“Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
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#Thursday #Quotables
19 Thursday Oct 2017
Category Archives: books
#Thursday #Quotables
12 Thursday Oct 2017
“I just can’t help thinking what a real shake up it would give people if, all of a sudden, there were no new books, new plays, new histories, new poems…”
And how proud would you be when people started dying like flies?” I demanded.
They’d die more like mad dogs, I think–snarling & snapping at each other & biting their own tails.”
I turned to Castle the elder. “Sir, how does a man die when he’s deprived of the consolation of literature?”
In one of two ways,” he said, “putrescence of the heart or atrophy of the nervous system.”
Neither one very pleasant, I expect,” I suggested.
No,” said Castle the elder. “For the love of God, both of you, please keep writing!”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Cat’s Cradle
RAISING RUFUS by David Fulk discussion & review
07 Saturday Oct 2017
Posted in Author, Book Review, books, Discussion, Fantasy, recommendation, review, science fiction, Writer
Martin is on a mission to capture a bug for his extensive collection, which leads him to an open pit mine that, if he were paying attention, he’d know he wasn’t supposed to go in. The bug Martin is pursuing is not being cooperative and when it finally does land it’s not in a safe location. Quickly Martin finds himself in trouble when a rock slide occurs. The rock slide leads however to a discovery – Martin discovers a very unique and rare rock that he decides to take with him back home.
The rock that Martin has discovered isn’t quite a rock however. He learns the truth about his “rock” when it hatches and a lizard emerges. With his parents “No Pets” rule, Martin must keep his strange lizard a secret.
Raising Rufus is a very enjoyable read – I picked it up after realizing what Rufus is and thought it would be a fun, light read. I absolutely loved this story, it brought back to me all the stories I used to read and love as a kid. Perhaps the best part is that the author, David Fulk, did not go the easy way with the ending, which is the route I thought he’d take.
This is one of those books that I think would be amazing if it were made into a made-for-TV movie for kids.
If you happen to come across Raising Rufus, I highly suggest picking it up, it’s superb.
★★★★★ RAISING RUFUS by David Fulk
#Thursday #Quotables
05 Thursday Oct 2017
“What use is a god with boundless mercy, sir? You mock me as a pagan, yet the gods of my ancestors pronounce clearly their ways and punish severely when we break their laws. Your Christian god of mercy gives men licence to pursue their greed, their lust for land and blood, knowing a few prayers and a little penance will bring forgiveness and blessing.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Buried Giant
#Thursday @Quotables
28 Thursday Sep 2017
“It is clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying, and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down.”
— Agatha Christie (The Clocks)
ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY by Charlie Jane Anders discussion & review
27 Wednesday Sep 2017
Posted in Author, Book Review, books, Discussion, Fantasy, recommendation, redemption, science fiction, time, Today, Writer
All The Birds In The Sky is a book that defy’s all possible genres and does so quite successfully. It’s the story of a witch and a tech mogul and the world between them.
The novel opens with a young Patricia in a Doctor Dolittle-esque that consists of a wounded bird, a mean older sister, a cat and a wise old tree. The scene serves as an introductory to Patricia and her abilities as she begins to discover her own uniqueness.
Following this initial glimpse into Patricias life, we are soon introduced to a young tech nerd named Laurence who is quite the savant when it comes to technology. Laurence finds himself being a social outcast at his school, he spends his free time building devices that he finds instructions for on the internet. One of his projects is an Artificial Intelligence program that dwells in a computer in his bedroom.
Inevitably Patricia and Laurence meet and become friends as they go to the same school together. They begin to mature into their respective abilities. This gets the attention of a certain member of a Nameless Order that attempts to interfere with the ultimate destiny of these two. As the children grow, Patricia starts exhibiting the powers she possesses as a young witch while Laurence hones his technological abilities. They help each other get out of trouble when necessary. Interestingly, Patricia and Laurence begin to grow together and apart almost simultaneously as they each have to come to terms with each other.
This attraction and polarization of Patricia and Laurence is done quite well by Anders – it showcased that despite these twos sharp differences, there is something that transcends these that’ll bring them together. Although the book does focus on the relationship between Patricia and Laurence, it does so in a world that is on the verge of complete collapse. Hurricanes are wiping out large portions of the United States while other disasters arise that must be confronted. Can magic and technology come together to help solve these crises instead of warring against one another?
This is perhaps the strength of All The Birds In The Sky as it serves as an allegory for the world that we live. Anders does not make an assertion that one field of thought is better than another, that true strength comes with solidarity rather than war.
★★★★★ ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY by Charlie Jane Anders
#Thursday #Quotables
21 Thursday Sep 2017
“At various points in our lives, or on a quest, for reasons that often remain obscure , we are driven to make decisions which prove with hindsight to be loaded with meaning.”
— Dai Sijie, Once on a Moonless Night
A LONG WAY GONE; MEMOIRS OF A BOY SOLDIER by Ishmael Beah discussion
20 Wednesday Sep 2017
Posted in Author, Book Review, books, Coffee, Discussion, Non Fiction, recommendation, review, Writer
When Ishmael was 12, he fled rebels who attacked his village and killed his parents during the civil war in Sierra Leone. When he was 13 Ishmael was conscripted into the governments army where for three years be fought against the rebels and committed some very horrific acts. By the age of 16 he was pulled out of the war by UNICEF where he was rehabilitated.
This is one of those memoirs that should be required reading – primarily as a lesson that war is not as glamorous as our society likes to make it out to be. Many of the things that Beah did while he was a soldier were terrible – and what even makes his actions even worse is that the murders he committed were done to people much like himself; kids caught up in a war they did not understand.
My primary issue with this book is that despite being rehabilitated, I did not get much of a sense that Beah felt much remorse for what he did. He talks about his time with UNICEF, his trip to the United Nations, his adopted family, and finally his escape from Sierra Leone as the war essentially follows him into the capital city. But through all of this, Beah doesn’t ever mention whether he felt any remorse for his killings. He buried people alive, participated in a contest to see who could kill a prisoner of war the quickest, and cut the throats of numerous other prisoners – not to mention the many other atrocities he participated in.
And somehow he just ‘moved on’ from all of this. This aspect is what I find the most difficult to comprehend and the primary issue I have with this book. The part that ‘stuck’ with me the most.
If you’ve read A Long Way Gone please leave a comment – did I gloss over Beah talking about his remorse towards the people he killed?
THE DRONE EATS WITH ME; A GAZA DIARY by Atef Abu Saif discussion
17 Sunday Sep 2017
Posted in Author, Book Review, books, cat, Coffee, Discussion, Life, Non Fiction, recommendation, redemption, review, Writer
In 2014 Israel conducted an invasion of Gaza that lasted 51 days and killed 2,145 Palestinians and injured over 11,000 people. The Drone Eats With Me by Atef Abu Saif is a day to day journal of this war that will give you a first hand look as to what it is like to live in these conditions.
This is a book that I only learned of it’s existence after scrolling through Instagram. Since I actively seek out books like this, I couldn’t understand how this one had flown under my radar. Regardless, this is a book that is absolutely necessary to read. In the age of pilotless drones and continual asymmetrical warfare where wealthier nations use their superior fire power on populations of poor, impoverished people – this book provides a perspective that *we* don’t often get.
As much as I’d like to talk about how important this book is, how tough it is to read – how it provides a window into what life is like when any moment could be your last. What I’d like to take a moment to talk about is this books reception. For the most part, the reviews of this book are quite excellent – but then you’ll come across a few that vehemently denounce this book as being “too subjective”, “not presenting both sides” and some of these “reviewers” will even toss out the ‘anti-semitic’ grenade in order to divert attention away from this book and cast it in a false light.
Why I’m pointing this out is that this book, as it talks about life in a war zone simultaneously, due to the war being discussed, exists in another type of war all together; an information war. This information war is just as lop-sided as the war being talked about in the book. The same side that flies the drones are working diligently to make sure that they control the narrative of what is going on. The brutal honesty of The Drone Eats With Me – which includes foot notes that direct you to news stories about events that are described in the book – is tough to combat, so in many reviews about the book, blanket allegations are launched at it by people on a payroll to do so.
I’ve noticed this phenomenon in almost every platform that discusses this book. I would not be surprised if a comment is written below this post tries to do much the same. There are several legitimate critiques of this memoir; ones that refer to perhaps the grammar and issues that arose due to translating the book. Those reviews are not what I’m referring to. The ones that state that the book is “too subjective” and doesn’t talk about ‘both sides’ of the war then go on with an attempt to justify the terror that Saif experienced – those are the reviews written by people on a government payroll. The absurdity of their reviews is that would they make these demands of Anne Frank or any other person writing about their experience during a war? No.
This is one of the few books that I’ve read that is a manifestation of the idiom that books are weapons in the war of ideas. The strength of this book is it’s honesty, its humanity and its ability to convey the terror of living under conditions of total warfare. It allows you to “see” a side of this story that rarely is conveyed in the media; a side that is taboo to talk about.
Add this to your personal library – and I strongly recommend giving it a read.
LIKE EATING A STONE; SURVIVING THE PAST IN BOSNIA by Wojciech Tochman discussion
16 Saturday Sep 2017
Posted in Author, Book Review, books, cat, Coffee, Discussion, review, Writer
Like Eating A Stone by Wojciech Tochman is beautiful yet horrifying overview of the aftermath of the four years of war that tore apart Bosnia. Over 100,000 people – primarily men – were rounded up and massacred, their bodies dumped in mass graves during the war. This book follows the survivors of the war – primarily women – as they try to piece their lives back together. Much of this book revolves around the process of identifying the remains of the people buried in mass graves.
The war began in 1992, a war that when I was a child, I recall hearing about on television every evening after school. The break up of Yugoslavia was extremely violent, with most of the people killed being civilians. Campaigns of genocide were being waged, it seems, from both sides. This book brings back the horror of that war while it explores the aftermath.
Due to how recent this war was, as I grew up I began to encounter many people who fled the Balkans to the US as refugee’s. Those who lived through this war and escaped, in my experience, do not like speaking about this time. Like Eating A Stone helps to depict the environment that those survivors left. It is a moment in history that certainly should not be forgotten.
This is a tough book that should be read with caution – but read none-the-less.
