Like Cormac McCarthy's The Road, this is a story of the end of the world. That was totally unexpected in a children's book. But it's so well written the characters are so good and the friendship that keeps them together is so strong, that it really works. Beautifully done.
Quotes:
"I think everything is still there," said Moomintroll. "Come with me and have a look."
This book reminded me of the Comedy Central "Roast" of David Hasselhoff: it wasn't funny and left me feeling a little dirty afterwards. I read somewhere that Raymond Chandler hated it. But i have to admit, it was well written and no BS in it. I guessed the killer correctly, about halfway, but i had the motive all wrong.
The only reason i thought of reading this book was because of a reference in the novel "Leaving the World". Besides the scenes of ultraviolence, the outdated viewpoints of the main protagonist are interesting to read.
Quotes:
From now on it’s a race. I want the killer for myself.
First, classify all murders. There are only a few. War, Passion, Self-Protection, Insanity, Profit and Mercy Killings. There are some others, but these are enough.
When I saw the light on I stopped in front of a mirrored door and gave myself a thorough inspection for lipstick marks. I managed to wipe my mouth clean, but getting it off my white collar was something else again. I could never figure out why the stuff came off women so easy and off the men so hard.
What we were both searching for was motive. There had to be one—and a good one. Murder doesn’t just happen. Murder is planned. Sometimes in haste, but planned nevertheless.
For a moment I wondered whether it would be decent to wear a gun when calling on a lady, but habit got the better of me.
A hell of a nice guy even if he was a moron.
No wife of mine is going to work. I want her at home where I know where she is.
Mary couldn’t wait until I closed the door. She flung herself at me and opened her mouth. Hell, couldn’t disappoint the hostess, so I kissed her.
How many times have you gone into the frailty of men and seen their weaknesses? It made you afraid. You no longer had the social instinct of a woman—that of being dependent upon a man.
I’m the jury now, and the judge, and I have a promise to keep.
I didn't copy much from this one, but i liked it very much.
Quotes:
These passages hold some of the most crucial secrets in this sad and flammable world.
For various reasons, portions of this chapter have been changed of made up entirely, including this sentence.
when the tune came to an end, she turned around and found herself face to face with an old man with neatly trimmed gray hair and a moustache that turned up at the ends. He was dressed as if everything he wore -- a flowered shirt, striped tie, tweed coat, and plaid slacks -- had come from different stores or from a rummage sale, except aht the crease in his trousers was sharp and his shoes were shined.
The old man, whose back was very straight, saluted Ramona as if she were a soldier and said, "Well, young lady, have you been good to your mother?"
Beverly Cleary -- Ramona Quimby, Age 8
I didn't realize this was a sad occasion.
The world is quiet here.
Well, young lady, have you been good to your mother?
The question is, has she been good to me?
This is not as funny as the Jeeves books, probably because the heroine here is a nice, honest person. :-) But it is Wodehouse. This book is out of copyright, so should be available in the usual places for free.
Quotes:
Of all outdoor sports, few are more stimulating than watching middle-aged Frenchmen bathe.
Fillmore--Gerald--all of them. There might be a woman in each of their lives, but she came second--an afterthought--a thing for their spare time. Gerald was everything to her. His success would never be more than a side-issue as far as she was concerned. He himself, without any of the trappings of success, was enough for her. But she was not enough for him.
Here was an estimable young man, obviously the sort of young man who would always have to be assisted through life by his relatives, and she had deliberately egged him on to wreck his prospects.
Chumps always make the best husbands. When you marry. Sally, grab a chump. Tap his forehead first, and if it rings solid, don't hesitate. All the unhappy marriages come from the husband having brains. What good are brains to a man? They only unsettle him.
If one could manage one's own life as well as one can manage other people's!
The trouble is, it seems, that about once in every thirty years a sort of craze for change comes over London, and they paint a shop-front red instead of blue, and that upsets the returned exile dreadfully.
I felt like a small lion in a den of Daniels.
And quietly and methodically, like a respectable wolf settling on the trail of a Red Riding Hood, he prepared to pursue.
She had always disliked Bruce Carmyle's hands. They were strong and bony and black hair grew on the back of them.
Bruce Carmyle gave it up, and lit a moody cigarette. He was oppressed by that feeling which so many of us have felt in our time, that it was all wrong.
My first Douglas Kennedy book; found courtesy of Amazon/Kindle recommendations. The heroine finds herself going through a series of unfortunate events and somehow manages to land on her feet (barely). Freaking sad in parts, but it had me reading compulsively as i got closer to the end.
The central question of the book is whether it is possible for a person to be happy, without the help of self-delusion. The answer seems to be something along the lines of "not really, but we keep trying anyway."
Quotes:
No one's actually happy.
Words matter. Words count. Words have lasting import.
nobody gets away lightly in life
We try so hard to put our mark on things, we like to tell ourselves that what we do has import or will last. But the truth is, we’re all just passing through. So little survives us. And when we’re gone, it’s simply the memory of others that keeps our time here alive.
The reason everyone is so bitchy in academia is because the stakes are so low.
Brad’s employment policies were largely based on finding unhappy or awkward people with something to prove, training them into the laws of the marketplace, and then turning them loose in an unapologetically Darwinian environment.
That’s the greatest relief in the world—knowing that you have got away with something you really shouldn’t have.
...interpretation. How do you choose to perceive a moral choice? Guilt is all rooted in the interpretation of events. It’s predicated on your take on things. How willing are you to twist reality to your own version of events? What can you (or can’t you) live with?
When we look at each other, do we even begin to see the pain we both carry?
‘I can’t go on, I’ll go on.’”
“I can’t go on. I won’t go on.”
“Does it scare you, death?” “It’s going to arrive, that’s for sure. And I guess the one and only thing that perplexes me is the idea that I will be no more, that my entire story will vanish with me. No ‘me.’ How can that be?”
“Still, when the dark stuff hits, keep in mind that old line about how if you save one life you save the world.”
“Sergeant,” I said, “that’s bullshit—and you know it.”
He looked momentarily taken aback by this, then shrugged and took another slug of beer.
What I see as a metaphor for all the granitic grief in the world you see as a tanning opportunity. Life—even at its most excruciating—is never more than a few steps away from all its inherent absurdity.
Interesting book, raised more questions than it answered. I hope there is a sequel.
Quotes:
I will love you until all codes and hearts have been broken.
I will love you until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faded by distant fog, and your fog is memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog.
In my humble opinion, the best book in the series. We finally find out for certain who Beatrice was, Olaf does his one noble act, and the Baudelaires finally grow up.
I think VFD represents the adult world and its choices, which are in the end, moral choices. Children are taken out from their family and induced into VFD whether they want it or not (and usually they don't), but it's their choices that will make them volunteers or villains (or more likely, something in between). When Oppenheimer made the atomic bomb, he used his great intelligence and leadership skills to create the best bomb possible. When the Baudelaires burned down the Hotel Denouement, they were fulfilling their mission and giving the best signal possible to VFD that their safe place had been breached. But their actions had grave consequences. Oppenheimer, quoting from the Bhagavad Gita, says "now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds". The Baudelaires may have caused the death of almost every secondary character in the series.
Ishmael, on the other hand, had decided to withdraw from the world completely, and thought he could protect his followers from having to make moral decisions. This course of action also proved fraught with unintended consequences, and in the end he wasn't able to hold the world with it's ambiguous moral choices at bay.
In this universe, salvation comes not from withdrawing from the ambiguous moral choices, but from seeking moral knowledge. As in the Garden of Eden, the snake brings his gift - the fruit of knowledge of good and evil.
In Snicket's book-centric universe, it's not surprising that the snake's name is Ink, because moral knowledge comes in great part from ink - from the printed word.
Quotes:
Call me Ish. (Ishmael)
It depends on how you look at it.
If you try to avoid every instance of peer pressure, you will end up without any peers whatsoever, and the trick is to succumb to enough pressure that you do not drive your peers away, but not so much that you end up in a situation in which you are dead or otherwise uncomfortable.
I've never known a Baudelaire that didn't rock the boat. (Ishmael)
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one:
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
-- Francis William Bourdillon
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
-- Philip Larkin
