A close reading of this classic with the #Booktwitter group. I read this in college, and while I finished it, I wasn’t quite sure what I had read. This time, having many decades to reflect on it, and benefitting from the expert notes of my fellow readers, and understanding better the brutal facts of mortality and existence, I drank this in, entranced. Maybe this one is only meant to be read later in life.
When I feel that “damp, drizzly November in my soul,” I’ll return once more to this incredible novel.
I picked up this first of Jance’s 20+ Beaumont mystery series. This one is set in Seattle and Phoenix, and as we were planning to move from Seattle to Phoenix, I thought it might be interesting. I liked the book fine, but didn’t connect with the main character of Detective Beaumont. I couldn’t imagine spending another book with him, let alone twenty more. The series is wildly popular though, so maybe he improves with age.
I’m mixed about this book. The first few chapters were confusing in true Neuromancer style, but I soon caught on. It’s an interesting premise: In the future, technology is developed using some kind of quantum physics to communicate with the past. In this case, a seventy-year past — pre-Jackpot — whatever that means, that feels like maybe 15 years into the future for the reader. The act of communicating with the past changes its timeline, so they call these time-travel adventures “stubs” in the continua. They figured out a way to bring members of this past age into the present day through the archaic virtual reality technology that existed in the stub time period, and then later through a neural interface that allow the person to take over a “peripheral” — a living, breathing robot (?) to interact in this future world as if they were really there. So, we get to see the far distant future through the eyes of someone who’s not that far removed from us. Oh, and during one of these interactions, the time-traveler witnesses a murder and is thus being recruited to the future in this peripheral body to help solve it. It’s a little convoluted, but fun in a nerdy way.
What a depressing, sad, miserable book. I read this for the literary reviews and the focus on boxing, but wow. I had a hard time getting through this short book. The pointless dialogue that would go on for pages between Tully and his girlfriend was grating (I suppose it was meant to be). The whole book was a misery.
Highlights
Pigeons the color of the street pecked in the gutters, flew between buildings, marched along ledges and cooed on Tully’s sill. His room was high and narrow. Smudges from oily heads darkened the wallpaper between the metal rods of his bed. His shade was tattered, his light bulb dim, and his neighbors all seemed to have lung trouble.
A short book of essays on the meaning of life from the perspective of a physicist and poetic writer. This particular volume intersperses anecdotes from Lightman’s life at his summer cottage on a remote island in Maine. His depictions of island life were touching, especially as we make arrangements to leave our own island.
In a meandering, thought-provoking manner, Lightman eventually comes around to a nihilistic view of existence. We’re here by chance in an uncaring, random universe that will eventually fade out and collapse like everything else, which is no great loss for the cosmos since in his view there are billions of additional universes in the greater multiverse. This perspective makes me dizzy to the think of our impossibly small stature in space and time.
But, perhaps we ourselves represent a multiverse, with countless universes inside us. Space is infinitely large and small, the theory goes. Time is also infinite, long and short. The life of a star — billions of years in our concept of time — might elapse inside of a single heartbeat for the multitudes within us.
I listened to the audiobook, which I think was a mistake. The narrator’s theatrics with Mrs. Who or Mrs. Whatsit was really overdone. As was Charles Wallace. I think the story would have been better with my own imagination of the voices this time.
Highlights
Like and equal are not the same thing at all.
Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. – Mrs. Whatsit
An interesting way to write about the atrocities of war and the holocaust — from the perspective of Death.
We follow the story of little Liesel whose five-year-old brother dies on a train in the opening pages, only to be dumped off herself at a foster home by her poor, sick mother. We expect mistreatment, but her foster parents are kind hearted saints who hide a Jew in their basement and suffer through the consequences of doing that. Lots of side stories that support a message that humans in power are mostly awful, and bravery is rare and endearing, and usually punished harshly.
Death as narrator provided an omniscient narrator with an attitude and a heart. The book ends with this haunting quote:
I didn’t expect to enjoy this book as much as I did. This one touched me. Ove felt very real to me. Backman has a gift.
Highlights
People said Ove saw the world in black and white. But she was color. All the color he had.
She loved only abstract things like music and books and strange words. Ove was a man entirely filled with tangible things. He liked screwdrivers and oil filters. He went through life with his hands firmly shoved into his pockets. She danced.
Fascinating memoir. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Will Smith himself, which was a performance in itself. Some very good life lessons about pushing through adversity to achieve big goals. Some very funny parts, and some sad ones too. I loved it.
Favorite Quotes
“Stop thinking about the damn wall!” he said. “There is no wall. There are only bricks. Your job is to lay this brick perfectly. Then move on to the next brick. Then lay that brick perfectly. Then the next one. Don’t be worrying about no wall. Your only concern is one brick.”
At least my fourth reading of this Hemingway classic. My comfort read, maybe my favorite book. I had to buy a new edition because I wore my last copy to tatters.
Highlights
As he had been thinking for months about leaving his wife and had not done it because it would be too cruel to deprive her of himself, her departure was a very healthful shock.
Brett was damned good-looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boy’s. She started all that. She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey.
You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.
You are a part of mankind, not a thing apart. You were born to lead.
Put yourself in the minds of those who offend you.
If what annoys you is done in the right, you should not be perturbed. If it’s wrong, know that it done unintentionally or in ignorance. They know not what they do.
Remember that you offend others in ways you don’t know.
You can’t know the hidden intentions of others. They may be acting on a perfectly sensible way.
Remember that mortal life is fleeting. No one will care about this in 100 years.
It is not the act itself that annoys us, but the color we ascribe to it.
The act of becoming angry hurts us more than the act itself.
Kindness in the moment of another’s rudeness is irresistible. Be kind.
Where a hardier boy would have run away from home or got in trouble with the police, I sat with my nose in a book so I wouldn’t have to think about things I didn’t like and couldn’t prevent happening.
What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory—meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion—is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.
I listened to the audiobook of this one, which was read by the author himself. I read it for the personal reflections on alcoholism and sobriety, the processes of rehab and AA, and to get another take on life as a recovering alcoholic. He goes through a whole cycle of drinking—sobriety—relapse—sobriety in the book. I was very worried for him before he relapsed, which seemed inevitable, and that worry carried over to myself. Am I heading for relapse as well? Is it truly inevitable?
Burroughs drank to hide some very painful memories and to block out the loss of a dear friend. He didn’t drink for the taste. That’s the lesson here. Look for the underlying pain and address that. Don’t cover it up with booze.
Sober. So that’s what I’m here to become. And suddenly, this word fills me with a brand of sadness I haven’t felt since childhood. The kind of sadness you feel at the end of summer. When the fireflies are gone, the ponds have dried up and the plants are wilted, weary from being so green. It’s no longer really summer but the air is still too warm and heavy to be fall. It’s the season between the seasons. It’s the feeling of something dying. Sobriety
Miseries of children — orphans, child labor, mistreatment.
The mystery of Lady Dedlock.
Highlights
It is the long vacation in the regions of Chancery Lane. The good ships Law and Equity, those teak-built, copper-bottomed, iron- fastened, brazen-faced, and not by any means fast-sailing clippers are laid up in ordinary. The Flying Dutchman, with a crew of ghostly clients imploring all whom they may encounter to peruse their papers, has drifted, for the time being, heaven knows where.
Repeat a phrase or idea that was introduced earlier, like the return of a musical refrain; Often the initial setup or opening sentence will forecast the ending.
Tweak or transform an earlier mentioned idea into something new, perhaps with a different spin.
Introduce a new insight helped in reserve just for the occasion of the ending.
“Readers should be left with some things to work out on their own.”
“Creative nonfiction allows the nonfiction writer to use literary techniques usually used only by fiction writers, such as scene-setting, description, dialogue, action, suspense, plot. All those things that make terrific short stories and novels allow the nonfiction writer to tell true stories in the most cinematic and dramatic way possible. That’s creative nonfiction.” — Lee Gutkind
