Tag: Loss

Books

Book 11: Catching Fire – Suzanne Collins

Geoff W

[To see an updated review of when I re-read it in 2013 before the release of the films click here.]

Similar to The Hunger Games, I pretty much read this in one sitting. I hadn’t planned on reading it for at least 24 hours after I’d finished Volume I, but I just couldn’t keep myself away.

IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED IN The Hunger Games DON’T READ AFTER THIS POINT!

Catching Fire picks up approximately six months after the end of the 74th annual Hunger Games. We check in with Katniss, Peeta and everyone in District 12 prior to Katniss and Peeta’s champion tour (yes they both one, with the threat of a double suicide, the gamemakers had no choice but to crown them both champions.

As the first chapter ends, the impact of Katniss and Peeta’s actions at the end of the games comes to light with a visit from the President who makes threats against Gale, Katniss’ love interest, and hers and Peeta’s families. It is from this point on where you not only realize how young Katniss is, but also how much she has on her shoulders.

Click here to continue reading.

Books

Book 10: The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins

Geoff W

[To see an updated review of when I re-read it in 2013 before the release of the films click here.]

Wow. I have no other words for this book.

How do you sum up something this intense? I wanted to cry within the first five chapters and was completely riveted and did not want to stop reading (and didn’t). The novel is a conglomeration of science fiction writers throughout history, from H.G. Wells, George Orwell, William Golding, and even Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and modern reality TV.

The Hunger Games is a dystopic novel about the US in the untold future where there were thirteen districts (thirteen colonies anyone?) and the capital. The capital won some sort of long-standing battle against the rebellion and completely obliterated one of the districts (13 – unlucky!) and indentured the other twelve. Each year the 12 districts have to send one female and one male competitor to the Hunger Games. These games, televised on national TV are a deathly battle where only one person can survive and they have to kill or be killed by the other 23 competitors. The quirky (seems to be my new word) characterization of the novel provides many brief respites from the seriousness of the task at hand and the oppressive government.

Click here to continue reading.

Books

Book 9: Bella Tuscany – Frances Mayes

Geoff W

You can’t help but love the way Frances Mayes writes her books. You can tell she has a background in literature, but truly loves writing. Her rich descriptions and colorful asides take her beautiful memoirs from just being books to being journeys. Having read Under the Tuscan Sun and A Year in the World, when I found out Ms. Mayes was speaking as part of the Lowell Lecture Series at the Boston Public Library I had to go and listen. I had a brief opportunity to speak with her after the lecture about A Year in the World and her growing up in the South, however it is her time and writings in Tuscany which brought her into the public eye and to Boston in particular.

In Bella Tuscany we once again join Ms. Mayes and her partner Ed and their various friends, acquaintances and neighbors in Tuscany. We are immediately reintroduced to Bramasole, their house, which is almost a character in its own right with a unique and quirky personality. Although it has been a few years since I read Under the Tuscan Sun, the similarities in the beautiful writing style and the ill temperament of Bramasole remain. There are a couple of sad portions of the memoir, but the ebb and flow of life in San Francisco and Cortona, Italy show that with sadness comes change and the future.

Click here to continue reading.

Quotes

Quotes from A Single Man – Christopher Isherwood

Geoff W

“With that body which sprawled stark naked, gaping wide in shameless demand, underneath Jim’s nude body? Gross in sucking vulva, sly truthless greedy flesh, in all the bloom and gloss and arrogant resilience of youth, demanding that George shall step aside, bow down and yield to the female prerogative, hide his unnatural head in shame. I am Doris. I am woman. I am Bitch. Mother. Nature. The Church and the Law and the State exist to support me. I claim my biological rights.” – 95-96

“He pictures the evening he might have spent, snugly at home, fixing the food he has bought, then lying down on the couch beside the bookcase and reading himself slowly sleepy. At first glance this is an absolutely convincing and charming scene of domestic contentment. Only after a few instants does George notice the omission that makes it meaningless. What is left out of the picture is Jim lying opposite him at the other end of the couch, also reading; the two of them absorbed in their books yet so completely aware of each others’ presence.” – 114-115

“Thinking what an absurd and universally accepted bit of nonsense it is that your best friends must necessarily be the ones who best understand you. As if there weren’t far too much understanding in the world already; above all, that understanding between lovers, celebrated in song and story, which is actually such torture that no two of them can bear it without frequent separations or fights.” – 122-123

“As for Geo, these waves are much too big for him. They seem truly tremendous, towering up, blackness unrolling itself out of blackness, mysteriously and awfully sparkling, then curing over in a thundering slap of foam which is sparked with phosphorus.” – 162

“I’m like a book you have to read. A book can’t read itself to you. It doesn’t even know what it’s about. I don’t know what I’m about.” – 176

Quotes

Quotes from A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers

Geoff W

“This part concerns the unshakable feeling one gets, one thinks, after the unthinkable and unexplainable happens–the feeling that, if this person can die, and that person can die, and this can happen and that can happen…well, then, what exactly is preventing anything from happening to this person, he around whom everything else happened? If people are dying, why won’t he?” – xxxiii

“But see, my father had as much patience for religion as he did for solicitors ringing the bell.”

“His brain is my laboratory, my depository. Into it I can stuff the books I choose, the television shows, the movies, my opinions about elected officials, historical events, neighbors, passersby. He is my twenty-four-hour classroom, my captive audience, forced to ingest everything I deem worthwhile.” – 49

“I want to save everything and preserve all this but also want it all gone–can’t decide what’s more romantic, preservation or decay. Wouldn’t it be something just to burn it all? Throw it all in the street?” – 122

“We’re kissing each other but so much more, kissing like warriors saving the world, at the end of the movie, the last two, the only two who can save everything.” – 148

“It’ll be hundreds of us, all running together on the beach, a herd of bare and hopeful flesh, sprinting from left to right, of course symbolizing all the things that that would obviously symbolize.” – 177

“Dignity is an affectation, cute but eccentric, like learning French or collecting scarves. And it’s fleeting and incredibly mercurial. And subjective. So fuck it.” – 217

“I fear that even if it is beautiful in the abstract, that my doing it knowing that it’s beautiful and worse, knowing that I will very soon be documenting it, that in my pocket is a tape recorder but just for that purpose – that all this makes this act of potential beauty somehow gruesome.” 399-400