I'm not emotionally ready for this.

I will have a coronary in the theater.

From the Bookshelves

source: The Book Book

" 'One's real life is, so often, the life that one does not lead',"I added as I turned toward the taxi, but he only blinked, that nervous, sly smile again twitching through his face.


"so long, my dear, mmmm, safe flight."


On the drive to the airport, Dad barely said a word. he rested his head against the taxi window, mournfully staring out at the passing streets--such an unusual pose for him, I covertly took the disposable camera out of my bag, and while the taxi driver muttered at people dashing across the intersection in front of us, I took his picture, the last photo on the roll.


They say when people didn't know you were taking their picture, they appeared as they really were in life. And yet Dad didn't know I was taking his picture and he appeared as he never was--quiet, forlorn, somehow lost (Visual Aid 18.0).

"As far as one journeys, as much as a man sees, from the turrets of the Taf Mahal to the Siberian wilds, he may eventually come to an unfortunate conclusion--usually while he's lying in bed, staring at the thatched ceiling of some substandard accommodation in Indocinea," writes Swithin in his last book, the posthumously published Whereabouts, 1917 (1918). "It is impossible to rid himself of the relentless, cloying fever commonly known as Home. After seventy-three years of anguish I have found a cure, however. You must go home again, grit your teeth and however arduous the exercise, determine, without embellishment, your exact coordinates at Home, your longitudes and latitudes. Only then, will you stop looking back and see the spectacular view in front of you."

--Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl

A mystery of two sorts . . . the discovery of adolescence and its dreaded relationships with our peers and the mystery of the adults that surround us. Both quandaries are puzzled out by the wonderful Blue Van Meer, one of the better adolescent female characters I've read in a good while.

From the Bookshelves to Cinema

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

get excited, people.

video from Clevvermovies

A Girl Who Reads

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

—Rosemary Urquico

  via cult classic, not bestseller via ladflow source: grindlebone

source: imgfave via pinterest

From the Bookshelves

source: the Tome Traveler

He's yours, a strange voice whispered. You musn't let him go.
"I know, " I murmured impatiently.
"What do you know, Diana?" Matthew took a step toward me.
Marthe shot to my side. "Leave her," she hissed. "The child is not in this world."

I was nowhere, caught between the terrible ache of losing my parents and the certain knowledge that soon Matthew, too, would be gone.

Be careful, the strange voice warned.


"It's too late for that." I raised my hand from the floor and smashed it into the bow, snapping it in two. "Much too late."
"What's too late?" Matthew asked.
"I've fallen in love with you."
"You can't have," he said numbly. The room was utterly silent, except for the crackling of the fire. "It's too soon."

"Why do vampires have such a strange attitude toward time?" I mused aloud, still caught in a bewildering mix of past and present. The word "love" had sent feelings of possessiveness through me, however, drawing me to the here and now.
"Witches don't have centuries to fall in love. We do it quickly. Sarah says my mother fell in love with my father the moment she saw him. I've loved you since I decided not to hit you with an oar on the City of Oxford's dock." The blood in my veins began to hum. Marthe looked startled, suggesting she could hear it, too.


"You don't understand." It sounded as if Matthew, like the bow, might snap in two.


"I do. The Congregation will try to stop me, but they won't tell me who to love." When my parents were taken from me, I was a child with no options and did what people told me. I was an adult now, and I was going to fight for Matthew."


-A Discovery of Witches, Deborah Harkness

This book has been getting huge accolades since before it was even published. Written by a history of science professor, it follows witch-in-denial Diana Bishop (of Salem fame) as she heads to Oxford for a year of sabbatical and research, only to get much more than she bargained for when she calls up manuscript Ashmole 782. The world is complete, the characters complex (with a cast of dangerous enemies), a fistful of exotic locations, and quite the toe-tingling romance. As a historian, I love when a lady historian goes off on an adventure, running across all sorts of people and texts along the way. Harkness assumes her readers are intelligent (a wonderful quality in a writer) and allows her characters to hold flourishing conversations about 16th and 17th century alchemy, as well as genetics and biochemistry (vampires love their science, you know). Furthermore, she writes about Oxford (my beloved city, as you know) with the authority of someone who has actually lived and spent time there. Her descriptions of rowing down the river and lunch in the Blackwell's Cafe Nero made me practically cry with a homesickness for my cobbled streets and dreamy spires. Overall, it was a great read and I'm champing at the bit for the next book (it's a trilogy, woohoo!). I read it (via Kindle . . .it's technically for school, and I'm buying a print copy, despite my dad's exasperated "wait! that's not the point of this!") in two days, clued to the screen and going into a zone that could not be shaken. History, the supernatural . . . romance . . . illuminated manuscripts . . . just my cup of tea.

Resources and Reviews:

Deborah Harkness
Entertainment Weekly
Bookgeeks

From The Bookshelves

Source: The International Bookseller

  I bury myself in the next housekeeping article, then the League newsletter. For the second week in a row, I leave out Hilly's bathroom initiative. An hour later, I find myself staring off at the window. My Copy of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men sits on the window ledge. I walk over and pick it up, afraid the light will fade the paper jacket, the black-and-white photo of the humble, impoverished family on the cover. The book is warm and heavy from the sun. I wonder if I'll ever write anything worth anything at all. I turn when I hear Pascagoula's knock on my door. That's when the idea comes to me.

No. I couldn't. That would be . . . crossing the line.

But the idea won't go away.

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

This book is so wonderful, on so many levels. Three different narrators, three distinct voices, three amazing stories that all inevitably weave together. What kept striking me as I read it was that I am in the same place as Skeeter (recent college graduate, living at home, trying to find work/make my life "matter"), but that we are in such incredibly different environment. It seems so foreign to me, the level of understood prejudice and ignorance that was just an accepted part of society . . . parts of the book floored me, and brought tears to my eyes. The amount of sacrifice, the injured pride . . . it seems like it should be total fiction, from somewhere else entirely. And yet it was only 45-50 years ago, in the country where I live. And its a battle still being fought, in America and all over the world. The Help is funny, entertaining, heart-wrenching, and eye-opening. Get on it, kiddies.

From the Bookshelves

 

On a wintry night in 1968 someone came to our door and told us Ed was in trouble. Robert and I went out to find him. I grabbed my black lamb toy that Robert had given to me. It was his black sheep boy to black sheep girl present. Ed was something of a black sheep himself, so I took it along as a comforting talisman.

Ed was perched high up on a crane; he wouldn't come down. It was a cold, clear night, and as Robert talked to him, I climbed up the crane and gave him the lamb. He was shivering. We were the rebels without a cause and he was our sad Sal Mineo. Griffith Park in Brooklyn. 

Ed followed me down, and Robert took him home.

"Don't worry about the lamb," he said when he returned. "I'll find you another."

We lost contact with Ed but a decade later he was with me in an unexpected way. As I approached the microphone with my electric guitar to sing the opening line "So you want to be a rock 'n' roll star," I remembered his words. Small prophecies.

Just Kids, by Patti Smith

It won the National Book Award for non-fiction, she writes like a dream, paints a picture in your head, and makes everything seem possible. And that's about all there is to say.   (and it's got some badass 60s/70s rock 'n' roll stories)

 

From the Bookshelves

 

 

 

 

 

source: The Short Review

 

 

I tried to put these things out of my mind. We'd been away three long months harrying the Hibernian shores, and now I was back with Pila, my common-law, and thinking that home was very close to paradise in these endless summer days. We'd built our house together, Pila and me. It was a fine little wattle-and-daub cabin on a pretty bit of plain where a wide blue fjord stabbed into the land. On summer evenings my young wife and I would sit out front, high on potato wine, and watch the sun stitch its orange skirt across the horizon. At times such as these, you get a good, humble feeling, like the gods made this place, this moment, first and concocted you as an afterthought just to be there to enjoy it.

-Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower

Wells Tower's collection of short stories is not my usual fare, but I very much enjoyed it. It is excellently written, and provides thought-provoking character profiles. They are people you see every day, but maybe don't recognize or realize you see. I was skeptical in the first few stories, as enjoyable as they were, but the final story really drove home this very interesting arc (conceit?) throughout the whole book and was just absolutely wonderful. I highly recommend!

From the Bookshelves to Cinema

The Maltese Falcon



I read Dashiell Hammett's Maltese Falcon at the beginning of the summer, both because I love his other novel Thin Man (and its film adaptation) and because I wanted to see the film. Well, I'm finally getting around to it right now. It's a story that lends itself to the moving pictures and particularly the film noir genre. Spade & Archer are a pair of private eyes in San Francisco. Spade is having an affair with Archer's wife and wouldn't have respected Archer very much even if he wasn't. But when Archer gets murdered while following a lead for a (female) client, Spade still wants to get to the bottom of it.

Humphrey Bogart (who, naturally, plays Spade) seems so much younger than he is in Casablanca, even though it was made only a year after Falcon. His Spade is spot-on--a man who always keeps his composure, is hardly ever startled (or hardly ever let's you see him startled). He's a man that can punch your lights out without losing the ash off the end of his cigarette. I've never been a huge Humphrey Bogart person, myself, but I like him alot more now that I've seen him smile. He'd always seemed rather forbidding (my mom just said "I think he's creepy, myself. Even creepier when he smiles." No, she doesn't know what I'm writing), and his smile has a fantastically sinister edge to it. 

But the film, beyond the fantastic plot (fantastic because it follows the film to a T), is just a fantastic example of old film-making. The minimal (i.e. realistic) set design, the play of shadows and light that is best executed in black and white, the clothes, all prove with a wonderful concreteness that flashier isn't better. It's so odd (and odd that it's odd) that the actors look like people. They have wrinkles, they aren't perfect physical specimens (or all the same body type if they're not), and their faces tell distinct stories. Their hair moves, which is refreshing. I suppose, it was a different time.

both photos: filmnoirphotos

From the Bookshelves to Cinema

Get excited people. I know I am.

source: yahoo via I don't think Prada is the Answer

From the Bookshelves

source: here

We want books that are written for those of us who doubt everything, who cry over the least little thing, who are startled by the slightest noise.

We want books that cost their authors a great deal, books where you can feel the years of work, the backache, the writer's block, the author's panic at the thought that he might be lost: his discouragement, his courage, his anguish, his stubbornness, the risk of failure he has taken.


We want splendid books, books that immerse us in the splendor of reality and keep us there; books that prove to us that love is at work in the world next to evil, right up against it, at times indistinctly, and that it always will be, just the way that suffering will always ravage hearts. We want good novels.
 
-A Novel Bookstore, by Laurence Cosse


A Novel Bookstore, translated into English by Alison Anderson (who also translated the lovely Elegance of the Hedgehog), is an ode. It is a love song to great literature, of all sorts, and one of the few books that made me want to create a list of every book mentioned in it and run to the library. The characters are so wonderfully developed, so subtle, in a way that I, honestly, can only compare to that French women are stunningly stylish in such an undone almost careless way. It's a thriller, it's a romance, it keeps you guessing, and it tugs at your very heartstrings. All this, plus passages of beautifully written word that just make you pause for the glory of a sentence.

Literature to Cinema: True Grit

source: here

who else is excited?!?!

From the Bookshelves

"I have been able to both love him and lie to him. I see myself wrapped in lies, which do not seem to penetrate my soul, as if they are not really a part of me. They are like costumes. When I loved Henry, as I did those four days, I loved him with a naked body that had shed its costumes and forgotten its lies. Perhaps it is not so with Henry. But love, in all this, trembles like a spear in a sand dune. To lie, of course, is to engender insanity. The minute I step into the cavern of my lies I drop into darkness."

-Henry and June, Anais Nin

I enjoyed Anais Nin's Henry and June immensely, largely due to Nin's beautiful writing style. Her words are very lyrical but still grounded in a sort of realism. And honestly, if it were not, I don't know if I would have been able to get through it at certain parts. It's very . . . indulgent. The affair between Henry Miller and Anais Nin seems to me very passionate, yes, but also very indulgent. It's almost like teenagers . . . everything is dramatic, everything is intense, everything is earth-shattering. Also, she seems cruel to the men in her life, and she knows it!

But then I remember that this is a time when women did not have power in their relationships, and that Nin's sexual awakening is a very new thing. And that leads me down very interesting thought paths, which I haven't really been able to fully figure out yet. At least not in a way that makes sense.

It's also very interesting to see her portrait of Henry Miller, an author that has quite the reputation to us Americans (so does Nin for that matter . . . I blushed a bit when I read the book in public coffeeshops). Overall I recommend, but not for anyone under the age of . . . . a mature 15, and not for the faint of heart!

Jane-ite alert!

If there is one thing I love in the world, it is an adaptation of a Jane Austen novel. While at Oxford I read a tutorial of Jane Austen and now consider myself quite the expert (not really, at all). Jane Austen novels are more than just pretty love stories, but also amazing pieces of social commentary. They provide insight into the family in a loving and comfortable way, which is so refreshing in a world where most see the past as a rigid set of rules with no room comfort or laughter. Here are a list of my favorite screen adaptations of Jane Austen novels:

-Joe Wright's Pride and Prejudice: As much as Keira Knightley is a witty and natural Lizzie Bennett and Matthew MacFadyen is an incredibly dashing Mr. Darcy (who brings a shyness to Darcy that is not inappropriate, I think), I also like this version the best for several other reasons as well. It is beautifully shot with incredible lighting, and (most importantly) it captures the story's most important points without sacrificing pacing. I personally cannot get through the epic 90s adaptation, despite Colin Firth's Darcy.

-BBC's Sense and Sensibility (2008): This adaptation does have the disadvantage of length, but it is beautifully adapted, shot, and pieced together. The actors and actresses seem the appropriate age, a fact that most adaptations frequently overlook. I do enjoy Emma Thompson as Elinor in the 90s version, but Elinor is supposed to be 18 or 19 years old! I also like that this adaptation shows somethings that are only hinted at in the novel, but I won't tell you what they are!

-Northanger Abbey (2007): When I first read through some of the Austen cannon, I loved Northanger Abbey best. This film adaptation is very pretty, and Carey Mulligan as the horrifying Isabella Thorpe is a delightful turn. Of course, then I went to Oxford and my tutor had to inform me that Mr. Tilney had homosexual undertones. Not that I have a problem with homosexuality, of course, but I can't be dreamy about him then.

When I first read Persuasion, I couldn't stand it. I was a freshman in college and found it very dull and boring. Fast forward to my junior year of college, and I reread it for my tutorial. I absolutely fell in love with it, with Captain Wentworth, and of course Anne Elliot. So much so, that I hesitate to watch any screen adaptations for fear of disappointment.




and, in case anybody wonders, I very much disapprove of this whole Pride and Prejudice and Zombies business. Disapprove entirely.

From the Bookshelves to Cinema

They've made The Help into a film, with a spectacular cast. They don't have a trailer out yet, but here are some photos that have been released.

source for both: The Help Trailer blog