Sam's Notes Taken Along the Way
Chapter One - The Shadow of a Crow
"...he had seen the metal face of the age and had been so stunned by it that when he thought into the future, all he could vision was a world from which everything he counted important had been banished or had willingly fled."
Can you imagine living a life knowing that your leg is rotting away underneath of you? I know it happens now but not nearly that often, especially in a hospital. But Balis just kept working on his project as if nothing was happening.
So the blind man didn't just have un-seeing eyes, he literally had no eyes? Is that really a phenomenon that could happen? I do agree with him though, better to have never been able to see than to loose your eyesight later in life.
I think it's funny that in the narrator's reminiscence the (I'm assuming) white people spent their time in the "Bald" getting drunk and lounging around, then the Indians come up and they set up a sport to play and pass the time.
"Inman did not consider himself to be a superstitious person, but he did believe that there is a world
invisible to us. He no longer thought of that world as heaven, nor did he still think that we get to go
there when we die. Those teachings had been burned away. But he could not abide by a universe
composed only of what he could see, especially when it was so frequently foul. So he held to the
idea of another world, a better place,"
Chapter Two - The Ground Beneath Her Hands
Angelica - Queen's lace
Tickseed - Coreopsis
Heal-all - Prunella Vulgaris
"...nature has a preference for a particular order: parents die, then children die. But it was a harsh design, offering little relief from pain, for being in accord with it means that the fortunate find themselves orphaned."
"It's claimed that if you take a mirror and look backwards into a well, you'll see your future down in the water."
I can't imagine how lonely it would be to live on the Cold Mountain farm and be all alone, I probably would have cried if I had been Ada when Ruby walked up and said she'd stay and help, so long as things were fair and even.
Chapter Three - The Color of Despair
Is Inman black? The statement about being comfortable with a scythe makes me think so, also explains why the 3 guys from down decided so randomly to attack him. If he isn't black, then what motivation did the guys have for jumping him?
I find it interesting that the "mountain people" thought Ada was stupid for drawing, although perhaps they really did think she was just taking notes in her book. Funny because Ada expected the mountain people to be stupid and uncivilized.
"...he would like to love the world as it was, and he felt a great deal of accomplishment for the occasions when he did, since the other was so easy. Hate took no effort other than to look about."
Chapter Four - Verbs, All of them Tiring
"...there was no burden that couldn't be lightened, no wreckful life that couldn't be set right by heading off down the road."
Chapter Five - Like Any Other Thing, a Gift
While the story of the preacher and the lady in white seemed really random, I think its my favorite part so far. "You only felt bad when the hay stacks were too wet to fuck in, I'm sure." Then to mislead the preacher into thinking her'll play the antagonist just long enough to tie him up and write the true story for the town to find later - I loved that.
When Inman is with the gypsies he says one of the boys takes a rat-tail file to the horses teeth. I can't imagine any horse being okay with you filing it's teeth.
Chapter Six - Ashes of Roses
I feel like Ruby is the perfect characterization of my mother. "That was a silly story, time for my night work." And off she goes to do checks and final things before going to sleep, even after having a nice big dinner and relaxing chat.
Chapter Seven - Exile and Brute Wandering
"There's some say that's the way to contentment, get to where there's nothing you crave, where you've lost your appetites."
"The creek's turnings marked how all that moves must shape itself to the maze of actual landscape, no matter what its preferences might be." (The "preferences" referring to gravity preferring to move in a straight line, but this creek was all curvy.)
Is it really realistic that a catfish could / would eat a hammer and a whole bluebird?
The bit where Inman knocks the preacher out for trying to steal from the country store made me laugh, but I think I'd rather have left him behind than to deal with him in my journey
Holy shit to the peddler's father's gambling winnings: "As a result of the evening card play, great numbers of hogs, several families of slaves, a saddle horse, a kennelful of bird dogs, a fine English-made shotgun, and Lucinda changed hands." Sure sounds like the guy he played against didn't have much to take home / go home to.
As sad and awful as the peddler's story was, I liked it. I would thoroughly enjoy a book centered around Odell's story!
Chapter Eight - Source and Root
"...the nail to his left index finger. It was near as long as the finger itself, the way some people will grow them for cutting butter and dipping lard and other such tasks." ...What? Ew.
The story involving the heron is so weird. First the fact that the bird would come so close to Ada just to fly away instead of just focusing on food. Then the fact that Ruby's father told her, when she was a little girl, a vivid tale of her mother being raped by a bird. WTF
The story of Ada's parents is sweet but heartbreaking. I also find it clever how Ada and Ruby's relationships with their father's was so different. Ruby had to take care of herself and her father when he was there, and Ada was literally the light of her father's life.
Chapter Nine - To Live Like a Gamecock
I feel like the story of Inman surviving a shooting seems a little unlikely, which is a bummer, cuz I was really appreciating the authenticity of this story.
Chapter Ten - In Place of the Truth
"Ada imagined her as a lonely and abandoned child wandering the countryside to braid the tails of old solitary plow horses out of need for proximity to something live and warm."
I liked the bit about how Ada acted all flippant when Inman came to say goodbye but then felt so bad she went to see him at work, and I love their final farewell, where he flipped the hat and flung it into his house so that he could kiss her. Also love how Ada talks about the clothing of the time, how Inman probably couldn't even feel her warmth because of all of the layers of clothing she wore to be "in style" with the times.
Chapter Eleven - The Doing of It
"Can't tolerate living around a chicken. No spirit to a chicken at all."
The goat scene didn't bother me until I realized the initial slice to the goat's throat didn't really kill it, just got it bleeding.
"...he guessed the promise of it was part of what made up the war frenzy in the early days. The powerful draw of new faces, new places, new lives. And new laws whereunder you might kill all you wanted and not be jailed, but rather be decorated. Men talked of war as if they committed it to preserve what they had and what they believed. But Inman now guessed it was boredom with the repetition of the daily rounds that had made them take up weapons. The endless arc of the sun, wheel of seasons. War took a man out of that circle of regular life and made a season of its own, not much dependent on anything else."
I like the potential foreshadowing of the Ada becoming the goatwoman. Maybe keeping record with drawings was a common thing in those days, but I can imagine Ada becoming comfortable enough with her ability to run her own farm that she could live in solitude with her journals.
"...she planned to stretch out at the top of the rock cliff and let the ravens peck her apart and carry her away. 'It's that or worms, she said. Of the two I'd as soon have ravens carry me off on their black wings.'"
Chapter Twelve - Freewill Savages
I don't blame Ruby at all for not being able to forgive and view Stobrod differently after his story of learning how to play fiddle during the war. It doesn't change the fact that she grew up alone and fending for herself.
Chapter Thirteen - Bride Bed Full of Blood
I do find it interesting that throughout Inman's narrative he keeps talking about all the bad he's done and how he's undeserving of a good life, but he keeps doing good things for people, especially this young girl who only offered him a few plates of beans.
I don't know why I'm always surprised when books or movies show or describe animals eating humans. Like, you wouldn't expect a chicken to eat the innards of a human, but then again it makes sense, just scary to think about how many different animals could/would eat your body.
Chapter Fourteen - A Satisfied Mind
The letter Ada wrote to her cousin seemed really random and out of place considering the cousin hadn't been mentioned up to this point.
I'm not good at understanding how to read "how to" pronounce something so what does the group think:
Broad initial A in Ada; accented second syllable in Monroe.
Everyone's natural leaning was Long A, heavy Mon.
Chapter Fifteen - A Vow to Bear
The bear scene was so sad, and that seems bizarre to me cuz I've never been attached to bears and view them mostly as a predator. But the fact that the bear literally ran itself off a cliff in an attempt to save it's cub is so depressing.
Do you guys think Guilt could be considered a deadly sin?
Chapter Sixteen - Naught and Grief
I really wasn't expecting Stobrod and Pangle to be shot to death, especially after the guard had them play a song for them before standing them up to be shot.
Chapter Eighteen - Black Bark in Winter
"We'll feed you, though. It's not like we've not been feeding every other stray that wanders through."
"Ruby said she found him not particularly worse than the general order of men, which is to say that he would greatly benefit from having someone's foot in his back every waking minute."
I feel like Stobrod surviving the three bullets and then reviving so (it seemed soon) after Ruby applied the herbs, seems a tad unrealistic.
"She doubted that its people, even in the last days, had ever looked ahead and imagined loss so total and so soon. They had not foreseen a near time when theirs would be another world filled with other people whose mouths would speak other words, whose sleep would be eased or troubled with other dreams, whose prayers would be offered up to other gods."
Chapter Nineteen - Footsteps in Snow
"He doubted there was a man in the world emptier than he at that moment. He would walk right out of this world and keep on going into that happy valley she had described."
"Quit puzzling over it. The worst you can do is fail to kill a turkey and there's not a hunter in the world hasn't done that. Go on."
It seriously infuriated me that the Georgia boy was living in Ada's house and led Inman to where Ada and Ruby had set off. Thank god they ended up meeting on the same path because if Inman and Ada had just missed meeting each other I would've been pissed.
"Such is the price I'll pay for the past four years. Firearms standing between me and everything I want."
Chapter Twenty - The Far Side of Trouble
I appreciate that a book set in such an older time has a character like Ruby to say "You don't need him. But if you want him, that's a whole different matter."
The idea of stuffing a wound with old spider / cobwebs seems super disgusting, although I can see that it would be effective nevertheless.
"... you went on living one day after another, and in time you were somebody else, your previous self only like a close relative, a sister or brother, with whom you shared a past. But a different person, a separate life."
"God lays the unbearable on you and then takes some back."
"He could haul a portable sawmill to a man's land and set it up and saw out the material for a house from the man's own timber. There would be an economy in that, and a satisfaction for the man as well, for he could sit in his completed house and delight in all its parts coming right from his own land." -- That is actually what my uncle did, his entire house is floored with wood that came from his own land, I believe the doors are as well.
"They stood on a cusp. They could think in one part of their minds that their whole lives stretched out before them without boundary or limit. At the same time another part guessed that youth was about over for them and what lay ahead was another country entirely, wherein the possibilities narrowed down moment by moment."
Chapter Twenty-One - Spirits of Crows, Dancing
"He looked to have German or Dutch blood in him. Maybe Irish or some inbred product of Cornwall. No matter. He was now American all through, white skin, white hair, and a killer."
Epilogue, October 1874
So, I hate the ending. Nothing ruins a book more for me than an ending I can't get behind. If Inman had to die, then why not Strobad too? And the whole "at least I have a piece of him from beyond the grave" thing is so overdone - although perhaps not when this book was written. I would not re-read the book again, but I'll still give three stars cuz I didn't hate it. I mostly struggled over some of the language and I wish it had been a touch shorter.
Chapter Three - The Color of Despair
Is Inman black? The statement about being comfortable with a scythe makes me think so, also explains why the 3 guys from down decided so randomly to attack him. If he isn't black, then what motivation did the guys have for jumping him?
I find it interesting that the "mountain people" thought Ada was stupid for drawing, although perhaps they really did think she was just taking notes in her book. Funny because Ada expected the mountain people to be stupid and uncivilized.
"...he would like to love the world as it was, and he felt a great deal of accomplishment for the occasions when he did, since the other was so easy. Hate took no effort other than to look about."
Chapter Four - Verbs, All of them Tiring
"...there was no burden that couldn't be lightened, no wreckful life that couldn't be set right by heading off down the road."
Chapter Five - Like Any Other Thing, a Gift
While the story of the preacher and the lady in white seemed really random, I think its my favorite part so far. "You only felt bad when the hay stacks were too wet to fuck in, I'm sure." Then to mislead the preacher into thinking her'll play the antagonist just long enough to tie him up and write the true story for the town to find later - I loved that.
When Inman is with the gypsies he says one of the boys takes a rat-tail file to the horses teeth. I can't imagine any horse being okay with you filing it's teeth.
Chapter Six - Ashes of Roses
I feel like Ruby is the perfect characterization of my mother. "That was a silly story, time for my night work." And off she goes to do checks and final things before going to sleep, even after having a nice big dinner and relaxing chat.
Chapter Seven - Exile and Brute Wandering
"There's some say that's the way to contentment, get to where there's nothing you crave, where you've lost your appetites."
"The creek's turnings marked how all that moves must shape itself to the maze of actual landscape, no matter what its preferences might be." (The "preferences" referring to gravity preferring to move in a straight line, but this creek was all curvy.)
Is it really realistic that a catfish could / would eat a hammer and a whole bluebird?
The bit where Inman knocks the preacher out for trying to steal from the country store made me laugh, but I think I'd rather have left him behind than to deal with him in my journey
Holy shit to the peddler's father's gambling winnings: "As a result of the evening card play, great numbers of hogs, several families of slaves, a saddle horse, a kennelful of bird dogs, a fine English-made shotgun, and Lucinda changed hands." Sure sounds like the guy he played against didn't have much to take home / go home to.
As sad and awful as the peddler's story was, I liked it. I would thoroughly enjoy a book centered around Odell's story!
Chapter Eight - Source and Root
"...the nail to his left index finger. It was near as long as the finger itself, the way some people will grow them for cutting butter and dipping lard and other such tasks." ...What? Ew.
The story involving the heron is so weird. First the fact that the bird would come so close to Ada just to fly away instead of just focusing on food. Then the fact that Ruby's father told her, when she was a little girl, a vivid tale of her mother being raped by a bird. WTF
The story of Ada's parents is sweet but heartbreaking. I also find it clever how Ada and Ruby's relationships with their father's was so different. Ruby had to take care of herself and her father when he was there, and Ada was literally the light of her father's life.
Chapter Nine - To Live Like a Gamecock
I feel like the story of Inman surviving a shooting seems a little unlikely, which is a bummer, cuz I was really appreciating the authenticity of this story.
Chapter Ten - In Place of the Truth
"Ada imagined her as a lonely and abandoned child wandering the countryside to braid the tails of old solitary plow horses out of need for proximity to something live and warm."
I liked the bit about how Ada acted all flippant when Inman came to say goodbye but then felt so bad she went to see him at work, and I love their final farewell, where he flipped the hat and flung it into his house so that he could kiss her. Also love how Ada talks about the clothing of the time, how Inman probably couldn't even feel her warmth because of all of the layers of clothing she wore to be "in style" with the times.
Chapter Eleven - The Doing of It
"Can't tolerate living around a chicken. No spirit to a chicken at all."
The goat scene didn't bother me until I realized the initial slice to the goat's throat didn't really kill it, just got it bleeding.
"...he guessed the promise of it was part of what made up the war frenzy in the early days. The powerful draw of new faces, new places, new lives. And new laws whereunder you might kill all you wanted and not be jailed, but rather be decorated. Men talked of war as if they committed it to preserve what they had and what they believed. But Inman now guessed it was boredom with the repetition of the daily rounds that had made them take up weapons. The endless arc of the sun, wheel of seasons. War took a man out of that circle of regular life and made a season of its own, not much dependent on anything else."
I like the potential foreshadowing of the Ada becoming the goatwoman. Maybe keeping record with drawings was a common thing in those days, but I can imagine Ada becoming comfortable enough with her ability to run her own farm that she could live in solitude with her journals.
"...she planned to stretch out at the top of the rock cliff and let the ravens peck her apart and carry her away. 'It's that or worms, she said. Of the two I'd as soon have ravens carry me off on their black wings.'"
Chapter Twelve - Freewill Savages
I don't blame Ruby at all for not being able to forgive and view Stobrod differently after his story of learning how to play fiddle during the war. It doesn't change the fact that she grew up alone and fending for herself.
Chapter Thirteen - Bride Bed Full of Blood
I do find it interesting that throughout Inman's narrative he keeps talking about all the bad he's done and how he's undeserving of a good life, but he keeps doing good things for people, especially this young girl who only offered him a few plates of beans.
I don't know why I'm always surprised when books or movies show or describe animals eating humans. Like, you wouldn't expect a chicken to eat the innards of a human, but then again it makes sense, just scary to think about how many different animals could/would eat your body.
Chapter Fourteen - A Satisfied Mind
The letter Ada wrote to her cousin seemed really random and out of place considering the cousin hadn't been mentioned up to this point.
I'm not good at understanding how to read "how to" pronounce something so what does the group think:
Broad initial A in Ada; accented second syllable in Monroe.
Everyone's natural leaning was Long A, heavy Mon.
Chapter Fifteen - A Vow to Bear
The bear scene was so sad, and that seems bizarre to me cuz I've never been attached to bears and view them mostly as a predator. But the fact that the bear literally ran itself off a cliff in an attempt to save it's cub is so depressing.
Do you guys think Guilt could be considered a deadly sin?
Chapter Sixteen - Naught and Grief
I really wasn't expecting Stobrod and Pangle to be shot to death, especially after the guard had them play a song for them before standing them up to be shot.
Chapter Eighteen - Black Bark in Winter
"We'll feed you, though. It's not like we've not been feeding every other stray that wanders through."
"Ruby said she found him not particularly worse than the general order of men, which is to say that he would greatly benefit from having someone's foot in his back every waking minute."
I feel like Stobrod surviving the three bullets and then reviving so (it seemed soon) after Ruby applied the herbs, seems a tad unrealistic.
"She doubted that its people, even in the last days, had ever looked ahead and imagined loss so total and so soon. They had not foreseen a near time when theirs would be another world filled with other people whose mouths would speak other words, whose sleep would be eased or troubled with other dreams, whose prayers would be offered up to other gods."
Chapter Nineteen - Footsteps in Snow
"He doubted there was a man in the world emptier than he at that moment. He would walk right out of this world and keep on going into that happy valley she had described."
"Quit puzzling over it. The worst you can do is fail to kill a turkey and there's not a hunter in the world hasn't done that. Go on."
It seriously infuriated me that the Georgia boy was living in Ada's house and led Inman to where Ada and Ruby had set off. Thank god they ended up meeting on the same path because if Inman and Ada had just missed meeting each other I would've been pissed.
"Such is the price I'll pay for the past four years. Firearms standing between me and everything I want."
Chapter Twenty - The Far Side of Trouble
I appreciate that a book set in such an older time has a character like Ruby to say "You don't need him. But if you want him, that's a whole different matter."
The idea of stuffing a wound with old spider / cobwebs seems super disgusting, although I can see that it would be effective nevertheless.
"... you went on living one day after another, and in time you were somebody else, your previous self only like a close relative, a sister or brother, with whom you shared a past. But a different person, a separate life."
"God lays the unbearable on you and then takes some back."
"He could haul a portable sawmill to a man's land and set it up and saw out the material for a house from the man's own timber. There would be an economy in that, and a satisfaction for the man as well, for he could sit in his completed house and delight in all its parts coming right from his own land." -- That is actually what my uncle did, his entire house is floored with wood that came from his own land, I believe the doors are as well.
"They stood on a cusp. They could think in one part of their minds that their whole lives stretched out before them without boundary or limit. At the same time another part guessed that youth was about over for them and what lay ahead was another country entirely, wherein the possibilities narrowed down moment by moment."
Chapter Twenty-One - Spirits of Crows, Dancing
"He looked to have German or Dutch blood in him. Maybe Irish or some inbred product of Cornwall. No matter. He was now American all through, white skin, white hair, and a killer."
Epilogue, October 1874
So, I hate the ending. Nothing ruins a book more for me than an ending I can't get behind. If Inman had to die, then why not Strobad too? And the whole "at least I have a piece of him from beyond the grave" thing is so overdone - although perhaps not when this book was written. I would not re-read the book again, but I'll still give three stars cuz I didn't hate it. I mostly struggled over some of the language and I wish it had been a touch shorter.
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