Art and shiny things…
Cali of Inside the Book Reader takes stunning images of books – beautiful colors and construction.
I’m starting to back away
from the world slowly,
in order to become pure ear.
Air. A mule deer. Maybe
Karen O. We are who we’ve been
waiting for. What’s taking place
now is free of time—tents
quavering like moon jellies
in the L.A. sky.
Heart’s mind says to itself
I am free to move about.
And also, I am afraid.
We cannot have any unmixed
emotions, says Yeats.
-Diane Raptosh, White Whale Review
I started my first Jo Nesbø, who is probably the greatest Nordic crime fiction writer alive now that Mankkell is no longer writing and Stieg Larsson is dead. Thus far it is very broody and suffused with a tone of depression that matches what the main character Harry Hole is experiencing, but the prose is slowly drawing me in, particularly this gem.
“A young woman in the front row stood up unbidden, but without offering a smile. She was very attractive. Attractive without trying, thought Harry. Thin, almost wispy hair hung lifelessly down both sides of her face, which was finely chiseled and pale and wore the same serious, weary features Harry had seen on other stunning women who had become so used to being observed that they had stopped liking or disliking it. Katrine Bratt was dressed in a blue suit that underlined her feminity, but the thick black tights below the hem of her skirt and her practical winter boots invalidated any possible suspicions that she was playing it. She let her eyes run over the gathering, as if she had risen to see them and not vice versa.”
–The Snowman, Jo Nesbø
Bring on the chills.
1. Daphne du Maurier. Of course I must start off with the queen herself, the original. Daphne du Maurier is the author of Rebecca, a 20th-century classic and the possessor of one of the more famous opening lines in literary history. Rebecca is a spooky, gothic romance, but mostly it’s just darn addicting – the story will grab you as if you’re a 10-year-old reading Redwall or an Alistair MacLean novel for the first time, and rush you along its irresistible current. If you like Jane Eyre or its lesser-known cousin, Villette, this will be exactly up your alley.
The narrator is never given a name, but she’s a young bride to Maxim de Winter, the charismatic but slightly mysterious owner of a Cornish estate. He’s a forceful personality ala Rochester, proposing by saying “I’m asking you to marry me, you little fool.” When the narrator moves in, however, she finds a home haunted by the memory of his first wife, Rebecca, who was killed in a sailing accident. Du Maurier herself always said she didn’t mean this book to be a romance, but I’ve always read and loved it as such: it’s about two people who overcome darkness to stay together. It’s heady and giddy and gripping and rather lovely. It’s never been out of print and is the standard-bearer for Gothic romance.
The opening lines resonate. “Last night I dreamt I went to at Manderley again…”
2. Mary Stewart. I went through a period in high school where I was obsessed with Stewart books – they’re such a deft, gripping blend of complex characters, suspense, and romance. She was one of the most widely read fiction writers of the 20th century, and passed away recently in May of 2014. A British novelist, she wrote both romantic suspense and historical novels and was respected for both. By far and away my favorite of her books, and a good introduction, is Nine Coaches Waiting, which yes, I admit, bears some resemblance to Jane Eyre as well (can I help it that all these Gothic romance writers are tripping on the same thing?).
Rainbow Rowell books always have the best covers.
Lola and the Boy Next Door is the second book in Stephanie Perkin’s loosely-linked young adult trilogy (Anna and the French Kiss, Lola and the Boy Next Door, Isla and the Happily Ever After)… it was good stuff, y’all. In fact, dare I say I liked it much better than Anna and the French Kiss? Lola is significantly more grounded than Anna, not emotionally, but just as far as personality and life situation – I had trouble fully identifying with both Anna and Etienne in French Kiss because their lives were so thoroughly privileged. Yes, they both had family troubles which made them more sympathetic, but I’ve never been a drop-dead gorgeous teenager who gets to attend boarding school in France, and I suspect most of the rest of us haven’t either. It was all just a little too much, a little too surreal and fairy-tale-like.
All of which is to say – Lola is much more identifiable – her family’s middle-class, she works a very average job at a movie theater, she’s pretty but not absolutely stunning, and she lives in San Francisco. (Side note: San Francisco as a setting was a delight, as I visit often and love that city. It’s under-utilized as a setting for American books).
Lola Nolan lives with her parents (two married men) in the Castro district in San Francisco, in a delightful if small house passed down by her grandmother. She has a smart, driven best friend and a steady boyfriend in the form of tattooed punk-rocker Max. Life for her is pretty good…until some old neighbors move back in and her life turns upside down. Calliope Bell was Lola’s best friend until she started becoming a star ice skater and dropped Lola for not being cool enough. Calliope’s twin brother Cricket, meanwhile, the soft-spoken, awkward foil to his sister’s shining light, was Lola’s first love. Their relationship ended abruptly (and, traumatically for Lola) almost before it began however, and Lola hasn’t seen either of the Bell twins for years.
Today in Pest’s open air markets there is a sale on holy
water and scapulars, hand-carved chess pieces, and Oriental
spoons whose sole task is to approximate the luxurious
sprawl of the Danube. There are swords upon which I’d throw
myself were it the time and place to throw myself
upon vanity, and fresh fruits. Think of a hitchhiker’s passport
to heaven. But there is a holier water distilled from the tap
and used to clear the ciborium of divinity that she poured
into the mulch insulating the dogwood. What is devotion
more than loyalty to that alternate power truly and ably
able to wound us; worship that it seeks to soak into the roots
of a precious tree. For all my talk of tied-down guns and dying
with my boots on, the way I play Augustus McCrae giving all
of himself to the gangrene to spite his rotting legs, the voices
in which I say A man isn’t a man if he doesn’t have the faculties
with which to kick a pig—for all of that, you have seen me absolutely
ugly as I listen to my father preempt his dying wish in which
he wishes I become a priest: baling bread, smearing ashes, falling
in love with a crisp cassock and phrases like Latens Deitas-–
and you have borne it. My Pillar of Autumn. My Tower
of the Off-Ivory. You said to me yesterday a second time
wounded lover, who else would love you? And no one would.
And I know I do not yet understand this morning’s market
where I’ll guess wrongly under which shell lies the pea.
-John Fenlon Hogan, Linebreak
The Emperor’s Soul, Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson is easily one of the best fantasy writers alive today, and reading any book of his has the warm feeling of falling into the hands of a master. You are safe and secure in a beautifully constructed plot with compelling characters. The Emperor’s Soul, though short enough to be a novella rather than a novel, has these usual characteristics.
Shai is a trickster who has lived on her wits for as long as she can remember, until her latest and most dangerous heist yet – a break-in to the imperial palace – goes wrong and lands her in prison. Shai isn’t just a thief, however – she’s a Forger, a rare individual with the talent to change any object by rewriting its past with magic. When the arbiters, who rule the kingdom under the direction of Emperor Ashravan, offer her a bargain, she has no choice but to accept it. Ashravan has been rendered catatonic by a surprise assassination attempt, and they need Shai to change him back to who he used to be. Her talent is illegal, considered heretical by the majority of the empire, but they are desperate. Shai agrees, initially simply to placate her captors, but gradually she is pulled into the most impossible, daring task she has ever attempted: can she remake a soul?
Really rather blown away by the below poem by Eric Raanan Fischman (an MFA candidate at Naropa University)
Hostage
for Jennifer Faylor
By the time you read this, the air
will turn white. The Sun will wake up
like a winter bloom, harvesting
its own light, and the barren clouds will break
like mirrors in a house of mourning.
There will be no more storms, no bombs,
no more seeds of ice. Only the stark feel
of white paper, and the blue sound of my voice.
This is not the first letter I’ve written you,
but all the others were composed
on the backs of sealed, stamped envelopes.
A woman in Boise, Idaho believes
that I cannot live without her. A man
in Tennessee keeps my soul on his bed-stand.
A Nicaraguan coffee farmer is the sole proprietor
of warm, passionate, August nights.
Here inside the mailbox, it is always
and envelopes make love like fireflies.
Magazines peek from beneath their covers.
And I fashion this letter, on a Cosmo’s table
of contents, on a Chinese take-out menu,
on my arms, my lips, and the steam of my breath,
hoping that it will reach you.
-Eric Raanan Fischman, published in Sixers Review
Coffee and Irony 