The Lady of the Rivers

The Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a fine historical novel that follows Lady Rivers through her life. Lots of historical detail mixed in with a little mysticism. Lady Rivers and her husband always seem to be in favor of the “right” thing to do, or have a premonition of how things will work out. When history favors the queen, Lady Rivers and her husband support her, But when history shows that they lose, they seem to be the only people to have tried to talk the parties out of it. I don’t know enough about history to know how much is Gregory’s elaboration, but I didn’t like that only the Rivers’ seemed to see things from a larger view. Surely they were swept along just as much as the other characters? Still, English royalty is forever entertaining and this was no exception.

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Landmarks

Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Macfarlane takes on the mission of reintroducing the world to forgotten/rare words that describe the world around us. Or more specifically Great Britain. (From the list of words I’m thinking hedges make up a great deal more of the landscape there than it does here in America.). His main argument is that if we know more vocabulary about the outside world we will appreciate it more. He may be onto something. The other day when it was neither rainy nor misty but somewhere inbetween I thought “hey, it’s mizzling”and enjoyed it that much more. Macfarlane is an amazing writer and an even better reader, pointing out the intricacies of nature writers’ works that would have passed me by. I do admit that the book may have gotten a bit long, even though it’s not a long book to begin with.

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Remnant Chronicles

The Beauty of Darkness by Mary E. Pearson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Solid ending to a solid series. Even a “hidden” twist in the epigrams before the chapters (so don’t gloss over those). This was a fun summer read that I read with my daughter. Yes, it has a love triangle. Yes, there are swords, arrows, recoveries in caves, as well as twists you see coming. But there are twists you don’t see coming, and a nice character arch for all 3 of the main characters as they try to determine what loyalty, duty, love and trust looks like. Destinies are fulfilled in surprising ways and the ending is satisfactory. Definitely a YA series I could recommend to young women and one that was fun to read with my own YA.

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Where The Bird Sings Best

Where the Bird Sings Best by Alejandro Jodorowsky
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was an magical realism retelling of the history of the authors geneology. I am a sucker for magical realism and I thought it was an interesting way to recall your history. So much of the stories that get passed down are fraught with a tinge of myth anyway, and this just goes over the top. Who will ever forget two lovers preserved in honey or a ghost that gets passed down through the generations? Still Jodorowsky comes from some disturbing lineages and there were times I almost stopped reading (and probably should have) because of some of the cruder passages. The ending also felt sort of anti climatic to me, like it was rushed at the end. Some of the imagery and stories were so magical I wish the whole thing could have been more readable.

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In memory, everything can become miraculous. All you have to do is wish it, and freezing winter turns into spring, miserable rooms fill up with golden tapestries, murderers turn good, and children who cry out from loneliness receive compassionate teachers who are really the children themselves, sent back from adulthood to their early years. Yes, my daughter, the past is not fixed and unalterable. With faith and will we can change it, not erasing its darkness but adding light to make it more and more beautiful, the way a diamond is cut.


For a month now, you’ve been lying here pretending to be dead. You don’t rot because you are alive but overcome by indifference.

If a wise man is one who knows that he doesn’t know, then at this moment I’m a wise man.

A silver coin, half a shekel, half a kopek, the same symbol, rich and poor giving a half, the mortal half, while receiving the sum of eternal life.

God hides so we will search for Him. By learning to see Him in everything, we are born.

There is a precise instant when the world is marvelous: now.”

my work, which was to lead all beings to Awareness, progressively eliminating God by absorbing Him in existence so that we would all become an exclusively human Universe. All of that was achieved with the consent of the Father, who, out of absolute love, creates us to be his tomb. From the putrefaction of the divine, our eternity will be born.

“A man sees a frog. The frog says to him, ‘Kiss me, please.’ “The man thinks, ‘A frog that speaks must be an enchanted princess. I’ll kiss her, she’ll turn back into what she was, she will marry me, and I’ll be a millionaire.’ The man kisses the frog, feels an explosion, and finds he’s been turned into a frog. “The first frog says, ‘How wonderful. You were enchanted for ever so long, and, finally, I was able to save you!’”

around an illusion, may elect him president. “But the capitalist regime, aside from some superficial reforms, will go on exactly as it is. It will go right on selling the country, and hunger will only be pacified with bullets. There is a third candidate that few see, who has no possibility of being elected because he preaches outside the circus, that is, from jail. He’s proposing an impossible truth, this Luis Emilio Recabarren. Instead of asking for small victories, like a monkey in the zoo who demands to be well treated by his keepers—a few extra nuts—but doesn’t consider destroying the cage, Recabarren wants everything; he wants to abolish borders, 

Why don’t they show a luminous, triumphant Christ in churches? It would be a bad example to the workers. If I, instead of lugging around these hundred pounds, were shooting light all over the place, I wouldn’t get money, food, and sex—rather, I’d get whippings and a sore backside for being a political agitator.”

As it is, no feline will dare come close. So I understand that sometimes it isn’t good to seek security, because it leads to death. Sometimes it’s better to live in uncertainty. But you know these things because you’re a saint. What work it has cost you to purify you soul. I saw it on your body. You’ve been beaten, had ribs broken. You’ve had to fight against many wills. You feel your parents didn’t love you as they should. All that weighs more than the Christ on His cross. If you like, I’ll lighten you. Memory is like a corset. Your memories stick to your chest, your back, all over your skin, and they form an invisible shell that separates you from the world.”

Each apple is different, because during their growth each receives the sun in a different way.

What She Knew

What She Knew by Gilly Macmillan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a fine thriller about a kidnapped boy and the race to find him. Plenty of surprises and red herrings while still inching closer to a somewhat plausible ending. I liked that the title itself plays into the psyche of the reader and changes meaning as the story progresses. It’s not the most tightly plotted, thrilling, or shocking suspense novel I’ve read but it’ll do for a summer read.

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Howards End

Howards End by E.M. Forster
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A classic so a slow simmering start. But l loved the sibling relationships. So many interesting thoughts about place, progress, class, marriage, gender equality, art. I ended up loving it.

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WE are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet. This story deals with gentlefolk, or with those who are obliged to pretend that they are gentlefolk.

But in his day the angel of Democracy had arisen, enshadowing the classes with leathern wings, and proclaiming, "All men are equal—all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas," and so he was obliged to assert gentility, lest he slip into the abyss where nothing counts, and the statements of Democracy are inaudible

any emotion, any interest once vividly aroused, can wholly die.

those who prepare for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy.

The poor cannot always reach those whom they want to love, and they can hardly ever escape from those whom they love no longer.

When physical passion is involved, there is a definite name for such behaviour—flirting—and if carried far enough it is punishable by law. But no law—not public opinion even—punishes those who coquette with friendship, though the dull ache that they inflict, the sense of misdirected effort and exhaustion, may be as intolerable.

The air was white, and when they alighted it tasted like cold pennies. 

All his affection and half his attention—it was what he granted her throughout their happy married life.

yet at the time it bored me more than I can say. And besides—you can believe me or not as you choose—I was very hungry. That dinner at Wimbledon—I meant it to last me all night like other dinners. I never thought that walking would make such a difference. Why, when you're walking you want, as it were, a breakfast and luncheon and tea during the night as well, and I'd nothing but a packet of Woodbines. Lord, I did feel bad! Looking back, it wasn't what you may call enjoyment. It was more a case of sticking to it. I did stick. I—I was determined. Oh, hang it all! what's the good—I mean, the good of living in a room for ever? There one goes on day after day, same old game, same up and down to town, until you forget there is any other game. You ought to see once in a way what's going on outside, if it's only nothing particular after all."

Was that "something" walking in the dark among the suburban hills?

Is it worth while attempting the past when there is this continual flux even in the hearts of men?

historians of the future will note how the middle classes accreted possessions without taking root in the earth, and may find in this the secret of their imaginative poverty.

Her only ally was the power of Home.

Now she understood why some women prefer influence to rights.

But we have to die, we have to leave life presently. Injustice and greed would be the real thing if we lived for ever. As it is, we must hold to other things, because Death is coming. I love Death—not morbidly, but because He explains. He shows me the emptiness of Money. Death and Money are the eternal foes. Not Death and Life. Never mind what lies behind Death, Mr. Bast, but be sure that the poet and the musician and the tramp will be happier in it than the man who has never learnt to say, 'I am I.'"

He prepares the way for cosmopolitanism, and though his ambitions may be fulfilled, the earth that he inherits will be grey.

Differences, eternal differences, planted by God in a single family, so that there may always be colour; sorrow perhaps, but colour in the daily grey.

Theft by Finding

Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002 by David Sedaris
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

DNF. While using a diary to flesh out a biography, or mining your own for story or essay ideas is perfectly legit, the idea of publishing your own for public consumption seems a little full of yourself. This is my first Sedaris book and obviously not the best intro. While I admire his ability to find a snarky observation in daily life, I found him very unlikeable. He’s in his late 20s blowing any good money he makes on drugs and alcohol. He observes people being abused, humiliated, or hopeless and seems to only use their pain for his amusement...no empathy or desire to make things better, just wry observation. I thought maybe it would chronicle his change and rise to the “great” essayist he is revered to be, but halfway through I was only more and more ambivalent and wondered why I was wasting my time with his uninspiring minutiae, so I quit.

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