American Gods (Neil Gaiman)

Like in Neverwhere, here we have another human, flawed hero who gets plunged into a world beyond his wildest imaginations, where the only resource he has to succeed is his basic decency, a sense of morality that goes a little deeper than convention. Unlike Neverwhere, this novel is of course set in the USA. Although many of the themes in the book are universal, it's still impressive how he was able to deal with American mythology (and spirituality?) like a pro, like a native.

If Neverwhere was about the London underneath, this would be about the America between, and on-top-of, and around. It’s an America with strange mythic depths. Ones that can hurt you. Or kill you. Or make you mad. -- Neil Gaiman

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Quotes:

When people tell you there’s something wrong with a story, they’re almost always right. When they tell what it is that’s wrong and how it can be fixed, they’re almost always wrong. Neil Gaiman - blog

I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen — I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it. (Sam Black Crow)

The best thing—in Shadow’s opinion, perhaps the only good thing—about being in prison was a feeling of relief. The feeling that he’d plunged as low as he could plunge and he’d hit bottom. He didn’t worry that the man was going to get him, because the man had got him. He was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, because yesterday had brought it.

“I brought you mead to drink because it’s traditional. And right now we need all the tradition we can get. It seals our bargain.” [...] “There,” said Mr. Wednesday. “You’re my man, now.”

“Tell him that we have fucking reprogrammed reality. Tell him that language is a virus and that religion is an operating system and that prayers are just so much fucking spam. Tell him that or I’ll fucking kill you,” said the young man mildly, from the smoke.

“Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.” (Wednesday)

“I feel,” Shadow told her, “like I’m in a world with its own sense of logic. Its own rules. Like when you’re in a dream, and you know there are rules you mustn’t break. Even if you don’t know what they mean. I’m just going along with it, you know?”

The important thing to understand about American history, wrote Mr. Ibis, in his leather-bound journal, is that it is fictional, a charcoal-sketched simplicity for the children, or the easily bored. For the most part it is uninspected, unimagined, unthought, a representation of the thing, and not the thing itself. It is a fine fiction, he continued, pausing for a moment to dip his pen in the inkwell and collect his thoughts, that America was founded by pilgrims, seeking the freedom to believe as they wished, that they came to the Americas, spread and bred and filled the empty land. [...] In truth, the American colonies were as much a dumping ground as an escape, a forgetting place.

No, in the USA, people still get the call, or some of them, and they feel themselves being called to from the transcendent void, and they respond to it by building a model out of beer bottles of somewhere they’ve never visited, or by erecting a gigantic bat house in some part of the country that bats have traditionally declined to visit. Roadside attractions: people feel themselves being pulled to places where, in other parts of the world, they would recognize that part of themselves that is truly transcendent, and buy a hot dog and walk around, feeling satisfied on a level they cannot truly describe, and profoundly dissatisfied on a level beneath that. (Wednesday)

“Let me tell you somethin’,” said Mr. Nancy. “It can be a long time between meals. Someone offers you food, you say yes. I’m no longer young as I was, but I can tell you this, you never say no to the opportunity to piss, to eat, or to get half an hour’s shut-eye. You follow me?”

What should I believe? thought Shadow, and the voice came back to him from somewhere deep beneath the world, in a bass rumble: Believe everything. (Shadow and Buffalo Man)

“We have, let us face it and admit it, little influence. We prey on them, and we take from them, and we get by; we strip and we whore and we drink too much; we pump gas and we steal and we cheat and we exist in the cracks at the edges of society. Old gods, here in this new land without gods. [...] Now, as all of you will have had reason aplenty to discover for yourselves, there are new gods growing in America, clinging to growing knots of belief: gods of credit card and freeway, of Internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon. Proud gods, fat and foolish creatures, puffed up with their own newness and importance.” (Wednesday)

“You shine like a beacon in a dark world.” (Laura)

“Say ‘Nevermore,’ “ said Shadow. “Fuck you,” said the raven.

It occurred to him that the reason he liked Wednesday and Mr. Nancy and the rest of them better than their opposition was pretty straightforward: they might be dirty, and cheap, and their food might taste like shit, but at least they didn’t speak in clichés.

Minus forty, maybe, that strange point on the thermometer when Celsius and Fahrenheit say the same thing.

This was not simply cold: this was science fiction.

This was beyond a joke. This had moved beyond foolishness, slipped over the line into genuine twenty-four-karat Jesus-Christ-I-screwed-up-big-time territory.

He did not touch Wednesday. He did not say anything. Later, he wondered if he could have changed things, if that gesture would have done any good, if it could have averted any of the harm that was to come. He told himself it wouldn’t. He knew it wouldn’t. But still, afterward, he wished that, just for a moment on that slow flight home, he had touched Wednesday’s hand.

“It’s a holy place,” said Wednesday. “That’s the American Way—they need to give people an excuse to come and worship.

“Where are we?” “Behind the scenes,” said Wednesday.

“This isn’t about what is,” said Mr. Nancy. “It’s about what people think is. It’s all imaginary anyway. That’s why it’s important. People only fight over imaginary things.”

“Media. I think I have heard of her. Isn’t she the one who killed her children?”

“In the god business,” said the figure—and now Shadow was certain it was Wednesday, nobody else had that rasp, that deep cynical joy in words, “it’s not the death that matters. It’s the opportunity for resurrection.

“There was only one guy in the whole Bible Jesus ever personally promised a place with him in Paradise. Not Peter, not Paul, not any of those guys. He was a convicted thief, being executed. So don’t knock the guys on death row. Maybe they know something you don’t.”

They drove on in silence. Shadow felt that he’d made a decision; something big and strange. [...] It wouldn’t have mattered if he hadn’t wanted to live, but he did want to live, and that made all the difference. He hoped he would live though this, but he was willing to die, if that was what it took to be alive.

“It doesn’t matter that you didn’t believe in us,” said Mr. Ibis. “We believed in you.”

Mr. Jacquel opened the last door for Shadow, and behind that door there was nothing. Not darkness. Not even oblivion. Only nothing. [...] Shadow accepted it, completely and without reservation, and he walked through the door into nothing with a strange fierce joy.

“Gods are great,” said Atsula, slowly, as if she were imparting a great secret. “But the heart is greater. For it is from our hearts they come, and to our hearts they shall return . . .”

Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you—even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition. [...] Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world.

Even Nothing cannot last forever.

Shadow shook his head. “You know,” he said. “I think I would rather be a man than a god. We don’t need anyone to believe in us. We just keep going anyhow. It’s what we do.”

The Death of Ivan Illych and other stories (Leo Tolstoy)

The Book Whisperer wrote that we read in order to become better persons. I think Tolstoy wrote in order to become a better person.

The short stories that make this collection are masterfully written, and each one is concerned with questions of morality, the meaning of life and of death. The first and last story -- surprisingly -- are about the war in Chechnya (does anything ever change?). The ideals of simplicity and closeness to God (and on the other hand, the artificiality and clutter of the lives of the rich) are also very much part of Tolstoy's thought. Some characters live well and die well; others live badly and dies well. Some become saints and some murderers, one of them manages to be both.

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Quotes:

[Tolstoy had] constant conflict within him between his innate artistic gift and the moral demands he made upon himself, the conflict, as he understood it, between beauty and the good.

[Tolstoy experienced] a conversion to what he called “true Christianity” as opposed to “Church Christianity.”

“Tolstoyism,” an anti-State, anti-Church, egalitarian doctrine of the kingdom of God on earth, to be achieved by means of civil disobedience and non-violent resistance

“What will come of what I do now, of what I will do tomorrow—what will come of my whole life?” Formulated differently, the question would be the following: “Why should I live, why desire anything, why do anything?” It can also be put like this: “Is there a meaning in my life that will not be annihilated by the death that inevitably awaits me?”

“If a man has learned to think, no matter what he may think about, he is always thinking of his own death. All philosophers were like that. And what truths can there be, if there is death?”

I came home and, while telling my wife about the profits of the estate, I suddenly felt ashamed. It became loathsome to me. I said I couldn’t buy the estate, because our profit would be based on people’s poverty and misfortune. [...] Above all the truth that the muzhiks want to live as much as we do, that they are people—brothers, sons of the Father, as the Gospel says.

And suddenly it became clear to me that all this should not exist. Not only that it should not exist, but that it does not exist, and if this does not exist, then there is no death or fear, and the former rending in me is no more, and I am no longer afraid of anything.

It was all done with clean hands, in clean shirts, with French words, and above all in the highest society, consequently with the approval of highly placed people. (about fornication)

He wept over his helplessness, over his terrible loneliness, over the cruelty of people, over the cruelty of God, over the absence of God. “Why have You done all this? Why have You brought me here? Why, why do You torment me so terribly?” (Ivan Illych)

The doctor said that his physical sufferings were terrible, and that was true; but more terrible than his physical sufferings were his moral sufferings, and these were his chief torment.

He sought his old habitual fear of death and could not find it. Where was it? What death? There was no more fear because there was no more death. Instead of death there was light. [...] “It’s finished!” someone said over him. He heard those words and repeated them in his soul. “Death is finished,” he said to himself. “It is no more.”

"Never trust a horse in the field or a wife in the house." (peasant proverb)

[D]epravity is no physical outrage; but depravity, true depravity, lies precisely in freeing oneself of moral relations to a woman with whom you enter into physical contact.

Unhappy people live better in the city.

It is commonly thought that the most usual conservatives are the old, and the innovators are young people. That is not quite correct. The most usual conservatives are young people. Young people who want to live, but who do not think and have no time to think about how one should live, and who therefore choose as a model for themselves the life that was.

And again he hears the call of the one who already called out to him. “I’m coming, I’m coming!” his whole being says joyfully, tenderly. And he feels that he is free and nothing holds him any more.

She understood that he had become a monk in order to be higher than those who wanted to show him that they stood higher than he. (Father Sergius)

I lived for people under the pretext of God, she lives for God, fancying she’s living for people.

He read five chapters from Matthew, and they began to talk. They all listened, but only Ivan Chuyev took it to heart. He took it so much to heart that he began to live in God’s way in all things.

When Misaïl asked Chuyev if it was true that they called the holy icons “boards,” Chuyev answered: “Go turn over any icon you like, you’ll see for yourself.”

“So that’s what makes up the true faith,” he thought. “Only those will be saved who gave food and drink to the poor, visited the prisoners, and those who didn’t will go to hell. Yet the robber only repented on the cross, and all the same he went to paradise.” He saw no contradiction here, but, on the contrary, the one confirmed the other: that the merciful will go to paradise and the unmerciful to hell, meant that everybody should be merciful, and that Christ forgave the robber meant that Christ, too, was merciful.

Stepan astonished him by his simple, truthful, and calm answers. Makhin felt unconsciously that this man who stood before him in chains and with a shaved head, who had been brought in guarded and would be led back to be locked up by two soldiers, that this man was totally free, and morally stood inaccessibly higher than himself.

But he saw the man in himself only from a distance, and could not yield to simple human demands, owing to the demands that press upon a tsar from all sides; to acknowledge human demands as more obligatory than the demands of a tsar was beyond his strength.

No one saw in that death the most important moment of that life—its ending and returning to the source from which it had come—but saw only the gallantry of a dashing officer falling upon the mountaineers with his saber and desperately cutting them down.

And indeed, as if to confirm their expectations, in the midst of their talk they heard, to the left of the road, the bracing, beautiful sound of a sharp, cracking rifle shot, and with a merry whistle a little bullet flew by somewhere in the foggy air and smacked into a tree.

Poltoratsky had never expected this fearsome mountaineer to be like that. He had expected to see a gloomy, dry, alien man, and before him was a most simple man, who smiled such a kindly smile that he seemed not alien, but a long-familiar friend.

The eyes of these two men, as they met, said much to each other that could not be expressed in words and that certainly was not what the interpreter was saying. They spoke the whole truth about each other directly, without words.

To disagree with Nicholas’s orders meant to lose all that brilliant position which he now enjoyed, and which he had spent forty years acquiring. And therefore he humbly bowed his dark, graying head in a sign of submission and readiness to carry out the cruel, insane, and dishonest supreme will.

The old heads of households gathered on the square and, squatting down, discussed their situation. Of hatred for the Russians no one even spoke. The feeling that was experienced by all the Chechens, big and small, was stronger than hatred. It was not hatred, but a refusal to recognize these Russian dogs as human beings, and such loathing, disgust, and bewilderment before the absurd cruelty of these beings, that the wish to exterminate them, like the wish to exterminate rats, venomous spiders, and wolves, was as natural as the sense of self-preservation.

Fat Camp Commandos Go West (Daniel Pinkwater)

:-) Almost as good as the original. OK, as good as the original. Great stuff.

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The Magician's Elephant (Kate DiCamillo)

Another wonderful book by Kate DiCamillo; possibly the most magical of her novels. This book deals with her usual themes of motherless children who struggle to find themselves, but it expresses the hope that the impossible not only happens but must sometimes be hoped for, waited for, and counted upon.

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Quotes:

Leo Matienne had the soul of a poet, and because of this, he liked very much to consider questions that had no answers.

It is not to be borne, the weeping of soldiers. Something is amiss in the universe when a soldier cries.

“Magic is always impossible,” said the magician. “It begins with the impossible and ends with the impossible and is impossible in between. That is why it is magic.”

“It’s the impossible,” said Hans Ickman. “The impossible has happened again.”

Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child (Marc Weissbluth Md)

Good book, manages to avoid the "guilting" that happens so often in baby how-to books.

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Fat Camp Commandos (Daniel Pinkwater)

Funny and Subversive, sprinkled with thinly-disguised references to real people and places in the Chicago area.

Great stuff! How did this get published?

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Quotes:

"I feel a little bad about saying all those mean things." Sylvia said.
"And yet, at the same time, I wonder if anybody ever felt bad about saying similar things to me."
"Bingo!" Mavis said. "People in general thing if you're fat, they can say whatever they like."

Tales From Moominvalley (Tove Jansson)

Captivating stories with Moomin characters. For example: The Invisible Child, the Last Dragon in the World, Snufkin's Spring Tune, and Cedric (Sniff's toy dog).

Laura and I have now read all the Moomin books that are available in English. We loved them. I wish there were more.

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The Werewolf Club Meets Oliver Twit (Daniel Pinkwater)

Werewolves of London!

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Quotes:

"Don't mention to anyone in London that you're werewolves. They have stricter rules over here than at home." (Mr Talbot)

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible! (Jonathan Goldstein)

Bible stories re-imagined with lots of ennui.

This one was in my to-read list for a while, since hearing the "Adam and Eve" story on the radio. In the end, i liked it a lot less than i thought i would. I think the problem is that to do a book like this successfully you have to like the stuff you're re-imagining, and Jonathan Goldstein seems to dislike the Bible characters very much. Or maybe he likes them in a weird way.

An interesting read nevertheless. The recasting of David and Goliath as a battle of comedians is one of the high points of the book.

The preface stands apart, though. Unlike what he does with the Bible stories, in the preface he talks about characters he likes, and the result is that the preface is great. Is it worth the price of the book? Maybe not, but it's very good.

For whatever it's worth, my favorite book in this genre is still Buechner's Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who's Who

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Quotes:

“Hi,” said the snake. “In the mood for some fruit of knowledge? It’s fruity.”

The idea of her own nudity, as well as Adam’s, had always felt more like a Nordic, coed health spa thing; now, with the fruit of knowledge, it felt more like a Rio de Janeiro carnival thing.

Here it was: death. Cain couldn’t believe it.

He wanted nothing from God. He wanted nothing from the world. The world was what it was and he didn’t need it to change. And in this way, he’d finally gotten his wish: to be just like Abel. (Cain)

After the flood, man’s relationship with God changed. Where once there was disinterest—a sort of “you go your way, we’ll go ours” attitude—there was now distrust.

There is no sadder word than “ family,” thought Jacob.

Meanwhile in Haran, Jacob’s life was no bed of roses either. His uncle Laban worked him like a red-maned pack mule.

The angel smiled beatifically. Then, drawing his wings back like the ears of an angry cat, he dropped his elbow onto Jacob’s groin. After that it was all nonstop pile drivers and headlocks.

“But your god . . . God?” “You musn’t even speak His actual name!” interrupted Rodney. “He doesn’t like it, so we’ve invented nicknames for Him: He Who Will Kill You. He Who Will Crush You. He Who Will Set You On Fire and Douse the Flames with the Blood of Those You Love. You really have to be careful. The Beneficent One hears all and sees all.”

Goliath was a bully who produced nervous laughter. Terrified laughter. David wanted to cause laughter that made the soul brighten. [...] And right away, David knew that he had erred. His timing had somehow been off—not exquisite enough. Perhaps he had been overzealous in his delivery of the stone.

“The way your dad is always trying to kill me,” David complained to Michal, “it’s so undermining.”

At the end of the first day he thought, What a story to tell our grandchildren one day, but by the end of the week, he thought, Schmuck, what’s the matter with you?

“When I first started I relied on slapstick—killing giants and that—but then I moved toward more advanced forms of humor—like wordplay. Irony!” [...] “Comedy should help remind people of what is real,” he told his son. “Everyone gets used to the way things appear, but comedy can awaken us to what is.” Everyone went through life pretending, and revealing this pretending was at the core of all jokes.

On the road, Jonah stopped caring which side of him was crazy and which was not and as a result, he felt his craziness blossom, going from being the kind that chews the flesh of the fingertips to being the kind that pounds the chest and summons God.
Being a fair bunch, the sailors dangled Jonah overboard by his robe straps. The moment his toe touched water, the storm abated. As they dipped him in further, the sun popped out, and when they submerged him past his knees, little yellow birds appeared on the deck, chirping and singing. When they hefted him back onto the boat, the whirlwinds raged anew.
When he was a child, in spite of everything, Jonah had this unshakable feeling that things were going to turn out fine. And now he was in a fish.

“She was much roomier than she looked” (Jonah)

The Shining (Stephen King)

I've never seen the movie, and i've been wanting to read the book since visiting the Stanley Hotel (Estes Park, CO) in 2009 (where the movie was done).

I didn't like it. It did keep me reading, but it wasn't a satisfying read. Stephen King has done better books.

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Quotes:

“You got a knack,” Hallorann said, turning to him. “Me, I've always called it shining.

grownups were always in a turmoil, every possible action muddied over by thoughts of the consequences, by self-doubt, by selfimage, by feelings of love and responsibility. Every possible choice seemed to have drawbacks

Dying was a part of living. You had to keep tuning in to that if you expected to be a whole person. And if the fact of your own death was hard to understand, at least it wasn't impossible to accept.