Reading list

last updated: 04 February 2005 back to kcarlson - family - travel index

Reading - 2004 (by author, Recent, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, and older)

title

author

comments / quotes
(presence or lack is not intended to imply the book is bad or good, I do not regret reading any)

the christmas train Baldacci, David ...you talk to the kids, not the kids through the parents....

The Time Traveler's Wife Niffenegger, Audrey ....Is there a way to stay put, to embrace the present with every cell?....
....I want my own bed, in my own apartment. Home sweet home....But my heart is here. So I must be home....
....We will see each other again, Clare. Until then, live, fully, present in the world, which is so beautiful. It's dark now, and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing....

Love Me Keillor, Garrison ....He was a Smile on Wheels and 100 percent Content Free....
....Some folks sit and fret about the future and others go upstairs and create the future and we are the products of their optimism....
...one is a pleasant guy, basically a suck-up and a loser but not evil or anything, just one more dust bunny under the bed of life....
....Beauty is by its very nature rare, and this beautiful afternoon would only be cheapened by repetition. So we parted. I wrote my phone number on her palm. She said she would think of me as she washed her hands....
....You're my music and my wine, you're my roof, our love is the only good book I ever wrote....
...and thus this narrow-minded tongue-tied frat boy and casual executioner would win four year's opportunity to inflict what damage he could on our decent society....

The Orchid Thief Orlean, Susan ....Nothing seems hard or permanent; everything is always changing or washing away....
....He is the most moral amoral person I've ever known....
....A normal person would not have these difficulties. Apparently adventure was destined to follow me in whatever I did....
...he was only an extreme, not an aberration -- that most people in some way or another do strive for something exceptional, something to pursue, even at their peril, rather than abide an ordinary life....

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal Moore, Christopher ....I don't know if now, having lived... the life of a man, I can write about little-boy love, but remembering it now, it seems the cleanest pain I've known. Love without desire, or conditions, or limits, a pure and radiant glow in the heart that could make me giddy and sad and glorious all at once. Where does it go?... Perhaps it is lost to us when we become sexual creatures, and no magic can bring it back....
....Yes, girls, you ninnies. Humans much like yourselves, except smarter and better smelling....
....Compassion is the same way. That's what the yeti knew. He loved constantly, instantly, spontaneously, without thought or words.... Love is not something you think about, it is a state in which you dwell....
...here is the sum of all I can teach you, and all that I know: treat others as you would like to be treated....

The Agony and the Ecstasy Stone, Irving ....A work of art is not a work of scholarship; it was personally, subjective. It had to be born within....
....Sing, play your lute, amuse yourself. Art should be practiced only by those poor wretches who can't help themselves....
....Was not life to be worked, and suffered, right to the end?...

Beyond Deserving Scofield, Sandra ....Everybody wakes up, even from deep sleeps, she thought, thinking of dreams as events, not states. Never thinking that what you take out of a dream might work like erosion on the solid parts of waking....
You understand how precious your own ordinary, happy, pocked life is. Every day, you have some reason to be, some moment when you are grateful....
....If everything has two meanings, your life occupies more space in the universe because it is both life and a game of life. It is a show and a rerun....

The Dick Cheney Code Beard, Henry ...."The President is a nitwit", said Cheyney matter-of-factly.
Rumsfeld exhaled in audible relief. "Dick, we know the President is a nitwit. This is not new news. This is old, old news. Of course he's a nitwit. But he's our nitwit..."...
....Hunting whooping cranes with bazookas sounds unsporting, but only to some bleeding-heart gun-hating Audubon Society wimp....
....You're probably feeling like a guy in one of those dumb thrillers you buy at the airport who's landed in the middle of some bizarre conspiracy....

The Da Vinci Code Brown, Dan ...every faith in the world is based on fabrication. The definition of faith -- acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove. Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory, and exaggeration, from the early Egyptians through modern Sunday school. Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessible. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors....

Brunelleschi's Dome King, Ross ....And the Florentines place great faith in the wholesome properties of wine. Drunk in moderation, it was said to improve blood, hasten digestion, calm the intellect, enliven the spirit and expel wind....
....The fact that it was built by men -- and built amid war and intrigue, with only a limited understanding of the forces of nature -- only makes it more of a wonder....

Drop City Boyle, T.C. [growing up in Alaska in 60's and 70's this seemed like a novel I should read]
...but children made her feel awkward and uneasy, unnatural even. How could she, a woman, tell anybody she didn't want children, didn't relate to them, didn't even really like them? Children were nothing but dead weight as far as she was concerned, red-faced yowling little aliens that sucked the life right out of you, and if you ever had any dreams of living for yourself, you could forget them when you had kids, because from then and forever you were just somebody's mother....
[a bit harsh, maybe?]
....Are you out of your f*ing mind? Alaska? It's like 60 below up there. What are we going to do, make igloos like Nanook? Eat snow and icicles and what, seal blubber?....

My Antonia Cather, Willa [a re-read... the first "literature" I recall reading, at 14]
....In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again....
...this had been the road of Destiny; had taken us to those early accidents of fortune which predetermined for us all that we can ever be. Now I understood that the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past....

let their spirits dance Duarte, Stella Pope ....His words got caught in the chambers of my heart and flowed out to every cell in my body. My head, eyes, feet, skin, every part of me knew. My mind battled the truth and a war bgan inside me. There's nothing worse than a private war going on inside you every day....
....Everywhere there are crevices, life is like that....
....Nobody has the answers. Maybe earth is a place for questions, not answers....
....Mothers cry in the same language the world over....

A Chance to See Egypt Scofield, Sandra ....Life is just a tale you're telling. Change the plotline. Introduce new characters....
...the world is a place you look at while you are looking for yourself....
....Life is in the day I'm living. The rest is gone....
....He thinks of himeself as an agent of something that was meant to happen. He thinks of love as a sweetness and a goodness, and passion as a gift. He doesn't know when it was that he became a reflective man, or a brave one, and the funny thing is it was all so easy. That, he thinks, is the nature of a miracle....

High Maintenance Belle, Jennifer ...but furnature is like men -- you don't find any when you're looking....
....My shrink had been right. I was a nomad. But I wasn't a turtle without a shell. I was a shell walking around without my turtle....

Kitchen Yoshimoto, Banana ....Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time....
....Always defeated -- defeated we make dinner, we eat, we sleep. Everyone we love is dying. Still, to cease living is unacceptable....
....After this you and I may end up seeing nothing but suffering, difficulty, and ugliness, but if only you'll agree to it. I want us to go on to more difficult places, happier places, whatever comes, together....
....I got dressed to begin another day. Over and over, we begin again....

Carrie Pilby Caren Lissner ....Maybe the world should adjust to me....
....One nut will taste all salty, but the next one will taste almost buttery. The third one willl be all shriveled and brown with a weird kind of tartness. They're like sexual climaxes. Each one is completely different in its own way, but they're all great....
...but I will RUN MY FINGERS OVER MY NUBILE PINK ERASER AND GASP IN ECTASY. And I won't wake up with a hangover or unsightly teeth marks on my neck....
....I could go to grad school, if they offered a master's in remedial socializing....
....You can make mistakes. You can realize you were wrong. You can do things simply because they're indulgent or decadent. We can change our minds, try everything and then settle down when we choose to. We don't know how things will affect us until we're in different situations. It's wonderful....
....I want to do what's right. I also want to be happy. Is it necessary for these two things to be exclusive?...

The Age of Grief Smiley, Jane ....Actually, she often wondered whether cleanliness drove love away. Fastidiousness, she suspected that life itself was to be found in dirt and disorder, in unknown dark substances that she was hesitant to touch....
...and it seems to me that I have arrived at the age of grief. Others arrive there sooner. Almost no one arrives much later....

the speed of light Elizabeth Rosner ....People had good intentions, even when their actions turned out badly....
....Leaning into the hill, our shadows bumped elbows; our edges blurred....
....El sliencio magulla el corazon....Silence bruises the heart....
....I wanted to see if I could learn how to touch the skin of a person who called hummingbirds the birds who kiss flowers....

Life of Pi Yann Martel ....I spent more hours than I can count a quiet witness to the highly mannered, manifold expressions of life that grace our planet. It is something so bright, loud, weird and delicate as to stupefy the senses....
....All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in a strange, sometimes inexplicable ways....
....Whatever the reason for wanting to escape, sane or insane, zoo detractors should realize that animals don't escape to somewhere but from something....
....For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless chilkdren is very hard, and it is to ther defence, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush....
....I never thought that finding myself confined in a small space with a spotted hyena would be good news, but there you go....
....From a bunk bed with a tiger to an overcrowded dormitory with meerkats -- will I be believed when I say that life can take the most surprising turns?....
....What a terrible thing to botch a farewell.... It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse....
....Isn't telling about something -- using words -- already something of an invention? Isn't just looking upon this world already something of an invention?... The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding soemthing, we bring something to it, no? Doesn't that make life a story?....

Tulip Fever Moggach, Deborah ....All life is a gamble. After all, it is a gamble that he was born at all. His parents' lovemaking, the night before or the night after, would have produced another child....

Open House Berg, Elizabeth ....Divorce is a series of internal earthquakes, that's what it is, one after the other....
....You live your life, and you get to ask for things, and sometimes they are given to you....
...and then there was no separation of anything. For the first time in my life, I had the sensation of simultaneous giving and taking so huge there was no room for anything else, anywhere. It was less sexual than sacred, close to what I think a good death might be....

`Reading - 2004 (by author, Recent, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, and older)`
`title`	`author`	*`comments / quotes`* `(presence or lack is not intended to imply the book is bad or good, I do not regret reading any)`
the christmas train	Baldacci, David	...you talk to the kids, not the kids through the parents....
The Time Traveler's Wife	Niffenegger, Audrey	....Is there a way to stay put, to embrace the present with every cell?.... ....I want my own bed, in my own apartment. Home sweet home....But my heart is here. So I must be home.... ....We will see each other again, Clare. Until then, live, fully, present in the world, which is so beautiful. It's dark now, and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing....
Love Me	Keillor, Garrison	....He was a Smile on Wheels and 100 percent Content Free.... ....Some folks sit and fret about the future and others go upstairs and create the future and we are the products of their optimism.... ...one is a pleasant guy, basically a suck-up and a loser but not evil or anything, just one more dust bunny under the bed of life.... ....Beauty is by its very nature rare, and this beautiful afternoon would only be cheapened by repetition. So we parted. I wrote my phone number on her palm. She said she would think of me as she washed her hands.... ....You're my music and my wine, you're my roof, our love is the only good book I ever wrote.... ...and thus this narrow-minded tongue-tied frat boy and casual executioner would win four year's opportunity to inflict what damage he could on our decent society....
The Orchid Thief	Orlean, Susan	....Nothing seems hard or permanent; everything is always changing or washing away.... ....He is the most moral amoral person I've ever known.... ....A normal person would not have these difficulties. Apparently adventure was destined to follow me in whatever I did.... ...he was only an extreme, not an aberration -- that most people in some way or another do strive for something exceptional, something to pursue, even at their peril, rather than abide an ordinary life....
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal	Moore, Christopher	....I don't know if now, having lived... the life of a man, I can write about little-boy love, but remembering it now, it seems the cleanest pain I've known. Love without desire, or conditions, or limits, a pure and radiant glow in the heart that could make me giddy and sad and glorious all at once. Where does it go?... Perhaps it is lost to us when we become sexual creatures, and no magic can bring it back.... ....Yes, girls, you ninnies. Humans much like yourselves, except smarter and better smelling.... ....Compassion is the same way. That's what the yeti knew. He loved constantly, instantly, spontaneously, without thought or words.... Love is not something you think about, it is a state in which you dwell.... ...here is the sum of all I can teach you, and all that I know: treat others as you would like to be treated....
The Agony and the Ecstasy	Stone, Irving	....A work of art is not a work of scholarship; it was personally, subjective. It had to be born within.... ....Sing, play your lute, amuse yourself. Art should be practiced only by those poor wretches who can't help themselves.... ....Was not life to be worked, and suffered, right to the end?...
Beyond Deserving	Scofield, Sandra	....Everybody wakes up, even from deep sleeps, she thought, thinking of dreams as events, not states. Never thinking that what you take out of a dream might work like erosion on the solid parts of waking.... You understand how precious your own ordinary, happy, pocked life is. Every day, you have some reason to be, some moment when you are grateful.... ....If everything has two meanings, your life occupies more space in the universe because it is both life and a game of life. It is a show and a rerun....
The Dick Cheney Code	Beard, Henry	...."The President is a nitwit", said Cheyney matter-of-factly. Rumsfeld exhaled in audible relief. "Dick, we know the President is a nitwit. This is not new news. This is old, old news. Of course he's a nitwit. But he's our nitwit..."... ....Hunting whooping cranes with bazookas sounds unsporting, but only to some bleeding-heart gun-hating Audubon Society wimp.... ....You're probably feeling like a guy in one of those dumb thrillers you buy at the airport who's landed in the middle of some bizarre conspiracy....
The Da Vinci Code	Brown, Dan	...every faith in the world is based on fabrication. The definition of faith -- acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove. Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory, and exaggeration, from the early Egyptians through modern Sunday school. Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessible. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors....
Brunelleschi's Dome	King, Ross	....And the Florentines place great faith in the wholesome properties of wine. Drunk in moderation, it was said to improve blood, hasten digestion, calm the intellect, enliven the spirit and expel wind.... ....The fact that it was built by men -- and built amid war and intrigue, with only a limited understanding of the forces of nature -- only makes it more of a wonder....
Drop City	Boyle, T.C.	[growing up in Alaska in 60's and 70's this seemed like a novel I should read] ...but children made her feel awkward and uneasy, unnatural even. How could she, a woman, tell anybody she didn't want children, didn't relate to them, didn't even really like them? Children were nothing but dead weight as far as she was concerned, red-faced yowling little aliens that sucked the life right out of you, and if you ever had any dreams of living for yourself, you could forget them when you had kids, because from then and forever you were just somebody's mother.... [a bit harsh, maybe?] ....Are you out of your f*ing mind? Alaska? It's like 60 below up there. What are we going to do, make igloos like Nanook? Eat snow and icicles and what, seal blubber?....
My Antonia	Cather, Willa	[a re-read... the first "literature" I recall reading, at 14] ....In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.... ...this had been the road of Destiny; had taken us to those early accidents of fortune which predetermined for us all that we can ever be. Now I understood that the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past....
let their spirits dance	Duarte, Stella Pope	....His words got caught in the chambers of my heart and flowed out to every cell in my body. My head, eyes, feet, skin, every part of me knew. My mind battled the truth and a war bgan inside me. There's nothing worse than a private war going on inside you every day.... ....Everywhere there are crevices, life is like that.... ....Nobody has the answers. Maybe earth is a place for questions, not answers.... ....Mothers cry in the same language the world over....
A Chance to See Egypt	Scofield, Sandra	....Life is just a tale you're telling. Change the plotline. Introduce new characters.... ...the world is a place you look at while you are looking for yourself.... ....Life is in the day I'm living. The rest is gone.... ....He thinks of himeself as an agent of something that was meant to happen. He thinks of love as a sweetness and a goodness, and passion as a gift. He doesn't know when it was that he became a reflective man, or a brave one, and the funny thing is it was all so easy. That, he thinks, is the nature of a miracle....
High Maintenance	Belle, Jennifer	...but furnature is like men -- you don't find any when you're looking.... ....My shrink had been right. I was a nomad. But I wasn't a turtle without a shell. I was a shell walking around without my turtle....
Kitchen	Yoshimoto, Banana	....Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time.... ....Always defeated -- defeated we make dinner, we eat, we sleep. Everyone we love is dying. Still, to cease living is unacceptable.... ....After this you and I may end up seeing nothing but suffering, difficulty, and ugliness, but if only you'll agree to it. I want us to go on to more difficult places, happier places, whatever comes, together.... ....I got dressed to begin another day. Over and over, we begin again....
Carrie Pilby	Caren Lissner	....Maybe the world should adjust to me.... ....One nut will taste all salty, but the next one will taste almost buttery. The third one willl be all shriveled and brown with a weird kind of tartness. They're like sexual climaxes. Each one is completely different in its own way, but they're all great.... ...but I will RUN MY FINGERS OVER MY NUBILE PINK ERASER AND GASP IN ECTASY. And I won't wake up with a hangover or unsightly teeth marks on my neck.... ....I could go to grad school, if they offered a master's in remedial socializing.... ....You can make mistakes. You can realize you were wrong. You can do things simply because they're indulgent or decadent. We can change our minds, try everything and then settle down when we choose to. We don't know how things will affect us until we're in different situations. It's wonderful.... ....I want to do what's right. I also want to be happy. Is it necessary for these two things to be exclusive?...
The Age of Grief	Smiley, Jane	....Actually, she often wondered whether cleanliness drove love away. Fastidiousness, she suspected that life itself was to be found in dirt and disorder, in unknown dark substances that she was hesitant to touch.... ...and it seems to me that I have arrived at the age of grief. Others arrive there sooner. Almost no one arrives much later....
the speed of light	Elizabeth Rosner	....People had good intentions, even when their actions turned out badly.... ....Leaning into the hill, our shadows bumped elbows; our edges blurred.... ....El sliencio magulla el corazon....Silence bruises the heart.... ....I wanted to see if I could learn how to touch the skin of a person who called hummingbirds the birds who kiss flowers....
Life of Pi	Yann Martel	....I spent more hours than I can count a quiet witness to the highly mannered, manifold expressions of life that grace our planet. It is something so bright, loud, weird and delicate as to stupefy the senses.... ....All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in a strange, sometimes inexplicable ways.... ....Whatever the reason for wanting to escape, sane or insane, zoo detractors should realize that animals don't escape to somewhere but from something.... ....For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless chilkdren is very hard, and it is to ther defence, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush.... ....I never thought that finding myself confined in a small space with a spotted hyena would be good news, but there you go.... ....From a bunk bed with a tiger to an overcrowded dormitory with meerkats -- will I be believed when I say that life can take the most surprising turns?.... ....What a terrible thing to botch a farewell.... It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse.... ....Isn't telling about something -- using words -- already something of an invention? Isn't just looking upon this world already something of an invention?... The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding soemthing, we bring something to it, no? Doesn't that make life a story?....
Tulip Fever	Moggach, Deborah	....All life is a gamble. After all, it is a gamble that he was born at all. His parents' lovemaking, the night before or the night after, would have produced another child....
Open House	Berg, Elizabeth	....Divorce is a series of internal earthquakes, that's what it is, one after the other.... ....You live your life, and you get to ask for things, and sometimes they are given to you.... ...and then there was no separation of anything. For the first time in my life, I had the sensation of simultaneous giving and taking so huge there was no room for anything else, anywhere. It was less sexual than sacred, close to what I think a good death might be....

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