Weekly Geeks #23
This week’s WG is to repeat one of the previous ones.
I forgot to do last week’s, so I’m going to do this week’s twice over and do last week’s and another one!
In a rather boring manouevre, I’ve chosen WG#6, which is to catch up on reviews. I have a pile of books to be reviewed that’s growing larger all the time…may as well get some of it done!
In other news, nanowrimo starts today! I’m not participating as such this year: I’m aiming to write, yes, but I’m writing short stories, not a novel, and I have no word count goal. Since I started nano-ing, I’ve basically stopped writing outside of November, so this month I’m going to get back into the swing of it and re-start my writing habit.
The wonderful folks at nanowrimo have made ’sitting this year out’ badges for people like me, so I’ll take this opportunity to post one:
Happy NaNoWriMo everyone!
ETA: Take a look at my catchup reviews:
Book quotes catchup
Whoops! This week’s challenge totally slipped my mind. I reckon I’ve missed out four quotes, so today’s entry is a catchup session to get them all in.
First is from Hotel World by Ali Smith. I loved this book; it has a strange and overpowring beauty that restores your faith in the world. Here’s the first paragraph:
Woooooooo-
hooooooo what a fall what a soar what a plummet what a dash into dark into light what a plunge what a glide thud crash what a drop what a rush what a swoop what a fright what a mad hushed skirl what a smash much mash-up broke and gashed what a heart in my mouth what an end
Here’s the first paragraph of another book, namely Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. I read this book in August and it’s already in my list of books to read again:
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remembe saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive…” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?”
This next quote is on my wall. It’s from Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh:
Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed- interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit- crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that?
And finally, one from The Sacred Art of Stealing by Christopher Brookmyre. This quote is a quote from another book, actually, so it’s been around a bit. Still, as I can’t find the passage from this book that I wanted, this will do:
It is as pleasant to be cheated as to cheat.
-Edwin Sachs, Sleight of Hand: A Practical Manual of Legerdemain
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
For today’s quote-a-day, I’ve chosen the poem from ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower‘.
I read this book a couple of months ago. I chose it because I’ve heard an awful lot about it, and I’d previously read the poem online and found it exquisitely heartbreaking.
I did enjoy the book, but not as much as I’d hoped. It was lovely to bury myself in it for a day and take myself somewhere else, but I felt like I wasn’t quite getting it somehow. There were lots of scenes where I knew I was supposed to feel something but I didn’t get it at all. It didn’t quite ring true for me; the characters didn’t add up and many of them seemed either too naive or too experienced to be believable.
Still, I guess that’s part of what the book is trying to say. I’m pretty close in age to the narrator, and while I found him hopelessly naive, I agree that that’s how teenagers probably think a lot of the time. Most people I know – myself included – see people as either very ‘experienced’ in life or as having no experience whatsoever, and it’s a constant struggle to try to place yourself in either category. Who’d be an adolescent, eh?
Overall, I found it a kind of nothing book, but it’s still one I’d read again simply because I enjoyed it and because even though I didn’t get the ‘overawed’ feeling I felt I should, I could still imagine myself getting that feeling. And on that note, here’s the poem:
Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it “Chops”
because that was the name of his dog
And that’s what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and a gold star
And his mother hung it on the kitchen door
and read it to his aunts
That was the year that Father Tracy
took all the kids to the zoo
And he let them sing on the bus
And his little sister was born
with tiny toenails and no hair
And his mother and father kissed a lot
And the girl around the corner sent him a
valentine signed with a row of X’s
and he had to ask his father what the X’s meant
And his father always tucked him in bed at night
And was always there to do it
Once on a piece of white paper with blue lineshe wrote a poem
And he called it “Autumn”
because that was the name of the season
And that’s what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and asked him to write more clearly
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because of its new paint
And the kids told him
that Father Tracy smoked cigars
And left butts on the pews
And sometimes they would burn holes
That was the year his sister got glasses
with thick lenses and black frames
And the girl around the corner laughed
when he asked her to go see Santa Claus
And the kids told him why
his mother and father kissed a lot
And his father never tucked him in bed at night
And his father got mad
when he cried for him to do it.
Once on a paper torn from his notebookhe wrote a poem
And he called it “Innocence: A Question”
because that was the question about his girl
And that’s what it was all about
And his professor gave him an A
and a strange steady look
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because he never showed her
That was the year that Father Tracy died
And he forgot how the end
of the Apostle’s Creed went
And he caught his sister making out on the back porch
And his mother and father never kissed
or even talked
And the girl around the corner
wore too much makeup
That made him cough when he kissed her
but he kissed her anyway
because that was the thing to do
And at three A.M. he tucked himself into bed
his father snoring soundly
That’s why on the back of a brown paper bag
he tried another poem
And he called it “Absolutely Nothing”
Because that’s what it was really all about
And he gave himself an A
and a slash on each damned wrist
And he hung it on the bathroom door
because this time he didn’t think
he could reach the kitchen.
Weekly Geeks #17 – Quote a day
As a new book blogger, I’m taking pride in participating in my first Weekly Geeks! This week’s challenge is to post a quote a day. There’s the option of having a theme, but I’ve decided to keep it faily loose: I’m going to post quotes from books I’ve read and enjoyed.
My first quote is from ‘Three Men in a Boat’ by Jerome K. Jerome. This was a book I enjoyed very much, even though I didn’t think I would. Come to think of it, it’s been about two years since I read it, and I should really read it again as it was one of those books that was a unique pleasure.
This quote appealed to me because it describes exactly the feeling that I sometimes get but can’t put into words. I’m not a religious person, but if I were, I think that I too would feel the same way:
Sometimes, our pain is very deep and real, and we stand before her very
silent, because there is no language for our pain, only a moan. Night’s
heart is full of pity for us: she cannot ease our aching; she takes our
hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far away
beneath us, and, borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a
mightier Presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great
Presence, all human life lies like a book before us, and we know that
Pain and Sorrow are but the angels of God.
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