Laura

Beautifully written, heartbreaking in places. I wanted to devour it but it was too much sometimes.

Thoroughly enjoyable, in fact so much that after I finished it on Sunday morning I spent most of the rest of the day being sorry that it was over. Although I snobbishly prefer literary over mainstream novels, Berry managed to balance on the line between the two very well – although it doesn't read as literary, there is a lot to be found here.
 
I picked this up from the bookstore at random because the cover looked nice. I've been into the mystery/crime genre lately, and the first page was intriguing. This book makes up for all those times I bought books under the same impulse but ended up regretting it.

Also, I could not help imagining the book as a film. It would be an amazing cross between Dark City, City of Lost Children, and Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe.

Re-read in late July and early Aug 2014 in preparation for the movie!! Better than the first time around (one-star improvement).

—

‰ЫПThe state liquor stamps over the tops of tequila bottles in the stores were coming unstuck, is how dry the air was. Liquor-store owners could be filling those bottles with anything anymore. Jets were taking off the wrong way from the airport, the engine sounds were not passing across the sky where they should have, so everybody‰ЫЄs dreams got disarranged, when people could get to sleep at all. In the little apartment complexes the wind entered narrowing to whistle through the stairwells and ramps and catwalks, and the leaves of the palm trees outside rattled together with a liquid sound, so that from inside, in the darkened rooms, in louvered light, it sounded like a rainstorm, the wind raging in the concrete geometry, the palms beating together like the rush of a tropical downpour, enough to get you to open the door and look outside, and of course there‰ЫЄd only be the same hot cloudless depth of day, no rain in sight.‰Ыќ

‰ЫПAs nights went on and nothing happened and the phenomenon slowly faded to the accustomed deeper violets again, most had difficulty remembering the earlier rise of heart, the sense of overture and possibility, and went back once again to seeking only orgasm, hallucination, stupor, sleep, to fetch them through the night and prepare them against the day.‰Ыќ

“I think if you read a poem, then forget you've read it, and then much later you read it again, it really does get better.” (From “Stop Thinking & End Your Problems”)

I haven‰ЫЄt read many how-е_to writing books, so my reading was not comparative to other books of this kind that are out there, which I am assured is many. I thought it was very helpful and wellе_-organized. The tone was mostly conversational which I found nice. I actually did one of the exercises, which ended up being kind of illuminating. There was quite a lot of repetition throughout the book, but I found that helpful in a hammerе_-it-home kind of way. I‰ЫЄve read a lot of the books she uses as examples, which probably made a big difference. I like that she used films to illustrate some of her points (particularly Adaptation) because I find movie details easier to remember than details from novels. I feel like this would be a good book to revisit after getting enough distance from writing something to see if there are parts that can be tightened and sharpened in various ways.

‰ЫПI must confess that his affection originated in nothing better than gratitude, or, in other words, that a persuasion of her partiality for him had been the only cause of giving her a serious thought. It is a new circumstance in romance, I acknowledge, and dreadfully derogatory of an heroine‰ЫЄs dignity; but if it be as new in common life, the credit of a wild imagination will at least be all my own.‰Ыќ

‰ЫПSomething he knew he missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery. There were a hundred million tickets in his lottery, and there was only one prize; the chances had been too decidedly against him.‰Ыќ

‰ЫПWhat is the point. That is what must be borne in mind. Sometimes the point is really who wants what. Sometimes the point is what is right or kind. Sometimes the point is a momentum, a fact, a quality, a voice, an intimation, a thing said or unsaid. Sometimes it‰ЫЄs who‰ЫЄs at fault, or what will happen if you do not move at once. The point changes and goes out. You cannot be forever watching for the point, or you lose the simplest thing: being a major character in your own life. ... The point has never quite been entrusted to me.‰Ыќ

—

‰ЫП'You can‰ЫЄt miss it' always means you‰ЫЄre never going to find it. The shortest distance between two points may well be the wrong way on a one way street. All the same, all the same, I think there‰ЫЄs something to be said for assuring the next that the water‰ЫЄs fine‰ЫУquite warm, actually‰ЫУonce you get into it. You can‰ЫЄt miss it. It could be that the sort of sentence one wants right here is the kind that runs, and laughs, and slides, and stops right on a dime.‰Ыќ

Charming and funny, but there is a subtle darkness and sadness underneath the surface. I read it exclusively on the beach (on Lake Huron and then Lake Erie) and the sunburn was worth it. Reminded me of Emily Carr's Klee Wyck, but with more appreciation for the child's perspective and imagination. I loved that Sophia is always shouting and screaming, so stubborn and selfish and single-minded, like a real kid.

—

“They went closer to the house and could feel how the island had changed. It was no longer wild. It had become lower, almost flat, and looked ordinary and embarrassed. The vegetation had not been disturbed; on the contrary, the owner had had broad catwalks built over the heather and the blueberry bushes. He had been very careful of the vegetation. The gray juniper bushes had not been cut down. But the island seemed flat all the same, because it should not have had a house. From up close, this way, the house was fairly low. On the elevations, it had probably been pretty. It would have been pretty anywhere, except here.”

—

Sophia dictates a study about worms to her grandmother (brought to mind when a couple of days later I read about the young Alison Bechdel dictating her diary to her mother in Are You My Mother?). After a worm stretches itself out and breaks apart:

“Both halves fell down on the ground, and the person with the hook went away. They couldn't grow back together, because they were terribly upset, and then, of course, they didn't stop to think, either. And they knew that by and by the'd grow out again, both of them. I think they looked at each other, and thought they looked awful, and then crawled away from each other as fast as they could. Then they started to think. They realized that from now on life would be quite different, but they didn't know how, that is, in what way. ....

“Presumably, everything that happened to them after that only seemed like half as much, but this was also sort of a relief, and then, too, nothing they did was their fault any more, somehow. They just blamed each other. Or else they'd say that after a thing like that, you just weren't yourself any more. there is one thing that makes it more complicated, and that is that there is such a big difference between the front end and the back end. A worm never goes backwards, and so for that reason, it has its head only at one end. But if God made angleworms so they can come apart and then grow out again, why, there must be some sort of secret nerve that leads out in the back end so that later on it can think. Otherwise it couldn't get along by itself. But the back end has a very tiny brain. It can probably remember its other half, which went first and made all the decisions. And so now ... the back end says, ‘Which way should I grow out? Should I go on following and never have to make any important decisions, or should I be the one who always knows best, until I come apart again? That would be exciting.' But maybe he's so used to being the tail that he just lets things go on the way they are.”

“To divest oneself of unnecessary possessions, and mainly of other people: that was the business of life.  “One had to find out what things were not necessary, what things one really needed. A little music and liquor, still less food, a warm and beautiful but not too big roof of one's own, a channel for one's creative energies and love, the sun and the moon. These were enough, and contact with Gos in his ultimately un-defiled separation was better than the endless mean conflict between male and female or the lust for power in adolescent battle which led men into business and Rolls-Royce motor cars and war.”

“Walking home tired in the Sunday dusk, it became obvious that it had been a good day. While one was in the act of being busy with these small creations, the mind travelled lucidly about its humble errands, gently skirting and mantling round the little problems of ash or hazel. Pre-occupied with simple, tangible constructions, looking before and after, the Biscay of the brain was stilled to a sweet calm: and in this calm vague thoughts created themselves unconsciously - sudden, unrelated discoveries.“

Amazing. Fun and tragic and agonizing and hilarious. I have never enjoyed so thoroughly a book in which so many people are killed. The characters are simultaneously archetypes and originals; they're just the kind of people you'd expect to populate a town like Warlock, but then you begin to see through them and it's a bit sickening to know them too well. At the same time, they have convictions and reactions that I believe in but don't always understand, but my lack of understanding makes me appreciate it all the more.

For me, the American western is cozy and familiar but yet distant, in the same way the British worlds of Dorothy Sayers, Anthony Powell, and Barbara Pym are – times and places that I feel connected to but don't really know. The story's ending was inevitable but for most of the book I couldn't see how it could make it there, and it was heartbreaking when it did.

I dog-eared a lot of pages, much more than any other book I've read recently, and I need to go back to them all to decide what passages to quote here.

“The pursuit of truth, not facts, is the business of fiction.” – Oakley Hall, from the Prefatory Note

“He thought of the forty years he had spent here on the homestead – the rude, pioneer days – the house he had built for himself, with its plain furniture, the old-fashioned spinning-wheel on which Anna had spun his trousers, the wooden telephone, and the rude skidway on which he ate his meals.”

February 2018:
YEP. This book is basically The Life-Changing Magic of Nurturing Your Inner Artist. I didn't ‘do' the course in the same way that I didn't ‘do' the decluttering process prescribed by Marie Kondo, but I still got so much out of this book. The exercises (“tasks”) are great and so are the pep talks. I don't care that it comes across as a little woo-woo. If you're not willing to tolerate a little woo-woo, I don't know how you can be creative. Creating things is magic – I don't know how else to explain it. But I get it if the tone isn't for you.

I loved that so much of this book is about self-care, just packaged in a somewhat dated style. It would be so interesting to see this book reframed from a feminist millennial perspective. Same concepts with a tone and examples more suited to our current times. A Call Your Girlfriend or Two Bossy Dames or Forever 35 version of The Artist's Way would be amazing.

I started taking this book a bit more seriously than I had initially because I really like The Artist's Way Everyday, which I did not finish. I wrote about it on my blog.

November 2017:
Trying this again. Might be the right time, this time.

August 2012:
I wasn't planning on “doing” the book but now I can't even face reading it. The first few chapters were enough for me. I will try reading it again another time but now is not that time.

It's a little humbling to put a book like this on my reading list. I have plenty of willpower! I am strong! Or not. Oh well.

“‘La! sir,' said Sir Percy at last, putting up his eye-glass and surveying the young Frenchman with undisguised wonderment. ‘Where in the cuckoo‰ЫЄs name did you learn to speak English?'”

I brought this book on our road trip down to Florida for American Thanksgiving. The author‰ЫЄs been getting so much positive attention and we had this book of stories and I‰ЫЄm not sure what else I can say about my motivation. But I was on vacation and reading was a lower priority than staring out the window or talking to family or poking at my new iPhone. I liked it enough to finish it in the car the first day driving home (bent close to my lap, one arm hiding the windows from view so I wouldn‰ЫЄt get carsick), if that tells you anything. The stories were of the gut-kicking variety, with wrenching poverty and sad families but a bit of joy here and there. Made me feel sick and over-privileged, like I have my priorities all wrong. But I know enough that it wasn‰ЫЄt a feeling that would last (and maybe that‰ЫЄs why I wanted to finish it so much).

‰ЫПWhen in doubt, suspend all logic. Slit common sense by the throat. Travel to the nearest newsstand and ask for elephants. Walk to the bakery and show complete disbelief when they inform you they do not stock piranha.‰Ыќ

‰ЫПI do not know if it is with courage or with a lack of spine that I confess my love of Hindi movies. It is like loving a brother everybody hates. Even though you know your brother has faults, he is still your brother. When an outside person says bad things about him, you will kill that person. You are allowed to complain because he is yours. You can tell him that he is sad and good for nothing, but let anyone else say that and you will drink their khoon straight from the heart.‰Ыќ

‰ЫПThomas Mann‰ЫЄs definition of a writer. Someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.‰Ыќ

‰ЫПLet it be said now without further ado, they were just pleasantly drunk. That is, we think, being more, becoming and unbecoming less, than usual. Not so far gone as to be rapt in that disgraceful apotheosis of immediacy from which yesterday and to-morrow are banished and the off dawn into the mire of coma taken; and yet at the same time phony and contrapanic-stuck, than usual. Not, needless to say, melting in that shameless ecstasy of disintegration justly quenched in the mire and pain of reassemblage; no, immediacy, it was merely an innocent and agreeable awareness of being and that less clocklaboriously than was their habit. Pleasantly drunk.‰Ыќ ‰ЫУ And so with this you see a sample of what I had to deal with, reading this book, not really understanding most of it.

And Smeraldina-Rima, upon hearing big words: ‰ЫПWhat‰ЫЄs that? Something to eat?‰Ыќ

Re-read on October 16, 2016. Tempted to upgrade it to 5 stars.

—

‰ЫПAnd so it came about that, like many other well-meaning people, they worried not so much about the dreadful things themselves as about their own inability to worry about them.‰Ыќ

‰ЫПShe had imagined that the presence of what she thought of as clever people would bring about some subtle change in the usual small talk. The sentences would be like bright jugglers‰ЫЄ balls, spinning through the air and being deftly caught and thrown up again. But she saw now that conversation could also be compared to a series of incongruous objects, scrubbing-brushes, dish-cloths, knives, being flung or hurtling rather than spinning, which were sometimes not caught at all but fell to the ground with resounding thuds.‰Ыќ

All amazing stories, except for ‰ЫПEspecially Heinous‰Ыќ which went on for much too long.

“Truly it's exhausting how many minds there are to swoop in and out of.” – Once around the Park with Omniscience

“The myocardiograph measured our heartache and it was more than the manuals said we could manage.” – Terror of the Future /1

Really too similar to A. L. Barker and Barbara Pym to be reading right on their heels, though with oodles more emotion (in the manipulative sense; cancer and small sweet children and such), so it‰ЫЄs time to break away from the women with their epiphanies and weeping and read some dudes from a different era.

Fun, sweet, propulsive. I gobbled it up. I never heard Calvin‰ЫЄs Irish accent in the dialogue so it was weird to be reminded of it every time he said think/tink. I loved the fleeting parts where Holland talks about the music. Some of the dramatic bits didn‰ЫЄt make much sense, but who cares! A fake marriage is always a fun situation to maneuver two characters into in order to develop a relationship.