6.26.2013

"Eleanor and Park" Rainbow Rowell

"All through first and second and third hour, Eleanor rubbed her palm.  Nothing happened.  How could it be possible that there were that many nerve endings in one place?  And were they always there, or did they just flip on whenever they felt like it?  Because it they were always there, how did she manage to turn doorknobs without fainting?"

"He closed his eyes and saw her again.  A stack of freckled heart shapes, a perfectly made Dairy Queen ice cream cone.  Like Betty Boop drawn with a heavy hand...How could he even look at her now?  He wouldn't be able to.  Not without stripping her down to her gym suit.  Without thinking about that long white zipper.  Jesus."

-Loved this YA book

"Broken Harbor" Tana French

"Nights last longer, when you're outside on your own.  You get to thinking strange things.  I could see other lights, in other houses across the estate...I started thinking about all the other people living there.  All those different lives.  Even if they were just cooking dinner, one guy could be making his kid's favorite to cheer her up after a bad day at school, some couple could be celebrating finding out she was pregnant...Every one of them, making dinner out there, every one of them was thinking something all their own.  Loving someone all their own.  Every time I was up there, it hit me harder.  That kind of life:  it's beautiful, after all."

"The Dressmaker" Kate Alcott

Given to me by my SIL, left at the cottage as it's a perfect beach read.

"Beatrice and Virgil" Yann Martel

"Henry preferred the latter.  He liked the personal art of each writer's handwriting, some nearly robotic in appearance and ultra-legible, others jagged scrawls that nearly defined comprehension.  It always astonished him how twenty-six highly conventionalized glyphs could find such varied expressoin once a living hand set to write them down.  Was it Gertrude Stein who said language was alaphabet in disorder?"

This book had potential, but it just lacked something.