The Faraway Nearby | 
pickThis book reminded me why I love Solnit‘s writing, after two in a row that were only ok. I loved the structure, in which the chapters mirror each other and the meandering musings all come back to a comfortable resting place. She‘s going through her own health crisis while her mother descends into Alzheimer‘s. She peels apart their complicated relationship while having new and remembering old adventures. Simply lovely.
Unexpected insight - not unexpected from Solnit, but at this precise moment I wasn‘t ready for it.
Another instance of book (life) synergy: this chapter has had this mention of van Leeuwenhoek, as well as mention of Napoleon challenging someone to come up with a way to feed his army, which led to the discovery of canning. Guess what kiddo‘s been studying in science the past few weeks - microorganisms and canning (in fact, we have a jar of applesauce to test this evening and see if our canning worked).
pickA mix of memoir and essay, this book was absolutely beautiful to read! I always enjoy wandering with Rebecca Solnit, and this journey was no different. It was intense and eloquent as Solnit discusses stories -hearing them, making them, the power of them- and how they connect us, allow us to empathize, and give us hope. And imagination activated through reading and art can help overcome the feeling of being a stranger lost in the world. See comment
pickRebecca Solnit's books engage both heart and mind and are full of doors which invite my own explorations. This one is categorised as anti-memoir. It starts with her fraught relationship with her mother but the gift of a mountain of apricots has a fairytale feel that opens the book beyond the personal. A theme develops of the double-edged nature of stories: how they can bind and imprison us or give voice and backbone, and ground beneath our feet.
Thank you Rebecca Solnit for this beautiful insightful description. #library #femaleauthor #womanwriter
I thought of you when I read this quote from "The Faraway Nearby (ALA Notable Books for Adults)" by Rebecca Solnit -
"Physical pain is often lonely, felt only by one person who must trust that others will believe and empathize, and convincing doctors of pain is one of the tasks of the sufferer without overt symptoms or causes."
As someone who has an invisible illness, this is life. Took over seven years to get diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis
I thought of you when I read this quote from "The Faraway Nearby (ALA Notable Books for Adults)" by Rebecca Solnit -
"A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another."
Books connect us!
pick"Writing is saying to no one and to everyone the things it is not possible to say to someone. Or rather writing is saying to the no one who may eventually be the reader those things one has no someone to whom to say them. Matters that are so subtle, so personal, so obscure, that I ordinarily can't imagine saying them to the people to who.
Rebecca Solnit ~ The Faraway Nearby
“The object we call a book is not the real book, but its potential, like a musical score or seed. It exists fully only in the act of being read; and its real home is inside the head of the reader, where the symphony resounds, the seed germinates. A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.”
I have been slowly working my way through The Faraway Nearby. I love this idea, especially as it applies to the creative process.
#marchintoreading day 26: #thistitleequalsgreatbandname
Sorry for the long hashtag you guys! But I'm loving all the #greatbandnames you've been coming up with. These are my picks:
- Wolf Totem (heavy metal hair band)
- River of Stars (some kind of atmospheric Sigur Ros-like music)
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane (indie rock/pop like Death Cab for Cutie)
- The Faraway Nearby (folk pop/rock like The Lumineers)
pickI'm not sure how to classify this book. It is kind of a memoir, but more like a series of interconnected essays. The primary thread is her relationship with her mother, woven with literature, myth, fairy tales, and history. Beautiful metaphors throughout!
In the bare room under the old library on the hill in the town at the tip of the small peninsula on the cold island so far from everything else, I lived among strangers and birds.
"This is the strange life of books that you enter as a writer, mapping an unknown territory that arises as you travel. If you succeed in the voyage, others enter after, one at a time, also alone, but in communion with your imagination, traversing your route. Books are solitudes in which we meet."
"The things that make our lives are so tenuous, so unlikely, that we barely come into being, barely meet the people we're meant to love, barely find our way in the woods, barely survive catastrophe every day" Rebecca Solnit
pick"What's your story? It's all in the telling." -RS. I am thinking about place today, where we live, why we stay, who we love. How will you change your story?
You must be patient, must become a patient, must take up residence in waiting rooms, must learn to wait for experts and results, must grow accustomed to being laid out on tables and invaded, described in an unfamiliar language, and treated with methods that seem like illnesses and injuries although they are intended to cure.
Where does a story begin? The fiction is that they do, and end, rather than that the stuff of a story is just a cup of water scooped from the sea and poured back into it...
