Book 30-Women in Love (44th book)

I read book 30-Women in Love by DH Lawrence during an interesting time in my life. My life got quite busy this last month thanks to starting a new dating relationship after years of singlehood. Thanks to this new relationship, I was also both resistant and open to the messages that this book had to portray.

Ironically enough, for a book entitled Women in Love the book had a lot of homoerotic undertones to it! The relationship between Birkin and his good friend Gerald had some interesting moments in it. Ultimately though, there relationship remained a close friendship and the two men took to pursuing the two sisters portrayed in the book, Gudrun and Ursula. Their  individual relationships each work out two possibilities of ways of being in relationship. One: to remain complete in yourself and join in relationship to another or two: for one person to give up who they are and symbolically die at the hands of another. At times both of these ideologies seem pretentious, but by the end I realized that Birkin and Ursula's relationship (two individuals remaining complete but staying in union) remained the more attractive of the two options and the one that has been more closely in line with the person I have become in the last 10 years.

Here are some quotes from Birkin's point of view in remaining a complete individual in union with someone else:

"What I want is a strange conjunction with you" He said quietly, " not meeting and mingling-you are quite right: but an equilibrium, a pure balance of two single beings-as the stars balance each other"

"Love is a direction which excludes all other directions. It is a freedom together, if you like"

"Why should we consider ourselves, men and women, as broken fragments of one whole? It is not true."

"He says...that you can find an eternal equilibrium in marriage if you accept the unison, and still leave yourself separate, don't try to fuse"

Ursula who marries Birkin has trouble wrapping her head around this way of thinking but eventually is able to accept it when she sees what his philosophy does for him. She had experienced passion from other men but never true deep intimacy until she shares a moment with Birkin in the moonlight.

"She wished he were passionate because in passion she was at home. But this was so still and frail, as space is more frightening than force"


There was also a lot of philosophical stuff that made the existentialist in me giddy with glee. I loved the sections on what made life worth living and also on whether there was a God out there and the idea of mystic connection with God, the universe and people.



On the purpose for living:


"What do you live for?"

"One needs some one really pure single activity-I should call love a single pure activity"

"What is mankind but just one expression  of the incomprehensible"

"every man was fit for his own little bit of a task"

"work and love are the two"  said of the important things to relieve boredom with life.


On God and mystic connection:


"The eternal creative mystery could dispose of man, and replace him with a a finer created being"

"To have one's pulse beating direct from the mystery, this was perfection"

"I believe in something inhuman, of which love is only a little part. I believe what we must fulfil comes out of the unknown to us, and it is something infinitely more than love"

"the world is only held together by the mystic conjunction"

"Really, something, must be left to the Lord, there always is an always will be."

"We want to delude ourselves that love is the root. It isn't it is only the branches"



There is also a great deal to say about how we know things and whether knowledge is good or not. For brevity sake I will leave out the quotes that I found. I was planning on rating this book a 3 out of 5 stars until the last 30 pages of it and then I changed my mind. It has all my favorite themes in it: love, work that makes someone tick, mystic/magic connection, existential questions, what makes people great and a lot to say about good and evil. I have moved it firmly into the 4 star category but only because when I look at my other all time favorite books, it doesn't quite compete. The more I read, the pickier I get. I think this list is turning me into a snob!!! Next up? The Red and the Black by Stendhal.

Book 29- Portrait of a Lady (43 book)

Huh....So book 29 on the list was Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. This is the second of James' books I have read and I feel the same way about it as the first. I started reading both books at the beginning full of high hopes and excitement and ended them feeling like the excitement got lost somewhere along the way.

Portrait of a Lady for me will always remind me of the very specific time frame in which I read it. The book featuring Isabel Archer, an independent American, who is brought by her aunt  to Europe to see the world, mirrrored a little too closely my life at the time that I was reading it. Why, do you ask? Whilst reading it I made several choices of independence that mirrored Isabel's and her story was not a happy one. I am hopeful I will have a different fate.

I guess the first thing I want to say is that even though Isabel's fate is not a happy one I really like her life philsophy. She wants to see life and know it for herself, which is something that I too aspire to. Here are some quotes along that tangent.

"her imagination was by habit ridiculously active; when the door was not open it jumped out the window. She was not accustomed indeed to keep it behind bolts."

"You want to see life"

"You want to drain the cup of experience"

and

"Her old habit had been to live  by enthusiasm, to fall in love with suddenly perceived possibilities with the idea of some new adventure."

Isabel loved life and wanted to go out and see the world. For her, at the start of the novel, the world was a wide open space with plenty of opportunities for a young girl with an enquiring mind. We first find Isabel in America as her aunt discovers her curled up in her family library reading a book. I think that very scene alone endeared her to my  heart.

*Spoiler alert*

Isabel ends up rejecting two marriage proposals. One from an English Lord and another from her American Sweetheart. It is a penniless collector who wins her heart but only wishes to keep her as one of the beautiful glittering objects in his museum-like home. Isabel realizes her fate two late and suffers in silence trying her best to live up to her husbands expectations that she hold only the views he wishes her to hold.

The book has some interesting things to say about marriage, most of them bitter.

"if one marries at all one touches the earth. One has human feelings and needs, one has a heart in one's bosom, and one must marry a particular individual"

"Who could say what men were looking for? They were looking for what they found"

"She had too many ideas for herself, but that was just what one married for, to share them with someone else"

I like the last sentiment and think that is true. In Isabel's case, however, her  husband wanted to have everyone in his life subject to his wishes. Isabel is asked to sacrifice everything that she is in order to remain in a outwardly civil relationship with her husband. Mr. Osmond, her husband, also forces his daughter Pansy to do the same. After years in a convent, Pansy is brought out to see the world, but must not marry unless the prospective husband meets the high standards of beauty that her father sets out for his daughter.

The final moments of the book leave the reader feeling dissatisfied. Almost no one in the book is happy and it ends leaving the reader hanging wondering what the point of it all was. The only redeeming feature of the book is Ralph Touchett who is Isabel's cousin. A physically ill man, Ralph falls in love with his cousin and gives her the means she needs to explore the world to see what she will do with herself. By releasing her to her fate, he comes closest of anyone in the whole novel to actually representing a picture of true love. I was rooting for him the whole book and was happy there was a very least a token of recognition from Isabel of his love.

Here are some cute things the book has to say about love.

"Dear Isabel, life is better; for in life there's love"

"In such hours as this, what have we to do with pain? That's not the deepest thing; there something deeper"

"But love remains"

"Ah but, Isabel--ADORED"

Sigh. I wanted to so badly to love this book about free will and what we make with our lives, but I just couldn't do it. Both of Henry James' books have left me feeling nothing but the vanity of high flying morals and that real life, lived in the trenches is far better than holding rigidly to some philosophical ideal. I suppose since that is probably the point of the novel it succeeded in meeting it's purpose, but I can't say that I enjoyed the process!

Next up? Women in Love.

Book 28-Gravity's Rainbow (42 book of 1001)

Book 28 was Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. I wasn't sure going into this book what to expect but I knew that Thomas Pynchon was a weird writer and I wasn't disappointed there!! The book was filled with drugged out hallucinations, communications with the dead, immortal light bulbs, and whole lot of graphic sexual content.

I am not a fan of war, so I probably had it out for this book before I even began. One thing that it did teach me though was how horrific it would have been to be in London during the Blitz. I have always had a  trauma response to anything from the First World War. I can cry at a drop of hat when someone starts whispering to me about Legend's of the  Fall, for instance! I just think it would be so horrible to be stuck in  trench, covered in mud, half starved and running into bodily harm  knowing half of you aren't going to make it. This book showed me that it would be equally horrifying to always have to look over head during the Second World War. The book centres around a rocket, the V2, which hits and then makes a sound. If you hear it you are still alive. The reversal of the sound first, then hit principle makes a backdrop for an interesting discussion about cause and effect. "You will want cause and effect". This is followed up by a discussion of Pavlov both with some experimental dogs that they training as well as Slothrop, one of the main characters who's penis seems to predict where bombs are going to hit. The book calls into question how much of our behaviour is actually in our control and how much of it is based on outside influences.

"You had dispensed with God. But you had taken on a greater, more  harmful, illusion. The illusion of control".

"all in his life of what has looked free or random, is discovered  to've been under some Control"

Slothrop, the character whose penis is believed to predict where a bomb will hit, becomes extremely paranoid and thinks that everything in his life is under someone else's control. He has a frightened reaction when he walks into a casino because it is a place were you would expect pure chance however he feels that everything is staged for his benefit.

"When They chose number, red, black, odd, even what did They mean by it?"

The book has a lot of repeated phrases and ideas that it plays with. They/we, Preterite/Elect, Life/Death. The novel seems to state that for every part there is a counterpart and one cannot survive without the other. The book also makes several references to the Zero. It seems to hold this out as one of the ultimate goals of life to reach the Zero, to be completely nothing, to die. Half of the book is a quest for the 00000 rocket which everyone knows to be in existence but no one knows where it hit.

"Preterite, the many God passes over when he chooses a few for salvation"

This book is just plain weird. Characters frequently burst into random lewd songs. There are immortal light bulbs named Byron, a several page long description of various ways to eat bananas and a lot characters running all over the "Zone" frequently crossing paths. That should have been funny and made the book interesting to read, but I just wasn't feeling it. Maybe it was the timing, since I read it during a busy month and felt the time crunch to return it to the library. Maybe it was the fact it was set during a war which I hate. Maybe it was the lewd content, which didn't really seem to have a point in the story. Either way, I did not enjoy the process of reading this novel....although I did have a few giggles, and head shakes at the stuff I was reading.

One thing I did like about the book was the feeling of being on a quest that occurs during the last half of the book. As several characters traipse around the Zone in search of the illusive Schwarzkommando and the 00000 you feel like you are on a quest from a fairytale. Despite that fact I still wouldn't rate this novel very highly. It wasn't the worst book I have ever read, and it certainly wasn't the best. I would love to read another  Thomas Pynchon novel though to see if it was just the topic that threw me. I will hopefully pick up another one from the 1001 books to Read Before You Die as I know there are several of his books included in the list.

The One Thousand and One Nights (41st book)

I finally finished a book I started two years ago,  The One Thousand and One  Nights. I picked up this book at a used bookstore for $6 a few summers ago and when I took a trip to Victoria, BC that I called, "Operation Valentines Retreat" I decided it was the perfect book to read while on a holiday. The sole purpose of "Operation Valentines Retreat" was to pamper myself on Valentines when the world tells us that someone else should be doing it for us.  I booked myself a hotel, had coffee and tea in a different shop every couple of hours, and took long bubble baths in hotel while reading. I think this book will always be tied into that time for me and it seems to fit with the book which is definitely a divergent from real life. When I arrived home however, I kind of let the book fall by the wayside even though I only had a hundred or so pages left. Thankfully when the book was the book of the month on the Goodreads "1001 Books to Read Before you Die" group I decided to finally finish it. I can finally tick this book off the list that I have read, even though I have mostly been done for 2 years.

Told as a series of tales to a King who was bent on killing Shahrazad his virgin bride after he had his way with her  the stories always ended leading into another one, so the King would be desirous of keeping her alive for one more night. The stories are very tied into Middle Eastern culture and I was fascinated to learn a ton of new words including Jinn (which is a genie), Wezir (advisor), Khan (hotel I think) and many others. It was also very neat to see how tied into everyday life their faith and religion were. Most stories have profuse praises to God when the characters are spared a horrible fate or granted an unexpected blessing. I loved the phrase, "till they were visited by the terminator of delights and the seperator of companions".

I was saddened to learn that the Harvard classics version that I had was misisng quite a few stories from the longer complete addition. It was also apparently "bowdlerized" or had all the inappropriate sexual content taken out. I always feel that if I am going to read something I need to do it right with the full length, non abridged version. I don't, however, think I loved this book enough to go through the trouble to find the more extensive version to read the nights that I am missing. I think my version ends on night 756 out of the 1001. I was pleased however that it included Ali Baba and the 40 Theives and Al-ed-din or Alladin and the Lamp. These two stories were believed to be an add on not included in the original text. As such they are usually tagged on to the end of the book as a supplement as they were in the case of the book I was reading.

Alright that is my review of 1001 nights. Now that I have finished this I might see what other books I can finish on my shelf that I have half done!

Book 27-The Man Without Qualities (40th book)

I finally finished book 27- The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil. As I set out to write this I have no idea how I am going to summarize a three volume mega novel with a philsophical bent. The first two volumes I didn't like very much, but the third volume I adored. I am not sure what that makes the average for the entire novel in terms of rating, but I guess over all it falls somewhere around a 3 star novel.

The novel, featuring a man named Ulrich who opts out of life by taking a year holiday and doing nothing but thinking through life, has very little action in it. The essential plot follows a cast of characters who have banded together for the collatoral campaign, a project that is trying to come up with one idea to symbolize  the monarch's jubilee. Most of the novel consists of Ulrich playing the devil's advocate through a whole host of conversations with various people. He argues a great deal of the time from both sides of every argument which a lot of the time is highly irritating. The last novel takes place after his fathers death when he reunites with a sister he hasn't seen in years. They have an almost incestuous relationship as they both see each other as two halves of a whole. Ulrich's philosophy is finally solidified at this point in the novel.

One of my favorite tangents in the novel was Ulrich playing with the idea of soul. I actually really like the idea he has which is essentially that the soul is all the empty places inside of us not filled up by personality, societal views or personal feelings. Here are some quotes:

"Every dweller on earth has a tenth character, which is nothing more or less than the passive illusion of spaces unfilled"

" some people even think away out and beyond everything, of a God who has the missing piece of themselves in His pocket"

"all roads to the mind start from the soul, but none leads back again"

"the loved person seems to stand where otherwise there is always something missing"

"I called it the acoustics of the void"

The book also had a great deal to stay about the idea of "mystic rapture". I was ecstatic to feel what I have felt many a time  (and often describe as "so excited I could scream" ) laid out in such fantastic words. It made my heart burn with the excitement the book was describing. It is for this reason, that I can't say I hate this book. It is also this idea of connectedness with the larger world beyond that makes me love literature. When you see something of yourself, outside of yourself it is very heart warming and leaves you with a feeling that all is not lost in the world.

"all moments that had meant something decisive in his life ahd left him with the same feeling"

"all decisive moments of his life had been associated with such a sensation of amazement and lonliness"

"every sort of excitement that exceeds the normal very soon mists over with a patina of melancholy, absurdity and satiation."

"They call it an undoing of self, and at the same time declare they live more fully than ever"

"The heart 'ravenous and satiated' , as they say- suddenly finds itslef in those utopian regions that lie somewhere and nowhere between an infinite tenderness and an infinited loneliness"

The book also has a lot to say about love and what it means between a man and women, but also the love of ideas. Most of the characters are in love with someone, or over the course of the novel several someones. Diotima, Ulrich's cousin is intellectually in love with a member of the collatoral campaign and debates the entire novel whether to take this into the physical realm.

The most fantastic quote that Ulrich aid to Diotima was this:

"to strip to the skin, put arms round each other's shoulders and instead of talking, burst out singing"

and also encouraged her to  'so to speak touching him under his pscyhological loin cloth without shuddering"

There were a lot more that were interesting including these;

"...had entered the territory of intimacy where one reveals oneself to the other person in all one's emotional disorder"

"When do you understand another human being? You have to play along with him"


"It goes back a very long way, this desire for a doppelganger of the opposite sex, this craving for the love of a being that will be entirely the same as oneself and yet another"

"true love-sickness is not desire for possession, but only a gentle unveiling of the wordl itself"

Finally there is a lot that talks about morality. Ulrich never really officially pins down his philsophy of life, but essentially you are never left feeling that the world doesn't have meaning or that there isn't a God. Despite several arguements about good and evil and deconstructing them Ulrich still believes that they exist. This book talks a lot about how morality should be fun and that living a life consistent with your own philosophy of life should not be boring. It left me excited about life and with a feeling that one can have a personal view of the world, still believe in some form of universal truth, but yet also be open to the differences amongst people. By playing both sides of each arguement I really feel like Ulrich comes closer to the truth about life than a lot of other people. He plays with the idea of a both/and philsophy and also that the truth lifes somehwere in between polar sides of an argument.

"We ourselves must work out the sum he sets us"

"he regarded the problem set by every human life as one of these" (a math problem with a specific answer but no general one)

"nowadays every truth comes into the world split into two mutually antagonistic falsehoods"

"perhaps they're potentially good human beings. They don't lose that even as criminals"

"Why should moral people be so dreary...when their intentions are good ought to be the most delicious, the most difficult, the most enjoyable thing anyone can possibly imagine"

"All moral propostions, "Ulrich confirmed, ' refer to a sort of dream condition that's long ago taken wing and flown away ot of the cage of rules in which we try to hold it fast"

"For him morality was neither conformism nor the sum of acquired knowledge: it was  the infinite fullness of lifes potentialities"

"morality is imagination'

This book was fun, Ulrich never takes himself seriously and you feel light hearted and silly about everything the whole time. It is long, though, and daunting. Large chunks of the book at times seem unnecessary and the action is slow moving.  The book also doesn't come to a conclusion either because the author never finished the novel or he purposely leaves it vague. Either way, this book is likely not for everyone. I love philosophy and playing around with ideas in my head so for that I mostly enjoyed the book.

Book 26-Finnegans Wake (39th Book of 1001)

I am finally finished what I have taken to referring to as "the monster". Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce is a difficult but ultimately clever novel about the rise and fall of man. I have never been so glad to be finished a novel in my entire life, despite the very interesting subject matter. I am sad to say that I understood almost none of it. Essentially, I gathered an interesting collection of Biblical references, silly words and phrases that made me giggle and a general idea of repeated phrases that are used throughout the book. It wasn't until three quarters of the way through that I finally caved and tried to find a cheater guide to assist me. Even with the guide half the time I couldn't see what others saw. I decided I was okay with not understanding or grasping the book, but that I absolutly had to finish it before moving on to the next novel on the list. As I raged about the book to various people that would listen they tried to convince me to move on because life was to short to waste it on bad reading. I have discovered that I am stubborn though, and a far harsher task master than any teacher I ever had. Since I set for myself to read the 100 novels from Daniel S. Burt's book I actually want to do it. I have already had one "cheat" by only reading 2 of the 6 books of "In Search of Lost Time" or "Rememberance of things Past". I have promised myself I will go back when I am done though. Now I am proud to say that I accomplished it and I feel pretty good about pushing past all my anger, frustration and exhaustion. It is suprisingly exhausting to simply read words on a page without comprehension. I don't know how international students learn a second language by immersion. It hurts my brain.

So this is going to be a non-traditional book review since I can't tell you much about the plot and the verdict is still out on how much I hate or like this novel....

Here is a list of my favorite clever "portmanteaus" which are a combintation of two words to make another. Here is a good way to look at it in Joyce's words which I think describe a portmanteau well, "a word as cunningly hidden in its maze of confused drapery as a fieldmouse in a nest of coloured ribbons"

musaic=a mosaic of music
reamalgamerge= reamalgamating and merging
uniswoon= two girls swooning in unison!
chickenestegg= a clever combo which conveys the idea which came first the chicken or the egg
ould lanxiety= a reference to the song old lang sine but also including anxiety
pigstickularly= particularly but also conveying the idea of being pig headed or stubborn
"moanday, Tearsday, wailsday, thumpsday, frightday, shatterday"= the days of the week depressing style!

The book has several really clever references to the biblical stories of the rise and fall of man. The actual story line for the most part involves several sexual indiscretions and the need for the characters to be redeemed and get back with their partners. I can't hate the book because of the clever portmanteaus and the cute biblical references that make me giggle.

"antediluvial zoo/ Noah's lark= a clever reference to the ark since antediluvial means "pre flood"  or something like that.

"they all were afloat in a dreamlifeboat, hugging two by two in his zoo-do-you-doo"- yet another clever reference to the ark, but also life in general

"the first babe of reconcilement is laid in its last cradle" a reference to Jesus

"by Allswell" the inception and the descent and the endswell of man is temporarily wrapped in obscenity"

Wow! What a great description of hope that Christian's have! There will be an all's well that ends well for everyone but it is temporarily wrapped in obscenity. I know he was making fun of religion but that actually makes me happy!

"the onesomeness was alltolonely" aww, a sad reference to God as being lonely.

"flash becomes word and silents selfloud" = a clever reinterreptation of a line from the Bible.

"This is the glider that gladdened the girl that lest tis the wind,that lifted the leaves that folded the fruit that hung on the tree that grew in the garden Gough gave"

A very rhythmic interreptation of Eve eating the fruit because of the "glider" or snake (aka Satan)

And another reference to Eve in the garden: "As the last liar in the earth begeylywaylayed the first lady of the forest"....the gibberish word in the middle is a clever combo of beguiled and waylayed!

"In the beginning is the word, in the muddle is the sound-dance and thereinofter you're in the unbewised again"

That is so beautiful and reminescent of the line from John, "in the beginning was the word..."

"All men has done something. Be the time they've come to the weight of old flesch" - What a beautiful way to describe the universality of sin and the human condition.

And Jesus is, "The child we all love to place our hope in forever"

There was also several very beautiful word combos that made me so happy because of the beauty of the imagery.

"star menagerie"
"Souls groupography"
"tidings of great joy into our nevertolatetolove box"
"the better half of a yearn or a sob. Its a wild kitten, my dear"

Finally, there are a lot of pop culture references such as nursery rhymes, songs, and stories thrown throughout the novel. I had the kids nursery rhyme about the blackbirds baked in a pie stuck in my head for days before I stumbled upon another cleverly hidden nursery rhyme. I wish I had written down the one about the blackbirds but it was only unconciously registered by my mind!

See if you can figure out these two:

"Flunkey footle forlaughed foul, writing off his phoney"

and this:

"yunker doodler wanked to wall awriting off his phoney"

Did you get it? Yankee Doodle the kids nursery rhyme!

And heres one that takes reading outloud:

"singaloo sweecheeriode"

Its the old hymn Swing Low, Sweet Chariot!

Oops, I have two last things to say....So the finally above really wasn't all that final! LOL.

Heres one thing that didn't fit in with the other sections. See if you can figure out what this says....this is just one piece of how hard it gets:

"bi tso fb rok engl a ssan dspl itch ina"

No? I was pleased as punch when I discovered of my own accord that it actually says "bits of broken glass and split china"!!! It is moments like that that made me LOVE the book, but it is such hard work and so unavailable to so many people....and ultimately 90% not fun to read that I don't think I can give it a high rating. That being said I don't think I can give it a low rating either since it is extremely clever and if it took as much mental effort to write as it did to read, James Joyce is either insane or brilliant (perhaps both)!

Lastly (and I mean it this time!) the Title in and of itself is brilliant Finnegan's wake has several varied meanings. "Finn" means to end but "egan" has overtones of to begin again. Wake is both a celebration at the end of life as well as to wake again. one of the two list I am using pointed that out to me. One of the last few statements in the novel whose beginning and end are joined by the first and last incompleted sentence making the novel one giant circle to be read again and again is Finn, again" helpfully pointing out that  the title has a double meaning.

The next novel on the list is "The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil

The Night Circus- A Delightful tangent from list reading!

Such a pretty, glittery tale about magic! I alternately wanted to continue reading  and stop reading so the story didn't have to end. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern is a 5 star book in my opinion. I knew I would love the book by the title, but I didn't realize how much.

I named my blog magic and mystery because to me those two things describe my love all things deep and spiritual. For me, magic is real (although not the circus and slight of hand variety) and mystery is what makes life worth living. This book has both elements to it and I just ate it up. I started the book as I started a very fun adventure to visit a friend. It was a perfect book to be reading  while on a journey.

There was a great quote about magic being the way the world is, "This is not magic. This is the way the world is, only very few people take the time to stop and note it"

The book finishes on one of my favorite themes. The magic of story and the healing power of  of deep truths in mythology, fairy tales and old stories. I have always believed that these things contain soul level truth. The book also talks about dreams and how we should all be living to our fullest potential. Both of these themes have always filled me with such glee. I discovered quite early the joy of living for things that make you happy (not hedonistic, bachanal pleasures but the things that make you tick). The things that make you come alive, are the things you should pour your life into. There were several awesome quotes about dreamers and the idea of story

"Someone needs to tell their bits of overlapping narrative. There's magic in it"

"You may tell a tale that takes  up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose"

I have several of these stories and tales that I have read and shaped me for better or worse. Not all of them are beautiful tales, but all of them involve real life. Some on my list include: East of Eden by John Steinbeck, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Doestoyevsky and some of the more recent ones including A Trip to the Stars by Nicholas Christopher and About Grace by Anthony Doerr.

I have discovered two things of late. a) that I probably should have taken more philosophy in university because I love finding things in stories that hint at the meaning behind the universe  and b) that I really should have been an English major in university because of the sick pleasure I get from ripping apart a story and finding themes in it.

"The truest tales require time and familiarity to become what they are"

"He reads histories and mythologies and fairy tales , wondering why it seems that only girls are ever swept away from their mundane lives"

"There are no longer simple tales with quests and beasts and happy endings. The quests lack clarity of goal or path"

There was a lot about dreams and the story of Bailey who is a young boy who stumbles upon the circus is particularly heart warming as he discovers what it is he wants to live for. I love dreams. I would love eventually to do something that would help others discover that in themselves. But what job is that? Career counsellor? That's a piece of it, but so much more I am sure...

"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees dawn before the rest of the world ~Oscar Wilde

The circus in the story was called "Circus of Dreams" in French. I thought it a most appropriate  name given that the majority of the circus was someones imagination made reality.

"But you built me dreams instead"

"Follow your dreams, Bailey...no matter what that father of yorus says, or how loudly he might say it. He forgets that he was someone else's dream once, himself"

"The Bailey he is now is closer to the Bailey he is supposed to be than the Bailey he had been the day before"

I guess that is all I will say about dreams and magic but I'll end this review with a description of some of the most beautiful things in the circus. A room filled with snow, a garden made of ice, a room with bottled scents, feelings and emotions, "unusually talented kittens" that jump through hoops, a star gazing room,  and a circus that appears suddenly in town without warning, is only open at night, dressed in black and white, peopled with victorian era ball gowns and dapper suits and fronted by a huge clock that has a multitude of beautiful moving parts. It is singularly the most beautiful thing I have ever heard of.

I'll leave you with one last quote to ponder. It tickled me pink and left me giggling to myself uncontrollably!

"...Not as one smiles at a random member of the audience when one is in the middle of performing circus tricks with unusually talented kittesn but in the way that one smiles when one recognizes someone..."