, ,

Ask Again, Yes

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Mary Beth Keane

Genre:   Fiction

390 pages, published May 28, 2019

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

Ask Again, Yes is a work of fiction about two neighboring families in a suburban town outside of New York City, the bond between their children, a tragedy that echos over four decades, the daily intimacies of marriage, and the power of forgiveness.

Quotes 

“She’d learned that the beginning of one’s life mattered the most, that life was top-heavy that way.”

“The thing is, Peter, grown-ups don’t know what they’re doing any better than kids do. That’s the truth.”

 

“They’d both learned that a memory is a fact that has been dyed and trimmed and rinsed so many times that it comes out looking almost unrecognizable to anyone else who was in that room or anyone who was standing on the grass beneath that telephone pole.”

 

“We repeat what we don’t repair,”

 

“…and sometimes when he watched her – searching for something in her bag, or peeling an apple with her knuckle guiding the blade – he felt a shiver of panic that he’d almost not met her.”

“There was no predicting where life would go. There was no real way for a person to try something out, see if he liked it – the words he’d chosen when he told his uncle Patsy that he’d gotten into the police academy – because you try it and try it and try it a little longer and next thing it’s who you are.”

 

“This was the great shock of America, winters that would cut the face off a person, summers that were as thick and as soggy as bogs.”

 

“She did remember some things, but those memories were of a poor quality, like someone had smeared Vaseline on the lens.”

 

“And he’d figured out that the fun was often not the thing itself—the party, the keg stand, the naked running into the duck pond—but the endless talking about it after, the reliving and describing, and laughing about it in front of people who wished they’d been there. Used to be he was one of the kids listening, one of the kids who missed everything, but now, since college, since Kate, he was in the stories.”

 

My Take

Mary Beth Keane is a gifted writer and it was a pleasure to read Ask Again, Yes.  She creates such multi-dimensional characters that when the book is over, you feel that you really know these people.  I also found her exploration of the themes of acceptance and forgiveness to be thought provoking and powerful.  I will read her again.

/by
, , ,

478. The Nickel Boys

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Carl Moor

Author:   Colson Whitehead

Genre:   Fiction, Historical Fiction

213 pages, published July 16, 2019

Reading Format:  Audiobook

Summary

In 1960’s Tallahassee, a young black boy named Elwood Curtis , a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee is unjustly sent to an infamous juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy.  Struggling to survive, naïve and innocent Elwood becomes friends with a fellow Nickel boy named Turner who is street smart, a schemer and a survivor.  Based on the real story of a reform school that operated for 111 years and ruined the lives of thousands of children.

Quotes 

“We must believe in our souls that we are somebody, that we are significant, that we are worthful, and we must walk the streets of life every day with this sense of dignity and this sense of somebody-ness.”

 

“Make a career of humanity. Make it a central part of your life.”

 

“The boys could have been many things had they not been ruined by that place. Doctors who cured diseases or perform brain surgery, inventing shit that saves lives. Run for president. All those lost geniuses – sure not all of them were geniuses, Chickie Pete for example was not solving special relativity – but they had been denied even the simple pleasure of being ordinary. Hobbled and handicapped before the race even began, never figuring out how to be normal.”

 

“He who gets behind in a race must forever remain behind or run faster than the man in front.”

 

“You can change the law but you can’t change people and how they treat each other.”

 

“If everyone looked the other way, then everybody was in on it. If he looked the other way, he was as implicated as the rest. That’s how he saw it, how he’d always seen things.”

 

“If it is true for you, it is true for someone else, and you are no longer alone.”

 

“Perhaps his life might have veered elsewhere if the US government had opened the country to colored advancement like they opened the army. But it was one thing to allow someone to kill for you and another to let him live next door.”

 

“It was easy to root for the winners. No, he liked the punch-drunk ones, half walking at mile twenty-three, tongues flapping like Labradors. Tumbling across the finish line by hook or by crook, feet pounded to bloody meat in their Nikes. The laggards and limpers who weren’t running the course but running deep into their character—down into the cave to return to the light with what they found. By the time they got to Columbus Circle, the TV crews have split, the cone cups of water and Gatorade litter the course like daisies in a pasture, and the silver space blankets twist in the wind. Maybe they had someone waiting for them and maybe they didn’t. Who wouldn’t celebrate that?”

 

“The world continued to instruct: Do not love for they will disappear, do not trust for you will be betrayed, do not stand up for you will be swatted down. Still he heard those higher imperatives: Love and that love will be returned, trust in the righteous path and it will lead you to deliverance, fight and things will change. He never listened, never saw what was plainly in front of him, and now he had been plucked from the world altogether.”

 

“To forbid the thought of escape, even that slightest butterfly thought of escape, was to murder one’s humanity.”

 

“Throw us in jail, and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities after midnight hours, and drag us out onto some wayside road, and beat us and leave us half-dead, and we will still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom.”

 

My Take

I had previously read The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, a book about blacks escaping slavery, and found it to be an interesting, but depressing book.  While The Nickel Boys is very similar, a depressing account of the inhumanity suffered by young black man, it is tighter and more engaging.

/by
, , , ,

475. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   J.K. Rowling

Genre:   Fiction, Young Adult, Fantasy

652 pages, published September 16, 2006

Reading Format:  Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is the sixth book in J.K. Rowling’s epic saga and follows Harry, Ron and Hermione in their sixth year at Hogwarts.  Ron and Hermione are prefects, Harry is captain of Griffindor’s quiditch team and all are struggling with teenage hormones and angst.  While Voldemort is regrouping with the death eaters in support, Dumbledore is preparing Harry for the battle that lays ahead.

Quotes 

“Do you remember me telling you we are practicing non-verbal spells, Potter?”

“Yes,” said Harry stiffly.  “Yes, sir.”  “There’s no need to call me “sir” Professor.”  The words had escaped him before he knew what he was saying.”

“It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.”

 

“He accused me of being Dumbledore’s man through and through.”

“How very rude of him.”

“I told him I was.”

Dumbledore opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. Fawkes the phoenix let out a low, soft, musical cry. To Harry’s intense embarrassment, he suddenly realized that Dumbledore’s bright blue eyes looked rather watery, and stared hastily at his own knee. When Dumbledore spoke, however, his voice was quite steady.

“I am very touched, Harry.”

 

“Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.”

 

“Dumbledore says people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right.”

 

“It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew – and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents – that there was all the difference in the world.”

 

“You’d think people had better things to gossip about,” said Ginny as she sat on the common room floor, leaning against Harry’s legs and reading the Daily Prophet. “Three Dementor attacks in a week, and all Romilda Vane does is ask me if it’s true you’ve got a Hippogriff tattooed across your chest.”

Ron and Hermione both roared with laughter. Harry ignored them.

What did you tell her?”

I told her it’s a Hungarian Horntail,” said Ginny, turning a page of the newspaper idly. “Much more macho.”

Thanks,” said Harry, grinning. “And what did you tell her Ron’s got?”

A Pygmy Puff, but I didn’t say where.”

 

“Why are you worrying about YOU-KNOW-WHO, when you should be worrying about YOU-NO-POO? The constipation sensation that’s gripping the nation!”

 

“Harry looked around; there was Ginny running toward him; she had a hard blazing look in her face as she threw her arms around him. And without thinking, without planning it, without worrying about the fact that fifty people were watching, Harry kissed her. After several long moments, or it might have been half an hour-or possibly several sunlit days- they broke apart.”

 

“And Harry saw very clearly as he sat there under the hot sun how people who cared about him had stood in front of him one by one, his mother, his father, his godfather, and finally Dumbledore, all determined to protect him; but now that was over. He could not let anybody else stand between him and Voldemort; he must abandon forever the illusion he ought to have lost at the age of one, that the shelter of a parent’s arms meant that nothing could hurt him. There was no waking from this nightmare, no comforting whisper in the dark that he was safe really, that it was all in his imagination; the last and greatest of his protectors had died, and he was more alone than he had ever been.”

 

My Take

It was a pleasure to read the sixth Harry Potter book as I continue to work my way through the audio versions of this classic series.  As with all of the installments, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince did not disappoint.  J.K. Rowling is truly such a talented and creative writer and listening to the excellent and exuberant voice work of actor Jim Dale is a rare treat.

/by
, , ,

471. The Glass Hotel

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Emily St. John Mandel

Genre:   Fiction, Mystery

302 pages, published March  24, 2020

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

The Glass Hotel is a fictional novel about money, beauty, white-collar crime, ghosts, and moral compromise.  It follows the story of Vincent, a beautiful young woman who works as a bartender at the five-star glass and cedar Hotel Caiette on an island in British Columbia, who becomes involved with Jonathan Alkaitis who works in finance and owns the hotel.   The day they meet, Vincent’s half-brother, Paul, writes on the windowed wall of the hotel: “Why don’t you swallow broken glass.”  From there, the story unfolds.

Quotes 

“Memories are always bent retrospectively to fit individual narratives.”

 

“There is exquisite lightness in waking each morning with the knowledge that the worst has already happened.”

 

“What kept her in the kingdom was the previously unimaginable condition of not having to think about money, because that’s what money gives you: the freedom to stop thinking about money. If you’ve never been without, then you won’t understand the profundity of this, how absolutely this changes your life.”

 

“One of our signature flaws as a species: we will risk almost anything to avoid looking stupid.”

 

“I’m no expert, but I remember reading somewhere, every time you retrieve a memory, that act of retrieval, it corrupts the memory a little bit. Maybe changes it a little.”

 

“It is possible to leave so much out of any given story.”

 

“A revelation earned only in hindsight: beauty can have a corrosive effect on character. It is possible to coast for some years on no more than a few polished lines and a dazzling smile, and those years are formative.”

 

“Did I say I liked working with her? I loved working with her. I considered her a friend. You know how rare it is to work with someone who loves their life?”

 

“It’s possible to both know and not know something.’ ”

 

“She’d never believed in love at first sight but she did believe in recognition at first sight, she believed in understanding upon meeting someone for the first time that they were going to be important in her life, a sensation like recognizing a familiar face in an old photograph: in a sea of faces that mean nothing, one comes into focus.”

 

“It’s just one future slipping away and being replaced by another.”

 

“Leon would not have predicted that he and his wife would turn out to be the kind of people who’d abandon a house. He would’ve imagined that such an act would bury a person under fathoms of shame, but here on the expressway in the early morning light, abandoning the house felt unexpectedly like triumph.”

 

“You know what I’ve learned about money? I was trying to figure out why my life felt more or less the same in Singapore as it did in London, and that’s when I realized that money is its own country.”

 

“In their late thirties they’d decided not to have children, which at the time seemed like a sensible way to avoid unnecessary complications and heartbreak, and this decision had lent their lives a certain ease that he’d always appreciated, a sense of blissful unencumberance. But an encumbrance might also be thought of as an anchor, and what he’d found himself thinking lately was that he wouldn’t mind being more anchored to this earth.”

 

“Maybe this could be enough. Maybe not everyone needs to have a specific ambition. I could be the sort of person who just goes to beautiful places and owns beautiful things.”

 

“But they were citizens of a shadow country that in his previous life he’d only dimly perceived, a country located at the edge of an abyss. He’d been aware of the shadowland forever, of course. He’d seen its more obvious outposts: shelters fashioned from cardboard under overpasses, tents glimpsed in the bushes alongside expressways, houses with boarded-up doors but a light shining in an upstairs window. He’d always been vaguely aware of its citizens, people who’d slipped beneath the surface of society, into a territory without comfort or room for error;”

 

“None of these scenarios seemed less real than the life she’d landed in, so much so that she was struck sometimes by a truly unsettling sense that there were other versions of her life being lived without her,”

 

My Take

I really loved The Glass Hotel and could not put it down.  Emily St. John Mandel is a very talented writer who has created compelling characters, a fascinating plot and intriguing themes.  I’ve been personally recommending this book for the past month and will continue to do so.

/by
, , , , , , ,

469. Bag of Bones

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Stephen King

Genre:   Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, Fantasy, Suspense, Horror

529 pages, published September 22, 1998

Reading Format:  Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

Bag of Bones is the story of novelist Mike Noonan and the grief he suffers after the sudden death of his pregnant wife Jo.  Mike develops writer’s block which is temporarily relieved when he returns to Sara Laughs, their remote vacation home on a lake in Maine.  There he meets the beautiful young widow Maddie and her toddler daughter Kyra.  Much stands in the way of Mike and Maddie’s growing attraction for each other:  her vengeful ex father in law who wants custody of Kyra, Mike’s reluctance to be with someone so much younger and the ghosts that increasingly insert themselves into the lives of Mike and those around him.

Quotes 

“Compared to the dullest human being actually walking about on the face of the earth and casting his shadow there,” Hardy supposedly said, “the most brilliantly drawn character in a novel is but a bag of bones.” I understood because that was what I felt like in those interminable, dissembling days: a bag of bones.”

“Humor is almost always anger with its make-up on.”

 

“This is how we go on: one day at a time, one meal at a time, one pain at a time, one breath at a time. Dentists go on one root-canal at a time; boat-builders go on one hull at a time. If you write books, you go on one page at a time. We turn from all we know and all we fear. We study catalogues, watch football games, choose Sprint over AT&T. We count the birds in the sky and will not turn from the window when we hear the footsteps behind us as something comes up the hall; we say yes, I agree that clouds often look like other things – fish and unicorns and men on horseback – but they are really only clouds. Even when the lightening flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page. This is how we go on.”

 

“For men, I think, love is a thing formed of equal parts lust and astonishment. The astonishment part women understand. The lust part they only think they understand.”

 

“I felt lonely and content at the same time. I believe that is a rare kind of happiness.”

 

“Grief is like a drunken house guest, always coming back for one more goodbye hug.”

 

“I was being paid to do what I loved, and there’s no gig on earth better than that; it’s like a license to steal.”

 

“I see things, that’s all. Write enough stories and every shadow on the floor looks like a footprint; every line in the dirt like a secret message.”

 

“A person can go along quite awhile if they get a good day every once and again.”

 

“I think reality is thin, you know, thin as lake ice after a thaw, and we fill our lives with noise and light and motion to hide that thinness from ourselves.”

 

“Readers have a loyalty that cannot be matched anywhere else in the creative arts, which explains why so many writers who have run out of gas can keep coasting anyway, propelled on to the bestseller lists by the magic words AUTHOR OF on the covers of their books.”

 

“Fear is actually an acronym for Fuck Everything And Run.”

 

“And perhaps the greatest blessing was that we never knew how short the time was.”

 

“Murder is the worst kind of pornography, murder is let me do what I want taken to its final extreme.”

 

My Take

I have always enjoyed reading Stephen King and Bag of Bones was no exception.  In fact, it is now one of my favorite Stephen King books. Improving the reading experience was Stephen King narrating the audio version himself.  The main character novelist Mike Noonan is a stand in for King and hearing King tell this story adds extra resonance.  I especially enjoyed the touching relationship between Mike and toddler Kyra that is tenderly drawn.  I highly recommend this book.

/by
, , , ,

467. The Henna Artist

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Lisa Stock

Author:  Alka Joshi

Genre:   Fiction, Cultural, Foreign

384 pages, published March 3, 2020

Reading Format:  Audiobook on Hoopla

Summary

On the run from an abusive marriage during the 1950’s, 17 year old Lakshmi settles in the vibrant pink city of Jaipur, India.   Self taught, she becomes the city’s most highly requested henna artist and confidante to the wealthy women of the upper class.  When her ex-husband and younger sister show up, Lakshmi’s world is upended as she tries to keep her painstakingly cultivated independent life from falling apart.

Quotes 

“Success was ephemeral—and fluid—as I’d found out the hard way. It came. It went. It changed you from the outside, but not from the inside. Inside, I was still the same girl who dreamed of a destiny greater than she was allowed. Did I really need the house to prove I had skill, talent, ambition, intelligence?”

 

“Just then, my mother’s words echoed in my head: stretch your legs only as far as your bed. I was getting too far ahead of myself.”

 

“Hadn’t Gandhi-ji said, An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind?”

 

“there were three kinds of karma: the accumulated karma from all our past lives; the karma we created in this life; and the karma we stored to ripen in our future lives.”

 

“In India, individual shame did not exist. Humiliation spread, as easily as oil on wax paper, to the entire family, even to distant cousins, uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews. The rumormongers made sure of that. Blame lay heavily in my chest. Had I not deserted my marriage, Radha would not have suffered so much, and Maa and Pitaji would not have been so powerless against an entire village.”

 

My Take

In The Henna Artist, author Alka Joshi follows a familiar plot line:  Girl escaping a bad situation makes her way to the big city.  After working hard and keeping focused, she finds success.  All is threatened when her past catches up with her, but she prevails at the end.  Despite its familiarity, I really enjoyed the familiar story with its Indian twist.

/by
, , , , ,

465. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Suzanne Collins

Genre:  Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Romance

517 pages, published May 19, 2020

Reading Format:  Audio Book on Hoopla

Summary

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a prequel to the wildly popular Hunger Games Trilogy.  The book opens with the reaping in advance of the tenth annual Hunger Games.  In the Capitol, 18 year old Coriolanus Snow, whose prominent family has fallen on hard times after the death of his military hero father, is preparing to serve as a mentor in the Games and hope that the experience will provide him the redemption he desperately seeks.  Snow is assigned to tribute Lucy Gray Baird, a 16 year old singer/songwriter from District 12.  As the games proceed, Snow develops feelings for Lucy and starts to question the life he has led.

Quotes 

“You’ve no right to starve people, to punish them for no reason. No right to take away their life and freedom. Those are things everyone is born with, and they’re not yours for the taking. Winning a war doesn’t give you that right. Having more weapons doesn’t give you that right. Being from the Capitol doesn’t give you that right. Nothing does.”

 

“Nothing you can take from me was ever worth keeping.”

 

“That is the thing with giving your heart. You never wait for someone to ask. You hold it out and hope they want it.”

 

“You can blame it on the circumstances, the environment, but you made the choices you made, no one else. It’s a lot to take in all at once, but it’s essential that you make an effort to answer that question. Who are human beings? Because who we are determines the type of governing we need. Later on, I hope you can reflect and be honest with yourself about that you learned tonight.”

 

“And try not to look down on people who had to choose between death and disgrace.”

 

“We control it,” he said quietly. “If the war’s impossible to end, then we have to control it indefinitely. Just as we do now. With the Peacekeepers occupying the districts, with strict laws, and with reminders of who’s in charge, like the Hunger Games. In any scenario, it’s preferable to have the upper hand, to be the victor rather than the defeated.”

 

“I’m planning to,” said Sejanus. “I’m planning to build a whole new beautiful life here. One where, in my own small way, I can make the world a better place.”

 

My Take

While not quite as good as The Hunger Games trilogy, I enjoyed The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes which provided insight into how Coriolanus Snow became a heartless tyrant in later life.  I especially liked the characters of Sejanus and Lucy who preserved their humanity in spite of horrific conditions.

/by
, , , , , ,

464. Pretty Things

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Lisa Stock

Author:  Janelle Brown

Genre:   Fiction, Romance, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense

496 pages, published April 21, 2020

Reading Format:  e-Book on Overdrive

Summary

Pretty Things tells the story of two very different women.  Nina is a grifter who grew up bouncing from town to town with her less than honorable single mother.  Vanessa is an heiress who has made a name for herself as a lifestyle Instagram celebrity.  Their worlds collide in Lake Tahoe where the two engage in a cat and mouse, table turning game of deceit and duplicity.

Quotes 

“Nothing is ever as pure as it seems at first glance; there is always something more complicated to be found when you peel back the unmarred surface of pretty things.”

 

“Perspective is, by nature, subjective. It’s impossible to climb inside someone else’s head, despite your best-or worst-intentions.”

 

“It’s easiest to judge from distance. That’s why the Internet has turned us all into armchair critics, experts at the cold dissection of gesture and syllable, sneering self-righteously from the safety of our screens. There, we can feel good about ourselves, validated that our flaws weren’t as bad as theirs, unchallenged in our superiority. Moral high ground is a pleasant place to preach, even if the view turns out to be rather limited in scope.”

 

“But I suppose that’s the point of it all, for Vanessa: To throw herself into the world she wants to inhibit in the hopes of forgetting the one in which she really lives. Who am I to say she’s wrong to try? We all build our own delusions and then live inside them, constructing walls to conveniently hide the things we don’t want to see. Maybe it means that we’re crazy, or maybe it means that we’re monsters, or maybe it’s just the world we live in now makes it so hard to separate truth from image from dream.”

 

“Anything you do in fury’s service feels justifiable; no matter how petty, how small, how nasty or cruel.”

 

“Caption-and-comment culture in all its brevity leaves out the middle ground, where most of life is found.”

 

“Social media feeds the narcissistic monster that lives within us all, I would think to myself. It feeds it and grows it until the beast takes over and you are left outside the frame, just looking at images of this creature, like everyone else in your feed, wondering what it is that you birthed and why it’s living the life you wish you had.”

 

“Maybe our greatest strength as human beings is also our greatest weakness, the need to love and be loved.”

 

“and that, in fact, for most people not born into privilege, the playing field is a steep incline and you are at the bottom with boulders tied to your ankles.”

 

“They say DNA is destiny. And probably this is true for those with gift coded in their genes: say, a rare beauty or intelligence, the ability to run a four minute mile or dunk a basketball, or perhaps just innate cunning or insatiable drive. But for the rest of the world, those born without some obvious greatness, it’s not your DNA that will get you ahead; it’s the life you were born into. The opportunities you were (or weren’t) handed on a silver platter. It’s your circumstances.”

 

“Smarts mean a lot in the world, but good looks even more.”

 

“I watch and I wait. I study what people have, and where they have it. It’s easy because they show me. Their social media accounts are like windows into their worlds that they’ve flung open, begging me to peer inside and take inventory.”

 

“In the end, we are all our mothers’ children, no matter how saintly or evil they might be; and the loss of their love is the earthquake that cracks your foundation forever. It’s permanent damage.”

 

“This is the great horror of life: that mistakes are forever, and cannot be undone. You can never truly go back, even if you want to retrace your steps and take another route. The path has already disappeared behind you.”

 

“There is no one path in life that is set before you, I’m starting to realize; no one is making your decisions for you.”

 

“When you’re documenting everything you do, you stop living life for yourself and start living it as a performance for others. You’re never in the actual moment, just the response to the moment.”

 

“Sex—it can be about love, yes. And it’s wonderful when it’s that, and God, baby, I hope that’s what you’ve found. But it’s also a tool. Men use it to prove a point to themselves, about their power to take what they want. You’re just the first rung on the ladder of their world domination. And when that’s the kind of sex you’re having—which is most of the time—you got to make sure that you’re using it as a tool, too. Don’t let yourself be used up by them, all the time believing it’s some kind of equal relationship. Make sure you’re getting just as much out of it as they are.”

 

“Was it any wonder that people on the wrong side of the glass would eventually decide to take a hammer and break it, reach through and take some of it for themselves?”

 

My Take

Pretty Things was a roller coaster thrill ride that I whipped through.  In the same vein as Gone Girl, Janelle Brown knows how to write a cliff hanging page turner.  I love getting caught up in a non-stop, well written thriller and thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent reading Pretty Things.

/by
, , , ,

463. The Red Notebook

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Meris Delli-Bovi

Author:  Antoine Laurain

Genre:   Fiction, Romance, Foreign

159 pages, published April 7, 2015

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

When Parisian bookseller Laurent Letellier comes across an abandoned handbag on the street there is nothing in it to indicate who it belongs to.  However, there are all sorts of other things in it which bit by bit disclose the identity of the owner, especially a red notebook which contains the owner’s thoughts and musings.  Laurent spends the next week tracking down the mysterious and enigmatic owner of the bag.

Quotes 

“How many things do we feel obliged to do for the sake of it, or for appearances, or because we are trained to do them, but which weigh us down and don’t in fact achieve anything?”

 

”If there was one thing that defined adolescence it was hysterical laughter. You never laughed like that again. In adolescence the brutal realisation that the world and life were completely absurd made you laugh until you couldn’t catch your breath, whereas in later life it would only result in a weary sigh.”

 

That was exactly what Tabucchi was suggesting with his title (“La Nostalgie du Possible”) –that we can pass right by something very important: love, a job, moving to another city or another country. Or another life. ‘Pass by’ and at the same time be ‘so close’ that sometimes, while in that state of melancholy that is akin to hypnosis, we can, in spite of everything, manage to grab little fragments of what might have been. Like catching snatches of a far-off radio frequency. The message is obscure, yet by listening carefully you can still catch snippets of the soundtrack of the life that never was. You hear sentences that were never actually said, you hear footsteps echoing in places you’ve never been to, you can make out the surf on a beach whose sand you have never touched. You hear the laughter and loving words of a woman though nothing ever happened between you. The idea of an affiar with her had crossed your mind. Perhaps she would have liked that –probably, in fact– but nothing every happened. For some unknown reason, we never gave in to the exquisite vertigo that you feel when you move those few centimeters towards the face of the other for the first kiss.”

 

“Can you experience nostalgia for something that hasn’t happened? We talk of ‘regrets’ about the course of our lives, when we are almost certain we have taken the wrong decision; but one can also be enveloped in a sweet and mysterious euphoria, a sort of nostalgia for what might have been.”

 

“There, it was over. How was it so easy to disappear from someone else’s life? Perhaps it was with the same ease that you enter it. A chance meeting, a few words exchanged, and a relationship begins. A chance falling out, a few words exchanged and that same relationship is over.”

 

“A quote from Sacha Guitry came to mind: ‘Watching someone sleep is like reading a letter that is not addressed to you.”

 

“What I really need is a friend just like me; I’m sure I’d be my own best friend.”

 

“Do great things, Laure, be happy, or at least do your best to be. Life is fragile.”

 

“There’s nothing worse than being bored with a boring man.”

 

My Take

The Red Notebook, which is a romance where the protagonists only meet at the end of the story, is a delightful read.  While reading it, I felt as if I was right there with them in the streets, book shops and cafes of Paris.  That alone makes it worth reading.

/by
, , , ,

461. Ninth House

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Leigh Bardugo

Genre:   Fiction, Mystery, Fantasy

459 pages, published October 8, 2019

Reading Format:  Audio Book on Overdrive

Summary

Galaxy “Alex” Stern was raised in Los Angeles by a hippie mom and dropped out of school into a world of drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and worse. At 20, she is the sole survivor of a multiple homicide.  Alex is then given a second chance when she is offered the opportunity to attend Yale on a full ride scholarship.  When she arrives in New Haven, she is called upon to use her special skill to see “grays” or ghosts on behalf of Yale’s secret societies.

Quotes 

“All you children playing with fire, looking surprised when the house burns down.”

 

“I let you die. To save myself, I let you die.  That is the danger in keeping company with survivors.”

 

“But would it have mattered if she’d been someone else? If she’d been a social butterfly, they would have said she liked to drink away her pain. If she’d been a straight-A student, they would have said she’d been eaten alive by her perfectionism. There were always excuses for why girls died.”

 

“Maybe all rich people asked the wrong questions. For people like Alex, it would never be what do you want. It was always just how much can you get?”

 

“Only two things kept you safe: money and power.”

 

“That was what magic did. It revealed the heart of who you’d been before life took away your belief in the possible. It gave back the world all lonely children longed for.”

 

My Take

I had a hard time following the plot of this book and never really engaged with any of the characters.  A mish-mash.  Skip.

/by