The Fault in Our Stars

My parents bought me a Kindle Fire for my birthday last week so I finally had an excuse to ignore the piles of unread books in my room and buy a new book to read. I decided on The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. I'd already read Looking For Alaska by him and I'd been hearing good things about The Fault in Our Stars so I decided to give it a go. The above illustration pretty much sums up my experience with the book. It is sad and beautiful and truthful about how we deal with life and death. I was happy with it being the first book I read on my Kindle.
Is it weird to feel like I actually read faster on a Kindle? Have there been any scientific studies that have been done about this? I think it feels faster because 1) it feels like you're only ever reading the right page of the book, which I think I read faster in actual books. and because 2)it's lit up so my eyes never really got tired from poor lighting. I think both of these aspects (and the use of electronic note-taking) made my reading go smoother and faster. Maybe I'm crazy, but there really should be a study done about it.
Anyway, I still need to read things from the aforementioned piles of unread books in my room. Thinking of maybe adopting a read a Kindle book--read a real book--read a Kindle book--read a real book type system. What should my next book be? Thinking of picking one out of the 25 I haven't read on this list. I also have a whole pile of books set or published in the early 1900s-1920s that I put together after I finished Downton Abbey and needed literary supplement. I only got as far as The Great Gatsby (which also kind of ruined my life). So as you can clearly see, the weight of the world is resting on my shoulders. Any suggestions of books that I may want to start a deep, emotional and somewhat unhealthy involvement with? It would be greatly appreciated.

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Book Report: Revolutionary Road

"Intelligent, thinking people could take things like this in their stride, just as they took the larger absurdities of deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs. Economic circumstances might force you to live in this environment, but the important thing was to keep from being contaminated. The important thing, always, was to remember who you were." 

I notice that every once in awhile an idea or concept or feeling or whatever pops into my head and I become completely enthralled with it. I start to watch TV shows and movies and read books that have to do with it until I get my fix on whatever it is I want to know/feel/act like/learn about. A couple weeks ago I got this weird feeling that I wanted to read about life in the 1950s American suburbs. Or perhaps the disillusionment of how perfect everyone seemed to have thought it was. Immediately Revolutionary Road By Richard Yates came to mind. I had already seen the Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio film adaptation and I really enjoyed it. I bought the book years ago and it had just sat on my bookshelf while other books took priority. Now after finally reading it I have no idea what took me so long.

If you haven't read the book or seen the movie, it's about a young couple Frank and April Wheeler who, like everyone else in the post-war 1950s, move from New York City to a Connecticut suburb to start a family. After two kids and several years at a mind-numbing job in the city, the couple starts to get restless and nostalgic about what their life could have been like--or could still be like. April comes up with the idea of packing up and moving the family to Paris. To her, Paris is where people really live life, unlike Connecticut where people just go through the motions of a life they think they're suppose to have. The book chronicles what happens when the couple tries to achieve this life that they think they're missing out on, and trying to keep it together when things don't go according to plan and everything starts to unravel. 

To me, one of the most amazing things about this book is that it was published in 1961. It wasn't published 50 years later when time had passed and people had forgotten what it was really like, or when nostalgia of the good ol' days had crept in with its rose-colored glasses. It was contemporary for its time--truthful and honest about how people may have felt while trying to adjust to this new concept of "suburbia" and this new way of life. The country was prospering but there was still a new generation of young people who were trying to find their spot in it all.  They were torn between living a life of passion and adventure, traveling and experiencing all that the world had to offer or succumbing to the "Leave It To Beaver" lifestyle of backyard barbecues, PTA meetings and bridge games.

The thing I loved most about this book is the dialogue between characters. A lot of the time when you read books from 50 years ago, the dialogue seems so unrealistic, that you couldn't imagine anyone ever talking that way. But this book is the complete opposite of that.  April and Frank's conversations and arguments are so believable that you could apply it to any couple today and it would still seem relevant.  And isn't that the ultimate feat? To have something still be relevant half a century later?

I was completely engrossed with this book, not being able to put it down and still thinking about it once I did. It was one of those books where I would read something, my jaw would drop and I would immediately think "I need to discuss this with someone." It was a book where you just wish someone was reading it right there next to you so you could look over to them and say, "Can you believe that?!"

So if you're looking for a book to read, a book to take you to a different era that still feels eerily familiar, that lets you eavesdrop on a couple that is both passionate and delusional, and that makes you love and hate the characters simultaneously, then I cannot recommend this book enough. And if you have already read it: what did you think about it?   Did you love it or hate it? And what are you reading now?

Springtime

 

            “When spring came, even the false spring, 
        there were no problems except where to be happiest.”

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Happy Saturday!

“Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are.”

--Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Vintage Books

Some new (to me) vintage books I recently acquired. A 1961 collection of children's stories, a 1938 collection of stories about adventure, travels and explorers and 1953 hardcover copies of The Great Gatsby and A Farewell to Arms. I think these will look quite dapper on my bookcase, dontchathink?

Happy Saturday

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could."

--Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

Happy Saturday!

"We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it to our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come."

--Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Happy Saturday!

"Then there came a faraway, booming voice like a low, clear bell. It came from the center of the bowl and down the great sides to the ground and then bounced toward her eagerly, 'you see, I am fate,' it shouted, 'and stronger than your puny plans; and I am how-things-turn-out and I am different from your little dreams, and I am the flight of time and the end of beauty and unfulfilled desire; all the accidents and imperceptions and the little minutes that shape the crucial hours are mine. I am the exception that proves no rules, the limits of your controls, the condiment in the dish of life.'"

--F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Cut-Glass Bowl

Happy Saturday!

"I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with."

-- The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

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January Book Reviews

"Heroes don't have to be public figures of any kind. Heroes are right in your family. There's amazing stories in all of our families, you just have to ask, 'and then what happened?'"

700 Sundays by Billy Crystal. I heard from a couple different websites that this book was funny, and since I enjoy a funny book, when I saw it for $3 at Big Lots I decided to give it a shot. While it wasn't the funniest book I'd ever read, it was humorous, but more than that it was sad and surprising and heartwarming all at the same time. Billy Crystal's childhood spent around famous jazz musicians was something I was very surprised to learn about. I mean, Billie Holiday took him to his first movie and he watched a Yankees game from Louis Armstrong's seats at Yankee Stadium, really now. It was heartbreaking reading about how he lost his father when he was a teenager, but encouraging how his family dealt with it. It's definitely a book that shows you the importance of family and that's what I loved most about it.

"Irenka, my dear girl, war makes men animals. You must not let this ruin your life. God has plans for you. He did not let you die. God has plans for you."

In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer by Irene Gut Opdyke. I must state that Holocaust memoirs are my favorite books to read. Not that the subject matter, or reading about people dying, is one of my favorite things to read about, but I find them infinitely interesting. I am so intrigued by World War II and the unthinkable things people went through, and the amazing stories that came from it. I feel that these people's stories deserve to be heard, and even though they are extremely upsetting, you can always take away the strength and courage of the human spirit that these people show.
Other than just reading memoirs about the war, I like reading different perspectives of it. This one was a Polish Catholic girl's story. It spans from ages 17 to 23 and the many, many events that happened during those years. From being imprisoned by the Russians, to being Forced to work for the Nazis to risking her life to help a dozen Jews escape execution, this book will astonish you. I found myself laying in bed, unable to sleep because I needed to know what happened next and before I knew it, the lamp on my nightstand was on and the book was in my hands. I talked to everyone I knew about it after I was done reading it. It is simply amazing what one person went through and the strength and determination she had to make a difference. It is truly inspiring. I cannot recommend it enough.

"Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true."

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer. While I stated above that my favorite books to read are Holocaust memoirs, I had no idea this was going to be (but not really) a Holocaust fictional book. I actually bought it not knowing what it was about or what to expect. It's a book made up entirely of fictional letters between numerous different characters. From an author to her publisher to her best friend and ultimately to the members of a literary society on the island of Guernsey in England that formed during The Occupation. It takes place after the war, in 1945, when the Nazi no longer had control over the island. At first it was a bit confusing trying to keep all the characters straight and remember who the letter was being written to, and written by but after awhile everything kind of straightens out.
While I love the idea of it being about books and literature and the war and that it's entirely made up of letters, the book just kind of fell flat. It didn't really seem believable, and it read like a movie to which you could predict the ending. It was entertaining, but when I read about the war and the people in it, I'd rather it be true.

Did you read anything good in January?

Books of 2010

I should start off by first saying I went through a m a j o r reading slump in 2010. I started numerous books and put them down halfway through, never to be picked up again (ahem, The Blind Assassin). I don't know what went on last year to make me not be able to get into anything-- all I can say is that I hope this year will be a different story (pun intended). I did manage to read (and finish) 4 books, all memoirs. On Hitler's Mountain: Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood by Irmgard Hunt, My Lobotomy by Howard Dully, Cast Member Confidential: A Disneyfied Memoir by Chris Mitchell, and Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart (which I talked about here) and I just finished 700 Sundays by Billy Crystal yesterday, but I think I'll count that towards my books of 2011. I know what you're thinking, "what is this? a book list for ants?! it needs to be at least... three times this long."

I really enjoyed all of them and would definitely recommend them. I used to never read memoirs until one of my co-workers got me hooked on them (On Hilter's Mountain and My Lobotomy were actually borrowed from her) and now that's all I want to read.
I got wind of an uh-mazing after holiday sale going on at Barnes and Noble (like 80% off hardcovers uh-mazing) and I went a little crazy. I stocked up on reading material for the next year... or five. The majority being memoirs. This year I want to enroll in The School of Life and read true stories about people and places, maybe watch a documentary or ten. Listen to numerous hours of The Moth podcasts. Just educate myself. My new mantra this year will be "More reading, less Angry Birds." So far I think I'm off to a good start. Did you guys read anything great in 2010? Something I can maybe add to my ever-growing pile of books-to-read?

Happy Saturday

"Many nights he lay there dreaming awake of secret cafés in Mont Marte, where ivory women delved in romantic mysteries with diplomats and soldiers of fortune, while orchestras played Hungarian waltzes and the air was thick and exotic with intrigue and moonlight and adventure"

 --F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

Summer At Tiffany

"So there we were, baking in the sun, waiting endlessly for lonely midshipmen to stop by. We didn't see a single one. Should have known. Guys don't hang around libraries on the weekend."

--Marjorie Hart, Summer at Tiffany



I saw this book laying on the kitchen table last week while my sister was visiting, and I spontaneously picked it up and started reading it. Not really planning on reading it, just maybe the first page. But then the first page turned into the first chapter, and the first chapter turned into the second chapter and I couldn't put it down. I half jokingly asked my sister if she would leave it for me to read and to my surprise, after she had left to go home, I saw it sitting on the dining room table. I quickly texted her asking if she had meant to leave it. She just responded, "you have 3 days to read it" (that was when my parents were leaving to visit her and she was expecting the book to be coming too) That was on Sunday, and needless to say, I just finished it (Wednesday).

It's a memoir of a woman's best summer ever. The summer of 1945 when two college-aged friends moved from Iowa to New York City and got jobs at Tiffany's. It's everything you could ask for (or at least I could ask for)in a book: 1940's, World War II, Tiffany's, gallivanting around the city with a handsome young Navy officer. And it was all true, that's the kicker. You get to read about their summer job at Tiffany's, with customers such as Judy Garland and Marlene Dietrich among others, seeing the Queen Mary sail into the New York harbor, and being in the midst of Time Square on VJ Day. It's a life experience we all wish we could say was ours. Personally, I could sit and listen to people from that era tell stories for hours.

I've never done a book review on this blog, aside from some random quotes I post, but I just felt like recommending this book to you. Aside from the fact that my sister was nice enough to let me borrow it, and that it felt good to be reading a book again and not be on the computer for once, but because it just made me happy and I wanted to pass it along to you. If you read it, let me know what you think!

Happy Saturday

"Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing."

--Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

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Happy Saturday

"As she read, at peace with the world and happy as only a little girl could be with a fine book and little bowl of candy, and all alone in the house, the leaf shadows shifted and the afternoon passed."

--Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

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Happy Saturday

"Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road."    -- Jack Kerouac, The Road

Happy Saturday

"Light streamed through one of the windows and across her face and I have never seen anything or anyone so beautiful in my life. If my heart had stopped at that moment I would have fallen happy and fallen full and I would have seen in life all that I had wanted to see and all that I needed to see. Fall. Let me fall."

--Jame Frey, A Million Little Pieces

Happy Saturday

"Slowly she spread her arms and stood there swan-like, radiating a pride in her young perfection that lit a warm glow in his heart."

--F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Offshore Pirate




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Happy Saturday

"But Mole stood still a moment, held in thought. As one wakened suddenly from a beautiful dream, who struggles to recall it, but can recapture nothing but a dim sense of the beauty in it, the beauty! Till that, too, fades away in it's turn, and the dreamer bitterly accepts the hard, cold waking and all it's penalties."

--Kenneth Grahme, The Wind in the Willows



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Happy Saturday

"People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic."

-- Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

Thank you, Abigail for this submission.
Have a favorite literature quote? email it to me!