Ain't that the truth!

"If it wasn't for dogs, some people would never go for a walk."
--source unknown

Pile of books side table

by Josefin Hellstrom-Olsson

Too many books?

Sometimes those of us who love books find ourselves smothered by the quantity we keep.
Sometimes, as much as it hurts to part with books, we just need to do some weeding.
Great post on this subject by the lovely Aubrey.
Read it here.

Leota's Garden

Leota's Garden is the first Christian novel I've read. My friend Tracie knows I want to mosaic a bowling ball for my first garden, and thought I'd enjoy the whimsical elements described in this book's garden also.
But it's more than that--it's about reconnecting with loved ones, and forgiveness.
It's about compassion and empathy.

"She glanced around the living room, trying to see things through their eyes. She supposed most of what she possessed was junk by their standards. They didn't know that every knickknack, stitchery picture, and stick of furniture meant something to her. Everything in her house held special meaning and sparked a memory. These stories, most of them private, some heartbreaking, some lovely, some tender." (page 287)

Some tidbits of wisdom:
"People can be like Monet paintings. You have to get some distance before you can see what they are and appreciate their full beauty." (page 411)

"All day Annie had watched family members, friends, and neighbors wander around the garden, and she kept thinking how they were all like flowers. Some were poppies, blooming bold and brief. Others were like ornamental vines, passion flowers, or trumpets. Still others were shy violets and wallflowers. And all together, what a beautiful world they made. Everyone different, everyone amazing to behold." (page 422)

A fable?

As much as I love books, I don't recollect them well.
I'm worse with movies.
Songs, however, are a different story (no pun intended).

I read something recently, and it's bugging me that I can't remember the source.
Perhaps you can help me?
Was it in Eat, Pray, Love perhaps?

It was a mention of a fable, in which a man asks God to enable him to touch people's lives (inspire, affect, etc), but without his knowing the impression he has made.
So as the man walks along, all these miracles are taking place behind him...
in his shadow.

I love that idea, because none of us can ever really know the extent to which we might make an impact on someone else.
Sometimes it's the right question at the right time, or a comment that affects someone, or a shared experience.
Sometimes it's written on a blog, or an email, or a letter.
Sometimes it's your example.

Don't discount your impact...your shadow falls longer and wider than you realize.

What a tale!

Wow.
The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield, just grabbed me, threw me about, and didn't let me go for two days.
It's an amazing tale within a tale within a tale.
If you love to read, love libraries, love words...
then you'll love this book.

"I didn't intend to read. Not as such. A few phrases were all I wanted. Something bold enough, strong enough, to still the words from the letter that kept going around in my head. Fight fire with fire, people say. A couple of sentences, a page maybe, and then I would be able to sleep.
I removed the dust jacket and placed it for safety in the special drawer I keep for the purpose. Even with gloves you can't be too careful. Opening the book, I inhaled. The smell of old books, so sharp, so dry you can taste it.
The prologue. Just a few words.
But my eyes, brushing the first line, were snared.
All children mythologize their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won't be the truth; it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story.
It was like falling into water...
...Aspects of my room came back into view, one by one. My bedroom, the book in my hand, the lamp still shining palely in the daylight that was beginning to creep in through the thin curtains.
It was morning.
I had read the night away." (page 26-28)

Many people understand (how sad for the ones who don't) that books can be like friends--a joy to spend time with, an adventure. They are FUN!
"Of course one always hopes for something special when one reads an author one hasn't read before, and Miss Winter's books gave me the same thrill I had when I discovered the Landier diaries, for instance. But it was more than that. I have always been a reader, I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I did as a child. I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Yet is is not the same. Books are, for me, it must be said, the most important thing; what I cannot forget is that there was a time when they were at once more banal and more essential than that. When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled. And during this time, these days when I read all days and half the night, when I slept under a counterpane strewn with books, when my sleep was black and dreamless and passed in a flash and I woke to read again--the lost joys of reading returned to me. Miss Winter restored in me the virginal qualities of the novice reader, and then with her stories she ravished me." (page 32)

Characters come to life in books, or in the case of biographies of people who lived long ago, books bring them back to life.
In this way, books are like photographs--the essence of a person, summed up with words.
"For all my biographical projects, I have kept a box of lives. A box of index cards containing the details--name, occupation, dates, place of residence and any other piece of information that seems relevant--of all the significant people in the life of my subject. I never quite know what to make of my boxes of lives. Depending on my mood they either strike me as a memorial to gladden the dead ('Look!' I've imagined them saying as they peer through the glass at me. 'She's writing us down on her cards! And to think we've been dead two hundred years!') or, when the glass is very dark and I feel quite stranded and alone this side of it, they seem like little cardboard tombstones, inanimate and cold, and the box itself is as dead as the cemetery." (page 159)

One of my favorite books--a really excellent journey.

I love this quote on so many levels

"Anyone who thinks they're too grown up or too sophisticated to eat caramel corn, is not invited to my house for dinner."

Ruth Reichl
Editor-in-Chief, Gourmet Magazine

In the pursuit of happiness

I get a special kind of joy from reading the type of books that are so finely written, I have a smile pasted on my face during the entire process of reading.

Luckily for me, two books I have recently read have been this kind of, well, FUN.
The one I'll talk about here, is Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.
This book was recommended to me by a friend who loves to travel.
It has the smut (romance), the spiritual, the journaling introspection, and bits and pieces of foreign travel.
Perfect.
But I wasn't expecting such sound writing...with words that just made me think, ponder, and feel that itch of the travel bug again.

There were times when I put a hand to my eyes and just laughed out loud.
Other passages made me squirm in uncomfortable recognition.
Some of it was a bit heavier than I anticipated.
But ultimately delicious.

I am so disappointed to hear the book will become a movie starring Julia Roberts.
Groan....
I'm not a big Roberts fan--so many other actresses better suited for the role.
The role needs a blonde with great acting ability but also intellect and sex appeal.
Please, NOT Scarlett Johanssen. That's soooo last year.
Not Charlize Theron. Enough with the same old same...
I can envision maybe Naomi Watts with an American accent.
Or that girl that played Claire on Six Feet Under, Lauren Ambrose.

But I digress.

Honestly, there are so many good excerpts in this book, they are worthy of printing out and posting in places for inspirational viewing.
So excuse the length of this post.

The book starts out with Liz thick in the muck of relationships gone sour and all the darkness that brings.
To drag herself out of the vortex of depression, she goes in pursuit of pleasure, and something she has always longed to do: learn Italian.

First, therefore, she traveled to Italy.
"Of course sometimes I really do become overcome with lust. I walk past an average of about a dozen Italian men a day whom I could easily imagine in my bed. Or in theirs. Or wherever. To my taste, the men in Rome are ridiculously, hurtfully, stupidly beautiful. More beautiful even than Roman women, to be honest. Italian men are beautiful in the same way as French women, which is to say--no detail spared in the quest for perfection. They're like show poodles. Sometimes they look so good I want to applaud." (page 66, 67)

This made me laugh:
"I mean, maybe I was afraid I wasn't getting any attention because I was no longer nineteen years old and pretty. I was afraid that maybe my friend Scott was correct last summer when he said, 'Ah, don't worry Liz--those Italian guys won't bother you anymore. It ain't like France, where they dig the old babes.'" (page 67)

"I work hard at Italian, but I keep hoping it will one day just be revealed to me, whole, perfect. One day I will open my mouth and be magically fluent. Then I will be a real Italian girl, instead of a total American who still can't hear someone call across the street to his friend Marco without wanting instinctively to yell back 'Polo!'" (page 71)

Most of her pleasure-seeking in Italy revolves around food (ah, a girl after my own heart...). Seriously, this life is about JOY. Not counting carbs or using artificial sweetener, or any other nonsense. Here, now, in-the-moment joy.
"...when I look at myself in the mirror of the best pizzeria in Naples, I see a bright-eyed, clear-skinned, happy and healthy face. I haven't seen a face like that on me in a long time. 'Thank you,' I whisper. Then Sofie and I run out in the rain to look for pastries." (page 81)

"These weeks of spontaneous travel are such a glorious twirl of time, some of the loosest days of my life, running to the train station and buying tickets left and right, finally beginning to flex my freedom for real...
One night in a town somewhere on the Mediterranean, in a hotel room by the ocean, the sound of my own laughter actually wakes me up in the middle of my deep sleep. I am startled. Who is that laughing in my bed? The realization that it is only me just makes me laugh again." (page 97)

"But is it such a bad thing to live like this for just a little while? Just for a few months of one's life, is it so awful to travel through time with no greater ambition than to find the next lovely meal? Or to learn to speak a language for no higher purpose than it pleases your ear to hear it? Or nap in a garden, in a patch of sunlight, in the middle of the day, right next to your favorite fountain? And then do it again the next day?" (page 113)

Some comments are more profound. They illustrate the lessons she has learned.
"When I get lonely these days, I think: So be lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings." (page 63)

"It was in a bathtub back in New York, reading Italian words aloud from a dictionary, that I first started mending my soul. My life had gone to bits and I was so unrecognizable to myself that I probably couldn't have picked me out of a police lineup. But I felt a glimmer of happiness when I started studying Italian, and when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt--this is not selfishness, but obligation. You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight." (page 115)

This book is so dog-eared with notations for excerpts, I'll have to continue with India and Indonesia in a future post.

Read another interesting review about this book here.

Bookmarks

Fun, whimsical metal bookmarks by Ialuna (etsy) and also here.

Reflection

Here are some excerpts from a lovely book based on a true story, The Poet of Tolstoy Park, by Sonny Brewer.

"Henry could not remember when last he had walked barefoot in the rain, mud squishing up between his toes. He believed it was Black Elk, or maybe Chief Seattle, who had said that the man who always wears moccasins thinks the earth is covered with leather." (page 5)

"Black Elk had spoken of the giving-away ceremonies practiced by his people in the springtime: extra pemmican, extra furs, extra horses--these were not hoarded but were given to those who had none or not enough. The joy of giving is more full when the gift is finer, Black Elk said. This is because each thing owned takes a measure of spirit from the owner. And more spirit is paid out into finer things. To make a gift of these things, the more prized things, Black Elk continued, returns a fuller measure of spirit and power to the giver's body." (page 28)

"...it was not a 'face' he'd put on his leaving. It was permission
that he had claimed. 'We do not owe each other the keeping of some artificial proximity because of our common family name. Love is what we share. And love does not dissipate across distance, falter through the passing of time. It will not succumb to your anger at my leaving.'" (page 52)

"'Thoreau said that to walk outside and gaze at the full moon is nothing,' said Henry, 'compared to walking along a path alight with the full moon's glow. The one is taste, the other a feast.'" (page 84)

"I am reminded that Socrates was found studying a new language on the night before the morning of his death. A pupil came to see him, and in surprise asked, 'Why do you now study a new language?' And Socrates answered, 'If not now, when?' If I don't build my hut now, dear Leddie, then when shall I ever build a hut?" (page 139)

"...these Alabama woods were remarkably green in winter. The magnolias had their leaves, the sweet bay and holly trees had their leaves; some of the varieties of oak were deciduous, but most of the oaks had their leaves, and the willows, the pines, and cedars were green. Much of the understory vegetation, honeysuckle and briar and privet, was thick with leafy jade. If Henry were a painter, he would set up his easel here. He would cover canvas after canvas with pigment. He would try to awaken an image reflecting the light falling here upon this immense green world. Henry could only stand in reverent awe.
When he shuffled his foot in the sand, he dislodged a fat acorn and it tumbled down to the water's edge. The acorn might have been a piece of wise man's gold, so captivated was Henry by it. He fumbled in his shirt pocket for the small daybook he had brought from his desk drawer in Idaho. He had a piece of pencil in his trousers pocket. He sat on the sand with the journal on his knee and the pencil poised above the clean page. There in the acorn's fall was his own life." (page 146)

Power in a circle

"After the heyoka ceremony I came to live here where I am now between Wounded Knee Creek and Grass Creek. Others came too and we made these little gray houses of logs that you see, and they are square. It is a bad way to live, for there can be no power in a square.

You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle. And that is because the Power of the World always works in a circle, and everything tries to be round...

The sky is round and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball. And so are all the stars. The wind in its greatest power whirls.

Birds make their nests in a circle, for theirs is the same religion as ours...The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves...

But the Waischus (white men) have put us in these square boxes. Our power is gone and we are dying, for the Power is not in us anymore...Well, it is as it is. We are prisoners of war while we are waiting here. But there is another world."

Black Elk, Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux, from Black Elk Speaks, by John G. Neihardt (and preface of The Poet of Tolstoy Park, by Sonny Brewer).

Where books and fabrics combine

I love it when I find things that overlap my interests.
This is a quilt made by Pockafwye (well, that's her Flickr ID).
Each block of the wall hanging represents a book she read during the year it was made (1991).

I adore symbolism like that.
Plus the fact that necktie fabric is used in parts.
So inspiring...

Read about each block here.

Bookshelves of books

Furniture and shelves created from old books, by This Into That.

The Secret

"Carefully watch your THOUGHTS, for they become your WORDS. Manage and watch your WORDS, for they will become your ACTIONS. Consider and judge your ACTIONS, for they have become your HABITS. Acknowledge and watch your HABITS, for they shall become your VALUES. Understand and embrace your VALUES, for they become YOUR DESTINY."

Mahatma Gandhi

The power of positive thinking

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."

Philippians 4:8

Keep growing

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."

- Will Rogers

The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, by Eva Rice

I love copying excerpts, if only to remember the author's tone.
This book, written by the daughter of lyricist Tim Rice, has an Alice in Wonderland quality.
It took me several chapters to grow accustomed to the affected mannerisms and language, but then the characters grew real to me.
I really enjoyed this story.

"Charlotte's coat was exquisitely comfortable and warm. It seemed a little slice of her had stayed hidden in its lining, and it felt strange, like putting on a mask. She wriggled into my coat, pulling her mass of hair over the collar. The effect shocked me, not least because she possessed the actress's ability to change the aura around her simply by altering her clothing. It was as if she had been given her costume for the evening and she was instantly immersed in her part." (page 7)

Some of the author's descriptions are just so wonderful:
"His bride virtually ran down the aisle and into his arms, a green-eyed, inky-haired fairy in white lace, already three months pregnant with me." (page 27)

"'Sit down next to me,' she pleaded, and I did, feeling the stone step warm on my thighs in the late-afternoon sun. I rubbed my fingers over a stalk of rosemary and lay back, listening to the hypnotic buzzing of the wasps in their nest in the old pear tree. The garden was the center of the universe, and within its walls lay the whole world, Eden-esque." (page 28)

"Glimpsed from the road, through a gap in the estate walls or a break in the avenue of whispering limes, Magna sits like a sapphire among the trees--part birthday cake, part ocean liner, part sculpture, part skeleton--a magnificent, ostentatious chunk of history, immediately defining those who have lived within its walls with the same adjectives." (page 28)

On shopping:
"There was something gorgeously theatrical about Selfridges, with its intoxicating smells of powder and perfume and the rows of salesgirls with shapely fingernails and Thursday-afternoon smiles. It was impossible to imagine anything bad happening to anyone in such a place, and as always, I felt my intellectual resolve weaken. I wanted everything, everything, everything--in fact, I felt myself positively winded by my need to consume." (page 51)

On friends:
"It was amazing how easy I felt with her, despite all my worrying. She was so utterly familiar to me, like a character from a favorite book come to life. I joined her by the window. The kitchen garden lay still under its white blanket, which gave me an odd sense of freedom. Silently, I thanked God for giving me temporary respite from the location I associated so strongly with the night my parents met." (page 66)

"Dear Aunt Clare. If ever there was a tangent, she was off on it." (page 204)

the definition of happiness:
"'There was a lightness about him,' said Aunt Clare. 'That's the only word I can think of to describe it. You have it too.'
'What do you mean?'
Aunt Clare stretched her hand out toward my whiskey.
'He struck me as being terribly good at living, which is the greatest gift anyone can have. A talent for life.'
'You mean he seemed very happy?'
'Not just happy,' said Aunt Clare. 'Nothing as straightforward as that.'
'What do you mean, then?'
'He was at ease with himself, he was at home in his own skin. I remember seeing the waitress light up when he asked her where she got her pretty shoes.'" (page 322)

"Happiness can be frightening when one is not used to the sensation." (page 330)

"I had become used to ache now; it was with me all the time, and never seemed to lessen. Time was no healer, I decided, but it was a great accommodator." (page 345)

Novel idea

Are you crafty at all?
Mary Ann made this adorable paperback book cover for her mom for Mother's Day.
Read her post here.

I'm totally inspired.

The Namesake

The last few days, I have buried myself within The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri, a book chosen as part of Finny's book club.


One of the biggest gifts of having joined a book club, however informal, is being exposed to pages I never would have found otherwise. I am carried off to a magical place, my body and mind go through a series of introspective cycles of my own memories and tears. My words are etched with her (Lahiri's) words, her phrases. It is like going on vacation.

This book has been a fantastic find; a lovely retreat.

Though these disembodied passages sound stark and cold, the feel of the book is not. Introspective, yes. Depressing, no. It's just filled with real moments and a roller coaster of moods that we all pass through. It stands as a reminder to be alert, notice your surroundings, hug the people you love.

"There is work to do at the house, his mother has warned him. His room must be emptied, every last scrap either taken back with him to New York or tossed. They will drive her to Logan and see he off as far as airport security will allow. And then the house will be occupied by strangers, and there will be no trace that they were ever there, no house to enter, no name in the telephone directory. Nothing to signify the years his family has lived here, no evidence of the effort, the achievement it had been." (page 281)

"And these events have formed Gogol, shaped him, determined who he is. They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end." (page 287)

The book brings you through routines, through emotions, through the days in the lives of individuals in a family. It amazes me how well this author brings the pages to life. Somehow her overuse of commas feels comfortable, conversational, effective.
"Though no longer pregnant, she continues, at times, to mix Rice Krispies and peanuts and onions in a bowl. For being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is sort of lifelong pregnancy--a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been ordinary life, only to discover that that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect." (page 49, 50)

Ah, the reminders this life passes by far too fast.
"She passes over two pages filled only with the addresses of her daughter, and then her son. She has given birth to vagabonds. She is the keeper of all these names and numbers now, numbers she once knew by heart, numbers and addresses her children no longer remember...In her own life Ashima has lived in only five houses: her parents' flat in Calcutta, her in-laws' house for one month, the house they rented in Cambridge, living below the Montgomerys, the faculty apartment on campus, and, lastly, the one they own now.
One hand, five homes. A lifetime in a fist." (page 167)

"And yet he has the feeling that he has been to a few of her birthdays, and she to his. That weekend, at his parents' house, he confirms this; at night, after his mother and Sonia have gone up to bed, he hunts for her in the photo albums that his mother has assembled over the years. Moushumi is there, lined up behind a blazing cake in his parents' dining room. She is looking away, a pointed paper hat on her head. He stares straight at the lens, the knife in his hand, poised, for the camera's benefit, over the cake, his face shining with impending adolescence. He tries to peel the image from the sticky yellow backing, to show her the next time he sees her, but it clings stubbornly, refusing to detach cleanly from the past." (page 207)

"She applies lotion to her arms and legs, reaches for a peach-colored terrycloth robe that hangs from a hook on the door. Her husband had given her the robe years ago, for a Christmas now long forgotten...She does not remember the year she'd gotten the robe, does not remember opening it, or her reaction. She knows only that it had been either Gogol or Sonia who had picked it out at one of the department stores at the mall, had wrapped it, even. That all her husband had done was to write his name and hers on the to-and-from tag. She does not fault him for this. Such omissions of devotion, of affection, she knows now, do not matter in the end...
It is the image of their two names on the tag that she thinks of, a tag she had not bothered to save. It reminds her of their life together, of the unexpected life he, in choosing to marry her, had given her here, which she had refused for so many years to accept. And though she still does not feel fully at home within these walls on Pemberton Road she knows that this is home nevertheless--the world for which she is responsible, which she has created, which is everywhere around her, needing to be packed up , given away, thrown out bit by bit. She slips her damp arms into the sleeves of the robe, ties the belt around her waist. It's always been a bit short on her, a size too small. Its warmth is a comfort all the same." (page 280)

Recycled book crafts

Wow, lamps from recycled books!

Storage boxes made from recycled books.

Buy blank journals made from recycled books at Buy Olympia.

Or blank journals at Ex Libris Anonymous.


Buy handbags made from old books at Rebound Designs.

Or make your own bag with the tutorial here.

How fun--buy an address book made from recycled floppy disks at Pristine Planet. (see Greenfeet)

Or a blank journal with a recycled record cover, from Buy Olympia.
Or at Snap.