We Can Only Be Said to Be Alive...

Sequestered Nooks / Serenity of Books

A Room Without Books...

Books Are Mirrors

Famous Wheel of Time Quotes... from the future

For those of you who, like me, just can't wait for a sneak peek of Brandon Sanderson's A Memory of Light (the final book in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series), check out this blog post on Tor.com about readers' favorite WoT quotes. Around about comment 112, readers start contributing their own favorite quotes from the yet-to-be-released A Memory of Light... and they are awesome. Which only re-affirms my belief that WoT readers are the shizz, of course.

Some personal favorites:

Comment 116 (from Amir):
"Well, Lews Therin had grown so powerful, he wanted to retire. So he told me his secret: 'I am not the Dragon,' he said. 'My name is Ryan. I inherited this title from the previous Dragon, just as you will inherit it from me. The man I inherited it from was not the real Dragon, either. His name was Cummerbund. The real Dragon has been retired fifteen years and living like a king in Patagonia.' Then he explained the name was the important thing for inspiring the necessary fear. You see, no one would surrender to the Dread Warlord Al'Thor. So we sailed ashore, took on an entirely new crew and he stayed aboard for awhile as first mate, all the time calling me the Dragon. Once the crew believed, he left the ship and I have been the Dragon ever since. Except, now that we're together, I shall retire and hand the name over to someone else. Is everything clear to you?"-- Rand Al'Thor, AMoL, Chapter 21, "Leavetakings"

Comment 127 (from SaidinsDragon):
"With the One Power comes great responsibility," -- Uncle Tam to Rand, AMoL, Chapter 3, "Tangled Webs"

January 2013 is just around the corner... 

Top Ten Favorite Book Quotes

I write in my books. I've confessed this many times before, I know, but it's relevant here (yet again) as I argue that this writing does, in fact, serve a purpose. I highlight, I comment, and I underline. And the underlines form a collection of some of my favorite book quotes of all time. Though the list is ever-evolving (#3 just made the cut last week, after all), here's where it stands at the moment (in no particular order):

1) "People tend to complicate their own lives, as if living weren't already complicated enough." - Carlos Ruis Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind 

2) "It would be so much better if we could share our insecurity, if we could all venture inside ourselves and realize that green beans and vitamin C, however much they nurture us, cannot save lives, or sustain our souls." - Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

3) "We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won't do harm - yes, choose a place where you won't do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine." - E. M. Forster, A Room with a View

4) "Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead." - F. Scott Fitgerald, The Great Gatsby

5) "That odd capacity for destitution, as if by nature we ought to have so much more than nature gives us. As if we are shockingly unclothed when we lack the complacencies of ordinary life. In destitution, even of feeling or purpose, a human being is more hauntingly human and vulnerable to kindnesses because there is the sense that things should be otherwise, and then the thought of what is wanting and what alleviation would be, and how the soul could be put at ease, restored. At home. But the soul finds its own home if ever it has a home at all." - Marilynne Robinson, Home

6) "Everybody has a story. It's like families. You might not know who they are, might have lost them, but they exist all the same. You might drift apart or you might turn your back on them, but you can't say you haven't got them. Same goes for stories." - Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

7) "It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live." - J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

8) "The thing about Tolkien, about The Lord of the Rings, is that it's perfect. It's this whole world, this whole process of immersion, this journey. It's not, I'm pretty sure, actually true, but that makes it more amazing, that someone could make it all up. Reading it changes everything." - Jo Walton, Among Others

9) "Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering." - Nicole Krauss, A History of Love

10) "But life isn't hard to manage when you've nothing to lose." - Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Any Book... Is Good For Him

"Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him."  -Maya Angelou

Why Do We Have to Read Poetry?

"Why do we have to read poetry? ... Read it and you'll know why. And if you still don't know, read it again. And again. Some of them took the things she said to heart, as she had done once when they were said to her. She was helping them assume their humanity. People have always made poetry, she told them. Trust that it will matter to you." (from Marilynne Robinson's Home)

I started out my year with an intention to read a poem a day. I haven't succeeded in reading quite that many, but I have read more poetry this year than any other, and I'm rather enjoying it. Any recommendations for poems/poetry collections I should be sure not to miss?

Thoughts for a New Year

As we turn to a new year, and embark on those impossible I-will-only-eat-healthy-foods resolutions we made in the midst of the glut of the holidays, let us remember what Muriel Barbery first put so simply:

It would all be so much better if we could share our insecurity. If we could all venture inside ourselves and realize that green beans and Vitamin C, no matter how much they may nurture us, cannot save lives nor sustain our souls. (From The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which I absolutely adored.)

There's more to 2012, really, than fruits and vegetables. And those of us who eat fruits and vegetables and chicken year-round find it INCREDIBLY OBNOXIOUS that when we try to grocery shop the first week of January, THERE IS NO PRODUCE LEFT because all the one-timers have bought twenty-seven pounds of bananas that will all go brown before they get eaten anyway and didn't leave any for me. Hmph.

Christmas Spirit

"It is required of every man," the ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death." - A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

So It's Not Like Riding a Bicycle, After All

There are some things that are just like riding a bicycle - easy to pick back up after a long break. It turns out blogging is not like that. I've been staring at a blank screen (in the new Blogger template, WHOA WHAT IS UP) for two days, trying to decide where to start. The list of books I've read and haven't written about is long, and some of the books I read as long ago as February. But I will persevere...
expect a boatload of reviews and a return to semi-regular posting this week! Just in time for Banned Books Week.

In the meantime, I leave you with this excellent thought, originally shared by Out of Print (follow them on Facebook).

“Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.” -William Faulkner (and it's his birthday, no less)

The Good of a Book (Quote of the Day)

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb. -Umberto Eco

Fiction Personalizes History (Quote of the Day)

"Fiction personalizes history and injects humor, tragedy, romance, and peril." - William Dietrich, in his recent Huffington Post article on educating children on history via historical fiction. (article via Reading the Past.)

My Library was Dukedom Large Enough (Quote of the Day)

"My library / Was dukedom large enough." - Shakespeare, The Tempest

Books Are Not Made for Furniture (Quote of the Day)

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house. - Henry Ward Beecher

Oh Magic Hour (Quote of the Day)

"Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words!" -A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

The Author Write to Himself (Quote of the Day)

"[He] had once told me that a story is a letter the author writes to himself, to tell himself things he would be unable to discover otherwise." -Shadow of the Wind, p. 444

Ordained by Syntax (Quote of the Day)

"And the words slide into the slots ordained by syntax, and glitter as with atmospheric dust with those impurities which we call meaning." -Anthony Burgess, Enderby Outside (as quoted in Stanley Fish's How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One, p.2)

Moral Illumination (Quote of the Day)

“The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.” - Elizabeth Hardwick

Passionately in Love with Language (Quote of the Day)

"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language." - W.H. Auden

Happy National Poetry Month, folks. With any luck, I'll even read some poetry this month myself (something I've always meant to do and never truly done).