, I'd ignored her calls. I was aware of everything shifting, new regret a sharp pain in my throat. The hurt felt real, and truly physical, and also, strangely, like something necessary and right. When I was young, lying in bed at night, the backs of my calves would hurt so much that I would sometimes cry out. Growing pains, my parents said. They were a myth, the doctor countered. But night after night, my legs hurt; until one night, they stopped hurting, and I was taller.
p.173
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"Do you think I'm interesting?" She switched the bag of groceries to her other arm. She focused n keeping her voice neutral, no judgment at all. She focused on keeping her voice neutral, no judgment at all. She wasn't trying to pick a fight. She really just wanted to know. "Also, when you think of me, when you picture me in your head, do you see me as a separate entity? Or do you only see me in relation to you?"
He took of his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. And he said absolutely nothing. It was, in twenty-six years of marriage, the only time she'd caught him speechless, too stumped even to nod or shake his head.
"I'll get the rest of the groceries," he said, as if that were the question she'd asked. "Don't let the dog follow me out."

p.223

The Adoration of Jenna Fox

2009-08-11T19:52:00.001-07:00

A Question I Will Never Ask Mother:

Did I have friends?
I was sick for over a year and yet there is not a single card,
letter, ballon, or wilted bouquet of flowers in my room.
The Netbook never buzzes for me.
Not even an old classmate's simple inquiry.
I may not remember everything, but I know there should be
these things.
Something.
I know when someone is sick that people check on her.
What kind of person was Jenna Fox tha she didn't have any
friends?
Was she someone I even want to remember?
Everyone should have at least one friend.

p.17
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I hear a sharp voice. It is Mother. She is angry. At me? I
did as she asked. I lean near the banister to listen. Lily's voice is
angry, too.
"When will you admit that you made a mistake?"
"Stop it! You of all people should understand! If it weren't for in vitro, I wouldn't be here. You always called me your miracle. Why can't I have one, too? Why do you get to decide
when the miracles will end?"
"It's not natural."
"Neither was I! You need help. That's all I wanted--"
p.41
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"How much is me?"
Her lip trembles. Her eyes pool.
Lily intervenes. "Ten percent. Ten percent of your brain. That's all they could save. They should have let you die."
I try to understand what she is saying. I watch her mouth move. I hear words. Ten percent. Ten percent.
And then Mother is suddenly fierce. A lion. Within inches of my face. "But it is the most important ten percent. Do you hear me? The most important."

p.117
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I glare at them both. "How dare you!" I say. "How dare you play with my brain!" How dare you pretend with me that I'm normal! How dare you program me!"
The word sends a shockwave through the room. For moment neither one speaks, stunned by the outing of their dirty secret.

p.152
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This one hits way too close to home for comfort!!!

"A bill is before Congress, " Rae explains, "and Senator Harris has been trying to persuade his fellow senators to vote against it. By talking for so long, he has hoped that it will give some chance for the opposition to make a stronger case, sway others to their point of view."
"What is the bill?" I ask.
Ethan lays his head down on his desk and closes his eyes as Rae explains.
"The bill is the Medical Access Act, which will put all medical decisions and choices back into the hands of physician and patient. It will cut FSEB entirely out of the process."

p.208
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Pieces

A bit for someone here.
A bit there.
And sometimes they don't add up to anything whole.
But you are so busy dancing.
Delivering.
You don't have time to notice.
Or are afraid to notice.
And then one day you have to look.
And it's true.
All of your pieces fill up other people's holes.
But they don't fill
your own.

p.231

Little Bee

2009-08-03T06:28:00.000-07:00

On the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.
p.9
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Everything was happiness and singing when I was a little girl. There was plenty of time for it. We did not have to hurry. We did not have electricity or fresh water or sadness either, because none of these had been connected to our village yet.

p.78
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The men came and they...That was how all of our stories started.

p.79

Nothing But Ghosts

2009-08-03T06:20:00.000-07:00

I saw my mom pull a flower straight out of a tree. I saw her stand, take the flower to the bride, and bow her head. I saw her go back to the bench and sit down the my dad and ask him, "Would you marry me again, Jimmy? Would you?"
"In a heartbeat," he said, "and you know it."
"I wouldn't take any of it back," Mom said, and maybe I don't know how you put regret inside a painting, maybe I can't figure out Miss Martine, maybe I can't really save my dad from sadness, but maybe so much time goes by that you start to understand how beauty and sadness can both live in one place. My eyes are heavy and the air is still hot. I may already be dreaming.

p.165
______________________________________________________________________

I lost Mom until the parade moved on, wound itself away from the harbor and up into the crooked streets. I turned and saw her standing on the edge of things--too thin, I realize now, and frail, the wind caught up in her hair. She'd kept her secret the whole trip long. She stood in that strange, chilled mist, alone, alive , but knowing what would come. History is never absolute truth. It isn't just the thing that was. It's the thing that could have been.

p.210

Finger Lickin' Fifteen

2009-07-28T09:42:00.000-07:00

Ranger and I have three things in common. We're the same age. We're both single. And we both were previously married for about ten seconds. That's where the common ground ends. I'm an open book with a lot of blank pages. His book is filled with life experience but written in disappearing ink.
p.13
______________________________________________________________________

I followed him to the door and watched him take his keys from the sideboard and pocket them. he pushed me to the wall, leaned in to me, and kissed me. "Later," he said, his lips brushing against mine. And he left.
It was a really great kiss, and if he'd said now, I might have been in trouble, but after a couple beats, when my heart had stopped jumping around in my chest and I wasn't pressed up against Ranger, I decided later was a scary idea.
p.65
____________________________________________________________________

He wrapped an arm around me and kissed me just above my ear. "There's something wrong with this picture," Ranger said. "You're in my bed a lot, but never with me."
p.116
____________________________________________________________________

Two Years, No Rain

2009-07-28T09:36:00.000-07:00

Even if I did live in a mostly empty house, I was doing pretty well.
I didn't need so much. I had my bed and my books. I had lamps by the bed, books to read stacked up on the floor, and a phone on which I could hear Hillary's voice in my ear. We had books to discuss. We had many thing to discuss.

p.180
______________________________________________________________________

Then it happened, he was gone, and I never got to say it. And now I feel like, really, what's the point of being angry? What's the point of being angry at anything, because what if you're wrong about it, and you don't ever get the opportunity to admit it? I'd rather not take that chance."
p.290

"What is this place? I asked softly. The smell of age permeated everything, like my grandparents' basement when I was a boy. A little boy.
"This," Hillary whispered, "is Man Mo Temple, where Hong Kongers make offerings to Man Cheung, the god of literature."
"There is a god of literature?"
"Isn't it perfect?"
Not far from us, a man knelt, slowly waving long sticks of burning incense held fanned-out between his hands. His eyes were closed, and the smoke trickled up to disappear in the open rafters. I watched his lips silently moving.
"What is he saying?" I asked.
"I think he wants good books," Hill said. "Just like we do. Come."

p.311

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

2009-07-28T09:25:00.000-07:00

"I wonder, Flavia," Inspector Hewitt said, stepping gingerly into the cucumbers, "if you might ask someone to organize some tea?"
He must have seen the look on my face.
"We've had rather an early start this morning. Do you think you could manage to rustle something up?"
So that was it. As at a birth, so at a death. Without so much as a kiss-me-quick-and-mind-the-marmalade, the only female in sight is enlisted to trot off, and see that the water is boiled. Rustle something up, indeed! What did he take me for, some kind of cowboy?
"I'll see what can be arranged, Inspector," I said.
Coldly, I hoped.
"Thank you," Inspector Hewitt said. Then, as I stamped off towards the kitchen door, he called out, "Oh, and Flavia..."
I turned, expectantly.
"We'll come in for it. No need for you to come out here again."
The nerve! The bloody nerve!!

p.34
____________________________________________________________________

If there is a thing I truly despise, it is being addressed as "dearie." When I write my magnum opus, A Treatise Upon All Poison, and come to "Cyanide," I am going to put under "Uses" the phrase "Particularly efficacious in the cure of those who call one 'Dearie.'"

p.62
______________________________________________________________________

I remembered a piece of sisterly advice, which Feely once gave Daffy and me:
"If ever you're accosted by a man," she'd said, "kick him in the Casanovas and run like blue blazes!"
Although it had sounded at the time like a useful bit of intelligence, the only problem was that I didn't know where the Casanovas were located.
I'd have to think of something else.

P.305

The Turnaround

2009-07-21T19:56:00.001-07:00

"Don't go putting me up on a pedestal. I'm not proud of everything I did."
"Neither am I." Monroe stopped working on Anderson's arm. "Look, Sergeant. You're gonna realize something as you get older. Hopefully it'll come to you quicker than it did to me. Life is long. Who you are now, the things you did, how you're feeling, like your world is never gonna be as good as it was? None of that is going to matter as you move along. It only will if you let it. I'm not the person I was when I was young. Shoot, I had an incident today...Let's just say I had to walk a whole lotta miles to learn how much I've changed. Whatever you did before doesn't matter. What matters now is how you make the turnaround. You'lre gonna be all right."

p.262

This sums up this book perfectly. It's all how you make the turnaround!!

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

2009-07-14T19:07:00.000-07:00

Matthew had called her harmless. harmless. And being with him made Frankie feel squashed into a box--a box where she was expected to be sweet and sensitive (but not oversensitive); a box for young and pretty girls who were not as bright or powerful as their boyfriends. A box for people who were not forces to be reckoned with.
Frankie wanted to be a force.

p.214

In the Land of Cotton

2009-07-13T16:50:00.000-07:00

Minutes later we were back on the horse headed back down the dirt road. Again, I had my head buried in Silas's back. This time it wasn't to avoid the dust, this time it was to hid my tears. I didn't care about the line in the sand; I just wanted to be with Silas even if it meant I'd burn at the bottom of one of those crosses.

p.104

The Lace Makers of Glenmara

2009-07-12T19:22:00.000-07:00

Her family had no idea how Aileen felt or who she was. Did it even occur to them to wonder? Did they care? To them, she was the cook, the nagger, the worrier, the chauffeur, the nurse, the laundress, the accountant. They didn't realize she'd been at the top of her class, a champion camogie player. That she lived and breathed and felt just like them. That they were a part of her and she of them. Always. Always.

p.80
______________________________________________________________________

Kate mimicked Colleen's movements, but the thread tangled almost immediately. "Do you have a book I can study?"
"A book? Heavens, no. We learned from our grandmothers, and they from theirs. It's a skill handed down, you see, from the days the wealthy Irish ladies brought the methods home from Europe and opened the lace schools, to help the people during the Famine, our ancestors too, making the lace to keep themselves alive," Colleen said. "You learn from watching and doing. Don't worry about making mistakes. you can always start over again."

p.87
____________________________________________________________________

"Padraig loves you. Anyone can see that," Bernie said.
"I'm afraid I'll scare him." Oona stood in front of the mirror, traced the lines on her chest, no more mounds of flesh, no nipples. Padraig had loved her breasts. The Alps, he called them, for their size and majesty, even after the children and the nursing and the passage of time made them droop. She hadn't realized she was grieving for her breasts--the denial, the anger, the sadness. She hadn't reached the point of acceptance. She didn't know when she would. Therre were worse things, of course. so many worse things. And yet--

p.115
____________________________________________________________________

Kate stared at the flames. "The voice sounded so real."
"The living are close to the dead there," Bernie replied. "It's one of the thin places, where the past and present touch."

p.228
____________________________________________________________________

Maybe you'll find yourself on a deserted lane and a man driving a colorful cart will offer you a ride and bring you to a village where the land runs down to the sea, a place where everything is waiting to begin. It doesn't have to be perfect. you don't have to be perfect. All you have to do is be. You'll take up the same needle and thread and see that they're magic, or could be--if only you let them, if you try--that the women, who gossip like sparrows and bite like midges and laugh so hard they cry, will teach you something new and you will teach them too, and it won't be all bitterness, not all, no, and the man walking up the road to see you is someone you could spend time with, make a life with, if you take a chance.
It all remains to be seen.

p.268 (the very last page)

Ink Exchange

2009-07-12T19:17:00.000-07:00

Silently she rested her face against his chest, and he held her and admitted the truth to himself: For this mortal I would disobey my queen, abandon my king, the court that has protected me all these years. All of it. If he took her into his arms, he would keep her. He wouldn't let her suffer the way the other mortals had when he'd left them. He would keep her, with his court's permission or without it. Irial wouldn't take her, and Keenan wouldn't stand between them.

p.171

Who Do You Think You Are?

2009-06-30T18:35:00.001-07:00

I loved ironing. As soon as I finished one piece, I would hand it to her and she would put it in a neat pile on the couch next to her. I would iron item after item late into the night. There was something so peaceful about those nights. I felt so grown-up and so important. I would think about how lucky I was to have that time with her. Just the two of us.

p. 112

** I marked this because I liked that Alyse and her mom had at least one thing that they enjoyed sharing with each other. I'm sad though that this was about the only thing that they shared.
______________________________________________________________________

"You know you can't smoke in my apartment, right?"
She didn't answer.
I could feel the mood change, but I pressed on. " You didn't think I would let you smoke here, did you?"
Did I not want her to come?
"You didn't think I would let my apartment smell like yours, did you?" I couldn't stop myself.
Still no answer.
Now I was angry. "Surely you're not saying you can't not smoke for an hour or two," I demanded. "That's pathetic."
She broke her silence.
She told me to drop dead and then slammed down the phone. I realized our relationship hadn't really changed at all.
My mother never saw my first Manhattan apartment.

p.154

**this made me sad that smoking was more important than checking out her daughter's new apartment!!!!!!!!!!!
____________________________________________________________________

And then my mother said, "Oh, thank God. I thought he was telling me I was going to die!"
And then I realized I didn't want her to die. That I wanted her to live. And that I wanted to start all over.

p.213
____________________________________________________________________

A Homemade Life

2009-06-27T06:51:00.000-07:00

Food is, of course, a social thing, one of the most positive, primal ways of spending time with people, but eating alone is also an affirmation. It's a way of enjoying me.

p.121
______________________________________________________________________

Favorite Chapter from this book was Bonne Femme
-she enjoys Paris with her mother.....wonderful chapter that I absolutely enjoyed from the beginning to the end. Makes me wish I had this kind of relationship with my mother.
______________________________________________________________________

There is an infinite number of reasons, I think, for loving someone. I love Brandon for lots o things, no the least of which is the fact that we found each other at all. But if I had to name just one reason, it would be this: because he made my home-m city and my little place within it-feel, for the first time, like hom. It sounds sappy to say it so plainly, but I think you know what I mean. I wasn't lonely before he came along. I had no real complaints or grievances. Seattle was good to me. But with him, and everything that comes with him, it's so much better.

p.270
____________________________________________________________________

It helps, though, that I like mishmash meals, the kind where you reach into the refrigerator and pull out a few things that you need attention- a neglected block of cheddar, let's say, and the end of a salami, and some cornichons and olives and a grapefruit--and that's dinner. I am a very lazy person, really, and I am also easily pleased. For as much as I love to cook, I love even more when cooking is unneccesary, and when all I have to do is eat.

p.293

The Mighty Queens of Freeville by Amy Dickinson

2009-06-18T15:21:00.000-07:00

We met and he offered me a staff position as a writer. Reluctantly, I said no. I couldn't imagine taking on a job that would require sixty-hour work weeks and travel. He said, "Forgive me for asking, but not a lot of people turn down these jobs. Do you mind telling me why?"
"I have another job, " I said.
"I didn't realize that. Could you tell me what it is?" he asked.
"I'm trying to raise a person, " I told him.

p.128

Vibes by Amy Kathleen Ryan

2009-06-18T15:06:00.000-07:00

Sam Juarez starts catcalling and pumping his fist in the air, and then Jacob Flax jumps up and down for joy. I shoot a glance at Mallory, who is staring at the show with his mouth open. His eyes slide over to me. "Did everyone drop acid before I got here?"
"We're just excited because the mother ship is landing today."
"Oh good, I love a mass suicide." He grins that wicked grin that makes me a little nervous and a little happy because finally there's someone in my school as dark and twisted as I am.

p.41
______________________________________________________________________

"What's Hildie short for?" Mallory asks as he guides me out the door with his hand on my wait. I don't like the way he looks, but I like the way he touches me.
"What? Oh, Hildegard." I blink because the bright sun hurts my eyes.
"Holy Hell! I thought my name was bad!"
"It is. Aren't you named after the sister on Family Ties?"
"I see you like prehistoric sitcoms. That's funny." He kicks at a pile of tiny gravel in the parking lot and it scatters. "I'm named after the poet. You know. Le Morte d'Arthur?"
"Oh. You think you name has dignity. I get it."

p.47
____________________________________________________________________

"But I'm starting to wonder if maybe I'm not as psychic as I thought."
He shrugs, his eyes wandering over the clouds above us. "We all have to live with a measure of uncertainty in our lives," he says. He leans his head back against the tree. "What would it mean if you weren't psychic?"
"I'll have to go through life guessing."
"Guessing what?"
"Whether I can trust people."

Back Creek by Leslie Goetsch

2009-06-18T14:53:00.000-07:00

High school wasn't of great interest to me: I was far more absorbed by the fiction I read than the fiction I lived.

p.11
______________________________________________________________________

Remembering my berry-picking made me realize I was always trying to make peace through gifts--drawings I made, unusual shells I found on the shore, even a heron's feather. I guess I didn't know how else to respond to the tension I felt in the house.

p.75
____________________________________________________________________

"Look, Grace, you're going to need to watch her--and your father."
"Watch her? Take care of Daddy? And Lillian? But I'm supposed to be leaving soon--" I stopped short. I believe it was the first time I'd ever said anything out loud about leaving the Creek. The words sounded hollow, even to me.

p.80
____________________________________________________________________

Then, without any warn, Cal grabbed me around the shoulders and kissed me. I mean, a real kiss--like the one I'd been waiting for--the kind I knew the kids in the cars at the York High School parking lots couldn't give--the kind of kiss Heathcliff must have given Catherine.

p.93
____________________________________________________________________

When Lillian wasn't around, I took time looking on one photo in particular. It was of Cal standing by the pier, reaching for something in his cooler. But he's looking for something else, something out at the end of the pier, or maybe farther out, somewhere in the Bay. Lillian focused on his face, and his eyes have this piercing quality to them. His eyes made me think of the fictional character Mr. Rochester looking and looking for someone--Jane Eyre, as it turned out . "Yearning" is the word Charlotte Bronte had for the look.

p.126
____________________________________________________________________

I wandered about the party, greeted by voices as familiar as the blankets on my bed.

p.132
____________________________________________________________________

As we followed the recipes her mother had followed and her mother before that, we talked in an abstract way. As the afternoon wore on and Mother kept talking, I was listening to preserve the stories in mind.

p.176

A World I Never Made by James LePore

2009-06-17T12:33:00.001-07:00

"How shall I address you?" she asked, meeting and holding his gaze, telling him with her eyes that she respected him was grateful for his offer.
"Abdullah will be fine."
"Not Professor?"
"No."
"May I ask, Abdullah, are you Muslim?" Through a small window behind the chess table, Megan had seen three men kneeling on faded wool mats in a dusty courtyard, praying, their foreheads touching the ground. "I thought I heard the call to prayer."
"I am a Coptic Christian."
"Ah. Iraqi?"
"No, Syrian."
"Can you worship here?"
"You cannot stop a man from worshiping, even if there are no churches."
"Yes, I will play," Megan said. And we will talk.

p. 94 (uncorrected Advance Reader Copy)
____________________________________________________________________

"Abdulla....," she said.
"There is nothing you can say, child. What is done is done. But I would be putting my own soul in jeopardy if I did not try to prevent the killing of this innocent babe. It is a terrible and tragic destiny to be killed by your own mother before you are born. To be so unloved."

p.155 (uncorrected ARC)

Undercover by Beth Kephart

2009-06-17T12:21:00.000-07:00

But playing Roxane made me feel uncomfortable. For there is Cyrano, writing letters to Roxane on behalf of the local pretty boy, and there is Roxane, buying every bit of it, hook, line, and sinker. Why can't she see that it is Cyrano's heart and head inside those letters? Why can't she tell how much he loves her? And what does this say about people in general, that they can't see what is standing before them? Beauty rules, every single time. Beauty is the password.

p.41
______________________________________________________________________

But I didn't tell them about loving Theo. I didn't say I'd written to Dad. That's what undercover operative do. They pick and choose their truths.

p.233
____________________________________________________________________

Here's what I think, when I think about it more: Beauty is a cruel deception, true. But the greatest tragedy of all is letting invisibility win. It's choosing to give up the thing you want because you think you don't deserve it.

p.245
____________________________________________________________________

"You know what I hate?" I declared, feeling emboldened.
"What's that?"
"The rules of love."
"Rotten." She smiled. "Through and through. But if they weren't so rotten, what would poets do?"
"Hope less forlornly, I guess."
"Yes. Maybe they would. But oh, how the poems themselves would suffer."

p.254

Prayers for Sale

2009-06-12T10:36:00.000-07:00

After the war ended, more than one widow of her acquaintance began entertaining, trading an evening for a small coin or sack of flour, or even a handful of potatoes. Hennie was disdainful and asked, "What will your little ones think?"
"I expect they like to eat," came the reply, and Hennie felt put in her place.
She realized then that morality was for folks with full bellies, and she came to realize that if things had been different, if Sarah had lived and they had been destitute, Hennie herself might have "entertained." She'd have done anything to keep that precious baby from starving. So when she moved to Middle Swan and learned that some of her neighbors were soiled doves, as they were called then, Hennie wasn't shocked, wasn't even surprised.

p.87
____________________________________________________________________

She'd had a good life, Hennie reflected, but there were things left to do before she went below. The girl Nit needed help if she was to become a mountain woman. Hennie had a lifetime of stories she wanted to tell one more time. Then there was that other matter that pricked the back of her mind, just this side of consciousness. It ought to be resolved before she moved on.

p.107
____________________________________________________________________

She chuckled at the memory. She and Jake and Mae would go there on a Sunday, after churc--back when Hennie attended services--and pick the raspberries. Once, when Mae had stayed home, Hennie and Jake had gone raspberrying by themselves and fooled around up there, not realizing until they were finished that their skin was stained red from where they'd lain on raspberries that had spilled out of the bucket. Hennie glowed at the recollection that her marriage had been good in that way.

p.178
____________________________________________________________________

The sun was warm on Hennie's bones, and she was not anxious to leave. "Can you stand another story?" "I can. I wouldn't like it half so well in Middle Swan if it wasn't for you and your stories." p. 190-191

Willow

2009-05-17T16:17:00.000-07:00

Willow is transfixed. The longing and need that are stamped across David's face are riveting. She watches as Cathy hold him tighter, as tight as possible, then bends her head to kiss him.
Willow feels like a moth, inexorably drawn to the flame. How would it feel to cry like that? How would it feel to be comforted like that?
If she let herself, she'd drown in a world of pain. But she can't let that happen, she simply wouldn't be able to handle it, not that kind of pain. Thankfully she knows how to prevent such a thing.

p.37
______________________________________________________________________

Her leg hurts. It's extraordinary that a two-inch cut could be so painful. It's easy to do, really, just open it up before it's healed, take something blunt like the toe of a sneaker and try to enlarge the cut up to three or four inches....
Now that she has her fix, now that the pain is flowing through her blood like a narcotic, Willow is free to think about other things.

p.50
____________________________________________________________________

She glances at the stack of books next to this elbow, hoping for some inspiration. "What are you reading these days?" Willow asks, and for the first time in the entire conversation her voice is natural. This is safe. Better than safe. This is familiar. This is the talk around the dinner table throughout her entire childhood. Why has she never thought of this before?

p.117
____________________________________________________________________

Everything sounds normal, everything sounds good. This is the way things are supposed to be-they're just a young family getting ready to meet the day.
Willow hates to join them, because she knows that as soon as she steps into the kitchen the illusion will instantly be destroyed. Her presence reminds everyone that there's something desperately wrong, that this isn't just an ordinary family going about its business. This family is different. This is a fractured family.

p.141
____________________________________________________________________

"Willow," Guy says a third time. Only this time it's not a question. This time it's clear that he's just making his presence known.
Willow tries to focus on his voice, on the lifeline he's throwing her. The pictures aren't fading, but as she listens to Guy's breathing, the sounds of the accident grow dim.
She stops cutting. The razor dangles uselessly from her hand; it has finally done its work. Willow watches the blood trickle over her skin through half-closed eyes.
Her breath deepens, becomes more regular, in concert with Guy's. The sound of their breathing in tandem is shockingly intimate, and soon, the only noise that filters through Willow's pain is the gentle swoosh of their shared inhalations as she drifts off to sleep grasping the phone as if it were a living being, as if it were her lover.

p.183
____________________________________________________________________

In fact, it makes her more than slightly ill. Willow knows that there's a terrible disconnect between what she does and what she feels when she sees the fruits of her labor, but it is not easy to be rational when the urge to cut is upon her.

p.187
____________________________________________________________________

Well, sometimes I worry that my whole life will be based around what's comfortable and easy. I'll care too much about what makes me feel good to ever really reach for anything. And then I worry that even if I do, I won't succeed."

p.216
____________________________________________________________________

"When you found me out, you thought that I wanted to kill myself, that all this slashing was like target practice until I got up enough courage for the real thing. You don't understand at all. You just don't get it. I'm saving myself.
"I've taught myself, I've trained myself, not to feel anything except physical pain. I'm completely in control of that. Do you understand? Do you get what that means?"

p.221
____________________________________________________________________

Willow remembers the last time that she saw him cry, how shocked she had been, frightened almost, to see him reduced to such a state. She is not so much scared now as awed. Impressed, as she had not been that other time, by how strong he must be in order to withstand such misery. She knows better than anyone what kind of inner fortitude it must take to let oneself be so overcome.
it is something that she will never be able to do. Even to watch it without allowing herself the luxury of cutting is almost more than she can bear.
His sobs wound her far more than anything she can inflict on herself, but it is not only pain that she feels as she watches him. She takes a bittersweet comfort in the fact that her brother is capable of feeling such grief. That he will never have to resort to the kind of remedy that she does, that he has an endless reservoir of strength that allows him to weep in such a fashion.

p.254
____________________________________________________________________

"I'm....I'm....not..." She chokes on the words. "I'm not anyone's daughter anymore!" Willow says this as if it is something that she just figured out.

p.293
____________________________________________________________________

Willow stands in front of her brother. She sees him open his mouth, barely hears him whisper her name.
She leans closer, so that she can hear what he has to tell her. Suddenly he grips her hand with surprising force, grips her so tightly that she can barely move.
"Oh Willow," he says. "Oh, Willow, what if you had died that night too?"

p.307

Evermore

2009-05-17T16:09:00.000-07:00

"I don't want to talk about it,: I say, blinking at the water globes that are now red and forming into a tulip.
"What do you want to talk about?" he whispers, gazing at me with those yes, two infinite pools luring me in.
"I don't want to talk," I whisper, holding my breath as his lips met mine.

p.81
______________________________________________________________________

"The kiss gets sweeter with every incarnation." He sighs, pulling away and brushing my hair off my face. "Though we never seem to make it further than that. And now I know why." He presses his forehead to mine, infusing me with such joy, such all-consuming love, then sighing deeply before pulling away.

p.254
____________________________________________________________________

He pulls me into his arms, his touch calm and soothing, but unable to erase the truth. "I have to go," he finally whispers. "But Ever, if you want to love me, if you truly want to be with me, then you'll have to accept what we are. I'll understand if you can't."

p.263

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

2009-05-04T19:01:00.000-07:00

Keiko halted and looked at Henry. She looked down at his button, the one his father made him wear. " You are Chinese, aren't you Henry?"
He nodded, not knowing how to answer.
"That's fine. Be who you are," she said, turning away, a look of disappointment in her eyes. "But I'm an American."

p.60
______________________________________________________________________

"I even got a little green-tea ice cream for dessert."
Marty's face was frozen in a polite grimace. Henry smiled and was grateful for such a kind and thoughtful future daughter-in-law, even if she didn't know that ice cream was Japanese. It didn't matter. He'd learned long ago: perfection isn't what families are all about.

p.146
____________________________________________________________________

"Go home, Chaz." The anger in his voice surprised Henry. He felt the blood drain away from his fists where they clenched the broom handle until his knuckles turned pale.
Chaz spoke softly, a mock gentleness to his voice. "This is my home, this is the United States of America--not the United States of Tokyo."

p.170
____________________________________________________________________

On the long walk home, Keiko stared blankly ahead. The joy of her surprise had popped like a helium balloon, loud and sharp, leaving nothing to hold but a limp string. Still, Henry held the record and tried his best to calm her down. "thank you, this is a wonderful surprise. This is the best present I've ever been given."
"I don't feel very giving, or grateful. Just angry," Keiko said. " I was born here. I don't even speak Japanese. Still, all these people, everywhere I go...they hate me."

p.114
____________________________________________________________________

They're taking them away, Henry thought. They're taking all of them away. There must be five thousand Japanese. How can they take them all? Where will they go?
A few blocks from the station itself, crowds filled the street. There was a mix of crying toddlers, shuffling suitcases, and soldiers checking the paperwork of local citizens-most of whom were dressed in their Sunday best, the one or two suitcases they were allowed packed to the point of bursting. Each person wore a plain white tag, the kind you'd see on a piece of furniture, dangling from a coat button.

p.129
____________________________________________________________________

His father pointed at the door. "If you walk out that door--if you walk out that door now, you are no longer part of this family. You are no longer Chinese. You are not part of us anymore. Not a part of me."
Henry didn't even hesitate. He touched the doorknob, feeling the brass cold and hard in his hand. He looked back, speaking his best Cantonese. "I am what you made me, Father." He opened the heavy door. "I....am an American."

p.185
____________________________________________________________________

Ten thousand? It was a number that still seemed unimaginable to Henry. "With that many people, what's to keep you from just taking over the camp?"
Mr. Okabe poured his wife another cup of tea. "Ah, that's a very profound question, Henry. And it's one I've thought about. There are probably two hundred guards and army personnel--and there are so many of us. Even if you counted just the men, we'd have a whole regiment in here. You know what keeps us from doing just that?"
Henry shook his head. He had no idea.
"Loyalty. We're still loyal to the United States of America. Why? Because we too are Americans. We don't agree, but we will show our loyalty by our obedience. Do you understand, Henry?"

p.229
____________________________________________________________________

I love her. Henry paused at the thought. He didn't even know what that was, or what it mean, but he felt it, burning in his chest--feeling fuzzy inside. Nothing else seemed to matter. No the somber crowd of camp workers drifting to the barbed-wire gate. Not the machine guns in the towers above.
Henry began to wave, then lowered his hand slowly as the words, "I love you" rolled off his tongue. She was too far away to hear it, or maybe he didn't make a sound, but she knew, and her mouth echoed the same statement as her hand touched her heart and pointed at Henry. He simply smiled and nodded, turning back to the gate.

p.234
____________________________________________________________________

Walking home with Ethel, Henry knew he had much to do. He had to help his mother prepare a funeral. He had to pack for his trip to China. And he had to find a suitable engagement ring. Something he would do with a certain sadness.
He'd do what he always did, find the sweet among the bitter.

p.265

The Handmaid's Tale

2009-05-01T03:08:00.000-07:00

It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.
Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control.
I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen?
That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.
Look out, said Moira to me, over the phone. Here it comes.
Here what comes? I said.
You wait, she said. They've been building up to this. It's you and me up against the wall, baby. She was quoting an expression of my mother's, but she wasn't intending to be funny.

p.174
___________________________________________________________________

I try to congure, to raise my own spirits, from wherever they are. I need to remember what they look like. I try to hold them still behind my eyes, their faces, like pictures in an album. But they won't stay still for me, they move, there's a smile and it's gone, their features curl and bend as if the paper's burning, blackness eats them. A glimpse, a pale shimmer on the air; a glow, aurora, dance of electrons, then a face again, faces. But they fade, though I stretch out my arms towards them, they slip away from me, ghosts at daybreak. Back to wherever they are. Stay with me, I want to say. But they won't.
It's my fault. I am forgetting too much.

p.193
___________________________________________________________________

The pen between my fingers is sensuous, alive almost, I can feel its power, the power of the words it contains. Pen Is Envy, Aunt Lydia would say, quoting another Center motto, warning us away from such objects. And they were right, it is envy. Just holding it is envy. I envy the Commander his pen. It's one more thing I would like to steal.

p.186
____________________________________________________________________

Are they old enough to remember anything of the time before, playing baseball, in jeans and sneakers, riding their bicycles? Reading books, all by themselves? even though some of them are no more than fourteen-Start them soon is the policy, there's not a moment to be lost-still they'll remember. And the ones after them will, for three or four or five years; but after that they won't. They'll always have been in white, in groups of girls; they'll always have been silent.

p.219
____________________________________________________________________

I saw your mother, Moira said.
Where? I said. I felt jolted, thrown off. I realized I'd been thinking of her as dead.
Not in person, it was in that film they showed us, about the Colonies. There was a close-up, it was her all right. She was wrapped up in one of those gray things but I know it was her.
Thank God, I said.
Why, thank God? said Moira.
I thought she was dead.
She might as well be, said Moira. You should wish it for her.

p.252
____________________________________________________________________

The three bodies hang there, even with the white sacks over their heads looking curiously stretched, like chickens strung up by the necks in a meatshop window; like birds with their wings clipped, like flightless birds, wrecked angels. It's hard to take your eyes off them. Beneath the hems of the dresses the feet dangle, two pairs of red shoes, one pair of blue. It it weren't for the ropes and the sacks it could be a kind of dance, a ballet, caught by flash-camera: midair. They look arranged. They look like show biz. It must have been Aunt Lydia who put the blue one in the middle.
"Today's Salvaging is now concluded," Aunt Lydia announces in to the mike.

p.277
____________________________________________________________________

At the corner we turn to one another in the usual way.
"Under His Eye," says the new, treacherous Ofglen.
"Under His Eye," I say, trying to sound fervent. As if such play-acting could help, now that we've come this far.
The she does an odd thing. She leans forward, so that the stiff white blinkers on our heads are almost touching, so that I can see her pale beige eyes up close, the delicate web of lines across her cheeks, and whispers, very quickly, her voice faint as dry leaves.
"She hanged herself," she says. "After the Salvaging. She saw the van coming for her. It was better."
Then she's walking away from me down the street.

p.285
____________________________________________________________________

Dear God, I think, I will do anything you like. Now that you've let me off, I'll obliterate myself, if that's what you really want; I'll empty myself, truly, become a chalice. I'll give up Nick, I'll forget about the others. I'll stop complaining. I'll accept my lot. I'll sacrifice. I'll repent. I'll abdicate. I'll renounce.
I know this can't be right but I think it anyway. Everything they taught at the Red Center, everything I've resisted, comes flooding in. I don't want pain. I don't want to be a dancer, my feet in the air, my head a faceless oblong of white cloth. I don't want to be a doll hung up on the Wall. I don't want to be a wingless angel. I want to keep on living, in any form. I resign my body freely, to uses of others. They can do what they like with me. I am abject.
I feel, for the first time, their true power.

p.286
____________________________________________________________________

The van waits in the driveway, its double doors stand open. The two of them, one on either side now, take me by the elbows to help me in. Whether this is my end or a new beginning I have no way of knowing: I have given myself over into the hands of strangers, because it can't be helped.
And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light.

p.295

The Cellist of Sarajevo

2009-04-29T03:16:00.000-07:00

The cellist opens his eyes. The sadness she saw in his face is gone. She doesn't know where it went. His arms rise, and his left hand grips the neck of the cello, his right guides the bow to its throat. It is the ost beautiful thing she has ever seen. When the first notes sound they are, to her, inaudible. Sound has vanished from the world.
She leans back into the wall. She's no longer there. Her mother is lifting her up, spinning her around and laughing. The warm tongue of a dog licks her arm. There's a rush of air as a snowball flies past her face. She slips on someone else's blood and lands on her side, a severed arm almost touching her nose. In a movie theater, a boy she likes kisses her and puts his hand on her stomach. She exhales, ad pulls the trigger.
Then sound returns to the word.

p.62
Arrow is a sniper and she is guarding the cellist so no one kills him. This is what happens to her when she hears his music.
____________________________________________________________________

"if we stay they will shoot at us from the hills until we're all dead, and then they'll come down just the same."
"The world will never allow that. They'll have to help us sooner or later." she says. He's not sure from her tone of voice if she believes what she says. He doesn't know how she could. They must both see the the same city disintegrating around them.
"No one is coming." His voice is harsher than he means it to be. "We're here on our own, and no one's come to help us. Don't you know that?"
Emina looks down, and fastens the top two buttons on her coat. She puts her hands in her pockets. After a while she says, very quietly, "I know no one is coming. I just don't want to believe it."

p.73
Interaction between Dragan and Emina while waiting to cross a dangerous intersection and bridge.
____________________________________________________________________

"I didn't need it. She didn't have to give me the cherries, either." Emina shrugs. "Isn't that how we're supposed to behave? Isn't that how we used to be?"
"I don't know, "Dragan says. "I can't remember if we were like that, or just think we were. It seems impossilbe to remember what things were like." And he suspects this is what the men on the hills want most. They would, of course, like to kill them all, but if they can't, they would like to make them forget how they used to be, how civilized people act. He wonders how long it will take before they succeed.

p.77
____________________________________________________________________

" A woman has a friend come to visit," Emina says, her voice quick and light. "The friend comes in, and the woman asks if she would a coffee. 'No.' the friend says,'thanks, I'm fine.' The woman says, 'Great, now I can take a shower.'"
Dragan laughs, even though he's heard the joke before. There are a half-dozen variations on it, but in each one the woman manages to do something large with an absurdly small amount of water. It's not far from the truth. Dragan is now able to wash his whole body with half a liter of water. A quarter to wash, a quarter to rinse. It's not the same, but it works. It's a treat if the water is warm.

p.111
____________________________________________________________________

His head leans back slightly, and she sees that his eyes are closed, that he's no longer looking through his scope. She knows what he's doing. It's very clear to her, unmistakable. He's listening to the music. And then Arrow knows why he didn't fire yesterday.

p.135
Arrow is getting ready to kill the sniper whose job it is to kill the cellist but she hesitates after seeing his reaction to the cellist's music.
____________________________________________________________________

He's tired. He's tired from getting water, and he's tired from the world he lives in, a world he never wanted and had no part in creating and wishes didn't exist. He's tired of carrying water for a woman who has never had a kind word to say to him, who acts as if she's doing him a favor, whose bottles don't have handles and who refuses to switch. If she likes the bottles so much, she should carry them to the brewery, she should watch as the streets fill with blood and then washes itself clean, as a man stands with an empty leash and looks for a brown terrier while the dead are loaded into a van.
Kenan gets up off the ground. He looks back to the bridge, at the spot where he hid Mrs. Ristovski's water. He turns away, and picks up the rope binding his own bottles. His back bends into its yoke. The water rises into the air. Kenan takes a step and then another. Soon he will be home.

p.152
____________________________________________________________________

SPOILER ALERT

She closes her eyes, recalls the notes she heard only yesterday, a melody that is no longer there but feels very close. Her lips move, and a moment before the door splinters off its hinges she says, hervlice strong and quiet, "My name is Alisa."

p.231

A Reliable Wife

2009-04-25T09:58:00.000-07:00

Then Catherine watched the angel rise into the dark night sky, his arms empty. Alice lay unredeemed, as inert as an abandoned doll. Catherine knew it was too late; there was an abandonment of hope. Her sister couldn't be saved.

p. 179
______________________________________________________________________

She might wound him, she might lie to him, and still he would do anything to hear one word of kindness from her lips, to feel his flesh touch her flesh without humiliation. He was willing to take the chance. And all this because she had stepped from the train with a small scarlet bird in a cage, and she was coming home to him, bringing a fluttering life. He was at last waiting for someone whose name was known to him. People saw her come home to him, people in his town. She smiled at him, and he knew then that he would die for her.

p.192
____________________________________________________________________

The moonlight shone through the window. The faint blue light caught the glass of water by the bed, and he suddenly felt so thirsty he thought he would die. He reached out and held the glass in his hands for a long moment. He smelled it and paused, but only for a second. Then he drank the water, drank all the water, and with the first sip, from the faint smell and the bitter aftertaste, he knew the water was tainted. He looked into the bottom of the beautiful Italian glass. He looked at his lovely wife, sleeping peacefully as a child in the moonlight. He remembered Florence, his days of indolence. He knew he was being poisoned.
And he didn't care. He just didn't care anymore.

p.198-199
____________________________________________________________________

It was just a story of how the bitter cold gets into your bones and never leaves you, of how the memories get into your heart and never leave you alone, of the pain and the bitterness of what happens to you when you're small and have no defenses but still know evil when it happens, of secrets aobut evil you have no one to tell, of the life you live in secret, knowing your own pain and the pain of others but helpless to do anything other than the things you do, and it end it all comes to.

p.280

The Geometry of Sisters

2009-04-25T09:56:00.000-07:00

No friendship could be enough. Lucy had Pell. And I didn't have Carrie. A friend was wonderful, but my broken heart ached for my sister. My mother was acting odd; it scared me. The world was going crazy, and I wasn't sure how much of it I could take.

p.144

Wintergirls

2009-04-25T09:22:00.000-07:00

....When I was a real girl, with two parents and one house and no blades flashing, breakfast was granola topped with fresh strawberries, always eaten while reading a book propped up on the fruit bowl. At Cassie's house we'd eat waffles with thin syrup that came from maple trees, not the fake corn syrup stuff, and we'd read the funny pages....

p.7
_____________________________________________________________________

In the pecking order of fifth grade, I was closer to the top than the bottom because my parents were rich and my dad had met the president of the United States. In the complex math of elementary school, I was a whole number, not a fraction.

.40
____________________________________________________________________

I inscribe three lines, hush hush hush, into my skin. Ghosts trickle out.

p.61
____________________________________________________________________

....I started coming here after the first ~~prison~~ clinic stay because Dr. N. Parker is a ~~scam artist~~ specialist in ~~crazy teenagers~~ troubled adolescents. I opened my mouth during the first couple of visits and gave her a key to open my head. Ginormous mistake. She brought her lantern and a hard hat and lots of rope to wander through my caves. She laid land mines in my skull that detonated weeks later.

. 114
____________________________________________________________________

The final eight minutes march past in silent formation until the timer on her desk dings.
"So, can I go to the funeral?" I ask.
She reaches for her shoes. "Do you understand why you want to go to the funeral?"
~~To make sure they bury her in concrete so she'll leave me alone.~~ "I feel that I need some closure about this. "
"And the funeral will provide that?
Yes, that's what I just said. "I've given it a lot of thought."
The clock ticks by two bonus minutes. I roll the hair of strangers into a ball.
"It's a good idea." She slips her shoes on and stands up. "But have one of your parents go with you. Nobody should ever go to a funeral alone."

P.118
____________________________________________________________________

The next passage is a glimpse into the internet chat rooms where girls meet up to help support each other with their weight loss. For me this was extremely scary and unnerving.

***
im bulimic have been for six years recently tried to recover gained a lot of weight now im sliping back and cant stand the weight any longer
***

***
what doess everyone think is the least amount of day you could lose 25 pounds?
***

I am so disgustingly, horribly fat. Today i went for a 2 hour run and starved myself till dinner where i ate like a pig. Sometimes i feel so fucking helpless.
****

p.129
____________________________________________________________________

I go up two flights and tiptoe across the polished floor of her bedroom, sloooooowly turn the doorknob, and open her bathroom door a crack. A breath of steam trickles out, filled with the sobs of a grown woman breaking into girl-sized pieces.
I close the door.

p.149
____________________________________________________________________

I showed her how I'd been making tiny cuts in my skin to let the badness and the pain leak out. They were shallow at first, and short, like claw marks made by a desperate cat that wanted to hid under the front porch. Cutting pain was a different flavor of hurt. It made it easier not to think about having my body and my family and my life stolen, made it easier not to care....

p.166
____________________________________________________________________

My fingers reach through the screen and comb through the garbage until they find the home of the shrieking chorus, hungry girls singing endless anthems while our throats bleed and rust and fill up with loneliness. I could scroll through these songs for the rest o my life and never find the beginning.

p.175
____________________________________________________________________

Two days later, two days before Christmas, I am judged fat and sane enough to be kicked out of the hospital. The plan to send me straight back to New Seasons won't work. There is no room at the inn for a leather Lia-skin plumped full of messy things. Not yet. The director promises ~~Mom~~ Dr. Marrigan he'll have a bed for me next week.
I'm stable enough to go home until then. They all say I'm stable.
I failed eating, failed drinking, failed not cutting myself into shreds. Failed friendship. Failed sisterhood and daughterhood. Failed mirrors and scales and phone calls.
Good thing I'm stable.

p.227
____________________________________________________________________

I breathe in slowly. Food is life. I exhale, take another breath. Food is life. And that's the problem. When you're alive, people can hurt you. It's easier to crawl into a bone cage or a snowdrift of confusion. It's easier to lock everybody out.
But it's a lie.

p.275
____________________________________________________________________

There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.

I am thawing.

p.278

If I Stay

2009-04-20T19:28:00.000-07:00

If I Stay by Gayle Forman

Then, when Yo-Yo Ma played "Le Grand Tango," Adam reached over and grasped my hand. In any other context, this would have been cheesy, the old yawn-and-cop-a-feel move. But Adam wasn't looking at me. His eyes were closed and he was swaying slightly in his seat. He was lost in the music, too. I squeezed his hand back and we sat there like that for the rest of the concert.

p.32
_____________________________________________________________________

Adam seemed to sense that I was upset. He pulled the car off onto a logging road and turned to me. "Mia, Mia, Mia," he said, stroking the tendrils of my hair that had escaped from the wig. "This is the you I like. You definitely dressed sexier and are, you know, blond, and that's different. But the you who you are tonight is the same you I was in love with yesterday, the same you I'll be in love with tomorrow. I love that you're fragile and tough, quiet and kick-ass. Hell, you're one of the punkest girls I know, no matter who you listen to or what you wear."
After that, whenever I started to doubt Adam's feelings, I'd think about my wig, gathering dust in my closet, and it would bring back the memory of that night. And then I wouldn't feel insecure. I'd just feel lucky.

p.84

The Lost Quilter

2009-04-20T19:15:00.000-07:00

The Lost Quilter by Jennifer Chiaverini

"This here's Ashworth land. See that pretty woman with the shawl? That's my wife. The little one next to her, that's your mama."
Joanna's heart leaped. She shaded her eyes with her hands and studied the distant figure, but she was too far away to see the woman's face clearly. "And my daddy?" she asked the groom eagerly. "Is my daddy out there, too?"
The groom regarded her incredulously. "Girl, your daddy's Marse Ashworth. Everybody knows that. " He chuckled and shook the reins, urging the horses to resume a faster pace.

p. 58

______________________________________________________________________

His eyebrows rose. "Ruthie? That won't do. Let's say instead ...Calpurnia. The wife of Caesar." He turned to his wife. "This one must be above reproach, isn't that so, dear?"
The mistress smiled, so he must have made a joke, although Joanna didn't find anything amusing. "Perhaps it's a bit much for such a little one," the mistress replied demurely.
"Something simpler, then. Julianna? No. Julia."
Just in time, Joanna remembered not to protest. She held herself motionless, while the master dipped his pen, turned the pages of his ledger, and wrote, "Julia, quadroon female. Sired on Joanna by Titus. Value twenty dollars."
"You may go, Joanna, " said the mistress before the ink dried.

p. 174
____________________________________________________________________

"Titus isn't coming with us, " said Miss Evangeline, shaking her head, brow furrowing. " My husband already has a groom. Even if my husband had dozens of horses and no one to tend them, I can't imagine my father would part with Titus. My father relies upon him too dearly."
A sudden roaring filled Joanna's ears. She gripped the edge of the bureau for support. "My baby," she said. "I can bring Ruthie, right, miss?"
Miss Evangeline fixed her with a cool, flinty stare that confirmed Joanna's worst fears.

p.181

Wicked Lovely

2009-04-13T07:47:00.000-07:00

Keenan was staring at her, too intently for comfort. "I don't know why certain people shine for others. I don't know why you and not someone else." He gently pulled her forward and whispered, "But it's you I think of when I wake each morning. It's your face in my dreams."

p.137
______________________________________________________________________

He interrupted, "There's nothing for you to be sorry for. You're not wrong. I'm not upset with you. It's him-" He stopped. He didn't move, just stood there in the middle of the room, watching her. "You're what matters."
"Hold me? If you still want to, I mean." She looked away.
"Every day"- then he was there, lifting her into his arms, holding her like she was fragile and precious- "I want to hold you every day. Nothing will ever change that."

p.203

Against Medical Advice

2009-04-06T08:24:00.001-07:00

One afternoon my father takes me to my favorite Chinese restaurant, and when the waiter places my meal in front of me, I just stare ahead with a long string of drool hanging down from my mouth. I imagine I'll never forget the sad look on my father's face as he watches me try to eat, to function on the most basic leve.
I'm not living the life everyone else is living. I'm not here anymore.

p.111
____________________________________________________________________

Before I get to the front door at school, I do my leg shuffle, followed by a brand-new tic that seems to have developed just for the occasion. Every few seconds, I punch the air three times in a row, then bring my fist to my chest for a beat, then punch again. I do this one or two more times before getting to the door. What a way to start.

p.135

Sarah's Key

2009-04-06T08:09:00.000-07:00

I caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror as we glided p. I looked as eroded as the groaning lift. What had happened to the fresh-faced belle from Boston, Mass.? The woman who stared back at me was at the dreaded age between forty-five and fifty, that no-man's land of sag, oncoming wrinkle, and stealthy approach of menopause.
"I hate this elevator, too," I said grimly.
Zoe grinned and pinched my cheek.
"Mom, even Gwyneth Paltrow would look like hell in that mirror."
I had to smile. That was such a Zoe-like remark.

p. 6
____________________________________________________________________

"You know what I find most shocking about the Vel'd'Hiv?" Guillaume said. "Its code name."
I knew the answer to that, thanks to my extensive reading.
"Operation Spring Breeze, " I murmured.
p.49
____________________________________________________________________

I wanted to say sorry, I wanted to tell her I could not forget the roundup, the camp, Michel's death, and the direct train to Auschwitz that had taken her parents away forever. Sorry for what? he had retaliated, why should I, an American, feel sorry, hadn't my fellow countrymen freed France in June 1944? I had nothing to be sorry for, he laughed.
I had looked at him straight in the eyes.
"Sorry for not knowing. Sorry for being forty-five years old and not knowing."

p.192
____________________________________________________________________

Zakhor. Al Tichkah.
Remember. Never forget.

p.261

The Girl She Used To Be

2009-04-04T06:42:00.000-07:00

I am tired of living, but what keeps me from dragging a blade across my wrist or diving off one of the crippled bridges that cross the polluted rivers my motel rooms predictably border is the idea of life-that somehow, someday, I will figure a way to experience what it is like to live in unfettered happiness, to bask in the freedom of security, and finally understand the person I am supposed to be.
I am tired of....dreaming about it.
The digital clock on the nightstand reads 10:38 P.M. and I can't help but think the night is young. Somewhere.
I open the door to my motel room and walk away.

p.98
______________________________________________________________________

"Melody," he says, grabbing a blanket from the closet and wrapping it around me, "you don't need to seduce me." He takes a step closer and cups my face with his hands and says, "I'm yours already."

p.191
____________________________________________________________________

I don't have a name.
I don't know what to do.
The only thing I know for certain is that I must begin to heal. Just like every time my life was re-created, I had to begin restoring the foundered part of my being: the lost relationships, the familiarity of a neighborhood, the sense of the person I might have been. There is an algebraic term for the technique for distributing two binomials, called the FOIL method. It stands for first, outer; inner, last. And that is exactly how I have learned to repair myself time after time: from the outside in.

p.233
____________________________________________________________________

My interest-okay, obsession-with math is genuine, and has been since the first time I was ripped away from the life I loved. I buried myself in numbers and word problems where an answer was certain (or at least in the back of the book) and I knew I'd found something I could count on.

p.5
____________________________________________________________________

www.davidcristofano.com

Shelter Me

2009-03-30T05:02:00.000-07:00

Shelter Me- Juliette Fay

"Any priest who says he never gets lonely is a liar. Nothing makes you immune to loneliness. Not God, not marriage, not even sex." For some reason, haring him say that word out loud made Janie blush, and she busied herself with straightening Carly's sun hat. Jake went on: "But loneliness has a purpose. It makes room for something. It's built to make us reach out. That's not such a bad thing."

p. 105

Living Dead Girl

2009-03-25T17:53:00.000-07:00

Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott

The day I got too tall to wear the white dress with short, puffy sleeves and little tucks along the chest, he filled the kitchen sink with water and shoved my head into it.

p.29
______________________________________________________________________

The thing is, you can have that kind of power, and everyone in those audiences knows it. That's why they yell. That's why the say YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING.
They have power too.
I'd like to see them with it taken away. I'd like to see What They'd Do then.

p.41
______________________________________________________________________

He is breathing faster now and pulls me toward him, a yank on my ankles drawing my rag-doll body in, lower half pushed against him.
"You'll hold her," he says, and everything I own is easily pushed down, away, clothes falling off me like water.
"You'll hold her and I'll love her."
He grins at me. "You'll like that, won't you?"
I nod because he wants me to. I nod because I will. She will get his love and I will hold her down to take it all because then there will be none for me.
I cannot save myself, and I do not want to save her.

p.73
____________________________________________________________________

Look at her. Little girl, Ray will want her, and I will be alone, my skin my own. Thought washing over me again and again, joy.

p.89
____________________________________________________________________

"Sickos," he said. "They just want to look. They don't want to take care of someone. Aren't capable of it. Don't know what love really is." Wrinkled his face, shaking his head. "I feel sorry for them. Don't you?"
Hot hand on my head, blessing curse. Love, Ray would say. My special love for my special girl.

p.95
____________________________________________________________________

Pointing at a woman struggling with the hands of two little girls at the bus stop, angry-faced and exhausted-looking, quick smack one, two, on the back of the girls' heads.
"Who could hurt a child like that?" he says, "Someone should report her. I hope someone does. Children should be loved. They are love."

p.112

Handle With Care

2009-03-22T19:32:00.000-07:00

Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult

"You don't have to say I love you to say I love you," you said with a shrug. "All you have to do is say my name and I know."
"How?"
When I looked down at you, I was struck by how much of myself I could see in the shape of your eyes, in the light of your smile. "Sa Cassidy," you instructed.
"Cassidy."
"Say...Ursula."
"Ursula," I parroted.
"Now....," and you pointed to your own chest.
"Willow."
"Can't you hear it?" you said. " When you love someone, you say their name different. Like it's safe inside your mouth."

p.172
____________________________________________________________________

There are legions of us, I realized. The mothers who have broken babies, and spend the rest of our lives wondering if we should have spared them. And the mothers who have let their broken babies go, who look at our children and see instead the faces of the ones they never met.
"They gave me a choice," Annie said, "and even now, I wish they hadn't."

p.191
____________________________________________________________________

"You can't win. Either you have the baby and wear your pain on the outside, or you don't have the baby and you keep that ache in you forever. I know I didn't do the wrong thing. But I don't feel like I did the right thing, either."

p.191
____________________________________________________________________

Here are the things I know for sure:
When you think you're right, you are most likely wrong.
Things that break-be they bones, hearts, or promises-can be put back together but will never really be whole.
And, in spite of what I said, you can miss a person you've never known.
I learn this over and over again, every day I spend without you.

p.475

Who By Fire

2009-03-22T19:13:00.000-07:00

Who By Fire by Diana Spechler

Eventually, we were rescued. One of the eight-man crew boats, filled with Harvard students, rowed right up to us. The coswain yelled, "Weigh 'nuff!" and then, "Set the boat!" and one by one, someone from the boat jumped into the polluted water and helped one of us in. First my father (who had shouted that he needed to be saved first so he could help his children), then Ash, then me.

**this is where I really started to not like the father in this story..what an ass! To be saved before his two children????
p. 30
______________________________________________________________________

In fact, I hadn't even known the extent to which Alena had been haunting me, hadn't known she'd been resting under my skin like a hard-to-reach itch, until I saw what my heart felt like when I could finally fill it with something new.

p. 65
____________________________________________________________________

And even though I didn't want to, I knew at that second that I was going to sleep with him. And guess whose fault that was. Ash's.

p.73
____________________________________________________________________

Bit's is describing her need to have sex.....

There was---okay---fifth grade, right after Alena disappeared, when I started fooling around with a seventh-grader named Teddy--the sweet boy with the red hair-lying naked with hiim behind the big maroon curtain on the auditorium stage. That was way before sex-ed classes, way before puberty, even before armpit hair. So kids talked. But at age ten, what could I do? Explain to my fellow fifth-graders what it felt like to lose a sister, and to have parents who, instead of trying to sew the hole up, ripped it open wider every day? Tell them about the rush of white noise in my head, the throbbing in my chest; the way sex, or whatever it was Teddy and I were doing, felt like the only way to dull the edges of things? So I said nothing. I let them talk.

p.127
____________________________________________________________________

"everything is a choice," I say, but I'm not even sure I've said it aloud, until Chaim responds, "Even guilt is a choice."

p.303

Laika

2009-03-13T16:56:00.000-07:00

Laika by Nick Abadzis

Setting: Yelena is talking to the dogs in their cages. She's talking to Albina....

"What would you say if you could talk?"

"Let me out" "Let me go." "What's it like to touch space?" "Being shot in a tin missile up into the sky?" "It's noisy, frightening and very dangerous." "Let me go."

p.87
____________________________________________________________________

Scene: Chief Designer is talking to Dr. Gazenko

CD: "I only hope that the technical achievement of Sputnik II will outweigh the sad but necessary sacrifice of one small dog."

DG: "Indeed."

CD: " Now, let's go over some dates. The dogs will need to arrive at the launch ground on the 29th...And I must tell you about the radio broadcast."

DG: is not paying attention at this moment and instead is focusing his attention on Laika being put into her space suit and taken over to the space pod. The look on Laika's face is so sad and the doctor is overcome with guilt, frustration, and sadness.

DG: "Excuse me for a moment, gentlemen."

DG: leaves the control room and goes to the men's restroom. There he enters a stall and sits down with his head in his hands and starts to cry.....

DG: "I'm sorry, Kudryava (Laika's original name)....I'm sorry Yelena...."

p. 139
____________________________________________________________________

The pages from 162-186 broke my heart. I can't post the quotes because that would be 24 pages but if you read this book, please remember these pages...I'm sure the images will invoke the same feelings they did in me. Sadness, loss of friendship, betrayal, confusion, hatred, and sorrow.

Fade

2009-03-13T16:26:00.000-07:00

Fade by Lisa McMann

In the evening, as they lie together in Cabel's bed, she knows it's time. Before she reads the green notebook, before what happens, happens, she needs to say what she feels. Because he is the only one who matters.
She practices in her mind.
Forms the words with her mouth.
Then tries them, softly, out loud.

"I love you, Cabe."

He's quiet, and she wonders if he's sleeping.
But then he buries his face in her neck.

p.102
____________________________________________________________________

Wake

2009-03-09T06:59:00.000-07:00

Wake by Lisa McMann

And then they play truth or dare.

Carrie alternates: truth, dare, truth, dare.
Melinda always picks truth.
And then there's Janie.

Janie never picks truth.
She's a dare girl.
That way, nobody gets inside.
She can't afford to let anyone inside.
They might find out about her secret.

p.11
_____________________________________________________________________

The director smiles. She hands Janie an envelope. "this is for you," she says.
"What is it?"
"I don't know. It's something from Miss Stubin. We found it in her belongings after the coroner came. Open it."
Janie's eyes grow wide. Her fingers shake a little. She breaks open the seal and pulls out a folded piece of stationery. When she opens it, a small piece of paper flutters to the ground. She reads. The handwriting is barely legible. Crooked. Written with a blind hand.

Dear Janie,
Thank you for my dreams.
From one catcher to another,
Martha Stubin
P.S. You have more power than you think.

Janie's heart stutters. She draws in a breath. No, she thinks. Impossible.

p. 109
____________________________________________________________________

Dream
1:03 p.m.

He's sitting in a dark jail cell. Alone. Above his head is a sign that says, "Drug Pusher."
Janie watches from outside the cell.
His head is down.

The scene changes abruptly.

He's in Janie's room, sitting on the floor, writing something on a pad of paper. Alone. He looks up at her, beckoning her with his eyes. She takes a few steps forward.

He holds up the notepad.
It's not what you think.
That's what it says.

He tears off that sheet of paper. Below it is another sheet in his handwriting.
I think I'm in love with you.

Janie's stomach lurches.

He looks at the tablet for a long moment. Then he turns to Janie and rips off one more sheet. He watches her face as she reads it.
Hows do you like my new trick?

He grins at her, and fades.
The scene changes again. Back in the jail cell. The sign above his head is gone.
He is alone. She watches from outside. His head is down. Then he looks up at her.
A ring of keys floats in front of her.
"Let me out," he says. "Help me."

Janie is startled. She moves automatically and unlocks the cell. He walks to her, takes her in his arms. He looks into her eyes. He sinks his fingers into her hair and kisses her. Janie steps out of herself as she's kissing Cabel. She walks away into a dark hallway and eases herself back to awareness in the library.

She blinks.
Sits up.
Looks at him.
He's still asleep at his table.
She rubs her eyes and wonders:

How the hell did he do that?
And.
Now what?

p. 146-147

I Love You, Beth Cooper

2009-03-09T06:31:00.000-07:00

I Love You, Beth Cooper
by Larry Doyle

Behind her. Behind her. Be-hind her," Rich incanted, like a poorly written television attorney. "She never saw you."
Rich stepped back for his close-up.
"You don't exist."
This was a persuasive argument. Denis knew what it felt like to not exist, and didn't much care for it. He doubted it would hold much sway with Dr. Henneman, who existence nobody doubted. He scanned his memory again, for even the slightest scrap of logic behind this monumental blunder, and there was Rich again.
"If you don't do this," Rich said, pausing to imply quotation marks before croaking out of the side of his mouth in a quasi-tough-guy voice:
"You will regret it, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life."
"What?" Denis said.
"Bogart, dude!"

p.18
____________________________________________________________________

"Instead, she bowed her head and whispered, Drugs?"
"Oh? No," Denis flustered, "not drugs. They're whack," quoting a health education video that could use some updating. "No, by influence, I meant my thinking process was influenced, negatively impacted, by which I mean....Rich Munsch."
Dr. Henneman smiled. This would be perfect for her blog, The UnCertainty Principal, the twelfth most popular high school principal blog in the state.

p.20
____________________________________________________________________

Dennis watched horror-struck as, across the cafeteria, Kevin was introducing Cammy and Treece to two of his army buddies.
Oh no.
Beth and Kevin were being officially inducted into a social circle. Soon they would become Beth & kevin, then Beth'n'Kev, and eventually Bevin.
It did not look good for Deneth.

p.32
____________________________________________________________________

Denis took a calcaneus to the temple. He staggered backward into a corner, trapped. So this was it: boned to death in his own room. Not exactly the tragedy he had always dreamed about. He thought of his mother finding his bloody pulped remains, and then he thought of that copy of Celebrity Sleuth: Women of Fantasy 15 on the floor, lying open to topless shots of Kristanna Loken, the Terminatrix. Embarrassing. If he had time, he would try to eat the magazine before he died.

p.87
______________________________________________________________________

The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain

2009-03-08T10:39:00.000-07:00

The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain
by Peter Sis

From his journals:

April 1956

My father's cousin Lamin is in prison as an enemy of the state. My grandmother talks to my parents about it in German so my sister and I won't understand. But we understand some of it. He was on a national volleyball team that was going to a tournament in the West, and the players were all planning to stay there. The secret police found out. Lamin is twenty years old and will be in prison for the rest of his life.
____________________________________________________________________

November 3, 1957

The Soviet Union launched a rocket carrying a little dog named Laika into space. I wonder how the dog is going to land?
____________________________________________________________________

March 1959

There is a story in our schoolbook about a Russian man who is a class enemy. he hides his wheat harvest in his cellar instead of giving it to the village cooperative. His son, who is a Young Pioneer, finds out and reports it. The family kills the boy. His name is Pavka Morozov. He is a hero. We are told that if we see our parents doing wrong, we should report them.
____________________________________________________________________

May 1966

A group of guys with long hair meet in front of the National Museum and get chased by the police. When they are caught, the police pull out scissors and give them haircuts.
____________________________________________________________________

January-February 1969

Jan Palach and Jan Zajic, students, set themselves on fire to "wake up the nation from lethargy."
____________________________________________________________________

SOMETIMES DREAMS COME TRUE.
ON NOVEMBER 9, 1989, THE WALL FELL.

SKIM

2009-03-07T05:19:00.001-08:00

SKIM
words by Mariko Tamaki
drawings by Jillian Tamaki

Mrs. Hornet said she's particularly concerned about people like me, because people like me are prone to depression and depressing stimuli.

Mrs. Hornet says students who are members of the "gothic" culture (i.e. ME) are very fragile.

Truthfully I am always a little depressed but that is just because I am sixteen and everyone is stupid (ha-ha-ha). I doubt it has anything to do with being a goth.

John Reddear was on the VOLLEYBALL TEAM, not a goth, and he KILLED HIMSELF!!!!

How come all the girls on the soccer team aren't in counseling?

p. 22
____________________________________________________________________

p. 86 the pictures describe how Skim and Hien, a vietname girl that was adopted, are at a slumber party when they're 13 and are shoved outside by all of the other girls who are pretending that there is an air raid. They lock the door and laugh at them and don't let them back inside.

These drawings remind me of how cruel kids are to each other. Here's a quote from that scene.....

Hien's parents adopted her from Vietnam two years earlier and she never got invited to parties. Maybe she thought that's how people left parties in Canada. Asians first.

(Skim is Asian too)

p. 86
____________________________________________________________________

This is the stuff that I have heard about John since he died:

1) That he was happy, outgoing and athletic, and he liked volleyball and music.

2) That he was secretly suffering from depression.

3) That he was MAYBE a star volleyball player and depressed person who was ALSO in love with a boy who was on the St. Michael's second-string volleyball team.

Maybe this is why he decided to overdose on his mother's heart pills. (Note: Lisa said she never said he shot himself. It was just a RUMOR)

No one talked about John being gay at the ceremony.

Surprise, surprise.

Although Julie Peters practically ripped Anna Canard's tongue out when she brought it up afterwards.

P.S. No one knows if the boy from the volleyball team loved John back....

pgs. 94-95
____________________________________________________________________

Dear Diary,
I think there are a lot of way to be marked.

If you are ugly, like Natasha Cake who has no eyebrows and doesn't wash her hair, then you are marked to be treated like crap for life.

I have eyebrows and wash but I think I am solos marked to some degree (biologically) as a weirdo for life. (Mom says that there is nothing about my appearance that I don't contribute to with my habits.)

People can also mark you. Scott Bouffant marked me in grade nine with a disgusting hickey that didn't go away for a week.

Me= slut for a whole week.

(He never even called me afterwards because I wouldn't give him a handjob-BECAUSE I'D JUST MET HIM!!!!)

Lisa's mother got drunk once and told us that all relationships leave a scare. Lisa said her mothe was talking about VD (=Venereal Disease- I had to look it up.) Lisa said you could have a VD and not even know it.

I think everything you do and everything people do to you leaves a mark, or at least if affects who you are.

pgs. 124-125

Love and Other Natural Disasters

2009-03-05T18:23:00.000-08:00

Love and Other Natural Disasters by Holly Shumas

"Attending to someone outside of the marriage robs your partner of the intimacy they deserve."
"You needed a book to tell you that?" I wished I could believe his conversion, but it seemed a little too convenient and showy, like something you'd find in a revival tent.

p. 111
____________________________________________________________________

I was tired of being jealous of Laney. There, I'd admitted it to myself. I had two children by this man; I shouldn't have had to feel jealous of anyone. I should have had a secure place in the world. I shouldn't have had to wonder why he'd stopped writing that e-mail, if he planned to finish it later, or if he'd just gone ahead and called her instead.

p. 144
____________________________________________________________________

I found myself wishing Thanksgiving had never happened. I liked to think Jon would have come to his senses after Olivia was born and ended things with Laney on his own. If he had, I would never have been the wiser. I would never have had to rethink my entire relationship with him. I wouldn't have lost my best friend, my family. But once you know there's no Santa Claus, you can never convince yourself otherwise.

p. 153
_____________________________________________________________________

I liked to think of myself as being without regrets. Rationally, I knew they were useless. But I was a person with a thousand "what-ifs." the funny thing is that if you follow your what-ifs back far enough, they become someone else's: What if my mother had been impregnanted by someone who actually gave a damn? What if my father had stepped up and decided to be a better man once he knew he was having a kid? That's when you realize just how foolish it is to retrace your steps when all you can really do is take a good, hard look around and walk forward.
I wasn't the tattoo type, but if I had been, I'd have an anklet that read: this is your life, so now what?

p.332
____________________________________________________________________

Still Alice

2009-03-01T11:21:00.001-08:00

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Relieved, Alice took out the ingredients for the white-chocolate bread pudding and placed them on the counter-vanilla extract, a pint of heavy cream, milk, sugar, white chocolate, a loaf of challah bread, and two half-dozen cartons of eggs. A dozen eggs?? If the piece of notebook paper with her mother's recipe on it still existed, Alice didn't know where it was. She hadn't needed to refer to it in years. It was a simple recipe, arguably better than Marty's cheesecake, and she'd made it every Christmas Eve since she was a young girl. How many eggs? It had to be more than six, or she would've taken out only one carton. Was it seven, eight, nine?
She tried skipping over the eggs for a moment,but the other ingredients looked just as foreign. Was she supposed to use all of the cream or measure out only some of it? How much sugar? Was she supposed to combine everything all at once or in a particular sequence? What pan did she use? At what temperature did she bake it and for how long? No possibility rang true. The information just wasn't there.
What the hell was wrong with me?

p.65
____________________________________________________________________

Neither of them spoke. They go in the car, John paid the garage attendant, and they made their way onto Storrow Drive in silence. For the second week in a row, tempertures were well below zero with the windchill. Runners were force indoors to either jogon treadmills or simply wait for slightly more habitable weather. Alice hated treadmils. She sat in the passenger seat and waited for John to say something. But he didn't. He cried the whole way home.

p. 89
____________________________________________________________________

"I'm so sorry I have this. i can't stand the thought of how much worse this is going to get. i can't stand the thought of looking at you someday, this face I love, and not knowing who you are."
She traced the outline of his jaw and chin and the creases of his sorely out of practice laugh lines with her hands. She wiped the sweat from his forehad and the tears from his eyes.
"I can barely breathe when I think about it. But we have to think about it. I don't know how much longer I have to know you. We need to talk about what's going to happen."
He tipped his glass back, swallowed until there was nothing left, and then sucked a little more from the ice. Then he looked at her with a scared and profound sorrow in his eyes that she'd never seen there before.
"I don't know if I can."

p. 100
____________________________________________________________________

Alice stood in their bedroom, naked but for a pair of ankle socks and her Safe Return bracelet, wrestling and growling at an article of clothing stretched around her head. Like a Martha Graham dance, her battle against the fabric shrouding her head looked like a physical and poetic expression of anguish. She let out a long scream.
"What's happening?" asked John, running in.
She looked at him with one panicked eye through a round hole in the twisted garmet.
"I can't do this! I can't figure out how to put on this fucking sports bra. I can't remember how to put on a bra, John! I can't put on my own bra!"
He went to her and examined her head.
"That's now a bra, Ali, it's a pair of underwear."
She burst into laughter.
"It's not funny," said John.
She laughed harder.
"Stop it, it's not funny. Look, if you want to go running, you have to hurry up and get dressed. I don't have a lot of time."
He left the room, unable to watch her standing there, naked with her underwear on her head, laughing at her own absurd madness.

p. 199
______________________________________________________________________

"Okay, Alice, can you spell the word water backwards for me?" he asked.
She would have found this question trivial and even insulting six months ago, but today, it was a serious question to be tackled with serious effort. She felt only marginally worried and humiliated by this, not nearly as worried and humiliated as she would've felt six months ago. More and more, she was experiencing a growing distance from her self-awareness. Her sense of Alice-what she knew and understood, what she liked and disliked, how she felt and perceived-was also like a soap bubble, ever hight in the sky and more difficult to identify, with nothing but the thinnest lipid membrance protecting it from popping into thinner air.

p. 242
____________________________________________________________________

Bliss

2009-02-27T09:21:00.000-08:00

Bliss by Lauren Myracle

For the first time, I wonder if coming to Atlanta has changed me-not just in surface ways, but deep down at the core. There's a hardness inside me I'm not accustomed to. Or, not a hardness, exactly. More like a new level of awareness, an awareness that involves passing judgment.
On the way home from school today, I saw a girl (not from Crestview) who wasn't wearing a bra. Who clearly wasn't wearing a bra, as in lots of bouncing action and look-at-me nipples. And it shocked me, and I wanted to say to her, What are doing strolling down Peachtree Road like that? This is Atlanta, not Woodstock!
I also thought she should wash her hair, and that her leather sandals looked embarrassingly rough-hewn.
Two months ago, that could have been me.

p. 154
____________________________________________________________________

I find a place against the wall. Sandy pushes her tongue around in her mouth while she plucks, but the sounds that rise from her harp....they're lovely. Again I'm struck by how unpredictable our world is, a world in which lumpish girls make beautiful music while beautiful girls turn others into lumps.

p. 187
____________________________________________________________________

"I had to honor her," Agnes says. "Don't you see?"
"What is it?" Sandy asks. "A piece of her scalp?"
Agnes's eyes blaze. "It's what came free. I wasn't.....I didn't have time to be picky."
"Agnes, that's disgusting," Sandy says gleefully.
As for me,I'm slogging through the horror of my thoughts. Liliana died...she jumped from the window and her skull smacked the ground...and Agnes kept a piece of her?

p. 215
____________________________________________________________________

I look at her. Moonlight shines through the slats in her blinds, and her face is slivered dark, then white, then dark. I'm in this room--in this bed--with a person whose grasp on sanity is no longer solid, if it ever was, and my senses kick into overdrive. I need to be careful.

p.305
____________________________________________________________________

My tears make everything waver, but I'm perfectly capable of seeing what Sandy does. She dips her finger in Sarah Lynn's blood and, looking straight at me, puts it in her mouth. When she pulls it out, she smiles.

p. 428

The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby

2009-02-26T17:59:00.000-08:00

The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby

I've been trying to write a short story that entails my knowing something about contemporary theories of time-hence Introducing Time-but every time I pick up any kind of book about science I start to cry. This actually inhibits my reading pretty badly, due to not being able to see. I'm OK with time theorists up until, say, St. Augustine, and then I start to panic, and the panic then gives way to actual weeping. By my estimation, I should be able to understand Newton by the time I'm 850 years old-by which time I'll probably discover that some smartass has invented a new theory, and he's out of date anyway. The short story should be done some time shortly after that. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, because it's killing me.

p. 55

____________________________________________________________________

For the first time since I've been writing this column, the completion of a book has left me feeling bereft: I miss them all. Let's face it: usually you're just happy as hell to have chalked another one up on the board, but this last month I've been living in this hyperreal world, full of memorable, brilliantly eccentric people, and laughs (I hope you know how funny Dickens is), and proper bendy stories you want to follow. I suspect that it'll be difficult to read a pared-down, stripped-back, skin-and-bones novel for a while.

p. 80

**Nick's describing how he feels after reading David Copperfield
____________________________________________________________________

Never mind that, as regular readers of this column know, I have over the last few months bought several hundred books I haven't yet read. And never mind that, as it turned out, I found myself passing a bookshop the very next day, and the day after that (because what else is there to do with a new baby, other than mooch around bookshops with him?), and was thus able to buy Mystic River. I didn't know for sure I'd ever go to a bookshop again; and if I never went to a bookshop again, how long were those several hundred books going to last me? Nine or ten years at the most. No, I needed that copy of Prayers for Rain, just to be on the safe side.

p. 104

** I understand exactly the need to buy just one more book because of being afraid that you'll never have enough books to last you and that god forbid, you may run out of stuff to read!!!!

The Wednesday Sisters

2009-02-24T18:45:00.000-08:00

The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton

You could see the Linda who'd settled herself on a tree branch where no one could see her and tried to spin for herself a web of imaginary friendships, a world of Charlottes and Ferns and Wilburs. The child who built I-don't-care-if-I-offend-you walls, who decided she didn't want friends other than the ones she found in books.

p. 147

____________________________________________________________________

"This is preposterous, "Brett said. "We're supposed to boil four hundred manuscript pages down to a single paragraph?"
"Like churning sweet milk," Kath said. "How about this, y'all? How about you start with a question to draw in the reader, then give them a little peek at the story but don't tell the ending? Show them a little ankle, maybe some calf, but don't go sleeping with the boy before the wedding day."

p. 199
____________________________________________________________________

That discussion did leave me wondering, though: Why are we drawn to sad stories? Why did we all read the book, knowing we were in for the dying-girl ending? Why did we go to the movie that December-Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal-having already read the whole tearjerker book? No one wants to be sad in real life. You want the sad life behind door number one, Monty, or the happy ending behind curtain number two? And yet sad plays well in literature. Romance and tragedy. Romeo and Juliet, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary. Why is that?

p. 206

The Sugar Queen- Sarah Addison Allen

2009-02-16T15:24:00.000-08:00

The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen
311 pages
copyright 2008
Large print edition

"Books can be possessive, can't they? You're walking around in a bookstore and a certain one will jump out at you, like it had moved there on its own, just to get your attention. Sometimes what's inside will change your life, but sometimes you don't even have to read it. Sometimes it's a comfort just to have a book around. Many of these books haven't even had their spines cracked. 'Why do you buy books you don't even read?' our daughter asks us. That's like asking someone who lives alone why they bought a cat. For company, of course."

p. 206

The School of Essential Ingredients

2009-02-14T05:32:00.000-08:00

The School of Essential Ingredients
by Erica Bauermeister

Passage 1:

In the chair beside her, almost hidden in the corner of the room, sat a man whose sadness seemed to have been pressed into his shirt.

p. 39
____________________________________________________________________

Passage 2:

What did she do that made her happy? The question implied action, a conscious purpose. She did many things in a day, and many things made her happy, but that, Claire could tell, wasn't the issue. Nor the only one, Claire realized. Because in order to consciously do something that made you happy, you'd have to know who you were. Trying to figure that out these days was like fishing on a lake on a moonless night--you had no idea what you would get.

p. 52
_____________________________________________________________________

Passage 3:

He walked up behind her and softly touched his lips to the back of her neck. Helen turned to face him, meeting his eyes for a long moment, as if measuring the weight of something within them. Then she smiled.
"You're home," she said, and reached up to kiss him.

p. 79
____________________________________________________________________

Passage 4:

It made a certain sense for a holiday celebrating survival over starvation, and everyone seemed to revel in the excess of it all, but she couldn't help feeling embarrassed for the food, all smashed together like immigrants in steerage class.

p. 90
____________________________________________________________________

Passage 5:

Isabelle listened, watching the muscles move in her son's biceps and back as he ripped shingles from the roof and threw them down to her, wondering where the soft, round arms of her baby boy had gone, marveling at the beauty of her son standing above her.

p. 183
____________________________________________________________________

Passage 6:

"I used to know a sculptor," Isabelle said, nodding. "He always said that if you looked hard enough, you could see where each person carried his soul in his body. It sounds crazy, but when you saw his sculptures, it made sense. I think the same is true with those we love," she explained. "Our bodies carry our memories of them, in our muscles, in our skin, in our bones. My children are right here." She pointed to the inside curve of her elbow. "Where I held them when they were babies. Even if there comes a time when I don't know who they are anymore, I believe I will feel them here.

p. 187
____________________________________________________________________

Passage 6:

"Well...how do you feel about her?"
"She's beautiful and smart and..."
"I mean, " Lillian's voice was patient, "what do you want?"
"I want...." Ian paused, and then his voice cleared. "I would want her for the rest of my life."
"Then that is how you cook."

p. 212
____________________________________________________________________

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

2009-02-08T18:56:00.000-08:00

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
by Alison Bechdel

Passage 1
Alison finally gets the courage to tell her parents she's a lesbian. She writes them a letter and then anxiously waits for them to contact her, when they do she can't believe what her mother tells her.

Then a phone call in which she dealt a staggering blow.

"Your father has had affairs. With other men."
What?
I'd been upstaged, demoted from protagonist in my own drama to comic relief in my parent's tragedy.

p. 58
____________________________________________________________________

Passage 2

This struck me hard..she's not willing to admit that her father's death more than likely had nothing to do with her coming out as a lesbian...she writes:

For a wild moment I entertained the idea that my father had times his death with this in mind, as some sort of deranged tribute.

But that would only confirm that his death was not my fault. That, in fact, it had nothing to do with me at all.

And I'm reluctant to let go of that last, tenuous bond.

p. 86
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Passage 3

I measured my father against the grimy deer hunters at the gas station uptown, with their yellow workboots and shorn-sheep haircuts. And where he fell short, I stepped in.

"Where's your barrette?"
"It keeps the hair out of your eyes"
So would a crewcut

I counted as an indication of my success the nickname bestowed on me by my older cousins.

"Hey, Butch! Think fast!"
No one needed to explain what it meant.

p. 96

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Passage 4

Allison and her father go into a diner one day for lunch. A woman walks in dressed much like a man and her first thoughts were

I didn't know there were women who wore men's clothes and had men's haircuts. But like a traveler in a foreign country who runs into someone from home--someone they've never spoken to, but know by sight--I recognized her with a surge of joy.

Dad recognized her too.
"Is that what you want to look like?"

What else could I say?
"No"

But the vision of the truck-driving bulldyke sustained me through the years...as perhaps it haunted my father.
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Passage 5

Allison was taking English classes at college and shared the list with her father for over a year and a half but after awhile she felt that his excitement was suffocating her. She realized that she had neglected to do a short project and so she signed up for James Joyce's Ulysses and decided to share this with her dad.

Home for Christmas, I found dad's delight about Ulysses a bit galling.
"Here, take this. It's the copy I used in college."

But it was nice to have his attention.

Can I write in it?
"Here's Dubliners, too. The first three stories are life drafts from portrait."

I realized I had missed it, however vicarious it may have been.

"And the dead. you have to read the dead. Or at least the very least, the last paragraph."
Okay

In a burst of tenderness, I encouraged him further.

So...what should I read this weekend?

Her father's face is elated...

"Hmm..let me think."

This interaction between the father and daughter made me full of emotions and brought glaringly into the light my loss of relationship with my own dad. After locking her father out of her English reading life, she realizes how much happiness her father receives by sharing this passionate interest with her. The drawings are spectacular, as you're reading the text and looking at the drawings it makes everything that much more intense.

p. 204
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The last page was absolutely perfect....and made me sit there and reflect on everything that I had just read.

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

2009-02-07T14:01:00.000-08:00

A collection of short stories. My passage comes from the final story, The Third and Final Continent.

I wanted somehow to explain this to Mrs. Croft, who was still scrutinizing Mala from top to toe with what seemed to be placid disdain. I wondered if Mrs. Croft had ever seen a woman in a sari, with a dot painted on her forehead and bracelets stacked on her wrists. I wondered what she would object to. I wondered if she could see the red dye still vivid on Mala's feet, all but obscured by the bottom edge of her sari. At last Mrs. Croft declared, with the equal measures of disbelief and delight I knew well:
"She is a perfect lady!"
Now it was I who laughed. I did so quietly, and Mrs. Croft did not hear me. But Mala had heard, and, for the first time, we looked at each other and smiled.

read February 7, 2009

Paper Towns by John Green

2009-02-07T12:49:00.000-08:00

Passage 1

I shrugged my shoulders. I didn't know the answer, but of course I had my hopes: maybe Margo needed to see my confidence. Maybe this time she wanted to be found, and to be found by me. maybe just as she had chosen me on the longest night, she had chosen me again. And maybe untold riches awaited he who found her.

p. 115
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** I was so intrigued by the use of the poem "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman. This poem was an intricately woven thread throughout the book.

I must read this poem in full sometime before I die.
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Passage 2

I couldn't figure out which of these ideas, if any, was at the core of this poem. But thinking about the grass and all the different ways you can see it made me think about all the ways I 'd seen and mis-seen Margo. There was no shortage of ways to see her. I'd been focused on what had become of her, but now with my head trying to understand the multiplicity of grass and her smell from the blanket still in my throat, I realized that the most important questions was who I was looking for. If "What is the Grass?" has such a complicated answer, I thought, so too, must "Who is Margo Ruth Spiegelman?" Like a metaphor rendered incomprehensible by its ubiquity, there was room enough in what she had left me for endless imaginings, for an infinite set of Margos.

p. 173
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Passage 3

"I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen," Whitman writes. And then for two pages, he's just hearing: hearing a steam whistle, hearing people's voices, hearing an opera. he sits on the grass and lets the sound pour through him. And this is what I was trying to do, too, I guess: to listen to all the little sounds of her, because before any of it could make sense, it had to be heard. For so long, I hadn't really heard Margo-I'd seen her screaming and thought her laughing-that now I figured it was my job. to try, even at this great remove, to hear the opera of her.

p. 196
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Passage 4

The fundamental mistake I had always made-and that she had, in fairness, always led to me-was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.
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read January 25, 2009