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  • Tag: novels

    • the girls

      Posted at 8:00 am by jasminedesirees, on September 29, 2016

      I packed a few books for our multi-day roadtrip back to AZ, including Everything I Never Told You (different than I thought it was going to be, but I liked it) and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (I can’t even bring myself to finish it) but the best of the lot was The Girls by Emma Cline.

      Some of my favourites:

      “I waited to be told what was good about me. I wondered later if this was why there were so many more women than men at the ranch. All that time I had spent readying myself, the articles that taught me life was really just a waiting room until someone noticed you- the boys had spent that time becoming themselves.”

      “So much of desire, at that age, was a willful act. Trying so hard to slur the rough, disappointing edges of boys into the shape of someone we could love. We spoke of our desperate need for them with rote and familiar words, like we were reading lines from a play.”

      “How I loved to wring myself out that way, stoking my feelings until they were unbearable. I wanted all of life to feel that frantic and pressured with portent, so even colors and weather and tastes would be more saturated.”

      “When I was nine, I’d broken my wrist falling from a swing. The shocking crack, the blackout pain. But even then, even with my wrist swelling with a cuff of trapped blood, I insisted I was fine, that it was nothing, and my parents believed me right up until the doctor showed them the X-ray, the bones snapped clean.”

      “I saw how his face moved a little with concern for me, an acknowledgement, I thought, of how brave I was. Though I should have known that when men warn you to be careful, often they are warning you of the dark movie playing across their own brains. Some violent daydream prompting their guilty exhortations to ‘make it home safe.'”

       

      Posted in books, inspiration, quotes | 0 Comments | Tagged emma cline, novels, quotes, the girls, writing
    • 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
    • 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
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