Book of the Week: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

"If a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don't think 'oh, I love this picture because it's universal.' 'I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.' That's not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It's a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes, you. An individual heart-shock. Your dream, Welty's dream, Vermeer's dream. You see one painting, I see another, the art book puts it at another remove still, the lady buying the greeting card at the museum gift shop sees something else entire, and that's not even to mention the people separated from us by time -- four hundred years before us, four hundred years after we're gone  -- it'll never strike anybody the same way and the great majority of people it'll never strike in any deep way at all but -- a really great painting is fluid enough to work its way into the mind and heart through all kinds of different angles, in ways that are unique and very particular. Yours, yours. I was painted for you."

Book of the Week ~ The Inner Sky: poems, notes, dreams by Rainer Maria Rilke

Solang du Selbstgeworfnes fängst, ist alles
Geschicklichkeit und lässlicher Gewinn -;
erst wenn du plötzlich Fänger wirst des Balles,
den eine ewige Mit-Spielerin
dir zuwarf, deiner Mitte, in genau
gekonntem Schwung, in einem jener Bögen
aus Gottes grossen Brücken-Bau:
erst dann ist Fangen-Können ein Vermögen, -
nicht deines, einer Welt. Und wenn du gar
zurückzuwerfen Kraft und Mut besäßest,
nein, wunderbarer: Mut und Kraft vergäßest
und schon geworfen hättest ...(wie das Jahr
die Voegel wirft, die Wandervogelschwärme,
die eine ältere einer jungen Wärme
hinüberschleudert über Meere - ) erst
in diesem Wagnis spielst du gültig mit.
Erleichterst dir den Wurf nicht mehr; erschwerst
dir ihn nicht mehr. Aus deinen Händen tritt
das Meteor und rast in seine Räume...

As long as you catch what you've thrown yourself, it's all  

just clever agility and venial gain;   

 but when you suddenly come to catch a ball  

an eternal playmate has thrown 

at you, at your center, has exactly set 

in mastered motion, in an arc 

out of God's great bridge-building -  

then that you catch is real power: 

not yours, the world's. And when you even 

have the strength to throw it back, 

no, better yet: have forgotten courage and strength 

and thrown it back already...(the way the year

throws birds, the flocks of migrating birds 

hurled over the ocean from an old to a new 

warmth - ) then, that gamble, is the first moment 

you too can be said to play. You 

unburden yourself of the throw no longer; you burden 

yourself with the throw no longer. Out of your hands steps 

the meteor and it races into its skies...

Book of the Week: A Wild Sheep Chase

"Body cells replace themselves every month. Even at this very moment. Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories."

I am a huge Murakami fan. I absolutely recognize that he's not everyone's cup of tea but...if he is your cup of tea call me; we'll talk. This is Murakami's first widely published novel and the fifth one I've read (after Kafka on the Shore, Windup Bird, 1Q84, and the nonfiction What I TalkAbout When I Talk About Running) and I've fallen completely in love with his particular, quirky brand of magical realism. Reading a Murakami novel is like floating around inside someone else's strange and slightly creepy dream. AWSC is part detective novel, part sci-fi, part quest/self-discovery and (and this part I was kind of unprepared for) part horror. 

There's always a sense of the eerie and foreboding in Murakami's novels, but this is the first time he has genuinely FREAKED ME THE F*&% OUT. Ben can vouch for that at one point I yelled AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! and threw my book onto the coffee table like it was a hot potato, because I was so creeped out. Anyway, if you are looking at venturing into the wonderful and weird world of Murakami I would highly recommend A Wild Sheep Chase...although I'd maybe say start out with Kafka on the Shore or Wind up Bird Chronicle (KotS is probably not his best, but it's a good introduction to his style. WBC is maybe his most critically acclaimed novel, but it is a bit more of a committment).

Yay reading!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Book of the Week: Tell the Wolves I'm Home

Maybe all I wanted was for Toby to hear the wolves that lived in the dark forest of my heart. And maybe that’s what it meant. Tell the Wolves I’m Home. Maybe Finn understood everything, as usual. You may as well tell them where you live, because they’ll find you anyway. They always do.



I'm having a tough time giving Tell the Wolves I'm Home a straight assessment. There's no denying that Carol Rifka Brunt's prose is gorgeous and full of little gems of profound wisdom, but ultimately the beauty of her writing wasn't quite enough to make me overlook the flaws in character and story. Still definitely worth a read though.

Book of the Week: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“Monsters come in all shapes and sizes, Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren't.”

I never know how to start writing about the books I truly love - the ones that infiltrate the corners of my mind and stay there for days, weeks, months after I've finished them.

I can try to tell you what The Ocean at the End of the Lane is about...at least, I can tell you what it made me think about. This is a book about childhood, memory and loss. How would we live, if we knew what was lurking behind the thin veneer of reality? Would we make different choices if we understood the sacrifices that had been made on our behalf? Is it really easier to forget, to not know these things, than it is to walk through the world with the weight of them on our backs?

This is one of those novels where upon finishing it, I immediately had to start it over again because the ending made me see the beginning in a whole new light. It is poignant and heartbreaking, and fantastically eerie in the way only a Neil Gaiman book can be. There were times when I felt like I was reading a very dark Studio Ghibli film, and I mean that in the best possible way. Plus kittens. KITTENS NEIL REALLY?? Come on.

Anyway. That's all I'll say for now. Read this book.

I'm going to start trying to do this book of the week thing. Is it even a thing? Eh...it is now. I'm making it one. Even if I'm not actually able to finish a book a week (highly likely) I've read a lot of books in my life so I have some serious catching up to do. Book of the Week may be a book I'm currently reading or a book I just finished, or it might be something I read years ago. Whatever strikes my fancy. We'll see where this goes.