For now I'm just trying this out. A new place to keep track of what I'm reading, when I'm reading, what I want to read, and what I'm thinking about it all. I had to find something else now that Amazon will own Goodreads.
Another one that I heard about on NPR. Also, Helen at the bookstore recommended it. I read the first couple of stories while I was there and am hooked. Add it to the list!
I'm not sure why this hasn't made it to my to be read list yet. Sounds phenomenal. I recently heard Janna Levin telling a story on The Moth and it reminded me that I really want to read this.
Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes Purchased at the Village Bookstore.
John Demos The Enemy Within Purchased at The Village Bookstore (Bargain Book Section).
Beautiful and moving story about life, love, change, and growth. It's out in December & I highly recommend it.
Stunning. Terrifying. Beautiful.
Another one that wasn't at all what I was expecting! I don't think I've ever seen the whole movie, but I've seen enough that I was completely shocked at how much more gruesome and frightening the book was. I couldn't stop reading it. Excellently paced and not at all dull despite the lack of characters. Terrifyingly believable.This is exactly why I try to tone down my fan-girl self...I don't want anyone to think I'm an Annie Wilkes. Seriously.
Sometimes a book is so much a part of pop culture, that you feel like you've read it and know it even though you haven't. This book is a shining example. It's also an exemplary example of why you shouldn't trust that feeling. This book was so much more than what I was expecting.It's beautiful, sad, funny, tragic, terrifying, hopeful and more. A coming of age tale unlike any other. One of the things that I loved about this book was the split time line. As you're reading, you're going between the "present day" (1985) and 27 years earlier when the characters almost defeated It as children. The parallels are interesting and the transitions seamless. As the novel picks up pace toward the end, the changes happen more quickly and are interspersed with short sections from the perspective of It and the town as well. It's both thrilling and frustrating, but in the best sort of way, propelling you on towards the explosive finish. And the aftermath.Stop reading right here if you've not read the book and plan to.Two pages from the end, there's just this beautiful section of what it is to grow up:"leaving.So you leave, and there is an urge to look back, to look back just once as the sunset fades, to see that severe New England skyline one final time-the spires, the Standpipe, Paul with his axe slung over his shoulder. But it is perhaps not such a good idea to look back -- all the stories say so. Look what happened to Lot's wife. Best not to look back. Best to believe there will be happily ever afters all the way around -- and so there may be; who is to say there will not be such endings? Not all boats which sail away into darkness never find the sun again, or the hand of another child; if life teaches anything at all, it teaches that there are so many happy endings that the man who believes there is no God needs his rationality called into serious question. you leave and you leave quick when the sun starts to go down, he thinks in this dream. That's what you do. And if you spare a last thought, maybe it's ghosts you wonder about ... the ghosts of children standing in the water at sunset, standing in a circle, standing with their hands joined together, their faces young, sure, but tough ... tough enough, anyway, to give birth to the people they will become, tough enough to understand, maybe, that the people they will become must necessarily birth the people they were before they can get on with trying to understand simple mortality. The circle closes, the wheel rolls, and that's all there is.You don't have to look back to see those children; part of your mind will see them forever, live with them forever, love with them forever. They are not necessarily the best part of you, but they were once the repository of all you could become.Children I love you. I love you so much.So drive away quick, drive away while the last of the light slips away, drive away from Derry, from memory ... but not from desire. That stays, the bright cameo of all we were and all we believed as children, all that shone in our eyes even when we were lost and the wind blew in the night.Drive away and try to keep smiling. Get a little rock and roll on the radio and go toward all the life there is with all the courage you can find and all the lelief you can muster. Be true, be brave, stand. All the rest is darkness."
1
Fantastic. There are stories that just stick with you. That leave you thinking for long after the last page turn. Some of those for me are: The Lottery by Shirely Jackson, A Prayer for Owen Meaney and The World According to Garp by Irving, King's Needful Things and The Mist, Harrison Bergeron by Vonnegut and The Veldt by Bradbury, Ender's Game by Card and House of Leaves by Danielewski, and more recently The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (just thinking of it makes me feel rain and wind and smell cinnamon and caramel and leaves and want to wrap up in a big red scarf) as well as The Magicians by Lev Grossman (just how does one get to Brakebills anyway?).I get the impression that The Age of Miracles will be one of those books for me. As anyone who knows me can tell you, I love a good end of the world story. Or, more paticularly, destruction of the world. I love the stories that are completely wound up in that process of destruction. Forget post-apocalyptic, give me plain old apocalyptic. That being said, this genre is just exploding everywhere, and even I was getting a little tired of it. Walker has a whole new take, and it's terrible, in that it's completely believable. The characters react in much the way I think normal people would react to the gradual slowing of the spinning of the earth. Mostly, they just carry on the best that they can. They try to live the way they've always lived and when that no longer works, they adapt. There's discrimination, hate, love, fear, rebellion, tragedy, comedy and a very little courage. I highly recommend this book to, well, pretty much anyone. Pick it up, or if you know me and are close by, ask to borrow it.
Delightful. Just delightful. I loved this world, the strange things that the residents of Auraria treat as commonplace, and the wonderful characters. I never read Big Fish, but I did see the film, and this book had that same kind of feel. And the ending was extremely satisfying. This just might be my favorite read yet this year.
