Skippy Dies - Paul Murray (1)

'What I don't understand,' Geoff says, 'is why did the first fish, like the one who started land animals, suddenly decided one day to just leave the sea? Like, to leave everything he knew, to go flipping around on a land where no one had ever evolved yet for him to talk to?' He shakes his head, 'He was a brave fish, definitely, and we owe him a lot, for staring  life on land and everything? But I think he must have been very depressed.'

This is the book that we're all hyping at work right now. For so many reasons. ~700 pages of witty, sad, weird (Irish) boarding school drama with all that comes with that. And Skippy, he dies in the first five pages. I have 300 pages left so I better get to it.

American Gods - Neil Gailman (2)

The three children went to the local church to hear the traveling preacher on Sundays, and they went to the little school to learn their letters and their fanners; while Essie also made sure they knew the mysteries of the piskies, which were the most important mysteries there were: redheaded men, with eyes and clothes as green as a river and turned-up noses, funny, squinting men who would, if they got a mind to, turn you and twist you and lead you out of your way, unless you had salt in your pocket, or a little bread. When the children went off to school, they each of them carried a little salt in one pocket, a little bread in the other, the old symbols of life and the earth, to make sure they came safely home once more, and they always did.

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury (7)

'Stuff your eyes with wonder,' he said, 'live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic then any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that,' he said, 'shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass'.

American Gods - Neil Gaiman (1)

"How was the funeral?" he asked.
"It's over," said Shadow.
"You want to talk about it?"
"No," said Shadow.
"Good." Wednesday grinned. "Too much talking these days. Talk talk talk. This country would get along much better if people learned how to suffer in silence."

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury (6)

Most of us can't rush around, talking to everyone, know all the cities in the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for, Montag, are in the world, but only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least knowing you were headed for shore.

A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess (1)

Then while he went hauwww hauww hauww like a doggie I tried the same style as for Georgie, banking all on one move-up, cross, cut-and I felt the britva go just deep enough in the meat of old Dim's wrist and he dropped his snaking oozy yelping like a little child. Then he tried to drink in all the blood from his wrist and howl at the same time, and there was to much krovvy to drink and he went bubble bubble, the red like fountaining our lovely, but not for very long.

The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway (1)

The old man drank his coffee slowly. It was all he would have all day and he knew that he should take it. For a long time now eating had bored him and he never carried a lunch. He had a bottle of water in the bow of the skiff and that was all he needed for the day.

The Stranger - Albert Camus (1)

I remember it was a Sunday, and that put me off; I've never cared for Sundays. So I turned my head and lazily sniffed the smell of brine that Marie's head had left on the pillow. I slept until ten. After that I stayed in bed until noon, smoking cigarettes. I decided not to lunch at Céleste's restaurant as I usually did; they'd be sure to pester me with questions, and I disliked being questioned.
So I fried some eggs and ate them off the pan. I did without bread as there wasn't any left, and I couldn't be bothered going down to buy it.

On the Road - Jack Kerouac (3)

In the West he'd spent a third of his time in the poolhall, a third in jail, and a third in the public library. They'd seen him rushing eagerly down the winter streets, bareheaded, carrying books to the poolhall, or climbing trees to get into the attics of buddies where he spent days reading or hiding from the law.

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury (5)

All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic book survive. And the three-dimensional sex-magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag, It didn't come from the Government, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals."

The Housekeeper + The Professor - Yoko Ogawa (1)

I remembered something the Professor had said: "The mathematical order is beautiful precisely because it has no effect on the real world. Life isn't going to be easier, nor is anyone going to make a fortune, just because they know something about prime number. Of course, lots of mathematical discoveries have practical applications, no matter how esoteric they may seem. Research on ellipses made it possible to determine the orbits of the planets, and Einstein used non-Euclidean geometry to describe the form of the universe. Every prime number were used during the war to create codes-to cite a regrettable example. But those things aren't the goal of mathematics. The only goal is to discover the truth."

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury (4)

He lay far across the room form her, on a winter island separated by an empty sea. She talked to him for what seemed a long while and she talked about this and she talked about that and it was only words, like the words he had heard once in a nursery at a friend's house, a two-year-old child building word patterns, talking jargon, making pretty sounds in the air. But Montag said nothing and after a long while when he only made the small sounds, he felt her move in the room and come to his bed and stand over him and put her hand down to feel his cheek. He knew that when she pulled her hand away from his face it was wet.

A Game Of Thrones - George R.R Martin (4)

"Hear my words, and bear witness to my vow," they recited, their voices filling the twilit grove. "Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the night to come."

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury (3)

"But most of all," she said, "I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they're going. Sometimes I even go to the Fun Parks and ride in the jet cars when they race on the edge of town at midnight and the police don't care as long as they're insured. As long as everyone has ten thousand insurance everyone's happy. Sometimes I sneak around and listen in subways. Or I listen at soda fountains, and do you know what?"
"What?"
"People don't talk about anything."
"Oh, they must!"
"No, not anything. They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimmingpools mostly and say how swell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else. And most of the time in the cafes they have the jokeboxes on and the same joke most of the time, or the musical wall lit and all the coloured patterns running up and down, but it's only colour and all abstract. And at the museums, have you ever been? All abstract. That's all there is now. My uncle says it was different once. A long time back sometimes pictures said things or even showed people."

A Game Of Thornes - George R.R. Martin (3)

"I hate the cold," he said. "Last night I woke up in the dark and the fire had gone out and I was certain I was going to freeze to death by morning."
   "It must have been warmer where you come from."
   "I never saw snow until last month. We were crossing the barrowlands, me and the men my father sent to see me north, and this white stuff began to fall, like a soft rain. At first I thought it was beautiful, like feathers drifting from the sky, but it kept on and on, until I was frozen to the bone. The men had crusts of snow in their beards and more on their shoulders, and still it kept coming. I was afraid it would never end."
Jon smiled.

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury (2)

He was not happy. He was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as the true state of affairs. He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back.

A Game Of Thrones - George R.R. Martin (2)

"Oh, my sweet summer child," Old Nan said quietly, "what do you know of fear? Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long night, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children are born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolfes grow gaunt and hungry, and the white walkers move though the woods."

On the Road - Jack Kerouac (2)

[...] for one of the biggest troubles hitchhiking is having to talk to innumerable people, make them fell that they didn't make a mistake picking you up, even entertain them almost, all of which is a great strain when you're going all the way and don't plan to sleep in hotels.

The Road - Corman McCarthy (2)

They carried armloads of dead limbs up the black stairs through the kitchen and into the diningroom and broke them to length and stuffed the fireplace full. He lit the fire and smoke curled up over the painted wood lintel and rose to the ceiling and curled down again. He fanned the blaze with a magazine and soon the flue began to draw and the fire roared in the room lighting up the walls and the ceiling and the glass chandelier in its myraid facets. The flame lit the darkening glass of the window where the boy stood in hooded silhouette like a troll come in from the night. He seemed stunned by the heat. The man pulled the sheets off the long Empire table in the center of the room and shook them out and made a nest of them in front of the hearth. He sat the boy down and pulled off his shoes and pulled off the dirty rags with which his feet were wrapped. Everything's okay, he whispered. Everything's okay. 

A Game Of Thrones - George R.R Martin (1)

My mind is my weapon. My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer, and I have my mind... and a mind needs books as a sword needs whetstone, if it is to keep its edge" Tyrion tapped the leather cover of the book. "That's why I read so much, Jon Snow."

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury (1)

"I'm anti-social, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking about thing like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four hours of film-teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecking place with the big steel ball. Or go you in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lamp-posts, playing 'chicken' and 'knock hub.caps.' I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right, I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is wither shouting or dancing around like wild or bearing up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?"
"You sound very old."

On the Road - Jack Kerouac (1)

They rushed down the street together, digging everything in the early way they had, which later became so much sadder and perceptive and blank. But then they danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploring like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the clue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!" What did they call such young people in Goethe's Germany? Wanting dearly to learn how to write like Carlo, the first thing you know, Dean was attacking him with a great amorous soul such as only a con-man can have. "Now, Carlo, let me speak-here's what I'm saying..." I didn't see them for about two weeks, during which time they cemented their relationship to fiendish allday-allnight talk proportions.

Every Day - David Levithan (1)

I watched as she picked everything out of the picnic hamper. Cheeses. French bread. Hummus. Olives. Salad. Chips. Salsa.
   "Are you vegetarian?" I ask, based on the evidence in front of me.
    She nods.

    "Why?"
    "Because I have this theory that when we die, every animal that we've eaten has a chance at eating us back. So if you're a carnivore and you add up all the animals you're eaten-well, that's a long time in purgatory, being chewed."

    "Really?"

She laughs. "No. I'm just sick of the question. I mean, I'm vegetarian because I think it's wrong to eat other sentient creatures. And it sucks for the environment."
     "Fair enough." I don't tell her how many times I've accidentally eaten meat while I've been in a vegetarian's body. It's just not something I remember to check for. It's usually the friends' reactions that alert me. I once made a vegan really, really sick at a McDonald's.

The Road - Cormac McCarthy (1)

They camped in a bench of land on the far side of a frozen roadside creek. The wind had blown the ash from the ice and the ice was black and the creek looked like a path of basalt winding through the woods. They collected firewood from the north side of the slope where it was not so wet, pushing over whole trees and dragging them into camp. They got the fire going and spread their tarp and hing their wet clothes on poles to steam and stink and they sat wrapped in the quilts naked while the man held the boy's feet against his stomach to warm them.

Mew - Saliva

Mew's song Saliva is a song that me and my former room mate Anna used to playea lot when I just moved to Stockholm and we lived together in a tiny apartment.

This song is still one of my favorite songs. It's odd but I don't know how many times I have quoted it, mostly without people noticing it (I don't think Mew is such a big band outside of Scandinavia, and they are not that big there either) or me and Anna going "I'm finding out you can't mess around with saliva" after nights out. So many memories and such a good song.

Mew - Saliva

And I'm sorry about you and me.

And I'm sorry about us.

You try to give it your best,

but to what end? Saliva.

You may no think so at first,

but I'm your designated driver.

But this roadside is not yours or mine.

And it's about time that I stop.

She is the gray weather at the end of my tether.

I didn't quite make it;

I had to forsake it.

And as I sit on the train,

I can taste her in my saliva.

But I still depend on my Thursday friend, Saliva.

And there's no book about you and me.

Only snippets remain.

I get a light! 

I get a light from everyone.

That's right! 

So undetermined,

all I do now is just horrible and mean.

I used to think that she and me could only be just fine,

and to begin with nothing seems wrong,

But it's not a happy song.

And I'm sorry about you and me.

And I'm sorry about us.

She is the gray weather at the end of my tether.

I didn't quite make it;

I had to forsake it.

I'm finding out that you can't mess around with saliva.

And I drive a lot, 'cause I can't stop thinking about her.

(I'm in your hands)

I'll be yours, you'll be mine.

It'll be fine. 

Intertwined.

Wet your dried out lips with saliva.

What's more strange than this? Your saliva.

If I did not miss your saliva,

if my lips could kiss your saliva still.

You know where to find me - Rachel Cohn

I preferred books to people. Laura was my exception. We had out own secret language, nonsense words to communicate when adults were present. Me-oh-my-oh-milo, eh foo manchu mysteryahoyatolah, in the car ride back from gymnastics class, could translate as, " Miles, since I'm allowed to check out more then two books a week from the library, I snuck some Nancy Drews into the tree house for you." Aiieeee, hersheyhialeaLauraho spaghetti-o-sautus was easily understood as "I swiped some chocolate bars for us from 7-Eleven, Laura. Meet you up there after dinner." 

The Summer Without Men - Siri Hustvedt (3)

I volunteered that Hollywood films were now made exclusively for fourteen-year-old boys, an audience of limited sophistication, which had drained the movies of even the hope of sprightly dialogue. Farts, vomit, and semen had taken its place.
---


Outside in the hallway, my mother stopped. She pressed both hands to her chest, closed her eyes, and said under her breath, "It's so bitter."
"What, Mama?"
"Old age."

Every you, every me - David Levithan (3)

"What is the answer, Ewan?" Ms. Granger asked.

Giraffe, I wanted to answer. It was on the tip on my tounge.
Giraffe.
This was in math class.

Special topics in Calamity Physics - Marisha Pessl (3)

He was handsome, sure, but as Dad once said, there were people who'd completely missed their decade, were born at the wrong time - not in the intellectually gifted sense, but due to a certain look on their face more suitable to the Victorian Age then, say, the Me Decade. Well, this kid, was some twenty years to late. He was the on with thick brown hair that flyingsaucered over an eye, the one who inspired girls to make their own prom dress, the one from the country club. And maybe he had a secret diamond earring, maybe a sequin glove, maybe he even had a good song at the end with three helpings of keyboard synthesizer, but no one would know, because if you weren't born in your decade you never made it to the ending, you floated around in your middle, unresolved, in oblivion, confused and unrealized. (Pour some sugar on him and blame it on the rain.)

Special topics in Calamity Physics - Marisha Pessl (2)

"Humphrey Bogart wore platform shoes throughout the filming of Casablanca" someone said. I turned , expecting to see a mother circling Dad like a hooded Vulture eyeing carrion, but it wasn't. It was she, the woman from Fat Kat Foods. She was tall, wearing skintight jeans, a tailored tweed jacket, and large black sunglasses on her head. Her dark brown hair hung idly around her face.
"Though he wasn't Einstein or Truman," she said, "I don't think history would be the same without him. Especially if he had to look up at Ingrid Bergman and say, 'Here's looking at you, kid.' "

Every you, every me - David Levithan (2)

Instead I thought about the world profile and that a weird double meaning it had. We say we're looking at a person's profile online, or say a newspaper is writing a profile on someone, and we assume it's the whole them we're seeing. But when a photographer takes a picture of a profile, you're not only seeing half the face. Like with Sparrow, whoever he was. It's never the way you would remember seeing them, You never remember someone in profile. You remember them looking you in the eye, or talking to you. You remember an image that the subject could never see in a mirror, because you are the mirror. A profile, photographically, is perpendicular to the person you know.

The Summer Without Men - Siri Hustvedt (2)

The book club is big. It has been sprouting up like proverbial fungi all over the place, and it is a cultural form dominated almost entirely by a womanly pursuit these days. Lots of woman read fiction. Most men don't. Woman read fiction written by women and by men. Most men don't. If a man opens a novel, he likes to have a masculine name on the cover; it's reassuring somehow. You never know what might happen to that external genitalia if you immerse yourself in imaginary doings concocted by someone with the goods on the inside. Moreover, men like to boast about their neglect of fiction: "I don't read fiction, but my wife does." The contemporary literary imagination, it seems, emanates a distinctly feminine perfume. Recall Sabbatini: we women have the gift of gab. But truth be told, we have been enthusiastic consumers of the novel since its birth in the late seventeenth century and, at the time, novel reading gave off an aroma of the clandestine. The delicate feminine mind, as you will remember from past rants inside this selfsame book, could be easily dented by exposure to literature, the novel especially, with its stories of passion and betrayal, with its mad monks and libertines, its heaving bosoms and Mr. B's, its ravagers and ravagees. As a pastime for young ladies, reading novels was flushed pink for the risqué. The logic: Reading is a private pursuit, one that often takes place behind closed doors. A young lady might retreat with a book, might even take it into her boudoir, and there, reclining on her silken sheets, imbibing the thrills and chills manufactured by writerly quills, one of her hands, one not absolutely needed to grip the little volume, might wander. The fear, in short, was one-handed reading.

Every you, Every me - David Levithan (1)

My mind became a brief history of empty boxes.
The big cardboard ones I'd find as a kind and turn into a fort. Or a house, drawing in windows on the sides. I would cut out the windows and ruin it.
Boxes that sweaters would come in. Boxes from department stores that I would keep in the bottom of my closet until they could be filled with some kind of collection.
Coffins.
The Cracker Jack box when I was all done, when the prize had been revealed to be something plastic, something worthless.
An empty sandbox, looking like it was waiting for sand.
A mailbox always looks like it's full of envelopes. But you never know for sure. Most of the time when you open it, it sounds hollow.
What did Pandora do with her box after she'd unleashed despair into the world? Did she keep it on her mantel, as a reminder of what she's done? 

Special topics in Calamity Physics - Marisha Pessl (1)

[...] but then I did start to notice all kinds of unquestionable bleak things. For example, when Bethany brought people into her room for a Friday night Audrey Hepburn marathon, I was distinctly aware, at the end of Breakfast at Tiffany's, unlike the other girls sitting on pillows chain-smoking with tears in their eyes, I actually found myself hoping Holly didn't find Cat. No, if I was completely honest with myself, I realized I wanted Cat to stay lost and abandoned, mewing and shivering all by its Cat self in those splintery crates in that awful Tin Pan Alleyway, which from the rate of that Hollywood downpour would be submerged under the Pacific Ocean in less then an hour. (This I disguised, of course, smiling gaily when George Peppard feverishly grasped Audrey feverishly grasping Cat who no longer looked like a cat but a drowned squirrel. I believed I even uttered one of those girly, high-pitched, "Ewws," in perfect harmony with Bethany's sighs.

The Summer Without Men - Siri Hustvedt (1)

It is impossible to divine a story while you are living it; it is shapeless, an inchoate procession of words and things, and let us be frank. We never recover what was. Most of it vanishes. And yet, as I sit here at my desk and try to bring it back, that summer not so long ago, I know turns were made that affected what followed. Some of them stand out like bumps on a relief map, but then I was unable to perceive them because my view of things was lost in the undifferentiated flatness of living one moment after another. Time is not outside us, but inside. Only we live with past, present, and future, an the present is too brief to experience anyway; it is retained afterward and then it is either codified or it slips into amnesia. Consciousness is the product of delay.

B*itches in Bookshops

I don't think I need to explain why I like this song and these lyrics. Watch the video here.


B*itches in Bookshops
Read so hard librarians tryin' ta FINE me­,
They can't identify me,
Checked in with a pseudonym, so I guess you can say I'm Mark Twaining. 
Read so hard, I'm not lazy.
Go on Goodreads, so much rated. 
Fountainhead, on my just read, gave it four stars, and then changed it. 
Read so hard, I'm literary. 
Goosebumps series, TOO SCARY!


Animal Farm, Jane Eyre
Barnes & Nobles, Foursquare it
No TV, I read instead 
Got lotsa Bills, but not bread
BURROUGHS , GOLDING, SHAKESPEARE -- all dead


Read so hard, got paper cuts
On trains while you're playin' connect the dots 
All these blisters from turning pages 
Read so hard, I'm seeing spots 


Your Sudoku just can't compare
Nor Angry Birds cos lookit here
My Little Birds is getting stares 
(pause)
This print's rare.


Read so hard, I memorize, The Illiad... I know lines.
Watch me spit, classic lit, epic poems that don't rhyme.
War and Peace, piece of cake, read Tolstoy in 3 days.
Straight through, no delays.
Didn't miss a word. Not one phrase.


Read so hard librarians tryin' ta fineee me - That shit cray x 3
Read so hard librarians tryin' ta fineee me -- That shit cray x 3


He said Shea can we get married at the Strand 
His Friday Reads are bad so he can't have my hand 
You ball so hard, OK you're bowling 
But I read so hard, I'm JK Rowling 


That shit cray 
Ain't it, A? What you readin'?
AQ: DeMontaigne.
You use a Kindle? I carry spines. 
Supporting bookshops like a bra, Calvin Klein. 


Nerdy boy, he's so slow 
Tuesday we started Foucault
He's still stuck on the intro? He's a no go.
It's sad I had to kick him out my house though --
He Mispronounced an author - MARCEL PROUST 


Don't read in the dark
I highlight with markers
While laying in the park
And wearing Warby Parkers
Marriage Plot broke my heart 
And it made me read Barthes 
I special ordered a 
A softcover not hard- HUAH?AHEHA?! 


Read so hard libraries tryin' ta fine me x 2


I am now marking my place
Don't wanna crease on my page
Don't let me forget this page
Don't let me forget this page
I may forget where I left off so I'll use this little post it...
I hope it doesn't fall out, I hope that it stays stickie... 


I am now marking my place
Don't wanna crease on my page
Don't let me forget this page
I got bookmarks at home
But I forgot one for the road
AQ: I got a bookmark I can loan
La Shea: Know how many bookmarks I own?


I am now bookmarking my page x3
Don't let me forget this PAGE....

The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern (2)

"Why did you call that man Alexander?" Celia asks.
"That's a silly question."
"It's not his name."
"Now, how might you know that?" Hector asks his daughter, lifting her chin to face him and weighing the look in her dark eyes with his own.
Celia stares back at him, unsure how to explain. She plays over in her mind the impression of the man in his gray suit with his pale eyes and harsh features, trying to figure out why the name does not fit on him properly.
"It's not his real name," she says. "Not one that he's carried with him always. It's one he wears like his hat. So he can take it off if he wants. Like Prospero is for you."
"You are even more cleaver than I could have hoped," Hector says, not bothering to refute or confirm her musings about his colleague's nomenclature. He takes his top hat from it's stand and puts it on her head, where it slides down and obscures her questioning eyes in a cage of black silk.

---

"I have had affairs that lasted decades and others that lasted for hours. I have loved princesses and peasants. And I suppose they loved me, each in their way."

This is a typical Tsukiko response, one that does not truly answer the question. Isobel does not pry.

"It will come a apart," Tsukiko says after a long while. Isoel does not need to ask what she means.

"The cracks are beginning to show. Sooner or later it is bound to break." She pauses to take a final drag off her cigarette. "Are you still tempering?"

"Yes," Isobel says. "But I don't think it helping."

" It's difficult to discern the effect of such things, you know. Your perspective is from the inside, after all. The smallest charms can be the most effective."

"It doesn't seem to be very effective."

"Perhaps it is controlling the chaos within more then the chaos without."

Are We There Yet? - David Levithan

David Levithan and I have a good relationship. I think this is the eight book from him I read. I like his way to write a lot. Two brothers traveling in Italy. Watching art and trying to get on together. What's not to like?



Elijah moves over in his bed and Cal lies down beside him.
"Do you wonder...? she begins. This is their game  Do you wonder? Every night - every night when it's possible - the last thing to be heard is the asking without answer.
They stare at the glow-in-the-dark planets on the ceiling, or to turn sideways to trace each other's blue-black outlines, trying to detect the shimmer of silver as they speak.
This night, Cal asked, "Do you wonder if we'll ever learn to sleep with our eyes open?"
And in return, Elijah askes, "Do you think there can be such a thing as too much happiness?"
This is Elijah's favourite time. He rarely know what he is going to say, then suddenly it's there. 
Above them. Liftning.
A few minutes pass. Cal sits up and puts her hand on Elijah's shoulder.
"Goodnight, sleep tight," she whispers.
"Don't let the bedbugs bite," he chimes, nestling deeper under the covers.
---


Morning.
Breakfast.
"You fool," Elijah says, glancing at the menu.
"What?" Danny grunts.
"I said, 'You fool.'"
Danny looks at the menu and understands.
"No," he says. "I won't quiche you."
"Quiche me, you fool! Please!"
"If you say that any louder, you're toast."
"Quiche me and marry me in church, since we cantaloupe!"
Elijah is giddy with the old routine.
"Orange juice kidding?" Danny gasps.
"I will milk this for what it's worth."
"You can't be cereal."
"I can sense you're waffling..."
Danny looks up triumphantly. "There aren't any waffles on the menu! You lose!"
Elijah is surprised by how abruptly disappointed he is. That's not the point, he thinks.
He turns away. Danny pauses for a second watching him, not knowing what he's done.
---


Elijah watches the chair disappear around the corner and immediately feels loss.
He can't believe that you can meet a person in this way and then lose touch with them forever.
He could check all the hotels in Venice and look for a Greg and an Isabel, but he knows he won't.
He wants to, though. Because he wants to believe in sudden fate.

The night circus - Erin Morgenstern (1)

I read The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern with great pleasure. The language, the story, the time and all just fitted me and I really enjoyed reading it. Morgenstern's debut I can recommend to everyone that like magic, late 1800 - early 1900, a love story and something new. I never read a book like this and I'm so happy I did.

The pool of tears

The sign outside the tent is accompanied by a small box full 
of smooth black stones. The text instructs you to take one
with you as you enter.
Inside, the tent is dark, the ceiling covered with open
black unbrellas, the curving handles hanging down like
icicles.
In the center of the room there is a pool. A pond
enclosed within a black stone wall that is surrounded by
white gravle.
The air carries the salty tinge of the ocean.
You walk oute to the edge to look inside. The gravel
crunches beneath your feet.
It is shallow, but it is glowing. A shimmering,
shifting light cascades up though the surface of the water.
A soft radiance, enough to illuminate the pool and the
stones that sit at the bottom. Hundreds of stones,
each identical to the one you hold in your hand.
The light beneath filters though the spaces between
the stones.
Reflections rippöe around the room, making it appear as
though the entire tent is underwater.
You sit on the wall, turning your black stone over and 
over in your fingers.
The Stillnes of the tent becomes a quiet melancholy.
Memories begin to creep forward from hidden corners
of your mind. Passing disappointments. Lost chances and
lost causes. Heartbreaks and pain and desolate, horrible
loneliness.
Sorrows you though long forgotten mingle with sill-fresh
wounds.
The stone feels heavier in your hand.
When you drop it in the pool to join the rest of the stones,
you feel lighter. As though you have released something more
then a smooth polished piece of rock.

Life of Pi - Yann Martel (1)

I read 80% of "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel before I gave up and thought that it can't be worth reading the rest. No spoilers but that book has a bit to much life at sea, killing fish and hanging out with a tiger for my taste. I enjoyed the begin of it but it all just when downhill from there.

Just beyond the ticket booth Father had painted on a wall with red letters the question: Do You Know Which is the Most Dangerous Animal in the Zoo? An arrow pointed to a small curtain. There were so many eager, curious hands that pulled at the curtain that we had to replace it regularly. Behind it was a mirror.

--

My life is like a memento mori painting form European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition. I mock this skull. I look at it and I say, "You've got the wrong fellow. You may not believe in life but I don't believe in death. Move on!"

The skull, snickers and moves even closer, but that doesn't surprise me. The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity - it's envy.

Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.

Elephants Can Remember - Agatha Christie

Second Christie book I read.

"Well, I'd have though it more likely he'd just have a shot the General. If he shot the General and the wife came along, then he'd have had to shoot her, too. You read things like that in books."

"Yes," said Mrs. Oliver thoughtfully, "one does read all sorts of things in books."

---

"You enjoy life altogether, don't you?"

"Yes, I do. I suppose it's the feeling that one never knows what might be going to happen next.

"Yet that feeling," said Mrs. Rosentelle, "is just what makes so many people never stop worrying!"

All My Firends Are Superheroes - Andrew Kaufman (2)

'Think about your girlfriend,' Ambrose commanded.

'My wife,' Tom said.

'Whatever, just picture her face.'

Tom pictured the Perfectionist's face.

'Now picture her best feature,' Ambrose instructed.

Tom pictured the Perfectionist's nose. He felt Ambrose's hand on his heart. Tom took shallow breaths. Ambrose reached behind his heart. He squeezed form underneath and quick line of blood squired up, hitting Ambrose face.

'That might be it,' Ambrose said, reaching to his back pocket, grabbing the rag and wiping of his face.

'What? What is it?'

'When was the last time you had this cleaned?'

'I never had it cleaned.'

'Exactly,' Ambrose said.

---

Someone knocked on her door.

'Just ignore it and it'll go away,' the Perfectionist said.

She leaned in closer. Tom felt her breath on his lips. There was another knock.

'I'll... I'll get it,' said Tom.

The Perfectionist sighed. Tom wiped his hand on his jeans. He got off the couch and opened the door. He had almost no time to react - the monster at the door was struggling to claw his face off.

Tom slammed the door shut. He locked it. He put his back to it. The thing stated screaming. It sounded like a blender.

'Was it tall?' the Perfectionist asked him.

'What?' Tom yelled. The thing was screaming very loudly.

'Was it tall?'

'Yes!'

'Pointed fingernails?'

'Yes!'

'Long, scabby arms?'

'Yes!'

'It smelled like cigarettes and cough syrup?'

'That's it!'

'That's an anxiety monster,' she said. 'I'm having a bath.'

'What?' Tom screamed.

'It's for you, not me. I'm having a bath,' she stated. Tom didn't reply. His back remained firmly pressed to her front door. She saw the look of terror in his eyes.

'Do you love me? she asked him.

[...]

'Do you love me?' the Perfectionist repeated.

'Yes' Tom said.

'Then trust me. I'm going to have a bath.'

The Perfectionist got off the couch. She walked around her living room collecting objects: candles, a lighter, a portable tape deck. She carried these thing into the bathroom. The bathroom door closed.

Tom heard her filling the bathtub. The tape deck played Motown. He sat on the couch with his legs pulled up to his chest as the Anxiety Monster's fingers ripped splinters from the door. It started throwing its weight against the door. The hinges came away from the wall. The Monster slammed into the door again. The door-hinge screws were three-quarters out. Tom was overwhelmed. He fainted.

When he woke up, two hours later, the Perfectionist was playing solitaire. She looked over at him. She smiled. She looked back at her cards.

'Feel better?' she asked.

He did. There was no sign of the Anxiety Monster.

'What happened?' he asked her.

'It left,' she said. She moved a black nine onto a red ten.

'It just left?'

'There are two ways to get rid of an anxiety monster, my friend - either you take a bath or a nap.'

Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman (2)

Richard was not dead. He was sitting in the dark, on a ledge, on the side of a storm drain, wondering what to do, wondering how much further out of his league he could possible get. His life so far, he decided, had prepared him perfectly for a job in Securities, for shopping in the supermarket, for watching soccer on the television on the weekends, for turning up the thermostat if he got cold. It had magnificently failed to prepare him for a life as an un-person on the roofs and in the sewers of London, for a life the cold and the wet and the dark.

---

"He..." Richard bagan. "The marquis. Well, you know, to be honest, he seems a little bit dodgy to me."

Door stopped. The steps dead-ended in a rough brick wall. "Mm," she agreed. "He's a little bit dodgy in the same way that rats are a little bit covered in fur."

---

"Oh. The poor dear," said Islington. It shook its head sadly, obviously regretting the senseless loss of human life, the frailty of all mortals born to suffer and to die. "Still," said Mr. Croup chirpily. "Can't make an omelette without killing a few people."

---

"It's is of no matter now," said the angel. "Soon, all the rewards your revolting little minds can conceive of will be yours. When I have my throne."

"Jam tomorrow, eh?" said Richard.

"Don't like jam," said Mr Vandemar. "Makes me belch."

I love reference to "Alice in Wonderland" or "Though the Looking Glass".

All My Firends Are Superheroes - Andrew Kaufman (1)

Andrew Kaufman is a great writer. I read the tiny book "The tiny Wife" in December and loved it. "All My Friends Are Superheroes" is also a super good book. Short with it's 106 pages and it made me laugh and wounder how Kaufman's brain works that can come up with all the things he writes about.

It's about Tom, a non superhero, that is married to The Perfectionist. She has a bit of a jealous ex boyfriend, Hypno, that hypnotize The Perfectionist not to see Tom. Tom does all to make her see him again.

All the friends that Tom has are superheroes, he's the only one without super powers, and the book presents some of the superheroes. Falling girl is my favorite, but there are so many good ones.

FALLING GIRL

Falling girl won't go higher then the second floor of any building. She's never set foot on a balcony and the floor is the only place she'll sit. A small sample of things she's fallen from includes trees, cars, grace, first-story windows, horses, ladders, bicycles, the wagon, countless kitchen counters and her grandmother's knee.

Smoking beside the Ear on winter night, she wiggled deeper under the sheets and admitted the only thing she's never fallen from, or into, was love. 'If that's how you do it, I would have done it,' she said. Then she leaned over to butt out her cigarette and fell out of the bed.

---

THE COUCH SURFER

Empowered with the ability to sustain life and limb without a job, steady companion or permanent place of residence, the Couch Surfer can be found roaming from couch to couch of friend's apartments all around the city.

The Couch Surfer is not only able to withstand long periods of acute poverty but is also able to nutritionally sustain himself with only handfuls of breakfast cereals, slices of dry bread and condiments. Mysteriously always has cigarettes.

---

The next night Tom stated having pains in his chest. The first one came at ten in the evening. It was sharp and enduring. He doubled over but it passed. The next two hours later; by the morning they came every ten minutes. The Perfectionist was sleeping and he knew not to touch her. He called the Amphibian.

'Hey.' said Tom.

'Hey,' said the Amphibian.

'Ahhhh,' said Tom. A pain shot through his heart.

'What is happening?'

'Pain in my chest.'

'Sharp and enduring?'

'Yes.'

'But recurring?'

'Yes!'

'In great frequency?'

'Less then ten minutes now.'

'I'm sending over a doctor.'

'What is it?'

'He's the best there is.'

'Tell me what it is!'

'Your heart is breaking,' said the Amphibian said.

No Way Down - The Shins

Lately I've been listing a lot to The Shins new album "Port of Morrow". I love The Shins and this album is just awesome. They are still as good as they always where.

The other day I had to pick up baby Jonas in a kindergarten I've never been to before. In the fear of being late I was way to early. The sun was shining and I found a swing set close to where I was. I sat down on the swing and stated swinging with The Shins in my headphones. The song "No Way Down" just fitted the feeling of sun in my face, my shirt flying with the wind as I was swinging and singing along to the a bit weird lyrics in this happy sounding song.

No Way Down - The Shins

He's the son of a government man

And a pillar of salt

I was born with blood on my hands

And have all the signs of a bleeding heart

Living high on a giant hawk

On a mountain so steep

Keep your head in a hollow log

As the ruling fog are about to creep

What have we done?

How'd we get so far from that sun?

Lost, lost in an oscillating phase

Where a tiny few catch all of the rays

Out beyond the western squalls

In an Indian land

They work for nothing at all

They don't know the mall or the layaway plan

Dig yourself a beautiful grave

Everything you could want

Maybe those invisible slaves

Are too far away for a ghost to haunt

What do we charge?

Letting go of a claim so large

All, all of our working days are done

But a tiny few are having all of the fun

Get used to the dust in your lungs

Is there no way down

From this peak to solid ground

Without having our gold teeth

Pulled from our mouth

Make me a drink strong enough

To wash away this dishwasher world,

they said was lemonade

Walk with me after the show

Maybe we can find a way through the minefield in the snow

What are they charged?

Letting go of a claim so large

All, all of our working days are done

But a tiny few are having all of the fun

Apologies to the sick and the young

Get used to the dust in your lungs

Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman (1)

I have read a couple of Neil Gaiman's books before. Mostly those that are somewhere between adult fiction and young adult, like "Coraline", "The Graveyard Book" and "Odd and the Frost Giants". Oddly enough I have never read any of his other books or comics. Until recently when I read "Neverwhere" that I really enjoyed. A magical underworld of London written in British English - What is not to like about that?

"Can I ask a question?" said Richard.

"Certainly not," said the marquis. "You don't ask any questions. You don't get any answers. You don't stray from the path. You don't even think about what is happening now. Got it?"

"But-"

"Most important of all: no buts," said de Carabas. "And time is the essence. Move."

---

"Darkness is happening," said the leather woman, very quietly. "Night is happening. All the nightmares that have come out what the sun goes down, since the cave of times, when we huddled together in fear for safety and for warmth, are happening. Now," she told them, "now is the time to be afraid of the dark."

Richard knew that something was about to creep over his face. He closed his eyes: it made no difference to what he saw or felt. The night was complete. It was then that the hallucinations started.

---

"Don't all the tunnels look the same?" asked Richard, tabling his diary entry for the moment. "How can you tell which is which?"

"You can't," said the marquis, sadly. "We're hopelessly lost. We'll never be seen again. In a couple of days we'll be killing each other for food."

"Really?" He hated himself for rising to the bait, even as he said it.

"No." The marquis's expression said that torturing the poor fool was too easy to be amusing.

The Fault in Our Stars - John Green (2)

This book is good in so many way, but one thing I find hictarical is that John Green has inclued some Swedish rapers and mentions Swedish songs from farely famous Swedish bands in Sweden. I know of them of course but I don't know how John Green came across them(maybe I should ask him on twitter). I have bookmarked the pages where this is mentioned, but I will not quote it here because it's just greater when you know the bands and the songs.

Instead I will share this:

Once I'd recovered, we went inside and sat down on the couch right next to each other, the laptop half on his (fake) knee and half on mine. "Hot," I said of the laptop's base.

"Is it now?" He smiled. Gus loaded this giveaway site called Free No Catch and together we wrote an ad.

"Headline?" he asked.

"'Swing Set Needs New Home,'" I said.

"'Desperately Lonely Swing Set Needs Loving Home,'" he said.

"' Lonely, Vaguely Pedophilic Swing Set Seeks the Butts of Children,'" I said.

He laughed. "That's why."

"What?"

"That's why I like you. Do you realize how rare it is to come across a hot girl who creates an adjectival version of the word pedophile? You are so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are."

The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (4)

I feel like Dorothy, when her house crash-landed in Oz and the world turned from black and white to color. We're not in Kansas anymore.

---

People don't appear and disappear the way you do. You're like the Cheshire Cat.

--

"Well, I don't feel like a spirit. Or a fictional character.

"How do you know?? I mean, if I was making you up, and I didn't want you to know you were made up, I just wouldn't tell you, right?" I wiggled my eyebrows at her.

"Maybe God just mad us up and He's not telling us."

---

The bathroom is tiny. I feel like Alice in Wonderland, grown huge and having to stick my arm out the window just so I can turn around.

---

"I still don't get it. I mean, I can see you not wanting your parents to know you were playing Lolita to his Humbert Humbert, but I don't get why you couldn't tell us. We would have been totally into it. I mean, we spent all this time feeling sorry for you, and worrying about you, and wondering why you, were such a nun-" Helen shakes here head.

"And there you were, screwing Mario the Librarian the whole time-" I can't help it, I'm blushing.

"I was not screwing him the whole time."

"Oh, come, on."

"Really! We waited till I was eighteen. We did it on my birthday."

The Fault in Our Stars - John Green (1)

I've just read "The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green, a book that I wanted to read since last summer when I found out about it. I then pre-ordered it. I didn't know I was going to move to Berlin at this time so the book arrive back in Stockholm and got sent here from there. This book has traveled quite a bit.

I read it in one day. I got it yesterday afternoon and was done today afternoon. It's a great book. Writing about terminally ill cancer teenage and make it this fun, serious and good can't be easy but Green pulls it of. I laughed, I cried and I recognize places in Amsterdam, where parts of the books takes place.

And I have some many bookmarked pages, so let's start.

Augustus glanced away from the screen ever so briefly.

"You look nice," he said. I was wearing this just-past-the-knees dress I'd had forever.

"Girls think they're only allowed to wear dresses to formal occasions, but I like a woman who says, you know, I'm going to see a boy who is having a nervous breakdown, a boy whose connection to the sense of sight itself is tenuous, and gosh dang it, I am going to wear a dress for him."

---

Augustus stepped toward him and looked down. "Feel better now?" he asked.

"No," Isaac mumbled, his chest heaving.

"That's the thing about pain," Augustus said, and then glanced back at me. "It demands to be felt."

---

"Why are breakfast foods breakfast foods?" I asked them. "Like, why don't we have curry for breakfast food?"

"Hazel, eat."

"But why?" I asked. "I mean, seriously: How did scrambled eggs get stuck in with breakfast exclusivity? You can put bacon on a sandwich without anyone freaking out. But the moment your sandwich has an eggs, boom, it's a breakfast sandwich."

Dad answered with his mouth full. "When you come back, we'll have breakfast for dinner. Deal?"

"I don't want to have 'breakfast for dinner,'" I answered, crossing knife and fork over my mostly full plate. "I want to have scrambled eggs for dinner without this ridiculous construction that scrambled eggs-inclusive meal is breakfast even when it occurs at dinnertime."

"You've gotta pick your battles in this world, Hazel," my mom said. "But if this is the issue you want to champion, we stand behind you."

"Quite a bit behind you," my dad added, and Mom laughed.

Anyway, I knew it was stupid, but I felt kind of bad for scrambled eggs.

The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (3)

"So Henry" Helen says, "we hear that you are a librarian. But you don't look like a librarian."

"Actually, I am a Calvin Klein underwear model. The librarian thing is just a front."

---

"How come you guys are up if it's nighttime?"

Alba sniffs.

"You're making coffee, so it's morning."

"Oh, it's the old coffee-equals-morning fallacy," Henry says. "There's a hole in your logic, buddy."

"What?" Alba asks. She hates to be wrong about anything.

"You are basing you conclusion on faulty data; that is, you are forgetting that your parents are coffee fiends of the first order, and that we just might have gotten out of bed in the middle of the night in order to drink MORE COFFEE."

He's roaring like a monster, maybe a Coffee Fiend.

"I want coffee," says Alba. "I'm a Coffee Fiend." She roars back at Henry. But he scoops her off of him and plops her down on her feet. Alba runs around the table to me and throws her arms around my shoulders.

"Roar!" she yells in my ear. I get up to pick up and pick Alba up. She's so heavy now.

"Roar, yourself."

I carry her down the hall and throw her onto her bed, and she shrieks with laughter. The clock on her nightstand says 4:16 a.m.

"See?" I show her. "It's too early for you to get up."

After the obligatory amount of fuss Alba settles back into bed, and I walk back to the kitchen. Henry has managed to pour us both coffee."

---

"You look perfect; a Nice Young Man."

"When in fact, I am the Punk Librarian Deluxe. Parents, beware."

The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (2)

The whole truth and nothing but the truth.

"I came from the future. I am a time traveler. In the future we a friends."

"People only time travel in movies."

"That's what we want you to believe."

"Why?"

"If everybody time traveled it would get too crowded. Like when you when to see your Grandma Abshire last Christmas and it was very, very crowded? We time travelers don't want to mess things up for ourselves, so we keep it quiet."

[...]

"You're making fun of me."

"I would never make fun of you. Why do you think I'm making fun of you?"

Clare is nothing if stubborn.

"Nobody time travels. You're lying."

"Santa time travels."

"What?"

"Sure. How do you think he gets all those presents delivered in one night? He just keeps turning back the clock a few hours until he gets down every one of those chimneys."
"Santa is magic. You're not Santa."

"Meaning I'm not magic? Geez, Louise, you're a tough customer."

"I'm not Louise."

Gone for Good - The Shins

The Shins is one of my favorite bands of all time. This is one of my favorite songs by them. Listen to it here.

Untie me, I've said no vows

The train is getting way too loud

I gotta leave here my girl

Get on with my lonely life

Just leave the ring on the rail

For the wheels to nullify

Until this turn in my head

I let you stay and you paid no rent

I spent twelve long months on the lam

That's enough sitting on the fence

For the fear of breaking dams

I find a fatal flaw

In the logic of love

And go out of my head

You love a sinking stone

That'll never elope

So get used to the lonesome

Girl, you must atone some

Don't leave me no phone number there

It took me all of a year

To put the poison pill to your ear

But now I stand on honest ground, on honest ground

You want to fight for this love

But honey you cannot wrestle a dove

So baby it's clear

You want to jump and dance

But you sat on your hands

And lost your only chance

Go back to your hometown

Get your feet on the ground

And stop floating around

I find a fatal flaw

In the logic of love

And go out of my head

You love a sinking stone

That'll never elope

So get used to used to the lonesome

Girl, you must atone some

Don't leave me no phone number there

No one belongs here more then you - Miranda July (2)

He walked around my living room, touching things that had once meant a lot to me but now seemed beside the point. I own many pieces of abstract art. He touched the art with his fingernails. He picked up a book that was lying on the floor and held it in the air between his two fingers. The subtitle of the book was Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships. I was working through it, word by word. So far I had done Keeping and was just starting on Love. I worried that by the time I got to Committed and Relationships, I would have forgotten Keeping. Not to mention Alive and all the other words. He carried the book like this, between two fingers, into the kitchen. He carefully laid it on the corner of the kitchen floor, and I said thank you and thank you and he nodded.

We don't have intercourse anymore. I'm not complaining, its my own fault. I lie there beside him and try to send signals to my vagina, but it's like trying to get cable channels on a TV that doesn't have cable. My mind requests sex, but my vagina is just waiting for the next time it has to pee. It thinks its whole job in life is to pee.

The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood (3)

I wonder which is preferable - to walk around all your life swollen up with your secrets until you burst from the pressure of them, or to have them sucked out of you, every paragraph, every sentence, every word of them, so at the end you're depleted of all that was once as precious to you as hoarded gold, as close to you as your skin - everything that was of the deepest importance to you, everything that belonged to you alone - and must spend the rest of your days like an empty sack flapping in the wind, an empty sack branded with bright fluorescent label so that everyone will know what sort of secrets used to be inside you?

The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (1)

"Henry - do other people have sex as much as we do?"

Henry considers.

"Most people.. no, I imagine not. Only people who haven't known each other very long and still can't believe their luck, I would think. Is it too much?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

I say this looking at my plate. I can't believe I'm saying this; I spent my entire adolescence begging Henry to fuck me and now I'm telling him it's too much. Henry sits very still.

"Clare, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize; I wasn't thinking."

I look up; Henry look stricken. I burst out laughing. Henry smiles, a little guilty, but his eyes are twinkling.

"It's just - you know, there are days when I can't sit down."

"Well.. you just have to say. Say nothing, dear, we've already done it twenty-three times today and I would rather read Bleak House."

"And you will meekly cease and desist?"

"I did, just then didn't I? That was pretty meek."

"Yeah. But then I felt guilty."

Henry laughs.

"You can't expect me to help you out there. It may be my only hope: day after day, week after week, I will languish, starving for a kiss, withering away for want of a blow job, and after a while you will look up from your book and realize that I'm actually going to die at your feet if you don't fuck me immediately but I won't say a word. Maybe a few little whimpering noises."

"But - I don't know, I mean, I'm exhausted, and you seem...fine. Am I abnormal, or something?"

Henry leans across the table and holds out his hands. I place mine in his.

"Clare."

"Yes?"

"It may be indelicate to mention this, but if you will excuse me for saying so, your sex drive far outstrips that of almost all the women I've dated. Most woman would have cried Uncle and turned on their answering machines month ago. But I should have thought... you always seemed into it. But if it's too much, or you don't feel like it, you have to say so, because otherwise I'll be tiptoeing around, wondering if I'm burdening you with my hideous demands."

"But how much sex is enough?"

"For me? Oh, God. My idea of the perfect life would be if we just stayed in bed all the time. We could make love more or less continuously, and only get up to bring in supplies, you know, fresh water and fruit to prevent scurvy, and make occasional trips to the bathroom to shave before diving back into bed. And once in a while we could change the sheets. And go to the movies to prevent bedsores."

Dash & Lily's book of dares - Levithan & Cohn.

Some month ago I read this book. I love both Levithan(best young adult writer in our time!) and Cohn as writers and when they put their heads together they're even better. The Christmas in New York,the dares, Dash's yogurt addiction, that they spend much time at Stand and all that Levithan & Cohn write about is just genius.

I got remained about this book when I read a Swedish blog about it and also reminded about a quote in that book that I loved and laughed about way to long about in a train.

"You were in Sweden?" Boomer asked.

"No," I said. "The trip got called off at the last minute. Because of political the unrest."

"In Sweden?" Priya seemed skeptical.

"Yeah-isn't it strange how the Times isn't covering it? Half the country's on strike because of that thing the crown prince said about Pippi Longstocking, Which means no meatballs for Christmas, if you know what I mean."

"That's so sad!" Boomer said.”

No one belongs here more then you - Miranda July

A friend recommended me "No one belongs here more then you". I don't read enough of short stories. I've never seen or read anything that Miranda July has done or been in, so I gave it a shot and found these quotes (so far).

One reason Helena and I would never be close friends is that I am about half as tall as she. People tend to stick to their own size group because it's easier on the neck. Unless they are romantically involved, in which case the size difference is sexy. It means: I am willing to go the distance for you.

This is my problem in life, I rush through it, like I'm being chased. Even things whose whole point is slowness, like drinking relaxing tea. When I drink relaxing tea, I suck it down as if I'm in a contest for who can drink relaxing tea the quickest. Or if I'm in a hot tub with some other people and we're all looking up at the stars, I'll be the first to say, It's so beautiful here. The sooner you say, It's beautiful here, the quicker you can say, Wow, I'm getting overheated.

The Road to Oz - L. Frank Baum

Sometimes I have to buy the e-book even if I all ready have the printed book, so I can carry it with me in my Kindle. And when I got the 15 books about Oz by L. Frank Baum for 0.99$ it's a given. (The 15 Oz books in print is really long and does not fit in my jacket pocket)

I love reading about Oz and I'm always smile while reading about the adventures in the magical land. The first two books are also full of memories for me. This, The Road to Oz, I haven't read before but I love it and I more then glad that I have 10 more books about Oz.

The Oz books are also the kind of books you can read in different ages and see new things in an other light. And the language is wonderful. I can't believe at times that the books where written in the beginning of the nineteenhundreds.

The highlights I made while reading is all about roads and money. I like the shaggy man quite a lot.

"Of course not. I wanted you to show me the road, so I shouldn't go there by mistake."

"Oh! Where DO you want to go, then?"

"I'm not particular, miss."

This answer astonished the little girl; and it made her provoked, too, to think she had taken all this trouble for nothing.

"There are a good many roads here", observed the shaggy man, turning slowly around, like a human windmill.

"Seems to me a person could go 'most anywhere, for this place."

"Roads," observed the shaggy man, "don't go anywhere. They stay in one place, so that folks can walk on them."

"Money," declared the shaggy man, "makes people proud and haughty. I don't want to be proud and haughty. All I want is to have people love me; and as long as I own the Love Magnet, everyone I meet is sure to love me dearly." (Oz-wiki)

"It must have cost a lot of money," remarked the shaggy man.

"Money! Money in Oz!" cried the Tin Woodman. "What a queer idea! Did you suppose we are so vulgar as to use money here?"

"Why not?" asked the shaggy man.

"If we used money to buy things with, instead of love and kindness and the desire to please one another, then we should be no better then the rest of the world," declared the Tin Woodman. "Fortunately money is not known in the Land of Oz at all. We have no rich, and no poor; for what one wishes the other all try to give him, in order to make him happy, and no one in all Oz cares to have more then he can use."

"Good!" cried the shaggy man, greatly pleased to hear this. "I also despise money--a man in Butterfield owes me fifteen cents, and I will not take it from him. The Land of Oz is surely the most favored land in all the world, and its people the happiest. I should like to live here forever."

"You have some queer friends, Dorothy," she said.

"The queerness doesn't matter so long as they're friends," was the answer.