Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman)

Cool book, typical of what I expect of one of Neil Gaiman's: a parallel world (here a subterranean London based in part on ancient underground train stations and playing with the heraldic nature of the names of many London's places), where moral decisions direct the character's journey. A meditation on choices and their consequences.

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Quotes:

"You've a good heart," she told him. "Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever you go." Then she shook her head. "But mostly, i'ts not."

Sometimes, there is nothing you can do. (Richard)

"I couldn't just have left you there." "You could have," she said. "You didn't."

"The first part of the Ordeal of the Key," he said, "is the nice cup of tea."

The marquis looked at Richard with eyes that had seen too much and gone too far.

When angels go bad, Richard, they go worse than anyone. (Marquis of Carabas)

He had gone beyond the world of metaphor and simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.

"I already killed you once today," it was saying. "What does it take to teach some people?"

The abbot cleared his throat. "You are all very stupid people," he told them, graciously, “and you do not know anything at all."

Native Son (Richard Wright)

Yowza this is a sad book!

I read it because the "unfathomable question" Who knows when some slight shock, disturbing the delicate balance between social order and thirsty aspiration, shall send the skyscrapers in our cities toppling? is one of the keys to the Vernacularly Fastened Door at the end of Lemony Snicket's The Penultimate Peril.

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Quotes:

Who knows when some slight shock, disturbing the delicate balance between social order and thirsty aspiration, shall send the skyscrapers in our cities toppling? (Max)

These were the rhythms of his life: indifference and violence. ... That was the way he lived; he passed his days trying to defeat or gratify powerful impulses in a world he feared.

he lacks the charm of the average, harmless, genial, grinning southern darky so beloved by the American people

a particle of white rock had detached itself from that looming mountain of white hate and had rolled down the slope, stopping still at his feet. The word had become flesh

He had lived and acted on the assumption that he was alone, and now he saw that he had not been. What he had done made others suffer.

Injustice which lasts for three long centuries and which exists among millions of people over thousands of square miles of territory, is injustice no longer; it is an accomplished fact of life. (it's not injustice, but oppression) (Max)

Bigger, an American product, a native son of this land. (Richard Wright)

Life becomes sufficient unto life; the rewards of living are found in living. (Richard Wright)

The Penultimate Peril (Lemony Snicket)

Denouement is not the end, but the untangling of the narrative's strands, which comes before the end. In this book, the kids become concierges and flaneurs (in the sense invented by Charles Baudelaire, of "a person who walks the city in order to experience it") in the Hotel Denouement, which was created by Dewey Denouement according to the categories of the Dewey Decimal System. Interestingly, the library aspect of the hotel is less important than it's extensive (and secret) catalogue of noble and vile actions. As the strands of narrative untangles, we get to know most of the answers to the questions we've had about VFD, and the kids learn some damning details of their parents lives. No matter how morally ambiguous their world has become, they still know that each person is responsible for the choices he or she makes. "What else could I do?" is never an adequate justification for not taking the noble path. We also learn for the first time, i think, that the Baudelaire's Dad was called Bertrand.

This is one of the best books in the series. My other favorites are The Hostile Hospital and The Grim Grotto.

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Quotes:

For Beatrice --
No one could extinguish my love,
or your house.

Deciding whether to trust a person is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree, because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch, or you might simply get covered in sap, and for this reason many people choose to spend their time alone and indoors, where it is harder to get a splinter.

Wrong! -- sound made by the clock in the lobby of the Hotel Denouement.

Are you who I think you are?

I didn't realize this was a sad occasion.

I'm a ballplaying cowboy superhero soldier pirate! -- Carmelita Spats

"I'm not sure we are noble," Klaus said quietly, flipping the pages of his commonplace book. "We caused those accidents at the lumbermill. We're responsible for the destruction of the hospital. We helped start the fire that destroyed Madame Lulu's archival library We---"
"Enough," Dewey interrupted gently, putting a hand on Klaus' shouder. "You're noble enough, Baudelaires. That's all we can ask for in this world."

A small mercy is simply a thing that has gone right in a world cone wrong, like a sprig of delicious parsley next to a spoiled tuna sandwich, or a lovely dandelion in a garden that's being devoured by vicious goats. A small mercy, like a small flyswatter, is unlikely to be of any real help...

"Scalia," Sunny said. She meant something like, "It doesn't seem like the literal interpretation makes any sense."

"You can find any item in a library if you have one thing."
"Catalog?" Sunny asked.
"No," Count Olaf replied, and pointed the harpoon gun at the judge. "A hostage."

Justice isn't being served in the lobby, or anywhere else in the world!" (Count Olaf)

“Wow!” squealed another voice. “Wait until the readers of The Daily Punctilio read the headline: ‘VICIOUS MURDER AT HOTEL DENOUEMENT!’ That’s much more exciting than an accident!”

Howliday Inn

What, a Bunnicula book without Bunnicula? Meh...

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Quotes:

I stood there, useless as a fire hydrant in a town without dogs. (Harold X)

The Source of Life (Jurgen Moltmann)

This book is a series of meditations on the theology of the Holy Spirit, and the life of the Christian community. It starts with very moving and memorable autobiographical notes of Moltmann's experience as a prisoner of war after WWII. What follows is a collection of articles, talks and meditations. This was the first book by Moltmann that i read in its entirety, and i liked it a lot.

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Quotes:

What cannot be said simply does not need to be said at all.

It is as if there were no time. The pains and the blessing are still in us, for they go with us wherever we turn.

Knowledge doesn't mean power any longer. Knowledge means powerlessness: 'after all, there's nothing we can do about it'.

Where Jesus is, there is life. That is what the Synoptic Gospels tell us. Where Jesus is, sick people are healed, sad people are comforted, marginalized people are accepted, and the demons of death are driven out.

Jesus didn't bring a new religion into the world. What he brought was new life.

instead of spreading a Christian civilization or the values of the Western world we have to build up a universal `culture of life' and resist `the barbarism of death' wherever we are

It was modern industrial society which for the first time viewed the earth simply as matter, and no longer as holy. It is time for us to respect the holiness of God's earth once more, before the catastrophes descend on us.

liked to use the image of the family, `since the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is our true Father and the Spirit of Jesus Christ is our true Mother, because the Son of the living God is our true Brother'

Here the reflection of the triune God is a community of women and men without privileges, a community of free and equal people, sisters and brothers.

We learn to love when we say yes to life. So we learn to hope when we say yes to the future.

We are acting out of an inner necessity, in the way that roses flower. The roses don't ask why either, or what for - they simply bloom. The same is true of life lived out of true hope.

We are waited for as the prodigal son in the parable is waited for by his father. We are accepted and received, as a mother takes her children into her arms and comforts them. God is our last hope because we are God's first love. We are God's dream for his world and his image on the earth he loves. God is waiting for his human beings to become truly human. That is why in us, too, there is a longing to be true human beings.

Harmony with God is called sanctification. Harmony with ourselves as God's image and his children is called happiness.

Trust in God, respect for our own lives and the lives of others, as well as reverence for everything living, in which God is present: these are the things which characterize and determine the sanctification of life.

I believe that today sanctification first of all means rediscovering the holiness of life and the divine mystery in all created things, and defending it against the arbitrary manipulations of life and the destruction of the earth through personal and institutionalized acts of violence.

Congregations without disabled members are - to put it bluntly - disabled congregations.

the church is not represented by theologians. It is represented by Christians in different jobs. Even if these people are called the laity in the context of the church's worship (though that is wrong in itself), where Christianity in the world is concerned they are the experts in their professions, not the theologians.

If Christianity is to become aware of what it is, we must abandon the pastoral church which takes care of people, which is the usual form of the Western church. Instead, we have to call to life a Christian community church.

when birds of a feather flock together, that is not yet a fellowship in the Spirit of God, which spans time. Fellowship in Christ begins first with the acceptance of other people, and interested participation in life that is different from our own.

A community of trust cannot aim to be a conflict-free community.

The ordination of women is not a matter of adaptation to changed social conditions. It has to do with new fife from the beginnings of the Christian church: life out of the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

There is enough for everyone! That is the incredible message of this story. We are not being told some historical tale about `the golden age' of the first Christians long ago. This is the disclosure of real, possible ways of living for us today. We can have this experience ourselves: the experience of the community of the Holy Spirit.

Anyone who has found the assurance of eternal life no longer needs the ambiguous security that possessions give him.

The opposite of poverty isn't property. The opposite of both poverty and property is community. For in community we become rich: rich in friends, in neighbours, in colleagues, in comrades, in brothers and sisters.

How can the body be a `temple of the Holy Spirit' if it is frozen into rigidity and is not permitted to move any more? People who are moved by God's Spirit move themselves, and people who experience grace move gracefully.

The world is full of praise, for God is in this world.

The Club of Queer Trades (G. K. Chesterton)

Typical Chesterton, in these twisted detective stories, the sane are usually mad and the mad, sane. The Sherlock Holmes type detective always gets it wrong, but his crazy sidekick gets it right every time. Perhaps Chesterton thought he was the only sane person in the world? Or at least he seems to have felt that the world was being slowly taken over by crazyness. There are no conspiracies, though; in this book, things are always simpler, lighter, less dark, than they seem.

Download my free non-DRM Mobi/Kindle version here (click).

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Quotes:

Major Brown was, I have said, a successful soldier, but by no means an enthusiastic one. So far from regretting his retirement on half-pay, it was with delight that he took a small, neat villa, very like a doll's house, and devoted the rest of his life to pansies and weak tea.

He saw life like a pattern in a freehand drawing book.

"Bosh," he said. "On what else is the whole world run but immediate impressions ? What is more practical? My friend, the philosophy of this world may be founded on facts, its business is run on spiritual impressions and atmospheres.

"I can never quite make out which side you are on. Sometimes you seem so liberal and sometimes so reactionary. Are you a modern, Basil?"

"As Vicar of Chuntsey, in Essex," he said, "I have never been forcibly dressed up as an old woman, and made to take part in a crime in the character of an old woman. Never once. My experience may be small. It may be insufficient. But it has never occurred to me before."

The chances of life are many, and it may doubtless sometimes lie in the narrow path of duty for a clergyman of the Church of England to pretend to be a drunken old woman; but such necessities are, I imagine, sufficiently rare to appear to many improbable.

Dracula (Bram Stoker)

Drs Seward and Van Helsing's handling of the case of a young woman afflicted by a vampire? Worst ever! I mean, if someone you love is in danger of becoming nosferatu, should you call those two clowns for help! Not! I mean, they mess up with Lucy not one, not two, not three, but four times or more, and then completely fail to see the signs of problem with Mina too!

Despite somewhat contrived story line and numerous silly opinionations from the characters that sometimes border on misogynism, this is a book that's worth reading, at least for one reason: pretty much 100% of everything that has been written about vampires seems to derive from Dracula.

My Mobi/Kindle (non DRM) version is available here (click).

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Quotes:

Denn die Todten reiten Schell (The dead travel fast)

The strangest figures we saw were the Slovaks, who were more barbarian than the rest, with their big cow-boy hats, great baggy dirty-white trousers, white linen shirts, and enormous heavy leather belts, nearly a foot wide, all studded over with brass nails. They wore high boots, with their trousers tucked into them, and had long black hair and heavy black moustaches. They are very picturesque, but do not look prepossessing. On the stage they would be set down at once as some old Oriental band of brigands. They are, however, I am told, very harmless and rather wanting in natural self-assertion. (Jonathan Harker)

Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make! (Dracula - about the howling of wolves)

The estate is called Carfax, no doubt a corruption of the old Quatre Face, as the house is four sided, agreeing with the cardinal points of the compass. (About Dracula's English estate)

Come! We must see and act. Devils or no devils, or all the devils at once, it matters not. We must fight him all the same. (Van Helsing)

A brave man's blood is the best thing on this earth when a woman is in trouble. (Van Helsing)

His face was not a good face. It was hard, and cruel, and sensual, and big white teeth, that looked all the whiter because his lips were so red, were pointed like an animal's. (Mina Harker)

"She is one of God's women, fashioned by His own hand to show us men and other women that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its light can be here on earth. (Van Helsing)

Do you mean to tell me, friend John, that you have no suspicion as to what poor Lucy died of, not after all the hints given, not only by events, but by me? (Van Helsing)

You are a clever man, friend John. You reason well, and your wit is bold, but you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. (Van Helsing)

May I cut off the head of Miss Lucy? (Van Helsing)

Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina! She has man's brain, a brain that a man should have were he much gifted, and a woman's heart. (Van Helsing)

This vampire which is amongst us is of himself so strong in person as twenty men, he is of cunning more than mortal, for his cunning be the growth of ages, he have still the aids of necromancy, which is, as his etymology imply, the divination by the dead, and all the dead that he can come nigh to are for him at command; he is brute, and more than brute; he is devil in callous, and the heart of him is not; he can, within his range, direct the elements, the storm, the fog, the thunder; he can command all the meaner things, the rat, and the owl, and the bat, the moth, and the fox, and the wolf, he can grow and become small; and he can at times vanish and come unknown.
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but we too, are not without strength. We have on our side power of combination, a power denied to the vampire kind, we have sources of science, we are free to act and think, and the hours of the day and the night are ours equally. In fact, so far as our powers extend, they are unfettered, and we are free to use them. We have self devotion in a cause and an end to achieve which is not a selfish one. These things are much. (Van Helsing)

I heed him not. But to fail here, is not mere life or death. It is that we become as him, that we henceforward become foul things of the night like him, without heart or conscience, preying on the bodies and the souls of those we love best. To us forever are the gates of heaven shut, for who shall open them to us again? We go on for all time abhorred by all, a blot on the face of God's sunshine, an arrow in the side of Him who died for man. (Van Helsing)

I suppose it is thus that in old times one vampire meant many. Just as their hideous bodies could only rest in sacred earth, so the holiest love was the recruiting sergeant for their ghastly ranks. (Jonathan Harker)

Oh, it did me good to see the way that these brave men worked. How can women help loving men when they are so earnest, and so true, and so brave! And, too, it made me think of the wonderful power of money! What can it not do when basely used. (Mina Harker)

Dead Girls Don't Write Letters (Gail Giles)

Yes, even living girls barely write any letters at all.

Laura got this book from the library based on a list of mysteries recommended for high-schoolers. Henrieta read and liked it, and i decided to give it a try. Well written (though kid-level vocabulary and a smidge of noir cliché); the author feeds you the expected plot twists early and then hits you with the unexpected one at the end. By the end, you've been living this weird nightmare inside Sunny's skin for so long that it's almost impossible not to take her side when the moment to doubt her arrives.

Update: Henrieta and Laura both sided with the grandmother. Maybe i'm soft...

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Quotes:

Things had been getting a little better till I got a letter from my dead sister.
That more or less ruined my day.

The Grim Grotto (Lemony Snicket)

In this book, Lemony Snicket continues to develop the theme of ethical uncertainty that has been present at least since The Hostile Hospital, and introduces the idea that people can't always be readily assigned to the good (volunteer) or bad (villain) side of the VFD schism. Like the infamous Medusoid Mycellium, some people are volatile.

In the end, the Baudelaire kids take a further step towards their independence by refusing (for the first time ever) Mr. Poe's "help". Thus they break the repetitive cycle their lives have been caught in, and move forward towards VFD's last safe place - the Hotel Denouement.

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Quotes:

For Beatrice --
Dead women tell no tales.
Sad men write them down.

He (or she) who hesitates is lost! (Captain Widdershin's motto)

"Absurdio," Sunny said, which meant "Philosophers live at the tops of mountains or in ivory towers, not underneath the sea."

It's not the sugar bowl [that is important]; it's what's inside it!

There are secrets in this world too terrible for young people to know!

"Stop looking at my outfit! You're just jealous of me because I'm a tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian! (Carmelita Spats)

People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict. (Fernald)

Reading poetry, even if you are only reading to find a secret message hidden within its words, can often give one a feeling of power, the way you feel powerful if you are the only one who brought an umbrella on a rainy day, or the only one who knows how to untie knots when you're taken hostage.

I'm happier than a pig eating bacon! I'm tickled pinker than a sun-burned Caucasian! I'm in higher spirits than a brave-new graveyard! I'm so happy-go-lucky that lucky and happy people are going to beat me with sticks out of pure, unbridled jealousy! (Count Olaf)