Reading was my escape and my comfort,
my consolation, my stimulant of choice;
reading for the pure pleasure of it, for
the beautiful stillness that surrounds you
when you hear an authors words
reverberating in your head.
from: The Brooklyn Follies (2006)
by: Paul Auster
my consolation, my stimulant of choice;
reading for the pure pleasure of it, for
the beautiful stillness that surrounds you
when you hear an authors words
reverberating in your head.
from: The Brooklyn Follies (2006)
by: Paul Auster
The buzz this season has been about the book The Hunger Games by: Suzanne Collins
Read it.
Found it entertaining.
Wasnt interested in going on to read the 2nd and the 3rd in the series. I found them a little too grim for my liking I suppose.
While packing up the boys' room I found this unread book on the shelf:
Read it in two days.
Liked it much more than Hunger Games.
It was written with more care, plus it has a more hopeful theme.
Im going to give it 3 3/4 stars. (YF)
But now Im so ready to move on to a work by my favorite author-Wallace Stegner!!!
Here's a man with a true literary gift. Reading him is like relishing a crystal goblet full of the most delectable chocolate mousse!!! Every bite, every word is yummy and perfect!!!
See if you dont agree-
Here are the very first few paragraphs of this next book Im reading:
A half hour after I came down here, the rains began. They came without fuss, the thin edge of a circular Pacific storm that is probably dumping buckets on Oregon. One minute I was looking out my study window into the greeny-gold twilight under the live oak, watching a towhee kick up leaves, and the next I saw that the air beyond the tree was scratched with fine rain. Now the flagstones are shining, the tops of the horizontal oak limbs are dark-wet, there is a growing drip from the dome of the tree above, the towheee's olive back has melted into umber dusk and gone. I sit here watching evening and the winter rains come on together, and I feel as slack and dull as the day or the season. Or not slack so much as bruised. I am like a man so stiff from a beating that every move reminds him and fills him with outrage. In the face of what has happened, Ruth is more resilient than I, she has taken up little life-saving jobs. It would not surprise me to see a FOR SALE sign on the cottage that for me still trembles a little, like settling dust in evening sunlight, with the ghost of Marian's presence. But Ruth, making the cookies and casseroles and whole-wheat bread that she used to take there as offerings, puts the future under the pressure of sympathic magic. She wills continuity, she chooses to believe that before too long we will hear the slam of the old station wagon's door down below, or have brought to us on the wind the voices of father and daughter talking to the piebald horse. I? I came down here vaguely mumbling about finally starting on my memoirs. But the last thing I want to think about is what a retired literary agaent used to do before he retired, and the people he used to do it among. I am concerned with gloomier matters: the condition of being flesh, susceptible to pain, infected with consciousness and the consciousness of consciousness, doomed to death and the awareness of death. My life stains the air around me. I am a tea bag left too long in the cup, and my steepings grow darker and bitterer.
Who writes like this anymore!!!???
I really would love to know.
Im so grateful Mr Stegner has a vast collection of work for me to read and enjoy. They are such a joy to devour.
See ya again on the other side of, All The Little Live Things.
No comments:
Post a Comment