#BooktagsBlogHop: The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel

About the Author
About the Book

I just finished reading this one yesterday. At 4:00 am. Yes, it was that good. I've been hooked onto short stories since I happened, completely by accident, upon a collection of Roald Dahl's adult (and oh-so-twisted) short stories. I was thirteen. And I'd never be the same again.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki -- Haruki Murakami (The B-Quotes Series)

I read this one, my second Murakami, back in January. Outstanding, beautiful book. Murakami is so hard to compare, even to himself... I read Kafka on The Shore last year, and while there's certainly a red thread unique to the author in, presumably, all his works, the beauty of each stands alone and singular.

Enjoy.

Not everything was lost in the flow of time. [...] We truly believed in something back then, and we knew we were the kind of people capable of believing in something--with all our hearts. And that kind of hope will never simply vanish.

[...] That if he intensely concentrated his feelings on one fixed point, like a lens focused on paper, bursting it into flames, his heart would suffer a fatal blow. More than anything he hoped for this. But months passed, and contrary to his expectations, his heart didn't stop. The heart apparently doesn't stop that easily.

p. 377

Our lives are like a complex musical score, Tsukuru thought. Filled with all sorts of cryptic writing, sixteenth and thirty-second notes and other strange signs. It's next to impossible to correctly interpret these, and even if you could, and then could transpose them into the correct sounds, there's no guarantee that people would correctly understand, or appreciate, the meaning therein. No guarantee it would make people happy. 

"[...] You don't lack anything. Be confident and be bold. That's all you need. Never let fear and stupid pride make you lose someone who's precious to you."

p. 342

"We survived. You and I. And those who survive have a duty. Our duty is to do our best to keep on living. Even if our lives are not perfect."
p. 334

In reality, though, none of this ever happened. In reality something very different happened. And that fact was more significant now than anything else.

p. 330

The beating of her heart kept time with the slap of the little boat against the pier.

"Important to me, perhaps. But maybe not to her. I came here to find that out."

"It sounds kind of complicated."

"Maybe too complicated for me to explain in English."

Olga laughed. "Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language."

p. 270

It was a different sense of isolation from what he normally felt in Japan. And not such a bad feeling, he decided. Being alone in two senses of the word was maybe like a double negation of isolation. In other words, it made perfect sense for him, a foreigner, to feel isolated here. There was nothing odd about it at all. [...] He was in exactly the right place.
p. 272-273

The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell (the B-Quotes Series)

I've been reading some really amazing, life-changing, perspective-altering books lately. Well, always, I suppose. But it recently struck me that most of the wisdom I find on the page, as powerful as it might feel to me at the moment of reading, will inevitably fall into oblivion. I make notes, sure; I have dozens of notebooks--big, small, tiny--scattered all over the house with quotes of exquisite truth jotted behind a grocery or a to-do list.

Like I said. Oblivion.

So I thought, why not put them into a blog post? With a clear label, they'll be easily retrievable at any time, anywhere.

I thus give to you the B-Quotes Series. And we begin with the wondrous turns of phrase, vocabulary choices, descriptions, and thoughts I found in The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell, read just last month.

"Love's pure free joy when it works, but when it goes bad you pay for the good hours at loan-shark prices."
p. 39

Power is lost or won, never created or destroyed. Power is a visitor to, not a possession of, those it empowers. [...] Power is crack-cocaine for your ego and battery-acid for your soul.

[...] and what's this prodding certainty that I'm in a labyrinth not only of turnings and doors but decisions and priorities [...]
p. 264  

P.S. -- Have you seen my Facebook page? It's still a fledgling thing of wet wings and iffy sense of balance, which means it needs all the Likes you care to give ;) Once that first solo book of mine comes out later this year (more on that later), I'll be returning the love via giveaways and stuff :D

Saramago, Caín, The Evolution of Opinions, and The Perils of Rigidity

For a good and hefty chunk of my life, I hated Saramago. At some point I read something of his--no clue what, could've been in school, could've been in some stray book in my dad's library, could've even have been a snippet glimpsed over someone's shoulder--and, whatever it was, made enough of an impression to forge a rock-solid disdain of his work.

And (to my intense embarrassment today) I didn't hesitate to vociferate it to anyone who asked.

The House of Six Doors (a novel about Curaçao)

For eleven years, ever since I came--by accident--to live in Curaçao, I've been looking for books about this island's rich history and people. And for eleven years I found nothing. There's plenty in Dutch or Papiamentu, neither of which I read, and even if I did, most of it is non-fiction, drab and clinical, that doesn't come close to doing this magical, surreal place justice.

And then I found Patricia Selbert's House of Six Doors. The book has flaws--it is, after all, a debut novel--but richness of setting isn't one of them. Neither is emotional charge, which comes across clear and sharp, without drama, without falling into maudlin o-woe-is-me. I teared up twice, the second time uncontrollably (yeah, near the end). But I laughed, too.

And I learned so much about this place I've called home for over a decade.

The Friend (of a friend)

Silvia Villalobos, an exemplary writer friend of mine--exemplary both as a writer and as a friend--has a short story up at Red Fez. Take a hop over, spread the love. The read is a ride of careening tension that doesn't let up. My stomach is still in knots--and will be whenever I think of this story. Friendship isn't always selfless, is it?

Brava, Silvia!

50 Best Literary Insults (Thank you, ShortList)

You have favorite lines from Shakespeare, don't you? Roald Dahl, Margaret Atwood, James Joyce? Lines so poignant, so rife with truth that they dropped like smooth riverstones into the still pond of your mind, that you felt the ripples to the tips of your fingers?

Of course you do.

Do NOT read 50 Shades of Grey

This is fantastic and definitely needs to be shared. Help spread the word, people. Bad writing doesn't seem to be its own punishment--let's enlighten the world! If you know anyone who's reading that or any other baaaaaad book, share this list and save a mind :)

A to Z: Querying

Apparently, "querying" used as a verb ("I'm going to start querying agents soon" or "I've queried fifteen agents so far") is a uniquely American term--or perhaps just uniquely used in writer circles. A British friend of mine had no clue what I meant when I used it.

Then again, he's not a writer :)

The Life of Books (When You're Not Looking)

Fantastic video I found on the She Reads blog yesterday!

The Lost Pleasure of Reading (For a Writer)

In an interview with Joselyn Vaughn on Amy Corwin's blog (do check out the interview--great stuff, great author), something came up that made me stop and go "huh."  It was Joselyn's answer to the question: "What makes a great book?"

This is her answer:

"When you start writing, you notice the writing in other books. You don’t get to read for pleasure very much anymore. You notice that they repeated a word or phrase within two sentences or you pick up the sly hints/foreshadowing much too easily. For me a great book has become one where the story is so engaging that I don’t notice any of this stuff—that is allows me to read purely for pleasure.[...]"

 Huh, I went.  Because this is so totally f*cking true.

I discovered authonomy

No, it's not a typo.  Authonomy, although HarperCollins spells it without the initial cap.  What is it?  It's a website where authors--published or un-pubbed--can showcase their work, and based on ratings by readers and other site members, can be selected for review by HarperCollins editors.


Sounds good.  Right?  Yippee.  And please forgive my intrinsic suspicious nature, my half-empty attitude, my snickering skepticism...  But doesn't it sound a bit too good?  As in too good to be true?


Well.  Maybe.  But it's been up since Sept 2009 and it seems to be going strong.  Besides, I'm a sucker for design, and the webpage is pretty cool.  Kinda cluttered for some, maybe, but as you can see (look around *this* page), I like clutter.  I took a quick traipse through the literary fiction titles, and some sound really enticing.  The Poet, by Andrew Stevens.  Dämon Ronion, by Brian Hatfield (I knew a Brian Hatfield, back in Cancun...  But he sold timeshare.  I don't think this is him).  There are lots of titles that really caught my attention and which I'd like to read.


So content is not the problem with authonomy.  What is, then?  Well... I don't know.  I find it strange that in this day and age of immediate gratification, of information readily available  e v e r y w h e r e, this is the first time I hear of this site.  But that may be my own shortcoming, my own fault for not following the blogs I should be, for not researching as thoroughly as I thought I had.


And my question to you today is: have YOU heard of authonomy?  What's your gut feeling about a site like this?  How come we're not ALL on there?  Or are we (*ahem* as soon as I register)?  Seriously thinking about posting the almost-ready version of Restoring Experience over there.  Or should I do the normal query runabout dance first, take authonomy as a next-best option?


If you, my dear reader, are not a writer, do take a click-stroll over to the authonomy site and grace these authors with your fine reading skills.  Lots of great books right there--no downloads, so you have to read online, but hey.  It's free.  Authors everywhere will kiss your foot for it.  And you have the incredible opportunity to become a Top Talent Spotter if you spot talent before it's discovered by other people.  Pretty cool, in my opinion.

Killer Character Blogfest -- Challenge #3: Antagonist

El Amor En Los Tiempos Del Colera (Love In Times of Cholera, or Love In The Time of Cholera)

Florentino Ariza met Fermina Daza one slow afternoon when she raised her head from a book and met his eyes, "and that look was the origin of a cataclysm of love that half a century later hadn’t yet finished." [My translation]

For fifty-one years, nine months and four days, Florentino and Fermina would not speak privately.  Love arose through letters and chaperoned walks in a park, a love of expected vibrancy given their youth.  But Fermina would soon realize that she’d fallen in love with Love itself, that Florentino was not anything she’d thought he was, and she’d dismiss him from her life to marry a man more in line with her station.

But Florentino did not give up.  He waited patiently, with a debauchery that never threatened the purity of his love for Fermina, for half a century.  The opportunity finally comes, but…  They’re too old, Fermina says.  Florentino’s patience isn’t exhausted and soon, in spite of her disparaging protests, she begins to admit there might still be time for love.  Love, after all, is love regardless of the time or the age.  But it becomes denser the closer one is to death.

Time is the antagonist.  Time is what threatens: Florentino must outlive Fermina’s husband.  Age—evidence of Time’s passage—threatens to make everything pointless.  In the end Florentino thinks he wins: Time, so long against him, is now his ally--not just because proximity to death has intensified everything, but also because the half-century interlude flew them over the trials of love turned routine.  And now…  Now they need only each other.  But Time won't stop, not even on that drifting riverboat with a cholera flag raised.  We're left with the sensation that, however well-lived, their days together will not be many.

Killer Character Blogfest -- Challenge #2: The All-Important Protag

Being a protagonist is hard.  Everything hinges on you: story, action, conflict—to top it off, there’s no privacy.  All your foibles, your deepest fears, desires, stuff you’ve barely found out for yourself—right there on the page for any reader to see.

The Odd Thomas Series, by Dean Koontz
http://www.deankoontz.com/odd-thomas-series/

As enthralled as I am by stories, I always feel a pang of voyeurism-sparked shame at invading foreign lives like that.  Nowhere was that most evident than when I met Odd Thomas.

He’s such a delightful and sensitive kid, that Odd.  So polite, so—normal, in every way but one.  He sees the "lingering dead", and although they don’t speak (not as far as he knows), they do communicate in some way to ask for justice.  Now, another kind of person would ignore them, turn their back, scream and run (sometimes these dead show up with the gore and mess that killed them), or perhaps simply go mad.  But not Odd.  He doesn’t like it, but he accepts that this is his lot with an equanimity that leaves no place for the melodrama of "why me?".  And I love him for that.

Odd touches my heart.  He’s a good, good man—but he doesn’t know it, doesn’t believe it.  Odd Thomas’s humanity jumps out of the page, weaknesses on his sleeve.  He seems almost apologetic for telling his story, for making any claim of importance.

But he is important.  His qualities are in extreme danger of extinction.

Read the other Killer Character 'Fest-ers choices for Killer Protagonists here.