girly book post
by devonsp
do you guys do this too? i’m not a consistent reader but when i’m in a changing environment, like on tour, i try to make sure i’m in the middle of a solid book. on this trip, i finished peter carey’s oscar & lucinda and luckily had some mark helprin stories — the pacific — to dash right into.
at the end of the tour, walking around the brighton lanes before soundcheck, i bought two books for a 95 pence each: the cloudspotter’s guide (exciting and funny) and colour by victoria finlay. i don’t think the writing of the second will quite hold up to those other two giants (don’t get me wrong: i couldn’t do better!), but i’m still looking forward to it.
here’s some good words from the pacific that i wrote down in my little green book:
abeyance – temporary inactivity, cessation, or suspension
jonquil – any of various other small daffodil-like plants
daven – to pray
and two excerpts (though removing the first from it’s story feels — forgive the cheese — a bit like taking a wet rock from a river):
ROGER HAD long since tired of the suite in which he lived in deadening luxury on the Upper East Side. It was now empty, as it was empty before his arrival, a rosewood and alabaster tomb without even a body, a columbarium without ashes. In that neighborhood it was fairly easy to get a Fabergé egg but almost impossible to get a kosher chicken. True, the dwellings were well kept and well appointed, they often were as high as birds’ nests, and you could look out and see a half-million windows and not a foot of fire-escape iron, but the difference between this place and where he lived in Brooklyn was like the difference between a wool suit on a hanger, and a lamb. There were those who would instinctively choose the suit, and those who would instinctively choose the lamb. It was not for Roger to criticize anyone who would take the suit, but he himself would gather the lamb into his arms.
THE ATOMS in a ripe tomato are busy shivering in such a way that when white light falls on them they absorb most of the blue and yellow light and they reject the red.