Book Love

I'd mentioned a couple of posts ago that unemployement has allowed me to read much more than I am used to. This new found freedom to pick up and dive into a book whenever I please is something I have truly cherished this last month. I have been lucky in that I've thoroughly enjoyed all of the books I've read, but I do of course have my favorites and without further ado here they are...



"Time is malleable. Memory fails. Memory changes."

On a recent library visit I wandered over to the shelf dedicated to the 2015 Maine Readers' Choice Award books. One immediately attracted my attention with it's cover being a picture that reminded me strongly of the buildings at Bowdoin. I picked it up and was to intrigued by the shadowed mystery hinted at inside the front cover to not take it home with me.

'The Headmaster's Wife' by Thomas Christopher Greene starts off seemingly to be another book about an individual in the midst of a mid-life crisis complete with a marriage slowly dying, a barrage of bad decisions, and a career heading towards destruction. Instead though, it is a novel where the reader learns that no detail can be taken at face value. A story of stunning twists where love, loss and grief have taken over and in so doing turn their victims into an echo of their former selves. I went through this book as fast as water flows through open fingers and without doubt it was time well spent.

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“I felt like a cobweb strung across the doorway, trembling in the draft and about to tear if I moved. If I had just waited one more day, tried one ounce harder in all the days before, maybe he would have dared the darkness and already remembered. Maybe he would have found a way to save us all. But now I was oath bound to destroy him”

Walking into the Young Adult section at the library in search of 'Splintered' (see below) 'Cruel Beauty' by Rosamund Hodge, caught my eye simply by the title. Picking it up hoping to find it was a new telling of my beloved Beauty and the Beast I smiled once I'd confirmed it was. The story opens to an introduction of our female heroine Nyx preparing to say goodbye to her life and all she knows on the eve of her wedding. Promised before birth to wed the demon who rules her kingdom she was raised being trained by her father to take down their evil ruler and rid the land of his influence forever. But once in the enchanted castle, Nyx realizes that such plans are easier said then done, that nothing is black and white, pure good or evil, especially her husband.

I quite enjoyed taking in the pages of this book. While the outline of the classic tale has clear echoes throughout, Hodge has definitely gone farther, brought in new elements, to create a world full of history unique to itself and characters that are infinitely her own.

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“I’ve been collecting bugs since I was ten; it’s the only way I can stop their whispers.”
I owe my discovery of this next book to an impromptu, last minute visit to Barnes and Noble on the last day of my Utah visit this past May. On special display, the cover had me instantly fascinated and the story description inside only added to my interest. I held back from buying it though and it was not until I'd returned from Norway that I was able to borrow it from my library.

Inspired by Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland', 'Splintered' by A.G. Howard is different from other retellings in that it is not another version of Alice's tale. It is instead the life is about Alyssa Garner, Alice's great-grandaughter. Haunted from a young age by the curse that seems to befall all of the women in her family's line, and threatened with a decision that promises to destroy her family forever, Alyssa finds her way down into the same rabbit hole that her ancestor had fallen into so many years before determined to break the curse and set her family free. 

Each page of this book had me absolutely transfixed, and I found myself completely in love with this new interpretation of Wonderland, both it's horrors and delights. Howard's vision of this world full of breathtaking descriptions of Wonderland and the hearts of her characters make this a tale impossible to turn away from.
 

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"And if you were a spirit, and time did not bind you, and patience and love were all you knew, then there you would wait for someone to return, and the story to unfold."

Last year I wrote a post about my complete entrancement with 'A Winter's Tale' by Mark Helprin. My excitement over that book was apparently so strong, and my frustration that I was reading from a library book (and therefore could not underline my favorite parts) so great, that some wonderful someone left a copy of that book for me at my door later that same day.  I have refrained from attempting to read more of Helprin's books since I knew that I would once again fall in love with the beauty of his writing and that because the book would come from the library (I'm not allowed to buy books any more!) and and that taking a pen to their pages would not be allowed. Lucky for me a Barnes and Noble gift card was bestowed upon me which allowed me to become the excited owner of 'In Sunlight and in Shadow'.

I began reading it during my last days in Norway and still have yet to finish. There are a few reasons why it has taken me longer to get through this book then is normal for me. Part of this is just that Helprin writes in a style that one cannot just speed through. It is also over 700 pages. I have also lately been reading two books simultaneously alternating each book every other day. Lately though it has been by choice. At one point, about halfway through, I came to some chapters whose relevance to the story I questioned. I thought they made the book unnecessarily long and I wondered how much I would enjoy the rest of it. Now with only 100 pages left, I understand the importance of those previous chapters; they were necessary, they were needed. And it is partly because I understand that I have deliberately slowed the pace of my reading.

The reason for this is that I am scared. Scared to find out what is coming. Scared to reach the end. Scared for the characters involved and for the horrible loss that I sense may be coming. I don't know if I will read the last page wrapped safe in a story where love has conquered time itself or if I'll be utterly devastated - or both.

It is a story of love lost inside the magic of New York City, the echoing despair of a world ravaged by war, and the utter injustice of the right forced into unequal battle good versus evil. Through it all, Helprin infuses each character, each place, each moment with the most beautiful language, clearest truths, and undying hopes. I am in awe and completely in love with his ability to do this. And so, because I just can't resist, this post will go out with just a few of the passages that captivated my heart as I read them...

"There is an echo to people's passing, a wake in the air that says more about them than can be said in speech"

"...he would love her indelibly, catastrophically, and forever."

"...the only thing that's really true, that lasts, and makes life worthwhile is the truth that's fixed in the heart. That's what we live and die for. It comes in epiphanies, and it comes in love, an don't ever let frightened people turn you away from it."

"Insane and guaranteed to break hearts into eternity, there it was nonetheless, war inescapable, elevating the sense of being alive like nothing else but love."

"...but most of all she wanted this - to be able to project her soul outside herself for those moments, enchanted and free..."

"He had never known whether the few perfect moments in his life had occurred because the walls between past and present had fallen, or if those walls fall in deference to perfection. But he did know that perfection and the defeat of time ran together, and that they brought love, calm, and resolution as solid as the granite on which he now stood."

"What he saw, imagined, and remembered was the convergence of immortal souls. These were more powerful than armies or empires and more radiant than sunlight. He could not see their faces, because they were swirling like dances, having risen wildly from the darkness and been shot into the air in spark and flame."

"..in the reading rooms of libraries, where the world could open quietly to infinity and she could visit and consult remnant souls in traces of themselves...she felt strongly that nothing was ever lost, that the world was so full of faint echoes that the air was almost solid."

"She was too interested in the truth of things to waste time stammering even slightly with her soul."

"When I was born, my soul took shape in the promises I would keep."

"I won't last forever, and anyone who won't last forever has to live courageously and well, or she's left with, and leaves behind, nothing."