books | loveliness.

Tag: books
- i wrote this for you
  
  Posted at 6:59 am by jasminedesirees, on April 19, 2016
  
  I was creeping around on Amazon last weekend, I can’t even remember what I was looking for, but I had some new book recommendations based on recent purchases. I fell down the recommendation rabbit hole, but eventually found some excerpts from a book, I Wrote This For You, that I loved.
  
  As per usual, I spent the next two hours reading everything I could find by the author, but I will probably still end up buying the book. A few of my favourite quotes below:
  
  “Forget about your lists and do what you can because that’s all you can do. Phone up the people you miss and tell them you love them. Hug those close to you as hard as you can. Because you are always only a drunk driver’s stupidity, a nervous shopkeeper’s mistake, a doctor’s best attempts and an old age away from forever.”
  
  “You’re just another story I can’t tell anymore.”
  
  “We clutch that picture to our hearts because we expect each other to always be the people in that picture. But people change. People aren’t pictures. And you can either take a new picture or throw the old one away.”
  
  “This is my skin. It keeps out the rain and words I’d rather not hear like “I’m tired” or “I’m fine” or “We need to talk.” This is my skin and it’s thick. This is not your skin. Yet you are still under it.”
  
  “To you, it was just picking flowers. To them, it was a massacre.”
  
  “I’ll see you at your funeral, if you’ll see me at mine. I’ll wait at the edges for your ghost to rise (until the end of time). We’ll find someplace nice to haunt, an abandoned beach house filled with memories of summer sunburns. Children will giggle as we tickle their feet at night and they’ll never know the bad dreams we fight. We’ll make our own heaven.”
  
  “As your body cuts through the air, think of only the things that made you smile, the people that made you love, the ideas that made you strong. Remember, those things will never happen again but they cannot unhappen.”
  
  “I read what you leave in public spaces. The songs you reference. The quotes you quote. I know it’s about me. I can feel you thinking of me.”
  
  You can get the book here. Also, I just got this in the mail last week and I am SO excited about it. Give me all the books.
  
  Posted in books, inspiration, other things, poetry | 0 Comments | Tagged books, i wrote this for you, jon ellis, poetry, quotes, writing
- my life on the road
  
  Posted at 8:00 am by jasminedesirees, on December 23, 2015
  
  I just finished reading My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem. It’s a collection of stories and anecdotes about her time traveling around the USA as an organizer, fundraising and public speaking to raise awareness for feminism and different political causes and campaigns.
  
  It was really interesting, there are stories about JFK, Bobby Kennedy and MLK, but some of my favourite parts of the book were just little tidbits from random people she had met during her journeys. The point of the book is to encourage people to travel, to meet each other in person, and to get involved with their communities. Basically, to live in the now, as she says The Road forces you to do.
  
  I have been hearing and reading about Gloria Steinem all my life, but I’d never read one of her books before. After this one, I’m excited to go back and read the others.
  
  Some of my favourite excerpts:
  
  “I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be “unfeminine” so we suppress it– until it overflows.”
  
  “Now I know that both the palaces and the movies were fantasies created by Hollywood in the Depression, the only adventures most people could afford. I think of them again whenever I see subway riders lost in paperback mysteries, the kind that Stephen King’s waitress mother once called her “cheap sweet vacations” and so he writes them for her still. I think of them when I see children cramming all five senses into virtual images online, or when I pass a house topped by a satellite dish almost as big as it is, as if the most important thing were the ability to escape.
  
  The travel writer Bruce Chatwin wrote that our nomadic past lives on in our ‘need for distraction, our mania for the new.’ In many languages, even the word for human being is ‘one who goes on migrations.’ Progress itself is a word rooted in a seasonal journey. Perhaps our need to escape into media is a misplaced desire for the journey.”
  
  “She turns out to be a ninety-eight year old former Ziegfeld girl who is on her way to dance in an AIDS benefit on Braodway with her hundred-and-one-year-old friend from chorus girl days- something they’ve been doing since the tragedy of AIDS first appeared. Humbled by this response and looking for advice on my own future now that I’m past seventy, I ask her how she has remained herself all these years. She looks at me as if at a slow pupil. ‘You’re always the person you were when you were born,’ she says impatiently. ‘You just keep finding new ways to express it.'”
  
  Also, loved the dedication:
  
  “This book is dedicated to Dr. John Sharpe of London, who in 1957, a decade before physicians in England could legally perform a abortion for any reason other than the health of the woman, took the considerable risk of referring for an abortion a twenty-two-year old American on her way to India.
  
  Knowing only that she had broken an engagement at home to seek an unknown fate, he said ” You must promise two things. First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want do with your life.”
  
  Dear Dr. Sharpe, I believe you, who knew the law was unjust, would not mind if I saw this so long after your death.
  
  I’ve done the best I could with my life.
  
  This book is for you.”
  
  Posted in books, quotes | 0 Comments | Tagged books, gloria steinem, my life on the road, quote
- a year of mornings
  
  Posted at 8:30 am by jasminedesirees, on August 11, 2015
  
  A few weeks ago I was sitting in a salon waiting to get my hair done, and I absentmindedly picked up a book to flip through while I waited. I was immediately captivated by the imagery in the book, which turned out to be A Year of Mornings.
  
  The book is based on this blog, where two women who had never met in person decided to collaborate to share one image of their lives, every morning.
  
  I am guilty sometimes of thinking that it’s only the big things in life that are worth sharing, but this book, and the images inside, immediately struck me as so beautiful and powerful, even though they were of nothing more exciting than the normal, every day struggle to get a family up, and fed, and off to meet the day. It might take a little bit more creativity and imagination, but that’s the point anyway, isn’t it?
  
  It only took me about 15 minutes to flip through from start to finish, but I had ordered the book before I even left the salon. I had been staying with my parents in Montana the week before, and spending a lot of time with my mom, who paints in her spare time. We had talked about working on paintings together while I was there, but I couldn’t think of anything that I really wanted to paint.
  
  The colours and composition of the images in A Year of Mornings were so inspiring that I texted my mom immediately to let her know that I had found my subject.
  
  I’m sometimes hesitant to buy books anymore, I try to live as minimally as possible (just don’t look in my closet), and I have SO many books in Canada still that I haven’t been able to bring with me (I have my own library, basically. It’s a sickness.) but I know this book will serve as a source of inspiration for years to come.
  
  Posted in art, books, inspiration, photography | 0 Comments | Tagged a year of mornings, blogs, books, inspiration, life, photography
- the girl’s guide to hunting and fishing
  
  Posted at 8:35 pm by jasminedesirees, on June 8, 2015
  
  I just finished reading The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank.
  
  It was beautifully written, following a girl, and in some cases, peripheral strangers to her life, through different stages from childhood, through adolescence, and into adulthood. Each chapter focuses on a different time in her life.
  
  My favourite thing about this book was that it didn’t offer everything right up front. There is a lot you don’t know about the main character, even by the end of the book. It doesn’t go into minute detail about everything that’s ever happened to her. Every chapter is a little glimpse into her life, sort of like creeping on the Facebook page of a random stranger.
  
  Some of my favourite quotes from the book:
  
  “I opened the blue box, and there was a velvet one inside, and I opened that. I looked at the ring. It was platinum with one diamond. It was just the ring I would’ve wanted, if I’d wanted a ring from him.”
  
  “We are all children until our fathers die.”
  
  “‘You can’t really blame him for that,’ Henry says. He tells me that the best man I will ever find will be attracted to other women. I hear this as another fact I am too old not to know. More proof of how unprepared I am to love anyone.”
  
  “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”
  
  You can find the book here.
  
  Posted in books | 0 Comments | Tagged books, inspiration, melissa bank, novels, quotes, reading
- how to be parisian wherever you are
  
  Posted at 8:00 am by jasminedesirees, on April 20, 2015
  
  I just finished reading “How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are: Love, Style and Other Bad Habits”. It was a super quick read, I finished it in a couple of hours, but I really enjoyed it. It’s written by 4 Parisian women, and gives some insights into their lifestyle, fashion, which stereotypes are true, and why they do some of the things they do.
  
  Most of the things in the book are probably highly subjective, as Parisian women are most likely just like women from everywhere else in the world, sharing similarities and differences with each other and everyone else, but there were a few passages in the book that I especially liked:
  
  On aging:
  
  “In truth, more than wanting to look young– which is but a fleeting illusion–they want above all to become the best possible version of themselves, outside and in, at any age.
  
  In their mind, a single rule outweighs all others: enjoy the face you have today. It’s the one you’ll wish you have ten years from now.”
  
  A Mother’s Advice on Love:
  
  “Just because you only have one life doesn’t mean you should be afraid of wasting it.”
  
  On fashion:
  
  “The signature item is a gift that a woman gives herself depending on her age, her taste, and the size of her purse. It is a symbol of independence and freedom which states ‘I bought this for myself. I earned it and it makes me happy’.”
  
  “Find ‘your’ perfume before you turn thirty. Wear it for the next thirty years.”
  
  You can get the book here.
  
  Posted in books, inspiration, quotes | 0 Comments | Tagged books, fashion, how to be parisian, quotes, reading, style
- the price of salt
  
  Posted at 8:16 am by jasminedesirees, on March 26, 2015
  
  I just finished reading The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith. I’d never heard of it before, but the tone of the book is supposed to have been the inspiration for Nabakov’s Lolita.
  
  The book is based on an experience from the authors life, where she had an affair with a married, soon to be divorced older woman, and the woman’s husband used evidence of their relationship to obtain full custody over their daughter.
  
  It’s not a very action packed book, it’s a lot of talking, but it’s interesting to read about a time not so long ago when people had to hide their relationships or face dire consequences.
  
  Some of my favourite excerpts from the book:
  
  “Happiness was like a green vine spreading through her, stretching fine tendrils, bearing flowers through her flesh. She had a vision of a pale white flower, shimmering as if seen in darkness, or through water. Why did people talk of heaven, she wondered.”
  
  “I know what they’d like, they’d like a blank they could fill in. A person already filled in disturbs them terribly.”
  
  “What was it to love someone, what was love exactly, and why did it end or not end? Those were the real questions, and who could answer them?”
  
  “It would be Carol, in a thousand cities, a thousand houses, in foreign lands where they would go together, in heaven and in hell.”
  
  You can read more about The Price of Salt here.
  
  Posted in books | 0 Comments | Tagged books, LGBT, novels, patricia highsmith, quotes, the price of salt, writing
- #girlboss
  
  Posted at 12:30 pm by jasminedesirees, on February 12, 2015
  
  Just finished reading #Girlboss by Sophia Amoruso, the founder and CEO of NastyGal.com. It was a great, quick read, and I would definitely recommend it.
  
  The book details how she started and expanded her company, and has a lot of great career advice from her, and from other female entrepreneurs.
  
  A few of my favourite quotes were from the Portrait of a #Girlboss from Christine Barberich, Editor in Chief of Refinery29:
  
  “In terms of striking out on my own and being brave in my convictions, I learned that mostly by being freelance. I don’t think you can truly know what you’re made of until you are in charge of your days. How you use that time, and the work you pursue, teaches you so much about who you are and what you can become.”
  
  I liked that a lot because I am working freelance right now, but I think it applies to how you spend your time in general. Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day, and how you spend your free time, whether it’s having Netflix marathons, or working towards your goals, is probably going to determine how successful you are going to be.
  
  “As hard as it is, stop caring so much about what other people think. Find a way to hear what you want. Recognize what is your dream. And then put everything you have into that: your work, the relationships you surround yourself with, the food you put in your body. Everything you have control over in your world should feed that dream.”
  
  So, so true.
  
  Posted in books | 0 Comments | Tagged books, career, career advice, Christine Barberich, nasty gal, reading, sophia amoruso
- we were liars
  
  Posted at 12:54 pm by jasminedesirees, on December 11, 2014
  
  I just finished reading We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. The ending wasn’t quite what I hoped it would be, but the writing and the style were so beautiful, I couldn’t get enough.
  
  I started it in the afternoon, and finished it by the next evening. Without giving anything away, here are some of the passages I liked best.
  
  “IN EUROPE, I vomited into small buckets and brushed my teeth repeatedly with chalky British toothpaste. I lay prone on the bathroom floors of several museums, feeling the cold tile underneath my cheek as my brain liquefied and seeped out my ear, bubbling. Migraines left my blood spreading across unfamiliar hotel sheets, dripping on the floors, oozing into carpets, soaking through leftover croissants and Italian lace cookies.”
  
  “I suffer migraines, I do not suffer fools.”
  
  “If you want to live where people aren’t afraid of mice, you have to leave the palace.”
  
  “Someone once wrote that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with you.
  Also, here is a green toothbrush tied in a ribbon.
  It expresses my feelings inadequately..
  
  Better than chocolate, being with you last night.
  
  Silly me, I thought nothing was better than chocolate.
  
  In a profound symbolic gesture, I am giving you this bar of Vosges I got when we all went to Edgartown. You can eat it, or just sit next to it and feel superior.”
  
  You can buy the book here.
  
  Posted in books | 0 Comments | Tagged books, E. Lockhart, reading, we were liars, writing
- goldfinch
  
  Posted at 8:00 am by jasminedesirees, on September 8, 2014
  
  I just finished reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. I really liked it, I’d definitely recommend it. I really had no idea what the book was about before I started it, so I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen.
  
  Isn’t it funny how when you read a book that someone recommends to you, or go to see a movie, one of the first questions people ask is “what’s it about?”. As if we only want to see a movie or read a book if we already know what’s going to happen.
  
  The book takes places across several decades, and in many different places, so it’s very unpredictable, and I thought the ending was perfect, which is not something that I say about endings very often.
  
  Especially towards the end of the book, everything is very tense and you are sure everything can only end in complete catastrophe, but then there is a deliciously simple but completely unforeseen twist.
  
  This excerpt was on of my favourites:
  
  “Because here’s the truth: life is catastrophe. The basic fact of existence– of walking around trying to feed ourselves and find friends and whatever else we do– is catastrophe. Forget all this ridiculous ‘Our Town’ nonsense everyone talks: the miracle of a newborn babe, the joy of one simple blossom, Life You Are Too Wonderful To Grasp, &c. For me– and I’ll keep repeating it doggedly till I die, till I fall over on my ungrateful nihilistic face and am too weak to say it: better never born, than born into this cesspool. Sinkhole of hospital beds, coffins and broken hearts. No release, no appeal, no “do-overs” to employ a favored phrase of Xandra’s, no way forward but age and loss, and no way out but death….And maybe it’s ridiculous to go on in this vein, although it doesn’t matter since no one’s ever going to see this– but does it make any sense at all to know that it ends badly for all of us, even the happiest of us, and that we all lose everything that matters in the end–and yet to know as well, despite all this, as cruelly as the game is stacked, that it’s possible to play it with a kind of joy?”
  
  The Goldfinch plot centers around a famous painting. The story contained a lot of discussion about art history, and different artists and painting styles, which was really interesting to me.
  
  I had been wanting to check out Khan Academy for awhile, so I went on there once I finished the book, and saw that one of their courses in an intro to basic art history, so I’ve been working my way through that in my spare time.
  
  They also have math, history, and science courses, and courses on taking test like the SAT’s, LSAT’s, and GMAT. Definitely check it out if you feel like doing some book learnin’.
  
  Posted in art, books, quotes | 0 Comments | Tagged art, art history, books, donna tartt, goldfinch, khan academy, reading
- a house in the sky
  
  Posted at 8:46 pm by jasminedesirees, on February 25, 2014
  
  I recently finished reading A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout. The memoir describes her time traveling the world as a freelance journalist, and her eventual kidnapping by Muslim extremists in Somalia, where she was raped, beaten, and held for ransom for over a year.
  
  Amanda is a Canadian girl, she grew up only a few hours away from me, so this story hit home for me even more. She came from an unstable home, and moved out as soon as she was old enough. She spent time as a waitress in Calgary, and managed to save a lot of money. She had never left the country, or done any traveling, but she booked herself a ticket to South America, where she traveled around for months.
  
  She began returning to Calgary to earn enough money to travel, and then spending six months at a time away traveling the world, eventually making her way to the war torn countries of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, where she began working as a freelance journalist and photographer as a way to earn more traveling money, even though she had no experience or schooling.
  
  From there, she went on to Somalia, hoping for her “big break” as a journalist. After only 3 days in the country, she was taken.
  
  It was a really great read, I knew what the memoir was about before I started reading, but even though I knew where her story would eventually lead, I was still envious over her travels, and entranced with her descriptions of her adventures and all of the amazing places she was able to visit.
  
  It was difficult to read about her terrifying ordeal, every time it seemed like things were about to turn around for her, they would actually get worse, but she was very brave, and lived to tell her story.
  
  Amanda still travels the world, and she started a non-profit foundation to help provide education and aid in Kenya and Somalia.
  
  You can order A House in the Sky here.
  
  Posted in books, travel, Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged A House in the Sky, Amanda Lindhout, books, Canada, Journalist, memoir, reading, Somalia
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