If the sun had suddenly risen into the sky, I could not have seen any more clearly than I did, all in glorious shades of blue and green and maroon and purple, as though God had dipped his brush into a late summer twilight and replaced all the darkness with those colors.
There‘s more magic in a baby‘s first giggle than in any firestorm a wizard can conjure up, and don‘t let anyone tell you any different. Magic comes from what is inside you. It is a part of you. You can‘t weave together a spell that you don‘t believe in.
I found him in a Dumpster one day when he was a kitten and he promptly adopted me. Despite my struggles, Mister had been an understanding soul, and I eventually came to realize that I was a part of his little family, and by his gracious consent was allowed to remain in his apartment. Cats. Go figure.
The house itself was a place of power. Dark emotions—greed, lust, hatred—all hung over it as visible things, molds and slimes that were strewn over it like Spanish moss with malevolent eyes. Ghostly things, restless spirits, moved around the place, drawn to the sense of fear, despair, and anger that hung over it, mindless shades that were always to be found in such places, like rats in granaries.
The more they learned, the more they found it was like listening to themselves—a better, wiser version of the selves they were fumbling toward. How liberating to discover Martin Luther King Jr. had already done all that work. Brilliantly. He had drawn from Gandhi, and it was amazing how well the principles stood up across time, space, and cultures.
When a gunman struck, the Parkland kids saw poetic justice in the long arc of history, recasting their school so eloquently in the image of its namesake. They had also lost a horrible battle at Parkland, with a human loss this time, but like Stoneman Douglas, they were resolved to mark Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School as the final outpost in a generational war.
The politeness we‘re raised to prioritize, first and foremost, against our better judgment and whether we feel like being polite or not, is the perfect systematically ingrained personality trait for manipulative, controlling people to exploit.
Finally starting this! #trainreads
Parkland changed everything—for the survivors, for the nation, and definitely for me. I flew down the first weekend, but not to depict the carnage or the grief. What drew me was the group of extraordinary kids. I wanted to cover their response. There are strains of sadness woven into this story, but this is not an account of grief. These kids chose a story of hope.
Maybe my values are outdated, but I come from an old school of thought. I think that men ought to treat women like something other than just shorter, weaker men with breasts.
Hope blooms in my chest anyway, a tiny bud giving way to the first light of spring, petals daring to open to reveal the color inside.
“My father once said we are all dealt a hand at birth. A good hand can ultimately lose—just as a poor hand can win—but we must all play the cards fate deals. The choices we face may not be the choices we want, but they are choices nonetheless.”
When I was young and I‘d wake with nightmares, my mother always used to say, All you have to do is think of me, and I‘ll appear in your dreams. I‘ll help you chase the nightmares away. That story always worked. Too well, really. I used to think I could summon my mother by thought until I was way too old to keep believing such things. Right now, I would give anything to be able to summon her.
There is a difference between what is not true and what cannot be measured.
Nate was a rain cloud, but he was her friendly rain cloud, and the world needs some rain.
Where her books were, she was. Get the books right and the rest will follow. Now she could address the rest of the room.
Old age and illness are destroyers of individuality. Just as babies look alike, so do people at the end of their lives.
I frown. How could he say these people were empty when they were stuffed full of rare talents and thrilling memories? “But there‘s so much inside of them!” He touches his heart. “No, nothing left of them, of who they once were . . . they‘ve lost themselves to become someone else.”
For others who have read this, does Catherine have a SINGLE redeeming quality?! I‘m 70% through and she is still the worst at this point...
“I don‘t know what it is exactly, but I feel safe when he‘s nearby. Not that there‘s any reason I should be afraid. It‘s more like finding something you never knew you were missing.”
“I test my smile the way she always does in the mirror, but the result is strained, and instead of looking pretty and lighthearted, I look like a bee just flew up my skirt.”
This reminds me of A Series of Unfortunate Events and I am living for it: “According to the legend, Albert Ellingham had come to the place purely by mistake while trying to get to Burlington to the yacht club. How you accidentally found yourself up the side of an uninhabited mountain in 1928 is unclear, but he had done it, and proclaimed the spot perfect.”
“She had read many stories in which death was present as a character—a palpable force in the room. There was such a force in the room now, a silent visitor in the space.”
“The house, with its strict walls and severe lines, is shamefully out of place, something modern dropped down somewhere as soft as feathers, as twisty and spreading as willow roots.”
Reading date with these two 💝
I‘m super enjoying this plot line and quickly devouring this book, but seriously, one more description of Heather annihilating her cuticle skin and I‘m shelving it 🤣😳
“You don‘t need flickering lights or doors slamming shut, the parlor tricks of a poltergeist, to be haunted. The true ghosts are made of deed and word and live deep inside the marrow and bone.”
Excited for this ARC! The description is too good: In 1991, Heather and her friends were members of the Dead Girls Club. Obsessed with the macabre, they exchanged stories about serial killers and imaginary monsters, like the Red Lady, the spirit of a vengeful witch killed centuries before. Heather knew the stories were just that, until her friend Becca began insisting the Red Lady was real, and she could prove it. That belief got Becca killed.
“How do you sever a thread of evil once it has woven itself into the world?”
“There is no greater power on this earth than story.” Will paced the length of the room. “People think boundaries and borders build nations. Nonsense—words do. Beliefs, declarations, constitutions—words. Stories. Myths. Lies. Promises. History.”
My sweet reading companion and I are loving this book. Definitely the most interesting non-fiction I‘ve read in a long time.
“Evie stared at the long columns of windows cut into the building across the street. So many windows. Who lived behind them? Were they happy? Or did they sometimes sit on a rooftop haunted by a deep loneliness for which there seemed to be no cure?”
“Those of us with means and voices must help those who have neither.”
I have anxiety just reading the weather alerts that were sent out on the first day of Katrina. I absolutely can‘t even imagine what it would be like to experience this.
“If Harry Snyder was from Wisconsin, Evie would eat her hat. If his name was Harry Snyder, she‘d eat a second hat.”
What to read next?! I‘ll be starting Five Days at Memorial for school tonight, but probably will start another leisure book soon too...
SPOILER ALERT
Honestly I‘m kind of over these ups and downs with Kartik at this point. I really loved him and Gemma for most of the story but I think his dramatic “there‘s nothing for me here” exit to India is just treacherous. I almost wonder if he will turn up one more time before the book ends since he always seems to find his way back into the story.
I have to say, every time I think “I‘ll stop reading and go do something else at the end of this chapter” I can‘t because the title of the next chapter is always so intriguing!
“He was flattering her, but she was enjoying it. She loved attention. It was like a glass of the best champagne—bubbly and intoxicating—and as with champagne, she always wanted more of it.”
pickI absolutely could not put this book down. I demolished it within 24 hours. My favorite part of this story is the whimsical Alice in Wonderland feel to Caraval, which has a very dark spin on it.
“Scarlett tried not to be enticed, but the child inside her drank in this new world greedily. The colors here were brighter, thicker, sharper; in comparison, every hue she‘d seen before seemed thin and malnourished.”
Just started this as it was on sale yesterday on amazon! I‘m 10% through and definitely interested in this plot.
I‘ve been wanting to read this book for quite some time, and it‘s now on the required reading for my Emergency Preparedness course (I‘m an MPH student)! Excited to start class Monday.
so-soI think a lot of this book was super repetitive. It definitely is an interesting case but I‘m not sure it needed an entire novel to explain what happened.
“Prejudice, suppression, reevaluations, and wishful thinking affect our memory. Gaps are filled with conscious or unconscious confabulation, because humans crave logic and connections.”
“Everything glowed and sparkled voluptuously. The windows were open to the evening air and wind and through them came the tinkling soliloquies of fountains and the rustling murmur of the sea.”
“This was Göran Lundblad‘s last known conversation. When he put his phone down for the night, he didn‘t know there was a hole in the ground ready and waiting for him, not far from Ställe Farm. It was freshly dug, at that point probably no older than six hours.”
