San Francisco Anne Rice Book Signing

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Being the bibliogeek that I am, I decided to celebrate my birthday by ordering a couple of exquisite purses crafted from hardcover books: Dracula by Bram Stoker and The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice. A couple of days after receiving them in the mail, I discovered in astonishing coincidence that Anne Rice would doing a book signing in San Francisco for her new novel, The Wolf Gift, her only Northern California appearance for this tour.


I had a devil of a time trying to figure out which of my books to bring to the signing. To my horror, I realized that my only copy of Interview with a Vampire was a discard I bought at a library sale long ago and that my Mayfair Witches books were all tattered mass marked paperbacks. So instead, this past Friday, I brought my fabulous new book purse, Christ the Lord Out of Egypt (a previous birthday present from my brother), and Servant of the Bones.

I had called ahead to Books, Inc., the book store hosting the signing, and managed to score for myself and my friends a ticket in the "A Group" with a purchase of the new book.  We were about 15th in line and were able to sit comfortably inside on chairs while many had to stand outside in the cold San Francisco night air.  The first people in line had been there since noon for the privilege.  We only stood in line for about half an hour.  Some people came from as far away as Sacramento and Yuba City and had rented hotel rooms for the night. 

To say that I was excited would be an understatement.

I stopped breathing when she appeared;  here was the grand dame, the queen, a living legend. Did she ever live up to my gothic image of her, making her magnificent entrance in floor-length black velvet with an ornate Victorian brooch decorating her throat.

I kept telling myself to be calm so that I would be coherent when my turn came.



And when I finally was face-to-face with my idol, who wore a gracious smile, I could barely utter, "Your books formed me."


There's not much more I remember, being completely starstruck, except for this little exchange when I presented my book purse for her to sign:


Me: "Have you seen one of these before?"


Anne (with a polite smile): "Yes, I've seen that book before."


Me: (Laughs hysterically, while mentally slapping myself): "It's a purse."


Anne: "This is a purse?" (Raises eyebrow) No, I haven't seen one of these before."


Me: (Crap, now she's thinking someone ripped apart her book and took out the best part for sheer vanity.) "It's recycled!!!"

Aftwerwards, my euphoria lasted for hours until I started to wonder if I had possessed the wits to thank her.  Late that night, I got an excited message from my friend saying that my purse had been filmed and uploaded into Anne Rice's Youtube channel.  I vaguely recalled one of Anne's people holding up his iPhone to the crowd but I was so excited I didn't realize he had been filming my few precious moments with Anne - now for posterity!  

Upon viewing the video, I was relieved to know that aside from gushing, I did, in fact, remember to express my gratitude. 

To see how long the line was outside the store (and it gets chilly in San Francisco, brrr):







Since I know y'all are gonna want one of your own- I got it at Novel Creations on Etsy.  I can attest that Karen is a sweetheart and has excellent craftsmanship.


And I have no shame in saying that I coordinated my entire outfit, head to toe, to match that purse. Wouldn't you?


"It is the unseen, unforgettable, ultimate accessory of fashion that heralds your arrival and prolongs your departure." - Coco Chanel

The Humming Room by Ellen Potter

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Hiding is Roo Fanshaw's special skill. Living in a frighteningly unstable family, she often needs to disappear at a moment's notice. When her parents are murdered, it's her special hiding place under the trailer that saves her life.

As it turns out, Roo, much to her surprise, has a wealthy if eccentric uncle, who has agreed to take her into his home on Cough Rock Island. Once a tuberculosis sanitarium for children of the rich, the strange house is teeming with ghost stories and secrets. Roo doesn't believe in ghosts or fairy stories, but what are those eerie noises she keeps hearing? And who is that strange wild boy who lives on the river? People are lying to her, and Roo becomes determined to find the truth.

Despite the best efforts of her uncle's assistants, Roo discovers the house's hidden room--a garden with a tragic secret.

Inspired by The Secret Garden, this tale full of unusual characters and mysterious secrets is a story that only Ellen Potter could write. 

The Humming Room by Ellen Potter  is a fantastic, modern retelling of The Secret Garden. In fact, other than the names and the setting, The Humming Room closely follows the beloved original. So why read The Humming Room, you say, instead of just re-reading The Secret Garden?

I give you – Roo. Distrustful and tough, wild and willful, Roo endeared herself to me from the first page. Something about Potter’s sharp and unsentimental description of the flatness of her green eyes, were they should be alive and brilliant but are spiritless instead --- won me.

Roo has learned how to hide from the harshness of the world. She has no friends and refuses to talk to anyone, even if well-meaning. Easy enough if you're quiet and small and your charming but criminal father and his trailer trash girlfriend have no parenting instincts. But even Roo can't hide from the social worker who comes to get her after they're murdered. From hiding in a garden of pilfered, artificial flowers she created as a sanctuary below her family’s trailer, Roo is taken by the social worker to remote Cough Island to be raised by a rich, mysterious uncle she never before knew existed.

"All around her on the icy, packed earth were dozens of tiny flowers, some made of blown glass, some trapped in Lucite domes-daisies, tiger lilies, a bouquet of pink roses, paper-thin red poppies. There was a pair of enamel earrings shaped like marigolds, large and gaudy, which she had stolen from the drugstore. She had mounded up earth and planted them by sticking their posts through the ground. Roo considered the little garden before nudging the poppies closer to the marigolds and putting the snake between them. Then she flung herself to the ground and listened to the earth. It was something she often did, checking the ground the way other girls might check the mirror. She could hear all its movements, small, fluttering sounds of life that fascinated her."

There’s a quiet beauty to Potter’s writing which reflects Roo’s personality – ever watchful and observant. Roo is sensitive to everything around her, even if it’s not immediately apparent to anyone else. She can find an all but dead garden that’s been walled up on the island; she can hear life humming in a seemingly lifeless earth. Cough Island just wild and stimulating enough that it awakens Roo’s adventurous spirit. In doggedly resuscitating the secret garden and making unlikely friendships, Roo blossoms as well, coming to life when she stops hiding herself from the world and becomes part of it.

The message in The Humming Room is exquisitely conveyed:  Like the secret garden, Roo and other characters in may have walled off their emotions because of painful tragedy, but there’s always a chance for redemption and renewal. 

Thank you very much to the Amazon Vine Program and Feiwel & Friends for providing copies for me to review!

The Butterfly Clues by Kate Ellison

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Penelope (Lo) Marin has always loved to collect beautiful things. Her dad's consulting job means she's grown up moving from one rundown city to the next, and she's learned to cope by collecting (sometimes even stealing) quirky trinkets and souvenirs in each new place--possessions that allow her to feel at least some semblance of home.
  
But in the year since her brother Oren's death, Lo's hoarding has blossomed into a full-blown, potentially dangerous obsession. She discovers a beautiful, antique butterfly pendant during a routine scour at a weekend flea market, and recognizes it as having been stolen from the home of a recently murdered girl known only as "Sapphire"--a girl just a few years older than Lo. As usual when Lo begins to obsess over something, she can't get the murder out of her mind.


As she attempts to piece together the mysterious "butterfly clues," with the unlikely help of a street artist named Flynt, Lo quickly finds herself caught up in a seedy, violent underworld much closer to home than she ever imagined--a world, she'll ultimately discover, that could hold the key to her brother's tragic death.


The Butterfly Clues by Kate Ellison has some very distinctive elements that appealed to me, chief of them an obsessive-compulsive/kleptomaniac protagonist, "Lo." Written from a first person POV, the parts where the narrative delves deep into Lo's obsessive rituals, worries, fears, and compulsions are the most impressive. Lo's condition is one that I haven't seen before in young adult so in this psychological aspect The Butterfly Clues stands out in a very crowded genre.

"Here's the thing: I don't choose to take things. I have to. I've always had to do certain things, since the day I turned seven and began to insist that I wanted to stray six. I didn't know why, but seven felt off, somehow, made me feel like the world was tilting too much to one side. It wasn't so bad at first. Just little things--like the way the food looked on my plate, or needing to eat peas before chicken, or needing to put the left shoe on before the right. I started taking little things---a toothbrush or a candy bar from a store, discarded ticket stubs from the movie theater, stickers from the kids at school.

"But since Oren disappeared, it has gotten worse. A lot worse. Now, when the urge comes on, it's like this superhuman force that grips my body and won't let go until I have the thing I've spotted, the thing I need. And it's not the taking or the stealing I crave, it's the having and the keeping. Forever. With me. Safe."

When The Butterfly Clues begins, Lo is in the throes of her disorder. Although the narrative hints that her brother's, Oren's, disappearance over a year ago precipitated her condition into manifesting as full blown kleptomania and hoarding, the reader is kept in suspense as to what exactly happened. Only the aftermath is apparent: a stressed out, absent father; a heavily sedated mother; and Lo, a daughter left helpless and alone in the grip of her own demons. The exposition is subtly and expertly revealed, along with the parallel story of who killed Sapphire.

Mirroring Lo's free fall into her obsessive-compulsive ways is her descent into the underworld of drug addicts, runaways, thieves, and strip clubs called "Neverland." Ellison balances its allure, in the form of a free spirit, Flynt, with its dangers, such as Sapphire's murder. I was intrigued with Lo's exploration of Neverland and charmed by Flynt; however, I was frustrated by how Ellison depicted Lo's clumsy and unrealistic investigation of the murder, which involved posing (while underage) as a stripper in a nightclub, interrogating other strippers, finding evidence in plain view which the cops apparently did not locate. I knew who the killer was the moment he/she came on the scene.

As a mystery/thriller, The Butterfly Clues, was not very compelling; it fares better as a psychological portrait of a teenage girl trying to cope with tragedy while battling OCD.



"The Butterfly Clues" - Book Trailer from Aaron Lewis on Vimeo.


Thank you to the Amazon Vine program for providing a copy for me to review!

Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood

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"Blessed with a gift..."cursed" with a secret."


Everybody knows Cate Cahill and her sisters are eccentric. Too pretty, too reclusive, and far too educated for their own good. But the truth is even worse: they're witches. And if their secret is discovered by the priests of the Brotherhood, it would mean an asylum, a prison ship - or an early grave.


Before her mother died, Cate promised to protect her sisters. But with only six months left to choose between marriage and the Sisterhood, she might not be able to keep her word . . . especially after she finds her mother's diary, uncovering a secret that could spell her family's destruction. Desperate to find alternatives to their fate, Cate starts scouring banned books and questioning rebellious new friends, all while juggling tea parties, shocking marriage proposals, and a forbidden romance with the completely unsuitable Finn Belastra.


If what her mother wrote is true, the Cahill girls aren't safe. Not from the Brotherhood, the Sisterhood - not even from each other.

Is Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood another case of gorgeous cover masking a dull and insipid story? I'm so glad to report that it was anything but! Like the Cahill girls, the fetching exterior belied a surprising and clever interior. Once I read Missie of The Unread Reader's enthusiastic review, I had no qualms purchasing then finishing Born Wicked that same night - that's how enjoyable it was!

Everything about Born Wicked engaged me: the alternative historical setting, the characters, the plot, the writing. Set in turn-of-the-century New World where witches once were powerful but were overthrown by the Brotherhood, girls are now watched and circumscribed within society's very narrow demands of them. At the age of 17, they must either marry or become cloistered within the convent-like order of the Sisters. Pity any girl who manifests (or is accused of having) any kind of magical ability - she is seized, tried unfairly, and thrown into a prison asylum, where she will likely live the rest of her days.

In this world, magic is equated with feminism and female sexuality alike. The oppressive religion is founded upon fear and suppression of feminine power. Nothing new or subtle about this idea but I am very curious as to how Spotswood will run with this through the course of the series.

"The Brothers are afraid the witches will rise up again someday, Mother said, so they loathe the idea of powerful women.  We are not permitted to study and got to university as men do, or to take up professions...Women are not normally granted permits to run businesses.


"The Sisterhood is held up as an alternative to marriage, and an honorable one.  They do  the charitable work of the Brotherhood: serving as governesses and nurses, visiting the sick and dying, and feeding the poor.  But no one in Chatham has actually joined them in years.  The notion of spending my life studying scriptures or teaching orphan girls is odious.  I'm fairly certain I'd murder my pupils."

Although Born Wicked is told from eldest and most responsible sister Cate's point of view, Maura and Tess, her younger sisters, are both equally as richly layered and individual as our heroine. I could easily envision future installments being told from their perspectives and each story being just as strong as this first. By the end of the book, Spotswood has given each of them, as well as other minor characters some great, revelatory scenes.

And that's probably most of the reason why I enjoyed Born Wicked immensely - I was constantly surprised. In reading the last chapter, I was in authentic suspense about how the novel was going to end. I knew it was a series and so there would be a cliffhanger (and it is a good one!). The ending did not let down; it was complicated and true to the characters and theme of the series - and absolutely made me vow to read the next one as soon as it comes out!






Enter to win Born Wicked, The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice, The House I Loved by Tatiana de Rosnay, or Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen, here!  Ends 2/24, 8:00 pm PST.

Wicked Giveaway!

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I feel like celebrating today so - winner gets to pick ONE from the following:

The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice

Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood

The House I Loved by Tatiana de Rosnay

Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen

RULES

To enter, just comment on this post with your e-mail address.
Only followers of Misfit Salon are eligible.

Extra entries:

Please leave a separate comment for each entry.

Like Misfit Salon's Facebook page (Please state your Facebook name) = 1 entry

Twitter follower of Misfit Salon (Please state your Twitter name) = 1 entry

Friend me at Goodreads (Please state your Goodreads name) = 1 entry

Add Misfit Salon to your circle in Google+  (Please state your Google+ name) = 1 entry

Maximum of 5 entries. 

Good luck! 

This is contest is open worldwide to everywhere Book Depository delivers!

Giveaway ends February 24, 2012, 8:00 p.m. PST.

The winner will be announced here after February 24, 2012.

The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips Are Telling Us by Sheril Kirshenbaum

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When did humans begin to kiss? Why is kissing integral to some cultures and alien to others? Do good kissers make the best lovers? And is that expensive lip-plumping gloss worth it? Sheril Kirshenbaum, a biologist and science journalist, tackles these questions and more in The Science of Kissing. Drawing upon classical history, evolutionary biology, psychology, popular culture, and neuroscience, Kirshenbaum's winning book will appeal to romantics and armchair scientists alike.

Don't you wish they taught this class in high school?  The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips Are Telling Us by Sheril Kirshenbaum  is the kind of science book I love to read: fascinating, fun, informative, and highly readable for the layperson. Kirshenbaum covers almost everything about this titillating subject. It's not too technical for the nonscientific crowd, but with enough depth across a broad spectrum so by the end I felt very educated about kissing. And people, real-world, personal research in this subject (which I am happy to participate in) can always be enhanced with some investigatory reading.

"A romantic kiss does nothing less than set off an avalanche of biological activity. During a passionate kiss, our blood vessels dilate; more oxygen is routed to the brain; our breathing quickens and becomes erratic; our cheeks flush; our pulse quickens; our pupils dilate; dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, oxytocin, and adrenaline levels spike, leaving our bodies awash in a chemical bath. In short, our biology seem to be hardwired to make kissing extremely pleasurable and, to some degree, addictive."

The Science of Kissing covers historical and cultural origins of kissing (do you know that there is a place in the Cook Islands where the men have an average of 1,000 orgasms a year yet do not engage in any form of romantic kissing?); the physiological and neurological, not to mention the emotional and psychological, responses when we kiss; kissing experiments; why we tilt our heads to the right when we kiss (nothing to do with being left or right-handed); a chapter on "cooties"; and much, much more.

But the education doesn't stop there; at the end, Kirshenbaum gives you 10 tips for better kissing. This isn't your average Cosmo article; these are tips from a scientist! Who's researched the field extensively! If for nothing else, you gotta read The Science of Kissing for this invaluable part.

However, I'm not sure if this book had the following effect on any other reader, but just to warn you, even after reading the chapter on germs, by the end of The Science of Kissing, I wanted to do much more than just read about it. So hopefully, your hubby or boyfriend or a hot stranger with minty breath who's been giving you flirtatious glances at the cafe will be on hand and available to, ahem, help you explore this subject in more depth.

My favorite literary kiss is from The Princess Bride by William Goldman:

“There have been five great kisses since 1642 B.C. when Saul and Delilah Korn’s inadvertent discovery swept across Western civilization. (Before then couples hooked thumbs.) And the precise rating of kisses is a terribly difficult thing, often leading to great controversy, because although everyone agrees with the formula of affection times purity times intensity times duration, no one has ever been completely satisfied with how much weight each element should receive. But on any system, there are five that everyone agrees deserve full marks. Well, this one left them all behind.”

Date a Girl Who Reads by Rosemary Urquico

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I first saw this beautiful essay written by Rosemary Urquico at Ivana's blog, Willing to See Less, which was written in (succinct) response to Charles Warnke's reasons why You Should Date an Illiterate Girl (posted earlier in the week).

"Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes."

Date a girl who reads. Because she has imagination.

Why You Should Date an Illiterate Girl by Charles Warnke

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Originally posted here. Read the entire thing.

Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi, and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale, or the evenings get long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail, frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return, or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent as a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so god damned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you.

February Issue of Misfit Magazine

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The Icepick  by James Hartley

She hadn't really intended to kill Jack, at least she didn't think she had. But he had come home drunk--again--and he had slapped her around--again--and she had the ice pick in her hand to chop ice for his drink. When he turned his back, it had seemed so natural to put the ice pick into it. Read more.

The Lost Thing  by Noeleen Kavanagh

It’s getting closer and closer. The lost thing is calling out to be found. Are they deaf that they can’t hear it? The river is deeper and faster down here past the bend. The trunks of trees hang out and tangle their branches in the water. The sun slips behind a cloud and the water darkens. The trout are hidden way down deep here and can’t be seen. Read more.

The Books They Gave Me

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I'm addicted to this tumblr site where people recount intimate stories of books their lovers have given them. Some of these are poignant. Others make me want to shake the writer and say, "Get over it!" However, I do agree with this one post that states the following :

"... it occurred to me that sharing books is an intimate act in a relationship. If sharing music is considered foreplay — which it is to me anyway — then sharing books is definitely going all the way. With music, you merely glimpse your infatuation’s tastes. Still, it’s easy to tune out a song you don’t particularly care for when you would rather listen to him talk or relish the comfort of his arms. But with books, you pay attention. You’re reading words; you’re consuming ideas and themes that move him; you’re connecting intellectually. Maybe even spiritually.

"I could be overthinking this. But I can’t help feel a sense of loss knowing that my book, marked by my handwriting — ideas and phrases that spoke to me, underlined, circled, highlighted — is floating in the world. Just like a man I once loved."

Picking a book for the one you love can be agonizing, especially if it's in the beginning stages of the relationship - it conveys so much meaning that is as yet unsaid. It's a promise and a sign. A symbol. Not only are the contents of the book important but the act of book-giving is a significant message in it of itself: I want you to know I've paid attention. I've thought about what moves you and what inspires you. This is what you mean to me.

In a very entertaining article, Allison Hill writes of how she's been seduced by literary lotharios, which starts with this promising sentence: "I once slept with a man because he gave me a copy of Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle."

What are some of the books you've given or have received that has special significance?


Ever been seduced by a man's literary game?