Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Now you are in the true world, and a great deal more is required of you. Here you must befriend real wolves, and lure real birds down from the sky. Here you must endure real people around you, and we are not uniformly kind; we are damaged and impulsive, each in our own way. It is harder. It is not safe. But it is what you were born to.
-- Margo Lanagan, Tender Morsels --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Arthur & George

Tonight I finished reading Arthur & George by Julian Barnes.
My verdict? TERRIFIC.
This is an author that definitely deserves a good reading! 
I did no research whatsoever before picking this book up, so I had no idea it was of the historical fiction / thriller genre. I did not know it was based on real events and that the "Arthur" of the story is none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, writer of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries.
The novel is uniquely structured, alternating between the entirely separate, seemingly unconnected lives of.. well…. Arthur & George. I've already mentioned who Arthur is -- George is a much lesser known figure, historically speaking.
George Edalji, a vicar's son, is a half-caste [Parsee / Scottish] boy who grows up in a small Staffordshire village. His family becomes victim to a series of malicious and completely unwarranted [perhaps racially motivated] slander. Life for the Edaljis becomes unlivable as they are increasingly maligned by this anonymous letter-writer and prankster. And soon, letters are not all they have to worry about. Someone is maiming animals in the night, slashing away at the bellies of cows and horses, leaving the animals to slowly die. The effect on the community is devastating, because in turn-of-the-century [1900] England, these are not only crimes against livestock, but against livelihoods.
Through what seems to be an explicit smear campaign aided by a less than competent police force, George is accused of the crimes. And convicted.
We, the reader, believe that he in innocent.
When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle picks up on the story, he is also convinced of George's innocence -- and sets out to clear George's name, seeking not only for exoneration, but reparation of this wrongful conviction. What follows is a re-telling of how Doyle virtually took on the persona of Sherlock Holmes, and painstakingly, courageously, and brilliantly tracked down the right clues -- finally achieving justice in what was essentially a travesty of the court system of the day.
It reads like a crime novel, but with an elegance and exquisiteness found only in the best of literature. Which is to say, we read not only a great plot, but also examine, in beautiful prose, the baseness and greatness of human nature. Barnes has stuffed all of that into these pages. 
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day.
-- Carlos Ruis Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind --

Have a great Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

The Shape I Gave You

Water looks like what it’s in.
Else it’s flat, and spread too thin.
The shape of you is much the same.
It needs a cup, a house, a frame.

It wasn’t long before I knew
The very curve and slope of you
Belonged in me, to never part
My ever loving, beating heart.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Have a great Valentine's Day!
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

I Know Her

Because across the room I know her.
A glance, just one, tells me we are on the same page.
Once someone spoke badly of her, in my hearing,
and everything within me knew they were mistaken.
She lives in a place that is beyond proving
or improving herself, to me or others.
And I would jump a cliff for her wink.
She derails me. Oh, makes me angry, yes,
now and then, but that is because I am learning
her. Learning me. I have looked at water
thirty feet down, fish oblivious ‘tween boat
and sand. She is clearer than that.
Her laugh ignites every best thing about me,
and when she arrives, I am more happy.
Than I was. Before.
It was not always like this. My life was not always
like this.

Even now, there are times, and they are frequent,
when I feel in a dream. I doubt.
And I believe that none of this should happen
to me.
But that is when I read what I have written above
and know that I am awake, and that across the room,
or across ten time zones,
I know her.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!

*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

Life. How easily everyone, including himself, said the word. Life must go on, everyone routinely agreed. And yet how few asked what it was, and why it was, and if it was the only life or the mere amphitheatre to something quite different. Arthur was frequently baffled by the complacency with which people went on with… with what they insouciantly called their lives, as if both the word and the thing made perfect sense to them.
-- Julian Barnes, Arthut & George --

Have a great Monday!
*****

Two Fine Cats: A Saturday Snapshot(s)

My longtime American Reading Partner [a very inclusive, yet moreso exclusive Book Club] sent me two pictures of her daughters' cats. I haven't been given proper legal authorization to use these cats' first or last names, so we will call them Cat A [the orange one] and Cat B [the close up].
Are you a cat person?
I definitely am, as you all know. I am deliberately not allowing Jack [my own cat] access to my computer for the next few days so he doesn't see this posting and become jealous of these two fine specimens here. If either of these cats were up for adoption [and they aren't] -- which would you choose to have? 
It would be a difficult decision for me. I think, in the end, Jack would be forced to somehow get along with both of them.

Thank you Alyce, for hosting this terrific Saturday Snapshot blog meme @ At Home With Books.
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life -- the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within -- can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.
-- George Eliot, Middlemarch --

Have a great Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

"What is history? Any thoughts, Webster?'
'History is the lies of the victors,' I replied, a little too quickly.
'Yes, I was rather afraid you'd say that. Well, as long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated. ...
'Finn?'
'"History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation." (quoting Patrick Lagrange)"
-- Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending --

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Wednesday

One must maintain a little bit of summer, even in the middle of winter.
-- Henry David Thoreau --

Have a great Wednesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
-- Isaac Asimov --
Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved. Drugs, movies where stuff blows up, loud parties -- all these chase away loneliness by making me forget my name's Dave and I live in a one-by-one box of bone no other party can penetrate or know. Fiction, poetry, music, really deep serious sex, and, in various ways, religion -- these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.
-- David Foster Wallace --

Have a great Monday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.
-- J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire --

Have a great Friday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Thursday

A star is born!

Have a great Thursday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

To me the point of a novel is to take you to a still place. You can multitask with a lot of things but you can't really multitask reading  a book. You're either reading a book or you're not.  And to me the world of books is the quiet alternative  An ever more desperately needed alternative.
-- Jonathan Franzen --

Have a great Tuesday!
*****

Splash du Jour: Monday

There's a hazardous sadness to the first sounds of someone else's work in the morning; it's as if stillness experiences pain in being broken. The first minute of the workday reminds you of all the other minutes a day consists of, and it's never a good thing to think of minutes as individuals. Only after other minutes have joined the naked, lonely first minute does the day become more safely integrated in its dayness.
-- Jonathan Franzen, Freedom --




Have a great Monday!
*****

Franzen Can Do No Wrong

I just spent the weekend with this guy's brain.
I'm sorry -- this will be a brief, admittedly beer-induced blog, [Stella Artois, no less] but honestly, I think I must say I have never read a contemporary author who speaks so truly to the human condition than this guy here. Jonathan Franzen.
I'm reading his 2010 novel, Freedom, and it had me awake till 4 a.m. last night. Rarely have I read a stronger story, with better developed characters and flawless dialogue -- more real than any conversation you've ever had.
My third Franzen novel -- and loving it even better than the others. This guy is on the upswing.  It's like Franzen has been reading my diary, and I don't even write one!  

If you have not yet experienced Freedom, just trust me this time around. 

Just get a hold of the damn thing, and it will get a hold of you.

 See, this woman gets it!

*****

Splash du Jour: Friday

Letterman's Top 10...

Signs You Have An Imaginary Girlfriend

 



10. You describe her to friends as "a nondescript female with eyes and hair."
9. "Photo" of girlfriend looks suspiciously like SunMaid raisin lady.
8. You keep referring to her in the first person.
7. Have a patent pending for a machine that gives you a hickey.
6. Someone says, "Tell me about your girlfriend," you say, "Hmm… let me think of something."
5. Your imaginary friend is dating her sister.
4. Everyone can tell you're arguing on the phone with Siri.
3. She's never upset when you forget her imaginary birthday.
2. Always pressuring you to pretend to buy engagement ring.
1. Said she's too shy to meet your friends, your family, and you.
 
Have a great Friday!
*****

On Reading Tim O'Brien

I did not read Tim O'Brien in chronological order, by any means, but I can now say I have read all his published novels. With this last one, The Nuclear Age, I can only say -- I wish he'd yet write another.
Apparently, O'Brien has given himself over to teaching writing, more than writing itself, or at least giving us new books to buy.
But I have thoroughly enjoyed all eight of his combined novels and memoirs.
People are most familiar [I think] with his 1990 bestseller The Things They Carried, which is a searing glimpse into the horrors of the Vietnam War. The book is required reading in some [good] high schools, I believe. And where it isn't, it should be.  It holds, in my own experience of reading it, the distinction of being one of those Rare Books That Made Me Cry.
 In pretty much all of O'Brien's novels, you will find elements of what Vietnam meant to those that were a part of that regrettable epoch. The author was a soldier in that conflict -- and there is no real understanding of what O'Brien seeks to do with his novels, without knowing this.
 
The Nuclear Age is the story of William Cowling, a young boy obsessed with the impending doom of what it means to live in the nuclear age. Written in the late 1970's, the novel spans the late '50's and 1960's -- but projects itself on up to 1995.
William devotes himself, during his college years, to protesting all things war-like. He stands outside the cafeteria with his hand-made poster which reads, "The Bombs Are Real" and soon aligns himself with four like-minded dissenters. Together they launch a covert [and sometimes not so covert] campaign to bring awareness to the dangers of nuclear armament. Their lives will be forever entwined, not only because of these common interests, but because of genuine love for each other.
The novel examines the psychological trauma that results [primarily in William and his "nuclear" family] from devotion to trying to eradicate what is ultimately an inexorable fact -- the existence, in our world, of nuclear weaponry.
This was a real page-turner of a book and I highly recommend it.
I agree heartily with the comment from the Los Angeles Times on the back of my Penguin edition -- "O'Brien has… flashes of Joseph Heller's irony, Don DeLillo's dark humor, and Aldous Huxley's witty pessimism."
Give us another one, Tim. Please?
*****