What did I think you ask? I thought that this was a terrible book. Kids flying in the sky, and that is all I remember. It made me decide to never readWhat did I think you ask? I thought that this was a terrible book. Kids flying in the sky, and that is all I remember. It made me decide to never read another James Patterson book....more
When I began reading this book I thought of It’s a Wonderful Life-- a quaint town with wonderful characters, and it seemed that it was going to be somWhen I began reading this book I thought of It’s a Wonderful Life-- a quaint town with wonderful characters, and it seemed that it was going to be somewhat like that, or even like James Harriet’s country folks, for you see, it began in a small quaint town and Olive’s husband, Henry, was a pharmacist. It had all the makings of a good story. I even saw Jimmy Stewart playing the part of Henry.
Then all the sudden Henry’s wife, Olive, called him a pathetic example of a man. I thought to put the book down, to mark it as abandoned. Then I decided to give it more of a chance. Next, she was vicious towards her son’s new wife, destroying a few pieces of her clothing. She was running with magic markers. I started to think that maybe she was crazy, but then not all crazy people are mean and vicious, but it helps. But like a bad drug the book pulls you in, so I will give the author credit for that much, but certainly not a Pulitzer Prize winner. I read it in spite of this, in spite of the fact that it as even boring and tedious to read, and maybe I just don’t understand creative writing, or maybe the Pulitzer Prize judges are all mean and old, so they all got it. But I wish to clarify this: Not all old people are mean.
Half way through the book, Olive thinks that her son will probably lock her in the attic after her husband dies. So, she knows that she is mean. It never seizes to amaze me that some people realize that they are mean and know that it is affecting people around them, and they know why their kids don’t want to come to visit them, but they never care to change.
Anyway, this book was filled with abusive people, some who had affairs, so I couldn’t wait for each short story to end, just to see if the next one was any better. They never got better. And I didn’t like the new introductions of characters in each new story, as I didn’t know them, and I saw that I wouldn’t have wanted to know them anyway. 13 stories, just a negative number, and I imagine that the author meant it to be.
Whatever happened to great characters like Steinbeck’s, who I loved even with all of their flaws? Now Steinbeck deserved the Pulitzer, even the Nobel Prize. I would rather hang out Steinbeck’s characters in Cannery Row and Tortilla Flats any day than to even be around any of the people in this book for a even second.
Some say this book was depressing, but it didn’t get depressing to me until people began to fall apart physically and then Henry ended up in a rest home. For a book to be depressing the author has to set a mood, develop the characters. This didn’t happen. Now if you want to read a book about depressing people that leaves you with an empty feeling, read, “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.” Why didn’t it win the Pulitzer?...more
So Atticus was a racist, according to this book, but he was still a racist in Mockingbird, just a more subtle one.
It is harder to recognize his racismSo Atticus was a racist, according to this book, but he was still a racist in Mockingbird, just a more subtle one.
It is harder to recognize his racism in “Mockingbird,” but it is there, and here is a quote from the article, “These Scholars Have Been Pointing Out Atticus Finches' Racism for Years” by Laura Marsh:
"...there is a well-established body of scholarship on To Kill A Mockingbird that draws attention to flaws in Atticus’s character. Pryal’s 2010 paper on a “failure of empathy” in the novel argues that Atticus never lives up to his own advice that to understand somebody, you have to “climb into his skin and walk around in it.” She points out that Atticus’s defense of Tom Robinson, a black character accused of rape, is not about understanding Tom Robinson: 'Neither the jury nor the audience of the novel have learned anything about Tom: where he lives, what his family is like, how he treats his wife and children and others in his daily life.” His defense of Tom relies instead on convincing them that he, Atticus, is honorable. By playing to white prejudices in a system that consistently benefits whites, his strategy does nothing to “disturb America’s racial caste system'.”
So I have just finished a very racist novel, as well as one of the most boring novels that I have ever tried to read and had actually finished. Every character in this story was written in Harper's own voice. And when she had people arguing together in this book, it felt like she was just taking both sides of a debate, that she couldn’t really change the character in the story so it wouldn’t sound like her.
It is my belief that this really is her second book in spite of what the publishers said, and yet, the publishers even said it on the cover of the book, “To Kill a Mockingbird, # 2.” And then they said it wasn’t a sequel? I have other reasons for believing that it really is a sequel:
Her childhood friend, Truman, has a very small part in this book, unlike in “Mockingbird,” if I remember correctly. It made me think and feel that they were no longer bosom buddies. And when asked where he was she merely said, "Italy," and never even enlarged upon it, as if he didn't matter anymore. If someone asked me where my close friend was, I would say much more.
Here's another reason I think that this is a sequel, if this had really been the first draft of Mockingbird, why would she have written a book that would really damage her father while he was alive? I can see how the town's people would handle all of what she had said in this book. It could ruin him or her or both. And her father didn't die until two years after Mockingbird was published, so what would he really think if he had read this book? What was Harper Lee thinking? If this was her first book, I would say that she was either not thinking or she was thinking, revenge.
There were other things that also made me think of this as a sequel, as well as other comments about this book that I had made in my review of "I am Scout," so I am just putting that review here:
I am Scout
My favorite part of Harper Lee's life is her childhood with Truman Capote. After that, it just seemed like her life melted away. She couldn't handle being famous and all it entailed. So as soon as she could, she hid herself away in her house, much like her mother had.
But first, I had more interest in why Truman and Harper Lee's friendship suffered, because I really liked how they were together as children. I also wanted to know why, when I heard someone quote from "Mockingbird" on TV, it sounded, to me, like Truman's writing? (I had only read Truman's Christmas stories and his "The Thanksgiving Visitor.") But that quote I had heard and I wish I had written down, made me go to the computer and Google, did Truman Capote help write To Kill a Mockingbird?” Well, I wasn’t the only one who had thought this.
Also, Truman Capote told his biographer that Harper's mother tried to drown her when she was two. In "Mockingbird" Harper has her mother dying when she was aged two. She kills her off at the same age as when she had almost been drowned. Harper Lee vehemently denied this happening to her, which caused a rift in their friendship. There were many rifts, and this probably wasn't the first. This just stood out for me. Also, I don't think Truman was lying about her; he just talked a lot.
When "Mockingbird" was published, Harper Lee gave no credit to Capote's helping her, not that the author of this book claimed that he had helped her, but Pearl Belle, a literary critic, was claimed to have said that Truman told her that he had helped Lee with "Mockingbird." Is this why he was upset that she hadn’t mentioned him?
There is no mention of Pearl Belle in this book, but that is supposed to be how the story of his helping her with "Mockingbird" got started.
Then Truman gives no credit to Harper for her helping him with "In Cold Blood." Was that payback for her not mentioning his helping her? Whatever the reason, this caused another rift in their relationship.
As to Harper Lee's mother, well, what kind of woman would want to drown her child? One that was mentally ill. She stayed indoors most of the time, but sometimes when she went out in public she would create a scene. What these scenes were like, the author doesn't say. But her mother was manic-depressive. In later years, even Harper stayed indoors. But no one ever talks about her as being mentally ill, except that I wondered if she had been when I was reading "Watchman." I thought this because in the beginning the book was coherent, then all the sudden it became disjointed, and the thought came to me that she was mentally ill. Her staying at home all the time didn’t occur until later years, and so it would make sense that “Watchman” was written later. This is when I did another Google search, coming up with only her mother's mental illness. Maybe I was really tired when I read that section, but then I reread the court scene, and it still seemed disjointed.
"Watchman," was stale and lifeless as well as boring. When she wrote an article for Vogue magazine, after having written "Mockingbird," Vogue stated, "It showed none of her hallmark humor or vividness." Ah, ha. She didn't have that Truman touch. But I also thought that "Watchman" was written by an older mature woman, one who was much more sophisticated.
Harper kept telling her publishers that she was writing another book, a sequel, and that it took place in her home town with some of the same people. This went on for 10 years or more, until they finally gave up on her. Later on, when someone asked her sister Alice about the book that was now claimed to be finished, her sister said that someone had broken into the house and had stolen it. So she was writing? Is “Watchman” really that book?
My favorite part of this book is still her childhood with Truman. I really liked it when Harper's father gave her and Truman a typewriter. They carried it around with them, writing stories together and even taking turns writing the same story. I just think that their childhood friendship was so delightful, and I think it continued on like this into their adult life, that is, until life got to them....more
When I was taking Spanish in college, I bought this book in Spanish and had this idea that I was going to read it, translating it along the way. Well,When I was taking Spanish in college, I bought this book in Spanish and had this idea that I was going to read it, translating it along the way. Well, that was too much of a project for me since I was only in my first year of Spanish. I gave up, but I never forgot the book.
Now it is years later and here I am again with the book in hand, only the book is in English.
It was a short bittersweet book about a Hispanic girl, Esperanza, growing up on Mango Street in Chicago, a girl that is caught in a web of living in a poor family and neighborhood. You only get glimpses of her life as she is growing up, still it is a powerful story, and the book left me wondering if she ever got out of her predicament.
Esperanza doesn't like her name, she doesn't like her house or her neighborhood, and I like her name and the name Mango Street, which led me to this book in the first place. It made me think of the mangoes my friend and I ate while traveling in Mexico. Mangoes with goat cheese and lime juice. I still eat them almost daily.
I wanted to read happy childhood stories. When I was reading this book, I thought of how my own life growing up in the small town of Paso Robles, CA in the 50s was so different than hers. We were poor, but I didn't mind it. The age where you begin to mind is when you are in high school, and by then my mother had remarried, and we had moved from our little shack, a shack that I just loved, even a life that I had enjoyed. But Esperanza's neighborhood, unlike my own, wasn't safe. I had roamed the town on my own, taken my dog by myself to the Salinas River and up Peachy Canyon. Drove my bike miles out into the country. No one cared then if a ten year old roamed. Freedom. I don't believe that Esperanza had that freedom. Do any kids have that today? I hope so.
This was a charming, delightful and creative book.
I began reading it, grew bored and put it down. Then I picked it up again it finally captured me. IThis was a charming, delightful and creative book.
I began reading it, grew bored and put it down. Then I picked it up again it finally captured me. I just thought that this was going to be a silly romance, especially since the main character of this story was making a list of what he wanted in a woman. Kind of a superficial way to do things. But it was much better than that. . ...more
Most people in our book group loved this book. I thought that it was boring due to the way it was written. I actually don't like sci-fi books anyway eMost people in our book group loved this book. I thought that it was boring due to the way it was written. I actually don't like sci-fi books anyway even if they are prophetic in some way. ...more
Her writing is beautiful, descriptive. You can smell and taste Africa; sometimes you can even smell and taste blood and liquor.
I would have never havHer writing is beautiful, descriptive. You can smell and taste Africa; sometimes you can even smell and taste blood and liquor.
I would have never have dreamed of reading a book about Africa; the country just never appealed to me. But my friend, who is a teacher, and who lives part time in Africa teaching English at a school she had started, recommended it. It is a true story of a white girl growing up in Africa during the civil war, and it smacks of colonialism and racism, both of which I dislike. So I decided to give it a try, and I am glad that I did.
It begins in Rhodesia in 1976. Alexandra's parents go to bed at night with guns near their bed, the fear of terrorists is great. The girls take a flashlight to the loo in the night and have fears of snakes, scorpions, baboon spiders, and anything else that may be lurking. Then when they rush back to their bed they take a flying leap from the floor onto the bed because of the fear that a terrorist might be hiding under the bed and just might grab their legs. In my childhood, when I got up in the middle of the night, I would run through the kitchen turning on the lights on the way to the bathroom, and when I returned to my room I would also take a flying leap onto my bed. My fears were not of terrorists but of the bogyman. I knew the bogyman wasn't real, but they knew the terrorist was.
The book was hard to enjoy at times since my mind was often on the children, and I kept questioning the parent's reason for bringing them to Africa during such a turbulent time. Then my mind would wander to America, and how parents took their kids across it in covered wagons, and how dangerous that was because sometimes entire families were killed or died from starvation or other causes. I justified Alexandra's parents in this way.
Alexandra's mother was an alcoholic, and in time she lost her mind slowly as she lost one child after another. The girls, even at a young age, lived in fear for their lives. It seemed that they were too young to even have to be thinking about death. But they all saw death in many different ways, some deaths being too horrible to have been inscribed into their minds. The slashing of bodies is not a pretty sight.
How much can a parent really protect their children? Life on this planet is never without dangers; some people are just more lucky than others to live a life where they have few fears. I look back on my life and realize that there were many times that I could have been killed by something I had done when I was young and wandering the countryside by myself. Life can be so horrible that it is no wonder that many dream of heaven, but Alexandra still dreams of Africa.
When living in Cherokee County read books about the Cherokees, well, read them anyway.
This was a story of Armentia, a black slave girl in the CherokeeWhen living in Cherokee County read books about the Cherokees, well, read them anyway.
This was a story of Armentia, a black slave girl in the Cherokee tribe who was forced from her home and taken on the Trail of Tears along with the Indians back in 1838. She was taken to Tahlequah, OK and then sold into slavery. She had a very hard life that actually didn’t get better until she was very old, and then like all of us, old age isn’t that great either.
Since writing this review the first time, I wish to add that when slavery had ended the Cherokees sent the African slaves away, and they were then no longer part of their tribe. In recent years the African American Cherokees began fighting to become members of the tribe again. They won; the Cherokees finally took them in.
Very little has been written about slavery within the Indian tribes. You might find them in Pioneer books. Well, I actually have some 99 cent books that I found on line and have read and reviewed here, but they are ll about kidnapping white children, and if I recall correctly, they were not always made into slaves. But this is the only one that my friend found on the subject and asked our book group to read.
Update, March 2028: This last month she and I went to the Black church to listen to Harold Aldridge, a black psychologist/blues singer/cowboy because he was going to be there. He is much loved in our town and always draws a crowd, but maybe I am over exaggerating, but he desires to be bragged about. He gave a talk on Black history, and on the Black towns in Oklahoma. And then another man, Ty Wilson, gave a talk about the Black Cherokees and their fight to get recognized by and included in the tribe. I bought the book he and Karen Coody Cooper edited, Oklahoma Black Cherokees. Hopefully, I will get around to reading it and then do a review on it. It is on my short reading list.
I did a term paper in college on The Trail of Tears and also worked on my family tree for a college project because I had relatives that had been on the Trail of Tears. And now I live in the Cherokee Nation where they took Armentia, the main character in this book. When we moved here my sister said, "You are going back to your roots."
Also, I couldn't help but be put off by the preaching in this book, because the Christians tried to destroy the Native American culture and almost took away his religion and in many cases had. I didn't have a as bad of taste in my mouth in regards to Christianity until I moved here and found that you had to keep your beliefs to yourself if you were not Christian, and that is what many of the American Indians do as well, and when they were first subjugated they were forced to become Christians and their children were taken away from their families. Still, this was a good book to read....more
I live in the town where this book was written, and in the movie they filmed a scene in the old hardware store that the boy's grandfather owned. Now iI live in the town where this book was written, and in the movie they filmed a scene in the old hardware store that the boy's grandfather owned. Now it is a restaurant named Jincy's Kitchen. Great food. It is decorated as the movie crew left it. Those things are kind of neat, and it is even nice that we have a Red Fern Festival.
What isn't so nice is that during this festival they have coon hounds chasing a coon skin to a tree, and then the dogs get to that tree and bark up a mighty storm, for in that tree they have a raccoon in a cage. Next they set the cage on the ground and let the dogs fight over it, scaring the poor raccoon. No telling what happens when they let the raccoon out later on when they get it home. I would love to lead a revolt against this practice, but it would do no good. I just don't go to that part of the festival. We went once, and once was enough. I also remember that my step-dad took us kids to watch the coon trials somewhere in California, Coalinga, I think. It didn't bother me then.
Now for the book. The first part of the story was sweet as the boy in this story walks from Sparrow Hawk Mountain to the mercantile store in Keys, OK in order to pick up two coon hound pups that he had purchased. He had to spend the night in the woods each way, so that was an adventure. He cared for them and loved them, but neither I nor the raccoons cared for him or even for his dogs.
This was a book club read, so I complained about it, and one of the women said that they hunted coons because they were hungry. Well, yes, why else would you want to hunt a raccoon? I can think of other reasons: the pelt and the sport. And yes, I understand needing warm clothing and food, but it didn't make me want to finish the book, and so I didn't. As for me, I will throw my copy of the book into a tree, and the dogs can bark it down for any kid who wishes to read it....more
This is interesting, I have five likes, and I haven't finished reading the book, nor have I made any comments on it. I think that some people like thaThis is interesting, I have five likes, and I haven't finished reading the book, nor have I made any comments on it. I think that some people like that I am reading this most boring, interesting, and somewhat raunchy book. Every day I pick it up and try to make myself read 20 pages. Sometimes they give me a chuckle, other times my mind floats away, and the book is great for going to bed and falling to sleep easily, but then you forget what you have read.
My husband was a construction worker like Sully, the main character in this book, and the people in his company were like Sully and company. He called them "construction trash," as I suppose that is what they called themselves. I didn't like being around them because they were like the people Sully knew. But I admit, I like Sully, and I like his partner Rub, and I like his landlady and how he takes care of both of these people.
But as for construction workers, well, there were some nice ones that my husband knew, but those were few. When I met ranchers where we lived, I learned that those were the people I liked best. We lived in a small town of 200. My husband would drive into town to get something, and it would take him forever to get home, and when he got home he would tell me stories that he heard in town. Fun stories.
Same would happen to me. I used to run into a woman in town who asked me to join their women's club. She thought I would like it because it was there that you heard all the gossip, which gossip she tried to share with me. I wouldn't join for that very reason. She was turning a couple of the good ol' boys into bad, just like Sully’s crowd, so I just learned to tune her out and quickly forgot the stories.
I did enjoy one of her stories that was about her. I will title it, Fran and the Runaway Cow:
A cow got loose just outside of town and was running across a rancher's property about the same time as Fran and her husband were driving down the road in her red convertible. They saw a man shooting at it, so they stopped the car and ran into the field after the man. I can still see Fran in her high heel shoes and tight jeans with her bleached blonde Dolly Parton hair, running across the field to meet this man. She said that she began crying and screaming at him, just like any ex-city person would do, even me. She told him that you don't shoot cows in front of people because it is traumatic to them.
Then the owner of the ranch showed up. I imagine that he was angry over having someone on his land shooting a rifle and a cow, all at the same time. He told the owner of the cow that it was now his cow. Heard that? He would not let the owner of the dead cow take it away.
Word got around town within minutes and soon ranchers drove over to check out the cow. They brought hunting knives and maybe a chain saw or two. They cut up the cow and took it to a meat processing plant. Soon the town had a free barbecue for everyone in town.
But why, you might ask, did the man kill his own cow? He said that he was tired of it getting loose all the time and his having to chase it down. I wonder if he ever heard of using more barbed wire on his fence.
Now that is what I call a good story even if it isn't written well. It isn’t raunchy and it isn’t long and drawn out.
I was talking to one of my friends about this book, and the conversation shifted from it to racism. I began telling her how I quit a club, in the town where we are living now, because the members made racist comments. Well, she began telling me about sycamore seeds and how they have a mouth with no brain. "Just like racists," she said. They also look like little aliens which makes them scary looking. I don't believe that I had talked her into reading this book, but I tried. Some things just don’t happen and for good reason.
Update: I was just over half way finished with this book, when the thought crossed my mind: If I turn each page without reading them, can that count as being read?
Last update: I finished the book by speed reading. The movie was great, but the book was too verbose. I will never try another buy him, but most people like his books according to reviews. I just like a lot more action than this....more
“He stood at the window of the empty café and watched activities in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the “He stood at the window of the empty café and watched activities in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they’d have no heart to start at all."
I think you either love McCarthy or hate him. I had seen the movie “No Country for Old Men” and while I really liked it I never wanted to see it again or even read the book. Way too dark. I didn’t want to read “The Road” either for the same reason. Then I read that he had won a Pulitzer Prize for it, so I had to read it. I loved it and his writing.
For a western this was a really good book. It isn't boring like those I used to love in my youth; instead, it was so captivating, except for the brief time that he was breaking horses, and I was feeling bad for the way he broke them. Even his life on the ranch was boring. Still, his time on the ranch didn’t last long beforee he was back on the road but now into trouble with the law.
Many of McCarthy's books take place in Mexico, so I decided to look at his biography. He was born in Rhode Island, moved to Tennessee, and then to El Paso, Texas and now lives in Tesque, New Mexico-all close to the Mexican border. I imagine that he has traveled often to Mexico, and that he is fascinated with it as much as I have been.
Update, March 25, 2028: I read No Country For Old Men. Nothing like the movie, so I liked it. Also read Blood Meridian, and now that was hard to read.
“Every dumb thing I ever done in my life there was a decision I made before that got me into it. It was never the dumb thing. It was always some choice I'd made before it.”
“He saw very clearly how all his life led only to this moment and all after led to nowhere at all. He felt something cold and soulless enter him like another being and he imagined that it smiled malignly and he had no reason to believe that it would ever leave.”
“They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing.”
“That night he dreamt of horses in a field on a high plain where the spring rains had brought up the grass and the wildflowers out of the ground and the flowers ran all blue and yellow far as the eye could see and in the dream he was among the horses running and in the dream he himself could run with the horses and they coursed the young mares and fillies over the plain where their rich bay and their rich chestnut colors shone in the sun and the young colts ran with their dams and trampled down the flowers in a haze of pollen that hung in the sun like powdered gold and they ran he and the horses out along the high mesas where the ground resounded under their running hooves and they flowed and changed and ran and their manes and tails blew off of them like spume and there was nothing else at all in that high world and they moved all of them in a resonance that was like a music among them and they were none of them afraid neither horse nor colt nor mare and they ran in that resonance which is the world itself and which cannot be spoken but only praised.”`...more
Darkness and ash fill the skies. A life that they had known is gone. A father and son are walking to the coa“There is no God and we are his prophets.”
Darkness and ash fill the skies. A life that they had known is gone. A father and son are walking to the coast, and along the way he cares for his son by protecting him, by teaching him how to survive during their long walk through what is now barren land of America. What do they expect to find at the coast? Warmer weather? Less ash? What destroyed the planet? The author never says, he doesn’t have to because we already know deep within.
Conversation is limited. The boy’s father has ash in his lungs, and if you can’t breathe, you say as little as possible. You just have to walk, to get there. And then there is the shock of what had happened, the death of family, of friends, of most who were once living. What does anyone who has survived have to say?
“Listen to me, he said, when your dreams are of some world that never was or some world that never will be, and you're happy again, then you'll have given up. Do you understand? And you can't give up, I won't let you.”
“Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.
You forget some things, dont you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”
The most beautiful prose, the most powerful words are in this book, and it feels like every word is a jewel or a reminder of what can and shouldn’t be.
“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”
Note.
Cormac McCarthy said in an interview that this book is a love story to his son and so considered his son a co-author. They had both been in a hotel room, his son sleeping while he was looking out the window at the city below, and in his mind’s eye he saw the town being destroyed by fire, and that was how he realized this book.--....more
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Anthony Doerr! I just want to say that this is the best book that I have read this year or maybe in forever, coming iThank you, thank you, thank you, Anthony Doerr! I just want to say that this is the best book that I have read this year or maybe in forever, coming in behind "Gilead." It took a while to pull me in because it goes back and forth to this young blind girl who eventually has a short wave radio, then to a young German soldier who fixes the radios. I just wasn't interested in his early life as a soldier, but then the book picked up and I not only couldn't put it down, but I also couldn't believe how well written this book was. Lyrical prose at its best:
“Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.”
“Here's what I mean by the miracle of language. When you're falling into a good book, exactly as you might fall into a dream, a little conduit opens, a passageway between a reader's heart and a writer's, a connection that transcends the barriers of continents and generations and even death ... And here's the magic. You're different. You can never go back to being exactly the same person you were before you disappeared into that book.”
“The brain is locked in total darkness, of course, children, says the voice. It floats in a clear liquid inside the skull, never in the light. And yet the world it constructs in the mind is full of light. It brims with color and movement. So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?”
“We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us.” ...more
"It's your existence I love you for, mainly. Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined."
This is one of the most"It's your existence I love you for, mainly. Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined."
This is one of the most beautifully written love letters that I have ever come across. James Ames, a congregational minister has a heart condition and doesn’t believe that he will be living much longer, so he wants his son to know him, so this long love letter.
And when you google quotes on this book, the list is so long that you will realize the wealth of this book, that perhaps you should just underline a few quotes and read the book over again and again, and I think aloud that the author had so much in her heart that she poured it all out in this book.
I can offer no more other than to leave you with some quotes. Well, yes I can. If you have not listened to it in audio, you must. It is narrated by Tim Jerome:
“It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance - for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light .... Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it? .... Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a courage that allows us to be brave - that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.”
“I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate to think they will be extinguished when I am. Well, but again, this life has its own mortal loveliness. And memory is not strictly mortal in its nature, either. It is a strange thing, after all, to be able to return to a moment, when it can hardly be said to have any reality at all, even in its passing. A moment is such a slight thing. I mean, that its abiding is a most gracious reprieve.”...more
I had this book on in my bookcase for years but then decided to recommend it to our book group and am glad I did.
The first half of the book was reallI had this book on in my bookcase for years but then decided to recommend it to our book group and am glad I did.
The first half of the book was really interesting and poetic, and then in the middle the author began talking about how a geisha prepares her makeup and clothing. Boredom set in. And then it began to get sexually explicit, so I put the book down. Maybe this isn't such a good book I began thinking.
Then I got on line to read about the book and learned that Arthur Golden had been sued by the geisha and had settled out of court. She said that he told her that he would not reveal her real name and had done just that. She also claimed that she was never sold by her father or even to a man later on. Next, she claimed defamation of character. That is when I realized that this was a biography of her real life. He had claimed that he had the tapes to prove that she had been sold, etc. I even listened to an interview with her, and the geisha community was upset with her for speaking of their secrets, and she lost friends as a result. That part was sad. Perhaps it was good that she was living in New York at the time and not Japan, because who knows what would have transpired in Japan. I felt bad for her and wondered if Golden actually did betray her, but either way I went back to reading the book and got though the parts that bothered me and was glad that I had finished the book, because it was beautiful overall.
I really didn't see that her character was all that flawed but thought of her as a lovely person who was in a bad situation. I also noticed that Golden has never written another book.
After reading an interview with Golden, it appears to me that he wanted to get the Geisha story correct and had thrown out his first manuscript due to this:
"You had to throw it away?"
GOLDEN: I did. In fact, I threw two drafts away. But I wrote a draft based on a lot of book-learning. And I thought I had a pretty good idea of what the world of a geisha was like, and wrote a draft. Then a chance came along to meet a geisha, which, of course, I couldn't turn down. And she was so helpful to me that I realized I'd gotten everything wrong, and I ended up throwing out that entire first draft and doing the whole thing over again."
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