books that broke my heart (a series): literary fiction

At least I think these books would all be under the genre of literary fiction. If not, oh well—it's not like I'm going to do a whole post on "coming of age" novels that broke my heart. Anyway. If everyone had their own "books that broke my heart" list, I'm sure some of these would be on every single one, but that should only add to their credibility.

Mama Day by Gloria Naylor
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy (book three of The Border Trilogy)
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich
Lord of the Flies by William Golding (Simon...)
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (The plot twist at the end was expected, but the section where Roseanne was cast out kiiiilled me.)
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien

If anybody else has books that are on their list, please let me know! I love to add books to my reading list.

As for the book covers used, if they have multiple versions of covers, I've chosen the cover that was used on the book I read (e.g. my mom's LoTR set that she's had since college and I have since accumulated—unbeknownst to her).

books that broke my heart (a series): young adult fiction

I told you I was going to document this, so here's the first in the series. I cried way too hard reading all of these.  :)

Adeline Street by Carol Lynch Williams
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (not pictured)
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Mick Harte Was Here by Barbara Park
Harry Potter and Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

Did any books that you read while growing up break your (pre?)teen heart?

like a disaster

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us...We need the kind of books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.
-Franz Kafka

I'm totally with Franz on this one. I'm disappointed with the books I've read so far this year, not because they weren't good (I mean, I finished them, didn't I?), but because they didn't break my heart like they led me to believe they would. Well, I never expected The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society or High Fidelity to break my heart—they were what they were. But all the rest...

The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Marcía Márquez
The Hours by Michel Cunningham
White Oleander by Janet Fitch
City of Thieves by David Benioff
Unless by Carol Shields
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby



I want to start documenting which books have broken my heart.

Which books broke your heart?

hahahahaha

Here's a site showing the first ten pages of this book.

Getting such a kick out of this animated gif. Must obtain book.

nicole krauss

The author of my most favorite book ever had a new book come out this month called Great House.
Finally, finally, finally.

She interviewed on NPR yesterday, and that interview includes some excerpts from the book and discusses how she goes about writing her novels. By the way, her actual voice sounds just as delicate and pretty as her written voice. Can you tell I kind of worship her? Well, her work, at least.

I always start without knowing at all what kind of novel I'm going to write. And that includes the themes, that includes the plot, and that even includes the characters. So I really just begin writing without any sense of where the writing will take me.

I need this book ASAP.

slaughterhouse-five

From the almost-finished summer reading list.


She said about what you would expect her to say. There was a baby. And so on. (9)

And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep. (18)

I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. (19)

This was a fairly pretty girl, except that she had legs like an Edwardian grand piano. (29)

With the help of fear and echoes and winter silences, that dog had a voice like a big bronze gong. (48)

When food came in, the human beings were quiet and trusting and beautiful. They shared. (70)

The champagne was dead. So it goes. (73)


image from here

#feelings i have known

I don't know how much longer I can keep going without a friend. I
used to be able to do it very easily, but that was before I knew what
having a friend was like. It's much easier not to know things
sometimes.

-The Perks of Being A Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky

i'd like to know why i've never read anthem before now.

I am loving it.

summer reading list

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Anthem by Ayn Rand

we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

photos from this site, a project about journeys rather than destinations; the inbetween (thanks, julie)

Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; not two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blow-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only when do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. I feel better now, having said this, although only those who have experienced it will understand.

-Steinbeck, Travels with Charlie

installation

After having it on my list for over a year, I finally made it to Sam Weller's Bookstore. I especially liked the bargain books section in the back of the basement with its uneven, creaky floors, random nooks, and cold air.

This was an art installation that was located on the top floor.

yes. often.

from here

No, really. Are you talking about me?

(UPDATE: Found out it's from Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson)

if people were rain, i was drizzle and she was a hurricane

I read a quote from this book on a blog that I follow. I probably won't ever read the book, but these words are perfect.

haven't been making enough time to read lately

More favorites from The Unbearable Lightness of Being:

Dreaming is not merely an act of communication (or coded communication, if you like); it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself. Our dreams prove that to imagine—to dream about things that have not happened—is among mankind's deepest needs. (59)

But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave. (75)

She was absolutely incapable of tolerating this absolutely insignificant incident. (75)

While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and exchange motifs..., but if they meet when they are older..., their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them. (89)

If she couldn't love her fourteen-year-old schoolboy, she could at least love cubism. (91)

photo from here

the unbearable lightness of being

The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. (5)

We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come. (8)

Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love. (11)

He called to her in a kind voice, and Tereza felt her soul rushing up to the surface through her blood vessels and pores to show itself to him. (48)

photo from here

why i love novels

I stayed up last night finishing The Secret Scripture. For fifteen minutes following I flipped back through parts of the book and thought about the unfairness of it all and cried. Poor Roseanne. What a lonely, heartbreaking life, and she still chose not to be bitter. What a beautiful person who thought all that was left of herself was a rumour of beauty (268).

If you can't tell, I'm a big fan of this book. It is the best book I've read in a long time. Up there with The History of Love, for me.

It was always going to be him. (144)

I must admit I put my mind only lightly to these matters. At least, I attempted lightness. My head is already stuffed with grief I suppose like a pomegranate with its red seeds. I can only bleed grief, having no room for more...I sat there among them with a roaring head. (165)

That is because at close of day the ship we sail in is the soul, not the body. (177)

There was the moment we stood side by side in the church, and I looked down at her face just the second before she said 'I do,' and then heard her say it, and then out of her face flew this extraordinary light, flooding up at me. It was love. You do not expect to see love like that. I did not anyhow. (177)

For a moment I thought I could hear music, a swell of old American jazz, but it was only the bleary wind staggering over the summit. And in the music I heard my name. (189)

The room had a little bit of sideways spring sunlight, that seemed to have crept in through the window-glass with an almost apologetic delicacy. A little square beam of it sat across Roseanne's face. Yes, she is very old. Sunlight as always the most brutal measurer of age, but also, the most faithful painter. (197)

I sat there. I am sitting there still. (202)

Some tunes only rarely find their moment, like some ould Christmas song, or slushy old ballads in the deeps of winter when everyone wants to be melancholy. (206)

There are some sufferings that we seem as a creature to forget, or we would never survive as a creature among all the other creatures. The pain of childbirth is said to be one, but I cannot agree there. And the pain of whatever had happened to me is certainly not one either. Even as a sere old crone in this room I can still remember it. Still feel a shadow of it. It is a pain that removes all other things except itself, so that the young woman lying there in her marriage bed was just all pain, all suffering. (210)

Who can really itemise the cause of our human tears? (212)

Imaginings. A nice sort of word for catastrophe and delusion. (219)

How was it I had managed to live in the world with no one? (260)

I suppose we measure the importance of our days by those few angels we spy among us, and yet aren't like them. (268)

Pure feeling, nothing else. Feeling without thought. Just to get there, to keep going and get there. (291)

Because why would I not reject her, when everyone else had? (293)

Photo from here

more secret scripture

There are so many strings of words in this novel that I don't ever want to forget.

He carried a highly ecclesiastical umbrella, like something real and austere, that said its prayers at night in the hatstand. (92)

And from his eyes came slowly tears, immaculate human tears, before the world touches them. River, window and eyes. (101)

Always the deluge of rain falling on Sligo, falling on the streets big and little, making the houses shiver and huddle like people at a football match. Falling fantastically, in enormous amounts, the contents of a hundred rivers. And the river itself, the Garravoge, swelling up, the beautiful swans taken by surprise, riding the torrent, being swept down under the bridge and reappearing the other side like unsuccessful suicides, their mysterious eyes shocked and black, their mysterious grace unassailed. How savage swans are even in their famous beauty. (125)

He was a demon for growing vegetables all the year round, which apparently is quite possible if you know how to do it. Like most things. (127)

Oh, he cleared his eyes of everything then, and he stared at me, and for the first time I saw what was also hiding in John Lavelle, a sort of kindness. How much of such kindness the war had covered over with corpses and curses I do not know.
'Will you show me my brother's grave?' he said, in the same tones as another might have said, I love you. (108)

Now yet again I discover I do not have the language, the lingo, to talk to her about this, or about anything. We have neglected the tiny sentences of life and now the big ones are beyond our reach. (70)

photo from here

i'm now expanding beyond frame-by-frame action photos

words from this book

too many wants

I want to bake cookies and leave them as surprises.
I want to watch Shakespeare in Love, because it's waiting on the DVR.
I want to longboard and also to play football but won't for two different reasons.
I want to relearn constellations and reorient myself in them, with them.
I want to stop eating mid-afternoon vending machine pretzel snacks.
I want to go to India and Iceland.
I want to always remember everyone's birthdays.
I want my house to smell like autumn.
I want a cozy reading nook.
I want to put more things on my bedroom walls.
I want to not need sleep.
I want to finish my Halloween costumes.
I want to calm down.
I want to name a dog.

the secret scripture - parts i love so far

A person without anecdotes that they nurse while they live, and that survive them, are more likely to be utterly lost not only to history but the family following them. Of course this is the fate of most souls, reducing entire lives, no matter how vivid and wonderful, to those sad black names on withering family trees, with half a date dangling after and a question mark.


his hair cropped tight like a condemned man


Whose sleeve do I have to grip, to tell my story to? It use to be Bet. Now, sleeveless.


Now we are two foreign countries and we simply have our embassies in the same house. Relations are friendly but strictly diplomatic.


Into the kitchen I went. How welcome a figure I can't say. Not very, probably, my sudden presence endured.


He recited to me all the intimations, suspicious and histories of his heart, not perhaps even bothering himself with the thought that I might not understand, but offering it all as a music quite as desirable to him and therefore to me...It was the way he had learned to live, in Ireland, the accidental place he loved.

photo from here