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Book Reviews & Quotes
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Leave a quote for your contemporaries so they can enjoy a part of your book.
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Lyn (Readinghearts)
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Jan 13, 2014 08:20PM
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The God of Small Things is a book I had to give up, but here's a quote showing why I stopped reading. Way too much of this...."It was raining when Rahel came back to Ayemenem. Slanting silver ropes slammed into loose earth, plowing it up like gunfire. The old house on the hill wore its steep, gabled roof pulled over its ears like a low hat."
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"It was raining when Rahel came back to Ayemenem. Slant..."
It seems like the author was trying to hard for "lyrical prose" or to be too poetic. Sometimes that fits, sometimes it doesn't.
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William fidgeted with the cloth he had separated from the rest. He looked as if he was making up his mind to something.
"His blue is good, Uncle. His black is good. The other colors are hit and miss because his dye cupboard is a shambles and he doesn't keep proper records."
Paul put his head in his hands, and William started to look like a man who had said mare than he should.
"You have been into Mr. Lowe's dye cupboard."
"Yes."
Paul felt weary to the core. He was more than willing to defend his nephew against he father, but he needed William to meet him halfway. The boy showed no remorse, though, and had no sense of the boundary he had transgressed.
We did miss the quotes! I am so sad I already gave my book away. I did find a good quote on the book's page though.From The Mockingbirds:
“In this moment I'm not defined by the other things, the things that happened to me, the things I didn't choose. This is the part of me that defines for all time, for always. The thing I choose completely.”
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“In this moment I'm not defined by the other things, the things that happened ..."
I really like this quote, Tara. Can you post what book it is from?
I edited my comment above. Totally forgot to do that... thanks for the reminder.
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Thanks. I always like to check out the books if I like the quote. :)
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p. 104:
"Or is it that the world unwraps itself to you, again and again, as soon as you are ready to see it anew?"
p. 285:
"The lore supposes there should be conflict, hostility, battle, but I wonder, in contact with spirits, if what the boy needs is a good helping of cold anger."
"Cold anger?"
"Oh, yes, don't you know that distinction? Tribal mothers always tell their children that there are two kinds of anger: hot and cold. Boys and girls experience both, but as they grow up the angers separate according to the sex. Boys need hot anger to survive. They need the inclination to fight, the drive to sink the knife into the flesh, the energy and initiative of fury. It's a requirement of hunting, of defense, of pride. Maybe of sex, too. ...
"And girls need cold anger. They need the cold simmer, the ceaseless grudge, the talent to avoid forgiveness, the sidestepping of compromise. They need to know when they say something that they will never back down, ever, ever. It's the compensation for a more limited scope of the world."
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"Writing is just like making rugs," I said.
"What do you mean?" asked Naheed, with a touch of scorn in her voice. She had never made a rug.
I put down my pen to explain. "Words are made letter by letter, in the same way that rugs are formed knot by knot. If you combine different letters, they make different words, and the same is true when you combine colors to make different patterns," I said.
"But writing is from God," objected Naheed.
"He gave us thirty-two letters, " I replied, proud that I knew that now, "but how do you explain that He gave us more colors than we can count?"
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I thought of how ... knew everything about me, and how if he were gone, part of me would be missing forever. I wondered if the person who really loves you is the person who knows all your stories, the person who wants to know all your stories.
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I also love the way you explained leaving out the character name in Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, too.
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At that moment it seemed as if all the hands on all the clocks in the entire world stood still. All moving things froze as if God had captured their movement with a giant camera from the sky. The camera flash was blinding. I saw stars. I was stunned; I felt like flying, dying, fainting. I knew that A Miauw was yelling at me, but I didn’t hear it, and I knew that the shop was becoming smellier in its stuffy air, but my senses had already died. I guess she felt the same way.
Can you guess what kind of "moment" this was?
Several years ago my f2f book club read Wicked and we had quite a discussion on it. We then decided to re-read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz the next month and discuss again. (By the way, the Oz book is somewhat different from the movie.) Some of us liked Wicked and some of us didn't, but the discussion was great.
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At that moment it seemed as if all the hands on all the clocks in the entire world stood stil..."
Lol, Tien....I think it is kind of self-explanatory.
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I have read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, too and agree, it is much different than the movie, but interestingly so, I think, I'll bet the discussion of it and Wicked together was something.
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heh, it was rhetorical ;p
I think the character wasn't even 15 at that stage... I'm tempted to say 13 but it really wasn't clear exactly the age but suffice to say early teens, ha ha ha - ah, young love :)
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I did like it, sort of. Definitely enough to keep at it. I ended up thinking of it as a 3.5. Some things bothered me, but that's ok. Here 's my review of it.
p. 49, Nobody's Fool by Richard RussoSully reflecting on an employer who keeps 'forgetting' to pay him -
"Smiling, he imagined Carl Roebuck tossed out his office window, his arms flapping frantically, his legs wildly pedaling an invisible bicycle as he fell. Sully didn't allow him to hit the ground. He just tossed Carl from the window again and again, so that the other man tumbled and pedaled and screamed."
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The history of our benighted Spain would have been very different had the generous impulses of the people won out more frequently over the arid doctrine of the state and the self-interest, venality, and ineptitude of our politicians, nobles, and monarchs.
... the sad history of our people, who always have given the best of themselves -- their innocence, their money, their labors, and their blood -- only to find themselves ill repaid in return.
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Sully reflecting on an employer who keeps 'forgetting' to pay him -
"Smiling, he imagined Carl Roebuck tossed out his office window, his arms ..."
I love the picture that this one paints. :)
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T..."
He does, doesn't he?
I loved this quote from The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. This book was my fave read of 2013."I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, be silent with"
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But he soon forgot the attractive waterway, for along the riverbank was a line of immensely tall palm trees unlike any he had seen before, not even in books. More than eighty feet tall, all were completely barren of limbs or even small branches for two thirds of their height; in that lower reach they consisted solely of slight, fragile-looking trunks standing severely erect with not a single deviation left or right. At the very top of each tree, and extending for only a few feed downward, was a green crown of typical palm fronds, but so few that they seemed like accidental dandruff atop a bald head. ...
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"I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anyt..."
that is a great quote, Julia. I still need to read that book. I hear it is fantastic.
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But he soon forgot the attractive waterway, for along the riverbank was a line of immensely tall palm trees unlike any he had seen before, not even in books...."
Susan - that quote paints a great picture. :)
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"...how's come if you're from Japan, you...look like such a Jew," Davy O'Dowd said.
"We're in Japan," Sammy said. "We're everywhere."
"Jujitsu," Joe reminded him.
"Good point," said Davy O'Dowd.
approx 22% of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
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"...how's come if you're from Japan, you...look like such a Jew," Davy O'Dowd said.
"We're in Japan," Sammy said. "We..."
What do you think of the book so far, Tien. I have heard good things and bad things about it.
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