Little Bee by Chris Cleave

From the back cover, "We don't want to tell you WHAT HAPPENS in this book. It is a truly SPECIAL STORY and we don't want to spoil it....Once you have read it, you'll want to tell your friends about it. When you do, please don't tell them what happens. The magic is in how the story unfolds."

While I don't completely agree wholeheartedly with the entirety of the above, I will honor it. This damn book is quotable. I scribbled in the margins. A LOT. Brackets, arrows, hash marks, sweeping lines. Obviously much of what strikes a chord with the reader is directly proportionate to what they already think about life, or the circumstances of their own, but most of this is universally appealing and applicable. One quote was sent with flowers to a friends' mother, another on a postcard to a friend.

The language of this book made me think about things simple and profound, in ways both simple and profound. It made me stop. It made me process things like the wind. It made me believe that I was, that I could be, the wind. The author's ability, as a male, to believably speak from a female first person perspective, is impressive. Perhaps only the third male author to ever convince me.

"Do these scars cover the whole of you? I thought that would be pretty, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers what us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.

In a few breaths' time I will speak some sad words to you. But you must hear them the same way we have agreed to see scars now. Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive. The next thing you know, something fine will happen to her, something marvelous, and then she will turn around and smile."

"Tea is the taste of my land: it is bitter and warm, strong, and sharp with memory. It tastes of longing. It tastes of the distance between where you are and where you come from. Also it vanishes--the taste of it vanishes from your tongue while your lips are still hot from the cup."

"I did not want to hurt her any more. I did not want to tell her what happened, but I had to now. I could not stop talking because now I had started my story, it wanted to be finished. We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us."

"Handing out in-flight meals in a plane crash. We escaped our own tragedies and into each other. Nothing serious. Nothing sentimental. Just a merciful interruption. A brief, blinking cursor before our old stories resumed.

But it was gorgeous. I gave myself completely. It happened easily, without any effort. It just happened; it wasn't an act. I felt agonies of tenderness. ...To really become myself, I had to go the whole way and fall. Again, I didn't have to make an effort. All I had to do was to permit myself to topple. This is quite safe, I told myself: the psyche is made to absorb the shock of such falls."

"Happiness isn't something one can pick up off the shelf, it's something one has to work at."

"Trust between adults is a hard-won thing, a fragile thing, so difficult to rebuild."

"We knew what we had: we had nothing. In our village our only Bible had all of its pages missing after the forty-sixth verse of the twenty-seventh chapter of Matthew, so that the end of our religion, as far as any of us knew, was My God, my god, why hast thou forsaken me? We understood that this was the end of the story.

That is how we lived, happily and without hope. I was very young then, and I did not miss having a future because I did not know that I was entitled to one."

Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky

I took this book with me everywhere. It started in Denver, late night and cross legged on my front porch. Together we found our way to a park bench, where the love affair rose to the next level. Then we travelled through Nebraska and Iowa, ending up in Galesburg, Illinois. It was here that I truly began to take my time, knowing that as soon as it ended, I would want to travel back to the beginning. As lame as it may sound to any other, I've taken this book with me everywhere since.

David Foster Wallace. How you've captured me. This book is simply a transcript of an elongated interview that DFW did with David Lipsky for a Rolling Stone article in 1996. After Wallace's death in 2008, Lipsky released this book. I'm forever grateful. (How obnoxious do I sound?)

It's one thing to have a conversation with a friend or fellow reader about popular culture, about the profound effects that "art" has on us all, but another to be allowed the pleasure of the voyeuristic experience of eavesdropping on 2 separate great minds having those same discussions. Multiple times throughout this book, I found myself feeling validated. When a genius like Wallace expresses a view that you've long held, he does it better. He encapsulates it with a sagacious conclusiveness.

Much like a fawning schoolgirl, I drank this in all the more so as I remember the stuff they're talking about. These interviews took place when I was a 20 year-old flailing college student, so whether pontificating on the merits of Updike or regaling Alanis Morissette for her accessibility, I'm smitten. Then and now.

Traveler by Ron McLarty

Whenever I truly want to enjoy a book, I take a few hours at Stella's. For roughly the last 7 years, I have found refuge in a specific corner there. This corner allows for the perfect blend of white noise from other patrons and the solitude that a book provides. There is a glorious high-backed wicker chair with a worn out velvety golden colored corduroy covered cushion. (Not unlike the glorious orange corduroy pants I'm wearing tonight.) They took the chair away, but I still frequent the haus.

All of that to say, this was a book that I took to Stella's. The couches were all taken, so I read in a hard-backed chair at a table, then sat outside on the patio by the fire. Any which way, this book merited some solid time. Not that it was a hard read, but that I found myself so engaged that I wanted to retreat with it. McLarty's first book, The Memory of Running, was the same way. He's not a phenomenal writer, just a true one. His words and characters stick with you, strike you as authentic and allow just enough of themselves to make you feel a part of them.

This book takes place partially in New York City, where the main character lives, and in Rhode Island, where Jono Riley grew up. (It should be noted that any book set in the Northeast has an unfair advantage, as I'm smitten by the idea of the area.) The book opens with Jono receiving a letter that one of his childhood friends has passed away. Having not returned to his hometown in some years, the story unfolds through alternating chapters of present and past.

With the backdrop of 1950s New England, there are stereotypes and prejudices addressed as we travel through a coincidentally familiar and foreign America. Names like Cubby, Big Tony, Mary Agnes and Bobby quickly quickly demonstrate that at this time, whether you were Italian or Irish, Catholic or not, it made a difference in Riverside Terrace.

McLarty uses elements of mystery to weave a story that reminds us that we're all still tied to our upbringing, regardless of how far down we try to repress those experiences or how far away we travel.

Labor Day by Joyce Maynard

I had no idea who Joyce Maynard was until the winter of 1999, when I read At Home in the World, her memoir. That book garnered much attention in a negative way-Maynard revealed a very personal story (her own experience, mind you) involving JD Salinger. The two shared a relationship, which profoundly affected her (as a writer and a woman), when she was 18. Salinger, notoriously reclusive, instigated the relationship, and it was far from idyllic. Once Maynard revealed portions of his life, she was very publicly castrated from the literary world's good graces. In doing so, I fell in love with her.

This is only the second piece of Maynard's fiction that I've read, and I will definitely be looking for more.

Henry is a 13 year old boy, living in the tension of a split family. His relationship with his mother is close, bordering on inappropriate. He senses this, but has no vocabulary for describing his mother's emotional frailty. Here we find him coming to terms with this, as well as his distanced relationship with his father and new step-family.

Over Labor Day weekend-six short days -we see Henry discover pieces of what he's been missing. A stranger approaches during a rare shopping trip and asks for Henry's help. This stranger is Frank. Frank enters Henry's home and shows him a new idea of family, of being there for one another, of normalcy. In the most abnormal way.

I loved every awkward moment that Henry experiences through learning what every child should-love is love, regardless of how it appears to the outsider.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Miranda is an adolescent girl living and attending public school in New York City. Her best friend, Sal, lives in her building, and it seems as if neither of them has travelled far from what they know. There's the crazy homeless man that sleeps under the mailbox on the corner, the sandwich shop that they "work" in during their lunch break, and the gang of ruffians that terrorize passersby in front of the garage...all within a 3 block radius of their apartments. Without seeming to try too hard, Stead creates a world that I could easily visualize as a film.

Weird things start happening. Miranda receives eery handwritten notes that reference events that haven't occurred...yet. When they start to realize, Miranda attempts to figure out the mystery. With catchy chapter titles that always begin with, "Things That...," one of the boys from the garage presents himself more frequently into Miranda's everyday life. Our girl's favorite book, A Wrinkle in Time, plays part and parcel to some clues as to what's going on with the notes. Perhaps it's my disdain for physics, or the reminiscence of past conversations with Gabe, Steve, and Todd that never produced exceptional fruit or clarity about the nature of time and its' continuum, but I didn't give much thought to the larger message.

Either way, I was entertained for an afternoon whilst floating in the pool in GBG.

The Blue Parakeet by Scot McKnight

Lest I be my snarky self when it comes to "Christian" writings, I'm pasting the Publishers' Weekly review from Amazon here:

"Infused with common sense and seasoned with candor, the latest work from McKnight (The Jesus Creed), religious studies professor at North Park College, takes a stand in controversial territory by bravely asking the question: how is it that even Christians who claim to be led by an authoritative Bible read it so differently? In response, the author asserts that believers need to take a fresh look at how they adopt and adapt Scripture before they can read the Bible in a way that renews a living relationship with the God behind the sacred text. Using the analogy of a water slide, McKnight argues that the Gospel is the slide, the Bible and church tradition the walls that both protect and liberate the believer as he or she discerns how to apply Scripture as a living document. In the last section, McKnight tackles the controversial issue of women's role in church ministry in a way that is both scholarly and confessional, documenting his own journey alongside that of the apostle Paul and other biblical characters. Enriched by folksy anecdotes, this volume could be very useful for evangelical readers and any others wanting a safe place to ask the same bold questions."

Given my love of discussion, this was an experiment in pushing myself to read things that I've not as of late. A group of 5 embarked upon a book club of sorts for this one, and we read it over the course of 4 months. The group included 2 of my closest friends, one newer acquaintance, and one of my roommates at the time. It should be mentioned that 4 of us had at one time or another been on staff or volunteered for the same youth program at a church that we were all still at least loosely affiliated. Always for adding another layer to relationships and thinking, I was excited to enter into this endeavor.

This situation allowed for many questions to be entertained, and many long held assumptions to be challenged. There were many moments of discord, and Scot-with-one-t held his own while withholding his blunt opinions to the point of never really knowing what he was urging you to think. While that sounds gracious enough, it was hard to walk away with anything more than a swirl of unanswered questions. However, it did open up the ground for analyzing things with a fresh perspective.

Short Stories...by Raymond Carver, Dorothy Parker, David Foster Wallace, John Updike

There are a few short story collections sprinkling my book collection, but I very rarely commit myself to reading them. They are generally filler, picked up between books and before bedtime when I'm in need of a distraction or my senses need to be dulled towards sleep.

Raymond Carver, however, is an exception. Carver has the ability to captivate me. His ability to turn everyday life into a grandiose experience calls to grab a cup of hot tea and settle in. Which is what I did, multiple nights in a row.

That led to turning to other old favorites...perhaps stories shall be turning up on my list more frequently.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

What to say about Olive? Here we have a character who isn't very likable, nor sympathetic, but I found myself identifying with her, liking her, and having a great deal of empathy for her. Her life, her situations, her surroundings.

Strout tells the tale of Olive Kitteridge using vignettes, each chapter sketches a story that, while building part of a larger whole, can stand alone. While I doubted it's effectiveness (and was quite irritated) when I realized that Chapter Two wasn't necessarily connected to the first, I quickly became engaged with each portion of the book. To the point of being riveted. I journaled about this book. I read it aloud to both of my roommates (two separate passages at two separate times), and we had heartfelt and meaningful discussions as a result.

Olive and the people who populate the town of Crosby, Maine live very mundane and commonplace small-town lives. It's just that that makes their experience, and this book, remarkable.