178. NUMBER the STARS

Lois Lowry 1989

Another children's book that drives home a big sigh!! Based on real events that happened during the evacuation of Jews from Denmark, WWII, this short story is very touching. On the street of Osterbrogade, in a small neighborhood in northeast Copenhagen, live best friends Annemarie Johansen and Ellen Rosen. Over the last three years, they have lived under the Nazi eyes. Aware of the Rosen family's impending capture and relocation, the Johansens pretend Ellen is Annemarie's sister. Later, an elaborate escape from Denmark to Sweden is set into motion, (with the help of Annemarie's mother, her Uncle Henrik, and her late sister's fiance Peter Nielsen) and ten-year old Annemarie's bravery shines through.

'"I'll race you to the corner, Ellen!" Annemarie adjusted the thick leather pack on her back so that her schoolbooks balanced evenly. "Ready?" She looked at her best friend.'(opening lines)

'Annemarie stared up. There were two of them. That meant two helmets, two sets of cold eyes glaring at her, and four tall shiny boots planted firmly on the sidewalk, blocking her path to home.... And it meant two rifles, gripped in the hands of the soldiers. She stared at the rifles first. Then,finally, she looked into the face of the soldier who had ordered her to halt.... "Why are you running?" the harsh voice asked. His Danish was very poor. Three years, Annemarie thought with contempt. Three years they've been in our country, and still they can't speak the language.'(3)

"When will there be cupcakes again?"
"When the war ends," Mrs. Johnson said. She glanced through the window, down to the street corner where the soldiers stood, their faces impassive beneath the metal helmets. "When the soldiers leave."(10)

"Who is that man who rides past here every morning on his horse?" the German soldier had asked.
Papa said he had smiled to himself, amused that the German soldier did not know. He listened while the boy answered.
"He is our king," the boy told the soldier. "He is the King of Denmark."
"Where is his bodyguard?" the soldier had asked.... "The boy looked right at the soldier, and he said, "All of Denmark is his bodyguard."(13-14)

'Annemarie relaxed the clenched fingers of her right hand, which still clutched Ellen's necklace. She looked down, and saw that she had imprinted the Star of David into her palm.'(49)

'Annemarie looked around and nodded her head in agreement. The house and the meadows that surrounded it were so much a part of her childhood, a part of her life, that she didn't often look at them with fresh eyes. But now she did, seeing Ellen's pleasure. And it was true. They were beautiful.
The little red-roofed farmhouse was very old, its chimney crooked and even the small, shuttered windows tilted at angles. A bird's nest, wispy with straw, was half hidden in the corner where the roof met the wall above a bedroom window. Nearby, a gnarled tree was still speckled with a few apples now long past ripe.'(60)

'The words were unfamiliar to her, and she tried to listen, tried to understand, tried to forget the war and the Nazis, tried not to cry, tried to be brave. The night breeze moved the dark curtains at the open windows. Outside she knew, the sky was speckled with stars. How could anyone number them one by one, as the psalm said? There were too many. The sky was too big.'(87)

'Light woke her. But it was not really morning, not yet. It was only the first hint of a slightly lightening sky: a pale gleam at the edge of the meadow, a sign that far away somewhere, to the east where Sweden still slept, morning would be coming soon. Dawn would creep across the Swedish farmland and coast; then it would wash little Denmark with light and move across the North Sea to wake Norway.'(98)

'Mama spoke quickly, her voice tense. "Annemarie, go into the house and get the small basket on the table. Quickly, quickly. Put an apple into it, and some cheese. Put this packet underneath; do you understand? Hurry."'(104)

'Surely that gift -- the gift of a world of human decency -- is the one that all countries hunger for still. I hope that this story of Denmark, and its people, will remind us all that such a world is possible.'(Afterword, p.137)

a Random House Children's Book edition
132 pages
Book owned
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

167. CATCH-22

Joseph Heller 1961

Set during WWII in the fictional island of Pianosa, Italy, this hilarious satirical novel follows the lives of Yossarian (the protagonist) and other enlisted men and officers (notable characters for me: Milo, Doctor Daneeka, Major Major, Colonel Cathcart, Snowden and Chaplain Tappman) of  the U.S. Army Air Forces 256th Bombardment Squadron. Under the guise of laugh-out-loud scenes with superb contradicting and absurd dialogues are the many themes that the book deals with - heroism, faith, justice, greed, power, personal integrity, morality and American bureaucracy.

'It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell in love with him.'(opening lines)

'The colonel dwelt in a vortex of specialists who were still specializing in trying to determine what was troubling him. They hurled needles into nerves to hear if he could feel. There was a urologist for his urine, a lymphologist for his lymph, an endocrinologist for his endocrines, a psychologist for his psyche, a dermatologist for his derma; there was a pathologist for his pathos, a cytologist for his cysts, and a bald and pedantic cetologist from the zoology department at Harvard who had been shanghaied ruthlessly into the Medical Corps by a faulty mode in an I.B.M. machine and spent his sessions with the dying colonel trying to discuss Moby Dick with him.'(15)

'Clevinger conceded unwillingly in s subdued tone. "Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?"
"I do," Dunbar told him.
"Why?" Clevinger asked.
"What else is there?"(39)

'There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more mission and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them., If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.'(46)

'Everyone agreed that Clevinger was certain to go far in the academic world. In short, Clevinger was one of those people with lots of intelligence and no brains, and everyone knew it except those who soon found it out. In short, he was a dope.'(68)

'Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three. Even among men lacing all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.
Major Major had three strikes on him from the beginning -- his mother, his father and Henry Fonda, to whom he bore a sickly resemblance almost form the moment of his birth.'(83)

 'What can you possibly say to him? Major Major wondered forlornly. One thing he could not say was that there was nothing he could do. To say there was nothing  he could do would suggest he would do something if he could and imply the existence of an error or injustice in Colonel Korn's policy. Colonel Korn had been most explicit about that. He must never say there was nothing he could do.
"I'm sorry," he said. "But there's nothing I can do."'(103)

'The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don't you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live."(124)

'The soldier in white was constructed entirely of gauze, plaster and a thermometer, and the thermometer was merely an adornment left balanced in the empty dark hole in the bandages over his mouth early each morning and late afternoon by Nurse Cramer and Nurse Duckett right up to the afternoon Nurse Cramer read the thermometer and discovered he was dead.'(167)

'"I see everything twice!"... Pandemonium broke loose in the ward again. The specialists came running up from all directions...
The leader of this team of doctors was a dignified, solicitous gentleman who held one finger up directly in front of Yossarian and demanded, "How many fingers do you see?"
"Two," said Yossarian.
"How many fingers do you see now?" asked the doctor, holding up two.
"Two," said Yossarian.
"And how many now?" asked the doctor, holding up none.
"Two," said Yossarian.
The doctor's face wreathed with a smile. "By jove, he's right," he declared jubilantly. "He does see everything twice."'(180-181)

'The colonel sat back when he had finished and was extremely pleased with himself for the prompt action he had just taken to meet this sinister crisis. Yossarian -- the very sight of the name made him shudder. There were so many esses in it. It just had to be subversive. It was like the word subversive itself. It was like seditious and insidious too, and like socialist, suspicious, fascist and Communist. It was an odious, alien, distasteful name, a name that just did not inspire confidence. It was not at all like such clean, crisp, honest, American names as Cathcart, Peckem and Dreedle.'(210)

'There's an international Polish sausage exchange in Geneva. I'll just fly the peanuts into Switzerland and exchange them for Polish sausage at the open market rate. They'll fly the peanuts back to Cracow and I'll fly the Polish sausage back to you. You buy only as much Polish sausage as you want through the syndicate. There'll be tangerines too, with only a little artificial coloring added. And eggs from Malta and Scotch from Sicily. You'll be paying the money to yourself when you buy from the syndicate, since you'll own a share, so you'll really be getting everything you buy for nothing. Doesn't that make sense?'(252)

'Just pass the work I assign you along to somebody else and trust to luck. We call that delegation of responsibility. Somewhere down near the lowest level of this coordinated organization I run are people who do get the work done when it reaches them, and everything manages to run along smoothly without too much effort on my part. I suppose that's because I am a good executive. Nothing we do in this large department of ours is really very important, and there's never any rush. On the other hand, it is important that we let people know we do a great deal of it. Let me know if you find yourself shorthanded. I've already put in a requisition for two majors, four captains and sixteen lieutenants to give you a hand. While none of the work we do is very important, it is important that we do a great deal of it.'(320)

'The chaplain had sinned, and it was good. Common sense told him that telling lies and defecting from duty were sins. On the other hand, everyone knew that sin was evil and no good could come from evil. But he did feel good; he felt positively marvelous. Consequently, it followed logically that telling lies and defecting from duty could not be sins. The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine institution, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.'(363)

'When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don't see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.'(445)

Simon and Schuster Paperbacks
452 pages
Book borrowed from the library
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge

146. the LOTUS EATERS

Tatjana Soli 2010

This is the first book I have read about the Vietnam war, a subject that is painful to talk about. This book certainly added to the intensity and poignancy of it. The novel starts and ends in April, 1975, the fall of Saigon, with a flashback in between. In the heart of the story is Helen, a photojournalist, who epitomizes the ambivalence attached to this war. She, too, is torn in so many ways: between the Saigon she has come to love and America, her homeland, between the married lover Darrow and the soft-spoken mysterious Linh, between her sympathy to the innocents, both Vietnamese and American, and all against the equally conflicting imagery, savagely torn but beautiful, green and lush Vietnam.

'The city teetered in a dream state. Helen walked down the deserted street. The quiet was eerie. Time running out. A long-handled barber's razor, cradled in the nest of its strop, lay on the ground, the blade's metal grabbing the sun,'(opening lines)

'She looked at the various poses of the Buddha in his enlightenment. Saigon in utter darkness this last night of the war. A gestating monster. Her letter to Linh had been simple: I love you more than life, but I had to see the end.'(41-42)

'Superstition held that if one traveled too far from one's birthplace, one's soul would fly out and return home, leaving one nothing more than a ghost, but if that were true the whole world would be filled with nothing more than wanderers, empty shades.'(42-43)

'For the first time since Linh had left his village, he felt something move within him, the anesthesia of grief briefly lifted. What he felt was fear for Darrow. To survive this war, one should not be brave.'(67-68)

'Why is it, you suppose, that the people who are supposed to love us the most are precisely the ones who try to stop us doing what we love? "(89)

"Sometimes you have to fulfill a promise in order to deserve the love you're given. Don't you think it's a calling to live in danger just to capture the face of those who are suffering? To show their invisible lives to the world?"(89)

'She did not think it was true that women fell in love all at once, but rather that they fell in love through repetition, just the way someone became brave.'(100)

'... the mystery came in its own language to each person, and you had to decipher it on your own.'(138-139)

'Their lives fell into a rhythm of sunrises and sunsets, of wind whispering through growing rice, of high white morning clouds dissolving to the metallic sheen of noontime heat. Their movements slowed to the speed of the thick, spreading rivers, the water buffalo's heavy footfalls... Their thoughts, too, slowed, filled with the sunlight through palm fronds, heat loosening muscles, tension unwinding from their bodies, until the war was something far outside both of them.'(172)

"We're making bigger and bigger mistakes because we can't admit we made the first one. We can't lose a war to a small Asian country."
The monk giggled and covered his mouth. "But you'll have to fight till every last Vietnam man is gone."(193)

'Still as clear as after they lifted off from that beach -- the photograph wasn't enough. Helped no one. Soldiers still died, civilians suffered, nothing alleviated in the smallest amount by the fact that a shutter had opened and shut, that light had stuck grains on emulsion, that patterns of light and dark would preserve their misery. No defense at all against the evil that had been perpetuated. Out on the beach that day, it had all been failure. Even the best picture would be forgotten, the page flipped.'(241)

""Sometimes one's past makes it harder to understand the present. I love Americans, but I don't know if they are good for the Vietnam people. I want them to stay and to leave at the same time." Linh took a deep breath, then shook his head. How could he make her see? His relationship with her, with all the American, genuine and false.'(309)

'This is what happened when one left one's home -- pieces of oneself scattered all over the world, no one place ever completely satisfied, always a nostalgia for the place left behind. Pieces of her in Vietnam, some in this place of bone... The smell of Vietnam: a mix of jungle and wetness and spices and rot. A smell she hadn't realized she missed.'(377)

'It is like a medic performing triage. You determine who will die anyway, and you move to those who you can save. You want to stand over the dead and cry, but that helps no one. That's a tourist's sensibility. Day after day I go out with photographer's who are tourists of the war."(328)

St. Martin's Press First Edition
386 pages
Book borrowed from the library
Book qualifies for: 100+ Reading Challenge
______________________________

127. CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN

 Louis de Bernieres 1994

Captain Corelli is one of those unforgettable characters who will stay with me for a while. As a member of an Italian troop who invades the small island of Cephallonia in Greece during World War II, he captivates his delightful house host Dr. Iannis. As a musician, 'in love' with Antonia (his mandolin), he also slowly creeps into the heart of Dr. Iannis' feisty and earnest daughter Pelagia. And as a decent, humorous, sincere and honest man, he ends up inspiring everyone else around him. 

'Dr. Iannis had enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or got any worse. He had attended a surprisingly easy calving, lanced one abscess, extracted a molar, dosed one lady of easy virtue with Salvarsan, performed an unpleasant but spectacularly fruitful enema, and had produced a miracle by a feat of medical prestidigitation.'(opening lines)

'Just bring in the wood before she asks for it, and bring her a flower every time you come back from the field. If it's cold put a shawl around her shoulders, and if it's hot, bring her a glass of water. It's simple. Women only nag when they feel unappreciated. Think of her as your mother who has fallen ill, and treat her accordingly.'(43)

'This is how we should be. We should care for each other more than we care for ideas, or else we will end up killing each other. Am I not right?'(52)

'There was something too decisive about his movements, his unconsidered responses; can you trust someone who replies immediately, without thought? Someone whose actions and words are poetic rather than solidly cogitated?'(84)

'What I regret is having had to learn a most bitter lesson about the way in which personal ambitions can lead a man, against his will and against his nature, into playing a part in events that will cause history to reap him with opprobrium and contempt.'(91)

'A column of men, much smarter than most of the others, marched by unison. At their head perspired Captain Antonio Corelli of the 33rd Regiment of Artillery, and slung across his back was a case containing the mandolin that he had named Antonia because it was the other half of himself. He spotted Pelagia 'Bella bambina at nine o'clock,' he shouted, 'E-y-e-s left.'

In unison the heads of the troops snapped in her direction, and for one astonishing minute she endured a march-past of the most comical and grotesque antics and expressions devisable by man. There was a soldier who crossed his eyes and folded down his lower lip, who pouted and blew her a kiss, another who converted his marching into a Charlie Chaplin walk, another who pretended at each step to trip over his own feet, and another who twisted his helmet sideways, flared his nostrils, and rolled his eyes so high that the pupils vanished behind the upper lids. Pelagia put her hand to her mouth.'(157-158)

'I think that Corelli was able to find it so funny because music was the only thing he considered serious, until he met Pelagia... he was like one of those saprophytic orchids than can create harmony and wonder even as it grows and blossoms on a pile of shit, in a place of skulls and bones. He let his rifle rust, and even lost it once or twice, but he won battles armed with nothing but a mandolin.'(163)

'She watched wonderingly as the fingers of his left hand crawled like a powerful and menacing spider up and down the diapason. She saw the tendons moving and rippling beneath the skin, and then she saw that a symphony of expressions was passing over his face; at times serene, at times suddenly furious, occasionally smiling, from time to time stern and dictatorial, and then coaxing and gentle. Transfixed by this, she realized suddenly that there was something about music that head never been revealed to her before: it was not merely the production of sweet sound; it was, to those who understood it, an emotional and intellectual odyssey.'(186)

'Corelli looked at her silhouette against the light of the window, and a tune came into his head. He could visualize the patterned patrol of his fingers on the freeboard of the mandolin, he could hear the disciplined notes ringing from the treble, singing the praise of Pelagia as they also portrayed her wrath and her resistance. It was a march, a march of a proud woman who prosecuted war with hard words and kindnesses. He heard simple chords and a martial melody that implied a world of grace.'(239)

'I think of Pelagia in terms of chords... She plays with a cat and laughs, and it is sol. She raises an eyebrow when she catches me observing, and pretends to reproach me and reprove me for the guilt of admiration, and it is doh. She asks me a question, 'Haven't you anything useful to do?' and it is like re, requiring resolution.'(249)

'Love is a kind of dementia with very precise and oft-repeated clinical symptoms. You blush in each other's presence, you both hover in places where you expect the other to pass, you are both a little tongue-tied, you both laugh inexplicably and too long, you become quite nauseatingly girlish, and he becomes quite ridiculously gallant. You have also grown a little stupid.'(279-280)

'Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.'(281)

'Italians always act without thinking, it's the glory and the downfall of your civilisation. A German plans a month in advance what his bowel movements will be at Easter, and the British plan everything in retrospect, so it always looks as though everything occurred as they intended. The French plan everything whilst appearing to be having a party, and the Spanish..., well, God knows. Anyway, Pelagia is Greek, that's my point. So can it work?'(289)

Vintage Edition, 1998

435 pages

Book Owned

117. MY NAME is MARY SUTTER

Robin Oliveira 2010

Against the backdrop of the Civil War, this powerful historical fiction effectively focuses on a young woman's innermost desire to heal against all hardships. This woman is Mary Sutter, a midwife who dreams of becoming a surgeon, an almost impossible feat for a woman at that time. Having been denied acceptance to medical school, mentorship by their town's surgeon James Blevens, and love of Thomas who later marries her twin sister Jenny, she decides to leave for Washington DC to help care for injured soldiers. She meets surgeon William Stipp, who hesitantly becomes the mentor she seeks. With heavy hearts, very limited resources, lacking in medical and surgical experiences and surrounded by stench, filth, devastation, sickness and death, they tackle an almost insurmountable and overwhelming task. A worthwhile debut novel.

'"Are you Mary Sutter?" Hours had passed since James Blevens had called for the midwife. All manner of shouts and tumult drifted in from the street, and so he had answered the door to his surgery rooms with some caution, but the young woman before him made an arresting sight: taller and wider than was generally considered handsome, with an unflattering hat pinned to an unruly curls, though an enticing brightness about the eyes compensated.'(opening lines)

"You have already seen me turn a child. I am just as skilled with a previa, or twins. But I want more. I want to study. I want to know more about anatomy, physiology. The something I cannot see."(7)

'At times it seems to Mary that the world over was rent with the cries of women giving birth. But when at last the baby emerged, slippery, fighting, squalling, the woman's thighs trembling and then collapsing, and Mary was given charge to kneel beside the mother and wipe-- gently-- the writhing baby dry on her stomach, the battle of labor proved a war worth fighting. What did Mary remember most? Not the mother's bulging flesh, the bullet-shaped head of the infant, the gasp of love when at last the mother encircled the infant in her arms, but Amelia's stillness. Her grand remove. Competence incarnate.'(24)

'No one has ever told her that grief was a leveling of all emotion, that life would stretch before you, colorless and endless, devoid of any hope.'(31)

'She believed her father had loved her best, not knowing it was the clever parent's trick to convince every child they were the most beloved.'(44)

"In all the world, there is not medicine enough to heal what ails the Union army, mopping or no."(129)

'It was his first but not his last amputation. One by one, he would grow adept with a knife, skilled, quick, efficient, in conditions much worse than these. In time, he would wield that blade as an extension of himself, grow to love its heft, its curves, the way the blade caressed and then sliced a portion of a man away. And he would grow to love himself: how he would know just what to do and how to do it, could do it, would be forced to do it for days on end, his knees buckling with fatigue, his heart numb to all but necessity.'(151)

'In the womb, she and Jenny had shared everything, their arms and legs entwined in a seeming eternal embrace, a grasp she feared now had spawned more competition than cooperation. But what was fair when selfishness collided with heartbreak? Mary buried her head in her hands. What was required of a sister?'(223)

'For a moment, Mary could not act. Time, her enemy all day, now betrayed her again by slowing further. A maddening sluggishness seized her. She could not move, could not think fast enough to understand what she was seeing.'(242)

'For all the things we say to our children for their own good, very little good ever comes of it.'(249)

'Come home. I need you. Mary looked up. If only, if only. Time the terrible trick. Find your way through the black shadow of the past.'(285)

"Listen to me Mary. You see all those men? Most of them will die. If not here, then back in Washington. On the Peninsula, no one shot in the belly or chest or head survived, not one, no matter how fast we got to them. Do you understand? We have to save the most men. If we let one on the train who will die anyway, it will doom two."(299)

'You want to be a surgeon? To be a surgeon is to look a man in the eye and tell him the truth. If you can't do that, then get out of here. Go home." He was shouting now, his fury echoing the thunder rising in the distance. Stipp had taken her by the scaffolding of her shoulders as if he no longer trusted her, but now he pulled her into an embrace and whispered, "It is all butchery. Every bit of it. You cannot help them with just whiskey, Mary."(300)

'Lincoln simply could not understand a man who could not see his own fallibility. Irony lost in the blind pursuit of cacophonous righteousness. I wish to be free, but you may not be free. What he hated most was that they could not see the inherent cruelty in their economy. Their slaves' skin might be black, but it was not as black as the souls who might enslave them.'(315)

'By the thousands, the wounded lay on the ground and thought, This thirst is not thirst. This pain is not pain. This world is not being rent in two... That howling is only a whisper. That screech is just a murmur. That explosion is nothing but a sigh. That musket fire is but a rustle... I am not here. We are not here. Armies are not here. The country is not depending on this moment... Battles are conversations. An exchange. A dialogue... None of this is true.'(332)

'It was strange that redemption, when it finally came, felt like a discipline. Mary's movements were certain, her thinking methodical, stemming no longer from fear or love-- the same emotion, when love is unrequited-- but instead from determination. She was not even bartering with death anymore. She was defying it.'(343)

Viking Penguin, First Edition

364 pages

Book borrowed from the Library

I read the book because of Jennifer's review @ Crazy-for-books.com. Her review is here.

108. SUITE FRANCAISE

Irene Nemirovsky 2006
Translated from the French by Sandra Smith

This book is the first two parts of an unfinished work by the author who was arrested and transferred to Auschwitz before she completed an intended 5-parts book. As such, although they are meant to be connected, they are really not. It will definitely leave you wanting. However, the first part succeeds in describing the three days of frenzy and confusion in the life of Parisians as they flee the streets of Paris prior to the arrival of the Germans in 1940. The second part depicts the conflict and necessity of coexistence. The Germans and the French learn to live together. The appendices accompanying this book are the most memorable parts for me. Appendix 1 shows the author's thoughts and plans for the book through her journal entries and Appendix 2 shows the period before and after her arrest by way of various correspondences from 1936-1945. The letters from her husband are particularly haunting.

Part 1: Storm In June

'Hot, thought the Parisians. The warm air of spring. It was night, they were at war and there was an air raid. But dawn was near and the war far away.'(opening lines)

'In a novel, there is nothing more valuable than teaching the lesson of humility to the heroes.'(16)

'The stars were coming out, springtime stars with a silvery glow. Paris had its sweetest smell, the smell of chestnut trees in bloom and of petrol with a few grains of dust that crack under your teeth like pepper. In the darkness the danger seemed to grow. You could smell the suffering in the air, in the silence.'(29)

'Privileges, exemptions, connections, all that was for the middle classes. Deep in her heart were layer upon layer of hatred, overlapping yet distinct: the countrywoman's hatred, who instinctively detests city people, the servant's hatred, weary and bitter at having lived in other people's houses, the worker's hatred.'(65)

'It was an exquisite evening with clear skies and blue shadows; the last rays of the setting sun caressed the roses, while the church bells called the faithful to prayer. But then a noise rose up from the road, a noise unlike any they'd heard these past few days, a low, steady rumbling that seemed to move slowly closer, heavy and relentless. Trucks were heading towards the village. This time it really was the Germans.'(93)

'Important events-- whether serious, happy or unfortunate-- do not change a man's soul, they merely bring it into relief, just as a strong gust of wind reveals the true shape of a tree when it blows off all its leaves. Such events highlight what is hidden in the shadows; they nudge the spirit towards a place where it can flourish.'(167)

Part 2: Dolce

"But most of all, my children, let your hearts speak. Do not aim for stylistic effect: forget your letter-writing skills and speak from the heart. Ah, the heart," said the Viscountess, half closing her eyes, "nothing beautiful, nothing great is accomplished without heart."(224)

'Madame, I am a soldier, Soldiers don't think. I'm told to go somewhere and I go. Told to fight, I fight. Told to get myself killed, I die. Thinking would make fighting more difficult and death more terrible."(251)

'The individual or society? Well, Good Lord. Nothing new there, they hardly invented that idea. Our two million dead in the last war were also sacrificed to the "spirit of the hive." They died... and twenty five years later... What trickery! What vanity! There are laws that regulate the fate of beehives and of people, that's all there is to it. The spirit of the people is undoubtedly also ruled by laws that elude us, or by whims we know nothing about. How sad the world is, so beautiful, yet so absurd... But what is certain is that in five, ten or twenty years, this problem unique to our time, according to him, will no longer exist, it will be replaced by others... Yet this music, the sound of this rain on the windows, the great mournful creaking of the cedar tree in the garden outside, this moment, so tender, so strange in the middle of the war, this will never change, not this. This is for ever...(263)

'War... yes, everyone knows what war is like. But occupation is more terrible in a way, because people get used to one another. We tell ourselves, "They're just like us, after all," but they're not at all the same. We're two different species, irreconcilable, enemies forever.'(307)

'It's nothing to do with us, it's not our fault. In the heart of every man and every woman a kind of Garden of Eden endures, where there is no war, no death, where wild animals and deer live together in peace. All we have to do is to reclaim that paradise, just close our eyes to everything else. We are a man and a woman. We love each other."(321)

Appendices

'My God! what is this country doing to me? Since it is rejecting me, let us consider it coldly, let us watch as it loses its honour and its life. And the other countries? What are they to me? Empires are dying. Nothing maters. Whether you look at it from a mystical or a personal point of view, it's just the same. Let us keep a cool head. Let us harden our heart. Let us wait.'(341)

'More and more, the world is becoming divided into the haves and the have nots. The first don't want to give anything up and the second want to take everything. Who will win out?'(345)

'Irene was taken away on July 13 by the French police, acting on orders from the German police, and taken to Pithiviers-- because she was a stateless person of Jewish descent, without taking into account the fact that she is Catholic, her children are French and that she took refuge in France to escape the Bolsheviks, who also stole her parent's entire fortune.'(378)

'Could you please find out if it would be possible for me to be exchanged for my wife-- I would perhaps be more useful in her place and she would be better off here. If this is impossible, maybe I could be taken to her-- we would be better off together.'(379)

A Borzoi Book
394 pages
Book borrowed from the library

98. A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT

Sebastian Japrisot 1994
Translated from French by Linda Coverdale

Refusing to believe that her fiance Manech is really dead, this mystery love story finds Mathilde Donnay relentlessly seeking the circumstances and details of his death, when along with four other soldiers they were left at the German border to die during the first World War. Although she is unable to walk, she is fearless, methodical and determined to seek out the truth no matter what, until slowly, over a period of years, through little clues here and there, the truth unfolds.

'Once upon a time, there were five French soldiers who had gone off to war, because that's the way of the world.' (opening line)

'She was sixteen when they first made love, one April afternoon, and swore to marry as soon as he came back from the war. She was seventeen when they told her he was lost. She cried a great deal, because women take such things hard, but she did not overdo it, because women don't give up easily, either.'(20)

'It has been a long time since anything whatsoever to do with this war could shock Mathilde... knowing as she does that war breeds only infamy, futility, and excrement... and that nothing grows on desolate battlefields but the weed of hypocrisy or the pathetic flower of derision... because derision is the ultimate defiance, the only way to laugh in the teeth of every misfortune.'(28)

'She paints flowers, only flowers. She loves white, black, passionate red, sky blue, soft beige. She has problems with yellows, but after all, so did Vincent, who greatly admired Millet. She will always see Millet's flowers as tender and cruel and full of life in the mists of time.'(68)

'Five bound soldiers, dragged all the way to the front-line trench and tossed over the barbed wire to the enemy-- and in the snow, no less! It was outlandish, it was simply one of those morbid and unfortunately not always unprejudiced tales that had flourished like weeds all through the war.'(113)

'This casket contains the story of one of my lives. And you see, I tell it in the third person, exactly as though I were someone else. Do you know why? Because I'm afraid and I'm ashamed of being only me and of not being able to get to the end of it.'(141)

'... you take what comes, when it comes, you do not struggle against the war, or against life, or against death, you pretend, and the only master of the world is time.'(172)

'The summer of '14 remains for Mathilde the summer of those first kisses, and first deceptions. In front of Benedicte and Mama, she and Manech work so hard at appearing innocent they seem practically retarded. They talk to each other only about silly things, or about nothing at all, going off adventuring with Catapult instead.'(199)

'Now that she's grown up, Mathilde would be willing to tell all, but her father turns down the offer, saying, "spare me your memories. What I like about this place are the mimosas and this tree with the sentimental triple M that hints at what my fathers-- for I'm not the only one-- cannot bear to imagine. And then they get used to it."'(204)

'...whenever men get together, it doesn't matter if they're thirty years old or fifty, they can't help it, they behave like children.'(246)

First Picador Edition:November 2004
327 pages
Book owned

59. the GUERNSEY LITERARY and POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY

Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows 2008

In this sweet and sentimental book, in the format of letters, Juliet Ashton, an author in 1946 after the Second World War seeks an inspiration for a second book. She finds much more through a lost book found and a book club, the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

'I no longer want to write this book--my head and my heart just aren't in it. Dear as Izzy Bickerstaff is--and was--to me, I don't want to write anything else under that name. I don't want to be considered a light-hearted journalist anymore. '(3)

'Am I too particular? 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, someone I can't be silent with.'(8)

'My name is Dawsey Adams, and I live on my farm in St. Martin's Parish on Guernsey, I know of you because I have an old book that once belonged to you--the Selected Essays of Elia, by an author whose name in real life was Charles Lamb. Your name and address were written inside the front cover.'(9)

'That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive--all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.'(12)

'I love seeing the bookshops and meeting the booksellers--booksellers really are a special breed. No one in their right mind would take up clerking in a bookstore for the salary, and no one in his right mind would want to own one--the margin of profit is too small. So, it has to be a love of readers and reading that makes them do it--along with first dibs on the new books.'(15)

'It was amazing to me then, and still is, that so many people who wander into bookshops don't really know what they're after--they only want to look around and hope to see a book that will strike their fancy. And then, being bright enough not to trust the publisher's blurb, they will ask the book clerk the three questions: (1) What is it about? (2) Have you read it? (3) Was it any good?'(16)

'We begun to meet--for the sake of the Commandant at first, and then for our own pleasure. None of us had experience with literary societies, so we made our own rules: we took turns speaking about the books we'd read. At the start, we tried to be calm and objective, but that soon fell away, and the purpose of the speakers was to goad the listeners into wanting to read the book themselves.'(51)

'Since there was scant butter, less flour, and no sugar to spare on Guernsey then, Will concocted a potato peel pie: mashed potatoes for filling, strained beets for sweetness, and potato peelings for crust. Will's recipes are usually dubious, but this one became a favorite.'(51)

'Quite apart from my interest in their interest in reading, I have fallen in love with two men: Eben Ramsey and Dawsey Adams. Clovis Fossey and John Booker, I like. I want Amelia Maugery to adopt me; and me, I want to adopt Isola Pribby. I will leave you to discern my feelings for Adelaide Addison (Miss) by reading her letters. The truth is, I am living more in Guernsey than I am in London at the moment...'(93)

'My greatest pleasure has been in resuming my evening walks along the cliff tops. The Channel is no longer in rolls of barbed wire, the view is unbroken by huge VERBOTEN signs. The mines are gone from our beaches, and I can walk when, where, and for as long as I like.'(105)

'Have you ever noticed that when your mind is awakened or drawn to someone new, that person's name suddenly pops up everywhere you go? My friend Sophie calls it coincidence, and Mr. Simpless, my parson friend, calls it Grace. He thinks that if one cares deeply about someone or something new one throws a kind of energy out into the world, and "fruitfulness" is drawn in.'(116)

'My guides are as various as the sights. Isola tells me about cursed pirated chests bound with bleached bones washing up on the beaches... Eben describes how things used to look... Dawsey says the least, but he takes me to see wonders...Then he stands back and lets me enjoy them as long as I want. He's the most un-hurrying person I've ever met.'(165)

'You really have to be Kit's height to see this world properly. She's grand at pointing out certain things I would otherwise miss--butterflies, spiders, flowers growing tiny and low to the ground--they're hard to see when you are faced with a blazing wall of fuchsias and bougainvillea.'(168)

'Didn't you ever notice how everyone you interviewed sooner or later talked about Elizabeth? Lord, Juliet, who painted Booker's portrait and saved his life and danced down the street with him? Who thought up the lie about the Literary Society--and then made it happen?'(201)

'Every biography should be written within a generation of it's subject's life, while he or she is still in living memory. Think of what I could have done for Anne Bronte if I'd been able to speak to her neighbors. Perhaps she really wasn't meek and melancholy--perhaps she had a screaming temper and dashed the crockery to the floor regularly once a week.'(228)

a Dial Press Book/August 2008
274 pages
Book borrowed from the Library

50. GONE with the WIND

Margaret Mitchell 1936

A historical romance of epic and dramatic proportions, set in the South during the Civil War. This classic gave us the two most unforgettable and adored characters in American literature: Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler. Scarlett is a Southern Belle who is charming and attractive but is also selfish, self-centered and relentless who loved a man already taken, married three men: two she didn't love, and the third, she didn't know she loved. Rhett, Scarlett's dashing rescuer, intelligent, utterly confident and a self-made man who truly loved Scarlett until it was too much to bear.

"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were."

"For Ashley was born of a line of men who used their leisure for thinking, not doing, for spinning brightly colored dreams that had in them no touch of reality...He looked on people, and he neither liked nor disliked them. He looked on life and was neither heartened nor saddened. He accepted the universe and his place in it for what they were and, shrugging, turned to his music and books and his better world."

"Beneath his choleric exterior Gerald O'Hara had the tenderest of hearts...It had never occurred to him that only one voice was obeyed on the plantation--the soft voice of his wife Ellen. It was a secret he would never learn, for everyone from Ellen down to the stupidest field hand was in a tacit and kindly conspiracy to keep him believing that his word was law."

"Let's don't be too hot headed and let's don't have any war. Most of the misery of the world has been caused by wars. And when the wars were over, no one ever knew what they were all about."

"What Melanie did was no more than all Southern girls were taught to do--to make those about them feel at ease and pleased with themselves. It was this happy feminine conspiracy which made Southern society so pleasant. Women knew that a land where men were contented, uncontradicted and safe in possession of unpunctured vanity was likely to be a very pleasant place for women to live."

"Scarlett had thrown herself on the bed and was sobbing at the top of her voice, sobbing for her lost youth and the pleasures of youth that were denied her, sobbing with the indignation and despair of a child who once could get anything she wanted by sobbing and now knows that sobbing can no longer help her. She burrowed her head in the pillow and cried and kicked with her feet at the tufted counterpane."

"The Cause didn't seem sacred to her. The war didn't seem to be a holy affair, but a nuisance that killed men senselessly and cost money and made luxuries hard to get."

"He looked, and was a man of lusty and unashamed appetites. He had an air of utter assurance, of displeasing insolence about him, and there was a twinkle of malice in his bold eyes as he stared at Scarlett, until finally, feeling his gaze, she looked toward him."

"When I first met you, I thought: There is a girl in a million. She isn't like these other silly little fools who believe in everything their mammas tell them and act on it, no matter how they fee. And conceal all their feelings and desires and little heartbreaks behind a lot of sweet words. I thought: Miss O'Hara is a girl of rare spirit. She knows what she wants and she doesn't mind speaking her mind--or throwing vases."

""Mrs. Charles Hamilton--one hundred and fifty dollars--in gold."
A sudden hush fell on the crowd both at the mention of the sum and at the name. Scarlett was so startled she could not even move."

"There was something exciting about him that she could not analyze, something different from any man she had ever known. There was something breath-taking in the grace of his big body which made his very entrance into a room like an abrupt physical impact, something in the impertinence and bland mockery of his dark eyes that challenged her spirit to subdue him."

"Scarlett, our Southern way of living is as antiquated as the feudal system of the Middle Ages. The wonder is that it's lasted as long as it has. It has to go and it's going now."

"But, Scarlett, you need kissing badly. That's what's wrong with you. All your beaux have respected you too much, though God knows why, or they have been too afraid of you to really do right by you. The result is that you are unendurably uppity. You should be kissed and by someone who knows how."

"This was an inferno of pain and smell and noise and hurry--hurry--hurry! The Yankees are coming! The Yankees are coming!"

"Hunger gnawed at her empty stomach again and she said aloud: As God is my witness, and God is my witness, the Yankees aren't going to lick me. I'm going to live through this, and when it's over, I'm never going to be hungry again. No, nor any of my folks. If I have to steal or kill - as God is my witness, I'm never going to be hungry again."

"Why was Scarlett O'Hara, the belle of the County, the sheltered pride of Tara, tramping down this rough road almost barefoot? Her little feet were made to dance, not to limp, her tiny slippers to peep daringly from under bright silks, not to collect sharp pebbles and dust. She was born to be pampered and waited upon, and here she was, sick and ragged, driven by hunger to hunt for food in the gardens of her neighbors."

"For 'tis the only thing in the world that lasts...and to anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them the land they live on is like their mother...'Tis the only thing worth working for, fighting for, dying for."

"You wanted something from me and you wanted it badly enough to put on quite a show. Why didn't you come out in the open and tell me what it was? You'd have stood a much better chance of getting it, for if there's one virtue I value in women it's frankness. But no, you had to come jingling your earbobs and outing and frisking like a prostitute with a prospective client."

"She could talk to him about almost everything, with no care for concealing her motives or her real opinions and she never ran out of things to say as she did with Frank--or Ashley, if she must be honest with herself."

"The world can't lick us but we can lick ourselves by longing too hard for things we haven't got any more--and by remembering too much. Yes, Will will do well by Suellen and by Tara."

"We're not wheat, we're buckwheat. When a storm comes along it flattens ripe wheat because it's dry and can't bend with the wind. But ripe buckwheat's got sap in it and it bends. And when the wind has passed, it springs up almost as straight and strong as before. We aren't a stiff-necked tribe. We're mighty limber when a hard wind's blowing, because we know it pays to be limber. When trouble comes we bow to the inevitable without any mouthing, and we work and we smile and we bide our time. And we play along with the lesser folks and we take what we can get from them. And when we're strong enough, we kick the folks whose necks we've climbed over. That, my child, is the secret of the survival."

"He drew a short breath and said lightly but softly:
"My dear, I don't give a damn.""

"After all, tomorrow is another day."

45. the BOY in the STRIPED PYJAMAS

John Boyne 2006

A short but powerful tale of an innocent friendship between Bruno and Shmuel who lived on opposite sides of the fence.

"One afternoon, when Bruno came home from school, he was surprised to find Maria, the family's maid - who always kept her head bowed and never looked up from the carpet - standing in his bedroom,k pulling all his belongings out of the wardrobe and packing them in four large wooden crates, even the things he's hidden at the back that belonged to him and were nobody else's business."(opening lines)

"But there were no other streets around the new house, no one strolling along or rushing around, and definitely no shops or fruit and vegetable stalls. When he closed his eyes, everything around him just felt empty and cold, as if he was in the loneliest place in the world. The middle of nowhere."(12-13)

"'Well, what's Out-With then?' he repeated. 'Out with what?'
'That's the name of the house,' explained Gretel. "Out-With.'"(24)

"About twenty feet further along from the garden and the flowers and the bench with the plaque on it, everything changed. There was a huge wire fence that ran along the length of the house and turned in at the top, extending further along in either direction, further than she could possible see. The fence was very high, higher even than the house they were standing in, and there were huge wooden posts, like telegraph poles, dotted along it, holding it up."(31)

"Did you do something bad in work? I know that everyone says you're an important man and that the Fury has big things in mind for you, but he'd hardly send you to a place like this if you hadn't done something that he wanted to punish you for."(50)

"'No, not them,' said Bruno. 'The people I see from the window. In the huts, in the distance. They're all dressed the same.'
'Ah, those people,' said Father,nodding his head and smiling slightly. 'Those people... well, they're not people at all, Bruno.'"(53)

"The one thing Bruno tried not to think about was that he had been told on countless occasions by both Mother and Father that he was not allowed to walk in this direction, that he was not allowed anywhere near the fence or the camp, and most particularly that exploration was banned at Out-With. With No Exceptions."(103)

"You're my best friend, Shmuel... My best friend for life."(213)
________________________

David Fickling Books Edition, 2006

216 pages

Book owned

________________________

Personal Note: Bought in Trier, Germany and finished en route to Brussels, Belgium, May 6, 2010.

36. LARK and TERMITE

Jayne Anne Phillips 2009

Two parallel narratives in time, place and hardship, July 26-31, 1950 and 1959, war in Korea and flood in West Virginia. Termite is a boy who cannot talk nor walk and Lark is his half-sister, protector, the one who can hear him. Robert Leavitt is fighting a war, longing for Lola, Lark and Termite's mother. The plot is simple, the writing is not. It is complex, dense, poetic and marvelous.

"He'd shipped out to Occupied Japan in December'49; whatever baby was a tucked seed inside Lola's sex, a nub the size of a tailbone."

"Lola's voice drifts close unbidden and it's like she's standing in the war next to him. No matter how loud the ordinance or artillery, how loud his own heart hammers, he hears her. Words she said when he could touch her."

"He might be thinking how great it would be, wind and rain, real hard rain, not like the summer rain we let him sit out in sometimes, He likes motion."

"Dish washing doesn't make money but I like at home when I'm alone. I'm so used to being with Termite, he feels like alone to me. He's like a hum that always hums so the edge of where I am is blunt and softened."

"He sees through the blue and it goes away, he sees through the blue and it goes away again. He breathes, blowing just high. The blue moves but not too much, the blue moves and stays blue and moves.He can see into the sky where there are no shapes. The shapes that move around him are big, colliding and joining and going apart."

"If death is this brilliant slide, this high, fine music felt as pure vibration, this plunging float in wind and silence, it's not so bad."

"Pregnant felt like nothing else. Not tired exactly, not sick or nervous, but edgy, distinct. Focused tight, in sync, like when you've hit a phrase in a song just right and it lays itself out through your throat, moving from you across the lights into faces you can't see in the dark, faces whose eyes you feel play across you."

"It's a fact. Termite can only tell the truth. I know she means she wishes, she wishes, he could say something more than the sound of what he's just heard. I pretend he thinks more, backward and forward for miles."

"Oceans have waves like a pulse, Lark says, and she puts his fingers on her wrist to feel the tiny beat. The sound in her skin surges but the sound in the shells only circles, coming and going in one curled space. His birthday comes and goes and Lark makes every birthday."

"Taking Termite to the ocean has always seemed to me like taking one full space to another. The ocean is the biggest sound I could ever show him, bigger than rivers or trains."

"She's told him that whirl and thrill that opens songs is an orchestra, men playing horns before the voices sing asked me how I knew. He moves the blue and moves it and hears Lark singing true is true. She's told him replied means yes and denied means no. Cannot be denied means always yes. No in songs is yes and smoke gets in your eyes."

"The air is white with cloud, and the sun is flat, bright blade at the horizon, like a slit under a door. All else is drifty, misted. The warmth in the ground rises in a fog over the cold water, stirring in slow parches over a dark, swift weight."

"The moving air is full of dense wet cloud. Termite hears it rain and rain the story of the train. The water and the train and the pounding are raining and pouring through. Even on a clear day, he can hear it. Now the sound is wide. He listens."

Personal Note: Thanks to Bibliophiliac whose great review convinced me to read the book.

24. the BOOK THIEF

Markus Zusak 2005

A compelling tale of Liesel Meminger growing up in Himmel Street, Molching Nazi Germany. This book has all the makings of a classic: a haunting and unwelcomed narrator, unique foreshadowing, heart-wrenching unforgettable characters Max Vandenburg, Rudy Steiner, Isla Hermann, Rosa and Hans Huberman, powerful stories of the books within the book and the most dramatic ending that will stay with you for days if not forever.

"First the colors. Then the humans. That's usually how I see things. Or at least, how I try."

"**Some Other Small Facts** Sometimes I arrive too early, I rush, and some people cling longer to life than expected."

"All told, she owned fourteen books, but how she saw her story as being made up predominantly of ten of them. Of those ten, six were stolen, one showed up at the kitchen table, two were made for her by a hidden Jew, and one was delivered by a soft, yellow-dressed afternoon."

"** A Definition Not Found In The Dictionary** Not Leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children."

"The stranger rubbed his jaw, looked around him, and then spoke with great quietness, yet great clarity."Are you a man who likes to keep a promise?""

"It makes me understand that the best standover man I've ever known is not a man at all..."

"She was home, among the mayor's books of every color and description, with the silver and gold lettering. She could smell the pages. She could almost taste the words as they stacked up around her."

"They keep triggering inside me. They harass my memory. I see them tall in their heaps, all mounted on top of each other. There is air like plastic, a horizon like setting glue. There are skies manufactured by people, punctured and leaking, and there are soft, coal-colored clouds, beating like black hearts."

"How do you give someone a piece of sky?..."Memorize it. Then write it down for him.""

"**A Nice Thought** One was a book thief. The other stole the sky."

"She returned to bed and fell asleep to the vision of Mama and the silent music. Later, when she woke up from her usual dream and crept again to the hallway. Rosa was still there, as was the accordion."

"The best word shakers were the ones who understood the true power of words. They were the ones who could climb the highest. One such word shaker was a small, skinny girl. She was renowned as the best word shaker of her region because she knew how powerless a person could be without words."

"Let the words do all of it. "Is it really you? the young man asked," she said. "Is it from your cheek that I took the seed?""

Personal Note: I reread this book. And I came away this time, in awe. I don't know why it WAS, but it IS. A great book.