favourites

Here are a few things that are making me happy right now:

This excerpt from Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn:

“We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can’t recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn’t immediately reference to a movie or TV show. A fucking commercial. You know the awful singsong of the blase: Seeeen it.

I’ve literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can’t anymore. I don’t know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved ones dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script.

It’s very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real actual person instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters.

And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don’t have genuine souls.”

I love writing like this, the first time I read this passage I got chills all the way down to my toes.

Love You Forever by Robert Munsch. I get this book for every person I know who is having a baby, it’s the greatest children’s book ever written. I can still remember my mom reading it to us when I was little. Robert Munsch has tons of great children’s books, my favourite are Moira’s Birthday, The Paperbag Princess, Something Good, and David’s Father.

A list of the best children’s books would not be complete without There’s a Monster at the End of This Book, with a shout out to my auntie Sherri, who does the best Grover voice, ever.

This book, Life: The Classic Collection that I bought as a birthday present to myself 2 years ago. It has all the most famous photographs ever printed in Life magazine, and some of them are removable so you can take them out and hang them in your house. I recently rediscovered it (we will have some unpacked boxes) and put up my favourites right away. I need to get frames, but every time I go to Target I end up buying a toboggan, a fishing rod and a new serving tray, so I just stuck them up with fun-tac for now.