Like Calligraphy
Title: Voltaire’s Calligrapher
Author: Pablo De Santis
Publisher: Harper
Genre: Fiction
Length: 149 pages
You know it’s been a rough week when you’ve managed to 1. worry your best friends 2. drive your husband batty 3. inadvertently offend your readers 4. write not one, but two overly pouty blog posts and 5. manage to take a whole week to read 149 pages.
Especially when those 149 pages are so delicious.
Not just delicious, witty and divine.
De Santis doesn’t just write about calligraphy and a master calligrapher. He manages to make his words sound like calligraphy. And his story is woven with the same sly craftiness as runaway ink.
Normally, I would recommend someone read this in one sitting over a cup of the best dark coffee blend they have. I didn’t do that. I spent a week sucking down a chapter at a time – and his chapters are only a page to three at best.
There are castles and print shops, automatons, and poisonous fish… dark corners and forbidden candlelight… Oh my! What terrifying fun! You won’t regret diving into the adventure.
Elements of Safety and Coziness
I am trying to be more conscientious of italicizing titles. I pretty much never do it, even though I know it is grammatically incorrect not to do so. It’s just a little button, so why am I so lazy? Who knows, but it seems as of late I’ve been accused of all kinds of laziness, and I do not want my writing to be one of those things.
Unrelated, (but also an exercise of habitually italicizing titles I share) I want to catalog cozy lines… my favorite bits of words and phrases and sentences and paragraphs that come to me in books that relate how I want to feel about the world. Things like this:
“It was one of those moments when you know the world is as it should be, believe everything is good, and trust you will always be safe.” – from Voltaire’s Calligrapher, pg. 86
And of course John Banville’s The Sea, which I have mentioned before:
“Life, authentic life, is supposed to be all struggle, unflagging action and affirmation, the will butting its blunt head against the world’s wall, suchlike, but when I look back I see that the greater part of my energies was always given over to the simple search for shelter, for comfort, for, yes, I admit it, for cosiness.” – pg. 44
This line of thinking actually began as I was reading Pablo de Santis’ Voltaire’s Calligrapher, and while prepping to write a review I came across the above mentioned quote. Add to the fact that I’ve had Lana Del Rey’s “Born to Die” playing on repeat half the morning while I read and clean the house, and, well, it’s just one of those days.
It’s too cold outside. It’s too cold outside and it’s not warm enough inside to make up for it.
I was reading through the reviews of my novella as I prep a second edition to release roughly around the same time as the sequel and there’s mention of the story being too easy. The characters have too much ease in erecting the Bookshop, they don’t encounter any dilemmas or properly struggle as you would in real life. I agree. As a storyteller I failed in that regard. Wondering how I could have done such a thing without a second thought, I realized – this isn’t the book I intended to write. I’ve been working on a sci-fi piece for years, but necessity required I scoop something together and try to make a buck. I wanted it to be easy. I needed it to be easy. Life has been too damn hard the last few years and I needed something simple to bury myself. Perhaps I shortchanged my readers, something I hope to remedy with a second edition and a sequel, but honestly, it was exactly what I needed. Minus the loads of money it’s NOT making. Seriously, if you want to feed my family for a whole day, buy my book
The problem is, I don’t think half as many people read these posts as pretend to. If everyone purchased my book that followed this blog, I’d be able to pay all my bills for a month. It’s a dream. Things being easy is a dream. I suppose that’s why I wrote my novella the way I did. I just wanted to live in a dream for 130 pages. The one liners weren’t doing it for me that month.
And as I say every morning when I wake up, “I’ll do better next time.”
So I’m here summoning all my best to offer you guys for book two. I’m here writing all over my novella, trying to edit out all the typos the editors missed. I’m here wanting things to be cozy and warm – desperately missing the sunshine and every cozy moment I’ve ever had with anyone ever. Because the world is not safe. Things are not cozy. Bills don’t get paid on time, foraging is just as much a necessity as a neat thing to teach my kid, and every day and every moment is a struggle to continue to exist.
A Tidbit from Miss Golightly
A Thoreau quote is a good way to start a novel. Also, sometimes it’s good to choose a book based on its cover, and it’s nearly always good to have coffee and chocolate while reading. (at Cultivar Coffee & Tea Co.)
– Miss Golightly
I will be joining Miss Golightly in reading this book this week. You can join us too and discuss later! – Anakalian Whims
Poetry and Paint
Title:The Road Not Taken and Other Poems
Author: Robert Frost
Publisher: Dover Thrift Edition
Genre: Poetry
I have a hard time reading poetry silently. When I’m reading it in my mind, my eyes tend to skip over the words like stones on water.
But aloud – that’s a different story.
Nothing calms us faster in my house (the kiddo and I) than poetry, painting, and a little Alt-J in the background. I don’t know how I survived sadness and melancholy before Alt-J was a part of my world.
The latest masterpiece – age 3.
This week we read through a Dover Thrift Edition of Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken and Other Poems. Like most people, kiddo will probably be far more familiar with The Road Less Taken than any of Frost’s other poetry. We don’t just read it out loud when we paint, but out on the trails in the woods too. Poetry is appropriate for painting, Frost is great while tromping on leaves. He just has a woodsy feel to him.
Starting a new piece during a poetry day.
MORNING COFFEE: FRIDAY EDITION
Photo compliments of Hannah from Coffee Scribble. (Formerly known as Musings from the TARDIS.)
Moonhorse
Weekly Low Down on Kids Books
Title: Moonhorse
Author: Mary Pope Osborne
Illustrator: S.M. Sealig
Genre: Children’s Picture Book
I saw this and couldn’t pass it up. Mary Pope Osborne invades my house again! I love her.
I enjoy her complete ability to offer facts and history and in this case astronomy in the form of fiction. To pique a child’s interest in a nonfiction topic with a bit of fantastical fairy tale.
I’m trying to get more detailed and specific when I offer these reviews of my child’s favorite books, but she doesn’t always seem to understand the questions. Or perhaps, I don’t understand the beautiful simplicity of her answers.
Me: “Did you like this book?”
Kiddo: “Yes!”
Me: “What did you like about it?”
Kiddo: “The white!”
Me: “Because the horse is white?”
Kiddo: “With the red.”
The little girl in the illustration is wearing a red dress. I think bits of the story were lost on my three year old today, she was drawing her own pictures and sucking down a cup of milk. I think ultimately, what she may have been trying to tell me, in her distracted three year old way, is that she liked the illustrations and the use of muted color. But I don’t want to put words in her mouth.
If you’re building an astronomy unit study for anyone under ten, this is a nice bedtime story to add to your week. Personally, I wish the poetry of the tale was rhymed more, but I have a natural inclination to the sing-songy way of things.
Stuck in Love
A Movie Review for the Bookish at Heart
I was watching Stuck in Love, and probably about halfway through it, when my husband walked in and said, “You enjoying your book movie?”
It took me a minute. This movie was about a man who spends three years of his life waiting for his wife to return to him – even though they are divorced and she has married someone else. This movie is about the third year and how he handles the emotional struggles of his two nearly adult children. And yes, I realized after my husband posed the question, this movie is about four writers – lots of book lovers – and has many literary references.
Greg Kinnear’s character has won two Penn Faulkner Awards. His oldest daughter is 19 and has just published her first novel through Scribner. His younger son, also having been groomed to write his whole life, is a poet and short story writer obsessed with Stephen King. Jennifer Connelly (the ex-wife) can be found reading Joan Didion in bed. Books are tossed around the set like old friends and are active characters in the movie as well, perched on shelves and end tables, strewn across laps at the beach.
I had not noticed until my husband pointed it out. I had not noticed because it was so familiar. I had not noticed because I live with these stacks of souls trapped in bindings all over my house. Sitting at the kitchen table, watching the sun come up with my coffee, I look out at my table… just here, in the kitchen of all places, I have 10 books, a journal, and a day planner, piled around me. You’d think this was a proper writing desk except for the bowl of orange slices and blueberries, my daughter’s play dough bucket, a United States place mat, and a container of markers.
Granted the houses in Stuck in Love are much nicer than my own. Slightly bigger and the bookshelves are proper built-ins made of mahogany or some-such beautiful woodwork. The end tables were no doubt not retrieved from a neighbor’s discard pile. Yes, that black stone tile end table pictured here on the right came out of the trash. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it and I could care less that it doesn’t match anything else in my house – I shall pile books on it. (Even though I’m supposed to keep all my books in the library and not let them trickle into the rest of the house. Keeping them out of other rooms requires a lot of daily maintenance.)
The people in Stuck in Love aren’t just richer than me, they’re probably much braver than me also. The daughter actually takes creative writing classes in school – whereas I took the safe route and studied marketing. They do what they feel – which results in a lot of really bad decisions. But one thing we do have in common, which I found really refreshing in a secular story, is have a permanence view of marriage. (You don’t find a lot of anyone who shares this worldview, not even among Christians: http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=11309913170).
I found a lot of online critics who gave this movie a ‘rotten tomatoes’ rating (the soundtrack, however, gets glowing reviews from everyone). I am not with them (except for the soundtrack lovers). I found it marvelous. It’s a beautiful story about genuine people with a lot of bookish bits. I gave it 5 stars on my Netflix account. I will re-watch it. I will probably compile a list of the character’s books at some point and add them to things to move up my TBR pile (the patriarch can be seen reading Jeffrey Ford as well, but I didn’t catch the title).
Not just for the book lists, the movie is filled with little quotable quotes, little tidbits for book-nerds and writers. Maybe that’s why I like it so much. That and I love that the dad teaches his kids to journal, that he allows them the privacy to write. I love that writing and reading are treated as means to live by, ways to learn, and how to pinpoint your emotions about your reality.
Something so obvious, that I didn’t catch at first glance and my husband did at a brief glimpse, this is a movie for book people.
Torture
The worst level of torture happens in our own minds – mostly in the form of perceptions and lies.
I live in a state of an aching mind. The pressure behind the eyes. The mean reds. The emptiness in the pit of my gut, my heart, and my soul. And most of this ache is something I should be able to think my way out of, if I’m to embrace my own belief systems. I should be able to choose to be happier. I should be able to read something positive until I feel it. I should be able to think in truths and not get caught up in whatever lies I have allowed myself to believe that day.
But my aching mind has been here for months. Months and months and I just can’t kick it.
Eating doesn’t fix it. Working out doesn’t fix it. Reading suppresses it. Praying seems to make it worse – if only because my image of God is much like my memories of my own dad (smacking me on the head and saying, “Just don’t be stupid” as you can imagine is *so* helpful).
It’s that need to cry and not being able to. It’s the need to scream at the top of your lungs into a cavern and enjoy the echo back, but never having the opportunity to do so. It’s the need to sleep unabashedly half naked in the sunlight like I did when I was young and that being completely out of the question. It’s the need for something, something so generic and so specific at the same time it’s completely absurd and renders me inarticulate.
It’s a terrible want that I can’t kick. A want I’ve never had before so I don’t know how to kick it, really.
Anger is easy. I’ve learned to calm my anger. I’ve become quite an expert at completely suppressing it for someone else’s emotional well being. Frustration is not so easy, but putting frustration aside is a daily exercise when you are chronically poor and have a toddler. Wanting material things is easy to kick. Wanting a lot of things is easy to kick.
It’s easy to kick things you have similar experiences with… but how do you kick a feeling you’ve never had?
Wanting something you can’t even identify. Something so imbedded in your core it makes you physically ill. It’s torturous to see shadows and glimpses of this something, but it never comes fully to light. The ache, the want, just hiding around the bend and under a rock. Just out of reach. Just out of sight. But pulsing, and radiating, and letting you know that it’s there and that you are missing it.
In the mean time, I’ll bury myself in The Bridge of San Luis Rey, and see if I can put it off for another night.
Papyrus – truly a thriller
Title: Papyrus
Author: John Oehler
Genre: Suspense, Historical Fiction
Length: 326 pages
I’ve wanted to read this book since the second I saw its cover. Mainly because John Oehler wrote it and I really enjoy his writing. I read and reviewed Aphrodesia awhile back and I swear I blushed for a month, so I knew Oehler’s writing was phenomenal. Add my obsession for all things Egyptian, and I was completely sold.
Many times this level of anticipation won’t work out well for a reader. There’s too much pressure on the book. How could it possibly live up?
Papyrus took my expectations in stride and out did itself.
Historical fiction all the way, there are still two different timelines – the ancient past (the 18th Dynasty of Egypt) and the not so ancient past (1977, during the war between Eritrea and Ethiopa). I enjoyed the banter and flirtation between these timelines and the story. It was woven together well and never missed a beat or left the reader feeling out of sorts with the rhythm of the tale.
In 1977, Oehler’s Rika Teferi is both a scholar and a warrior of Eritrea. This was an attribute so enticing for my black belt and book nerdy self that I spent two hours in a local Starbucks devouring this book instead of watching the Broncos beat the Patriots on Sunday. I loved her for her strength, her beauty, and ultimately for her intelligence.
Dive into ancient Egypt and Queen Tiye is completely riveting, especially since most my academic studies have focused on Hatshepsut and Nefertiti. It was refreshing to have Akhenaten’s mother be the focus, as I don’t think she is as common a fictional pursuit as other Eqyptian Queens. (The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Pauline Gedge’s The Twelfth Transforming – also stellar writing, but I was apparently so disappointed with the story it seems I have given that title away.) I do not own any nonfiction work devoted primarily to Tiye either, but Oehler’s version of her offered a pretty tempting reason to go find some.
As always Oehler handles the story arch with such grace and ease – I am jealous. He writes stories where things happen. Not just anything, but powerful and exciting things. Foreign countries, different times, bombs, planes, diplomats, ancient manuscripts, tombs, revolutionaries, romance…! His books are award winners with good reason and he is one of Houston’s best kept secrets. It is amazing to me that this was Oehler’s first novel.
February 2014 Events!
Stores and coordinators take a little bit of a break from extra events around the winter solstice holidays and let the holidays be the holidays. But it’s a new year! Here’s to February 2014.
Anakalian Whims 