I once believed that "Speak" was Laurie Halse Anderson's only book, and I loved it. I recently learned she's actually written a lot of books and I was very excited to read them. Unfortunately I was mostly disappointed by this book. I really wasn't invested in the story until the last 80 pages, which is a huge difference from the instant hook I felt while reading "Speak". That's not to say this is a bad story, it's features a strong young woman character handling a tough situation admirably. I guess I just don't relate enough to this book to find it interesting, but I still want to read more books from her.
"There are two types of people in this world: 1. Zombies 2. Freaks. ... everyone is born a freak. ... every newborn baby, wet and hungry and screaming, is a fresh-hatched freak who wants to have a good time and make the world a better place."
"It's always there - fear - and if you don't stay on top of it, you'll drown."
"Sometimes I wonder if he cheats on us, too, if he's looking for new kids who won't disappoint him."
"It doesn't matter how much she loves him, he's not going to change."
"I called mom back to tell her I hadn't killed myself and then we got into a fight. Why? Because I didn't make my bed this morning."
"'You go to a cemetery on purpose?'
"'Isn't that the point?'"
"I kissed him until everything that hurt inside me melted into a pool of black water so deep I couldn't touch the bottom. As long as I was touching him, I wouldn't drown."
"'Do you think we've crossed the border...to the next town yet?'
"The moon chuckled. It did. I heard it."
"The remembering takes up every breath until there is no time for today. I pour a drink, ten drinks, so I can forget that I have forgotten today."
"Here's what you don't know. By five o'clock that morning, the officers had all gotten the message that the war would end that day. But lots of them ordered their men to keep fighting. ... Almost eleven thousand soldiers died on November 11, 1918. ... Politics beats out freedom, honor, and service every time. Don't ever forget that."
"Killing people is easier than it should be. Staying alive is harder."
"Odysseus had twenty years to shed his battle skin. My grandfather left the battlefield in France and rode home in a ship that crawled across the ocean slowly so he can catch his breath. I get on a plane in hell and get off, hours later, at home."
"I added it to the growing list of things I never thought I would do but did anyway."
"The clouds scuttled away from the sun and blinding light reflected off the fresh snow. We were standing in a sea of glass shards, millions of tiny frozen mirrors."
"I've been standing on the edge with you for years."
"Out there on the edge, the spinning of the earth had slowed to give us the time we needed to start giving each other again."
Thursday, April 27, 2017
Sunday, April 9, 2017
Sam Reviews "Riding in Cars with Boys" by Beverly Donofrio
I really should stop going into books blindly. I had never heard of his movie (or at least never seen it) and had no idea this was an actual memoir. (Although, it does go to further prove that I subconsciously read similar genre books really close together, been on a memoir/autobiography kick lately). Anyways, I went into this book expecting fiction, but it was really a memoir of a girls teenage life and how in eventually affected her adulthood, though her adulthood is a back burner subject. I liked it, I thought it was going to be a juicer story, but it was good, it was real and raw and honest and I appreciate that in books like this.
"Lately I've been thinking of the things I did and feeling like a maniac mother. Lately, I've been looking at my life like there's something to learn. ... i hear Frank Sinatra singing "My Way." I think, That's it. I wasn't a terrible person. I just did it like Frank Sinatra."
"When I was single, I had a job, I had money, I bought nice clothes, went on vacations. I did what I pleased. Then when you marry, you too where the man wants. ... If you want to be happy, stay single."
"I wondered if I'd still remember Bobby when I was thirty or forty. I'd be an adult, but in my memory he'd still be a kid. ... wondered if Bobby was the lucky one. ... Bobby would never get the chance to spread his wings and learn too fly. I wondered if any of us would."
"I felt like Hester Prynne must've felt in the next chapter, the one that never got written, the one where she's in the woods on her way to the rest of her life and finally rips off that ridiculous A and throws it in the camp fire."
"That was the thing with my mother. I'd bought this beautiful fourteen- year- old with- a- rebuilt- engine emerald- green Volkswagen after four years without a car - which, incidentally, was not only going to take me to college but eventually off welfare - and all my mother had to say was, Better keep it clean?"
"I've been thinking lately that maybe there's a big design, that the end is already there in the beginning and there's nothing we can do about it, not in a lifetime. Nothing we can do about the events, but plenty we can do with them."
"Lately I've been thinking of the things I did and feeling like a maniac mother. Lately, I've been looking at my life like there's something to learn. ... i hear Frank Sinatra singing "My Way." I think, That's it. I wasn't a terrible person. I just did it like Frank Sinatra."
"When I was single, I had a job, I had money, I bought nice clothes, went on vacations. I did what I pleased. Then when you marry, you too where the man wants. ... If you want to be happy, stay single."
"I wondered if I'd still remember Bobby when I was thirty or forty. I'd be an adult, but in my memory he'd still be a kid. ... wondered if Bobby was the lucky one. ... Bobby would never get the chance to spread his wings and learn too fly. I wondered if any of us would."
"I felt like Hester Prynne must've felt in the next chapter, the one that never got written, the one where she's in the woods on her way to the rest of her life and finally rips off that ridiculous A and throws it in the camp fire."
"That was the thing with my mother. I'd bought this beautiful fourteen- year- old with- a- rebuilt- engine emerald- green Volkswagen after four years without a car - which, incidentally, was not only going to take me to college but eventually off welfare - and all my mother had to say was, Better keep it clean?"
"I've been thinking lately that maybe there's a big design, that the end is already there in the beginning and there's nothing we can do about it, not in a lifetime. Nothing we can do about the events, but plenty we can do with them."
Monday, April 3, 2017
Sam Reviews "The Shack" by William Paul Young
I am going to give this four stars because it was a well written story that was easy to read, even if i didn't necessarily love the content all of the time. I was lent this book under the premise that it's "religious but not so religious that you'll hate it". Let me just say, while this is a very different (and in my opinion good) way to view, discuss, and write about religion, this book is So Very religious. There were a lot of things in the way this author explains religion that I love but I still walked away from this confused and questioning things and I don't know if that's a great thing.
Overall, the concept was unique and interesting and I was pretty well entranced with this book so I read it pretty quickly. I think it's a good read for a lot of people as long as you're okay with reading about God a lot.
"From the few stories Mack has told me, I know his daddy was not a fall-asleep-happy kind of alcoholic but a vicious, mean, beat-your-wife-and-then-ask-God-for-forgiveness drunk."
Overall, the concept was unique and interesting and I was pretty well entranced with this book so I read it pretty quickly. I think it's a good read for a lot of people as long as you're okay with reading about God a lot.
"From the few stories Mack has told me, I know his daddy was not a fall-asleep-happy kind of alcoholic but a vicious, mean, beat-your-wife-and-then-ask-God-for-forgiveness drunk."
"Techno gizmos that somehow make everything go faster, as if life weren't going fast enough already."
"Suffice it to say that while some things may not be scientifically provable, they can still be true nonetheless."
"Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets." - Paul Turnier
"Even his efforts to shake it [The Great Sadness] off were exhausting, as if his arms were sewn into its bleak folds of despair and he had somehow become part of it."
"He was a rich man ... in all the ways that mattered."
[On the death of his father] "Well, life is hard sometimes, but I have a lot to be thankful for."
"Please call me Sam. Short for Samantha, but I grew up kind of a tomboy and beat up the
kids who would dare call me Samantha to my face."
"Emotions seemed so near to the surface, and even the least bit of kindness seemed to poke holes in his reserve."
"God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them listen to and follow sacred scripture, properly interpreted, of course. God's voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects. It seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients and uncivilized, while educated Westerners' access to God was mediated and controlled by intelligentsia. Nobody wanted God in a box, just a book. Especially an expensive one bound in leather with gilt edges, or was that guilt edges?"
"Sometimes honesty can be incredibly messy."
"Oh, don't go [talk to God] because you feel obligated. That won't get you any points around here. Go because it's what you want to do."
"You were created to be loved. So for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around. ... Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly. ... And if it's left unresolved for very long, you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place."
"Let's pray that the human race never escapes Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere." -C.S. Lewis
"He knew that it didn't matter whose fault it was - the mess from some bowl that had been broken, that a planned dish would not be shared. Obviously, what was truly important here was the love they had for one another and the fullness it brought them. He shook his head. How different this was from the way he sometimes treated the ones he loved."
"Being always transcends appearance - that which only seems to be. Once you begin to know the being behind the very pretty or very ugly face, as determined by your bias, the surface appearances fade away until they simply no longer matter."
"I'll never get tired of looking at this [starry sky]. The wonder of it all - the 'wastefulness of creation', as one of our brothers has called it. So elegant, so full of longing and beauty even now."
"Growth means change and change involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown."
"What you're seeing here is a relationship without any overlay of power. We don't need power over the other because we are always looking out for the best. ... Humans are so lost and damaged that to you it is almost incomprehensible that people could work or live together without someone being in charge. ... It's one reason why experiencing true relationship is so difficult for you. Once you have a hierarchy you need rules to protect and administer it, and then you need law and the enforcement of the rules, and you end up with some kind of chain of command or a system of order that destroys relationship rather than promotes it. ... When you choose independence over relationship, you become a danger to one another. Others became objects to be manipulated for your own happiness. Authority, as you usually think of it, is merely the excuse the strong ones use to make others conform to what they want."
"Even should we find another Eden, we would not be fit to enjoy it perfectly nor stay in it forever." - Henry Van Dyke
"Such a powerful ability, the imagination! ... But without wisdom, imagination is a cruel taskmaster."
"I live in the present. Not the past, although much can be remembered and learned by looking back, but only for a visit, not an extended stay."
"To force my will on you is exactly what love does not do. Genuine relationships are marked by submission even when your choices are not helpful or healthy. ... Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect."
"What they [my children] do might affect my pride, but not my love for them."
"[God] doesn't stop a lot of things that cause her pain. Your world is severely broken. You demanded your independence, and now you are angry with the One who loved you enough to give it to you. Nothing is as it should be, as Papa desires it to be, and as it will be one day. Right now your world is lost I darkness and chaos, and horrible things happen to those she is especially fond of."
"This life is only the anteroom of a greater reality to come. No one reaches their potential in your world. It's only preparation for what Papa had in mind all along."
"Even if you had been to blame, her love is stronger than your fault could ever be."
"As well-intentioned as it might be, you know religious machinery can chew people up."
"These terrors [institutions, religion, politics, as economics] are tools that many use to prop up their illusions of security and control. People are afraid of uncertainty, afraid of failure. These institutions, these structures ave ideologies, are all a vain effort to create some sense of certainty and security where there isn't any."
"Just because I [God] work out incredible good out of unspeakable tragedies doesn't mean I orchestrate the tragedies. ... Grace doesn't depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors."
"If anything matters then everything matters. Because you are important, everything you do is important. Every time you forgive, the universe changes; every time you reach out and touch a heart or a life, the world changes; with every kindness and service, seen or unseen, my purposes are accomplished and nothing will ever be the same again."
"Even his efforts to shake it [The Great Sadness] off were exhausting, as if his arms were sewn into its bleak folds of despair and he had somehow become part of it."
"He was a rich man ... in all the ways that mattered."
[On the death of his father] "Well, life is hard sometimes, but I have a lot to be thankful for."
"Please call me Sam. Short for Samantha, but I grew up kind of a tomboy and beat up the
kids who would dare call me Samantha to my face."
"Emotions seemed so near to the surface, and even the least bit of kindness seemed to poke holes in his reserve."
"God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them listen to and follow sacred scripture, properly interpreted, of course. God's voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects. It seemed that direct communication with God was something exclusively for the ancients and uncivilized, while educated Westerners' access to God was mediated and controlled by intelligentsia. Nobody wanted God in a box, just a book. Especially an expensive one bound in leather with gilt edges, or was that guilt edges?"
"Sometimes honesty can be incredibly messy."
"Oh, don't go [talk to God] because you feel obligated. That won't get you any points around here. Go because it's what you want to do."
"You were created to be loved. So for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around. ... Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly. ... And if it's left unresolved for very long, you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place."
"Let's pray that the human race never escapes Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere." -C.S. Lewis
"He knew that it didn't matter whose fault it was - the mess from some bowl that had been broken, that a planned dish would not be shared. Obviously, what was truly important here was the love they had for one another and the fullness it brought them. He shook his head. How different this was from the way he sometimes treated the ones he loved."
"Being always transcends appearance - that which only seems to be. Once you begin to know the being behind the very pretty or very ugly face, as determined by your bias, the surface appearances fade away until they simply no longer matter."
"I'll never get tired of looking at this [starry sky]. The wonder of it all - the 'wastefulness of creation', as one of our brothers has called it. So elegant, so full of longing and beauty even now."
"Growth means change and change involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown."
"What you're seeing here is a relationship without any overlay of power. We don't need power over the other because we are always looking out for the best. ... Humans are so lost and damaged that to you it is almost incomprehensible that people could work or live together without someone being in charge. ... It's one reason why experiencing true relationship is so difficult for you. Once you have a hierarchy you need rules to protect and administer it, and then you need law and the enforcement of the rules, and you end up with some kind of chain of command or a system of order that destroys relationship rather than promotes it. ... When you choose independence over relationship, you become a danger to one another. Others became objects to be manipulated for your own happiness. Authority, as you usually think of it, is merely the excuse the strong ones use to make others conform to what they want."
"Even should we find another Eden, we would not be fit to enjoy it perfectly nor stay in it forever." - Henry Van Dyke
"Such a powerful ability, the imagination! ... But without wisdom, imagination is a cruel taskmaster."
"I live in the present. Not the past, although much can be remembered and learned by looking back, but only for a visit, not an extended stay."
"To force my will on you is exactly what love does not do. Genuine relationships are marked by submission even when your choices are not helpful or healthy. ... Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect."
"What they [my children] do might affect my pride, but not my love for them."
"[God] doesn't stop a lot of things that cause her pain. Your world is severely broken. You demanded your independence, and now you are angry with the One who loved you enough to give it to you. Nothing is as it should be, as Papa desires it to be, and as it will be one day. Right now your world is lost I darkness and chaos, and horrible things happen to those she is especially fond of."
"This life is only the anteroom of a greater reality to come. No one reaches their potential in your world. It's only preparation for what Papa had in mind all along."
"Even if you had been to blame, her love is stronger than your fault could ever be."
"As well-intentioned as it might be, you know religious machinery can chew people up."
"These terrors [institutions, religion, politics, as economics] are tools that many use to prop up their illusions of security and control. People are afraid of uncertainty, afraid of failure. These institutions, these structures ave ideologies, are all a vain effort to create some sense of certainty and security where there isn't any."
"Just because I [God] work out incredible good out of unspeakable tragedies doesn't mean I orchestrate the tragedies. ... Grace doesn't depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors."
"If anything matters then everything matters. Because you are important, everything you do is important. Every time you forgive, the universe changes; every time you reach out and touch a heart or a life, the world changes; with every kindness and service, seen or unseen, my purposes are accomplished and nothing will ever be the same again."
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