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264. The Screwtape Letters

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  John Breen

Author:   C.S. Lewis

Genre:  Fiction, Theology, Christian, Fantasy

223 pages, published 1942

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

This classic satire by the acclaimed C.S. Lewis is a sardonic portrayal of human life by the demon Screwtape, a senior tempter in the service of “Our Father Below.” The device used by Lewis are letters from the experienced old devil Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, a novice demon in charge of securing the damnation of an ordinary young man.

 

Quotes 

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality. ”

 

“We must picture hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives with the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.”

 

“Humour is…the all-consoling and…the all-excusing, grace of life.”

 

“The man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring two-pence what other people say about it, is by that very fact forewarmed against some of our subtlest modes of attack.”

 

“Nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust and ambition look ahead.”

 

“[God] will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest chemist’s shop.”

 

“Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”

 

“She’s the sort of woman who lives for others – you can tell the others by their hunted expression.”

 

“One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food;

(2) He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.”

 

“Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.”

 

“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

 

“You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption ‘My time is my own’. Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to him employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which h allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright.”

 

“The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour’s talents–or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall.”

 

“When He [God] talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.”

 

“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin.” The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.”

 

“Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.”

 

“A woman means by Unselfishness chiefly taking trouble for others; a man means not giving trouble to others…thus, while the woman thinks of doing good offices and the man of respecting other people’s rights, each sex, without any obvious unreason, can and does regard the other as radically selfish.”

 

“A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all—and more amusing.”

 

“By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the the impossible.”

 

My Take

Even though it has been almost 80 years since The Screwtape Letters was published, it still has a lot of relevance to modern day life and makes the expression “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions” particularly apt.  C.S. Lewis’ clever device of a conversation between demons on how best to ensnare human beings made me really think about how I was living my own life and what God expects of me.  Lots of food for thought told in a very interesting fashion.

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248. Gwendy’s Button Box

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:  Stephen King and Richard T. Chizmar

Genre:  Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Novella

171 pages, published May 16, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Gwendy Peterson is your typical thirteen year old girl from the small town of Castle Rock, Maine.  It is 1974 and Gwendy is not happy with the few extra pounds she carries and has the usual young teen issues.  When the mysterious Mr. Fariss approaches her and offers her an curious button box, Gwendy reluctantly agrees to take it.  Gwendy soon discovers that the mysterious button box has powers she can only begin to imagine.

 

Quotes 

“Secrets are a problem, maybe the biggest problem of all. They weigh on the mind and take up space in the world.”

 

“I am what you might call a rambling man, and America is my beat.”

 

“Wanting to know things and do things is what the human race is all about. Exploration, Gwendy! Both the disease and the cure!”

 

“Nailed it. So okay. The media says, ‘Girls, women, you can be anything you want to be in this brave new world of equality, as long as you can still see your toes when you stand up straight.’” He has been watching me, Gwendy thinks, because I do that every day when I get to the top. She blushes. She can’t help it, but the blush is a surface thing. Below it is a kind of so-what defiance. It’s what got her going on the stairs in the first place. That and Frankie Stone.”

 

My Take

I always enjoy Stephen King books and his brief novella Gwendy’s Button Box was no exception.  Even though it is short, the engaging characters, engrossing plot and the sense of dread that hangs over the whole story hooked me in.  Recommended if you are looking for a quick, fun read.

 

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247. La Belle Sauvage (The Book of Dust #1)

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Philip Pullman

Genre:  Fiction, Fantasy, Young Adult

464 pages, published October 19, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

When Malcolm Polstead, a young teenage boy who works in his father’s inn on the banks of the river Thames, finds a secret message inquiring about a dangerous substance called Dust, his world changes in dramatic ways.  A suspicious cast of characters are all interested in a baby girl named Lyra in the care of the nuns at the nearby Abbey.  When a flood of biblical proportions is unleashed, it is up to Malcolm and his friend Alice to save Lyra and perhaps a lot more.

 

Quotes 

“This is a deep and uncomfortable paradox, which will not have escaped you; we can only defend democracy by being undemocratic. Every secret service knows this paradox.”

 

“Once we use the word spiritual, we don’t have to explain anymore, because it belongs to the Church then, and no one can question it.”

 

“the pleasure of knowing secrets was doubled by telling them”

 

“War asks many people to do unreasonable things.”

 

My Take

This is the first book that I have read by Philip Pullman (author of The Golden Compass), but it won’t be the last.  He knows how spin a compelling and captivating yarn and I was happy to be along for the ride with Malcom, Alice and Baby Lyra as they journeyed through flooded landscapes, obstacles and hazards  in Malcom’s trusty canoe named La Belle Sauvage.  An entertaining tale for readers of all ages.

 

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228. The Alchemist

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Paul Coelho

Genre:  Fiction, Fantasy, Foreign, Happiness

197 pages, published May 1, 1993

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Paulo Coelho’s extremely popular master work tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different—and far more satisfying—than he ever imagined. Santiago’s journey teaches us about the wisdom of listening to our hearts, of recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life’s path, and, most importantly, to follow our dreams.

 

Quotes 

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

 

“It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”

 

“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”

 

“One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.”

 

“I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living now.”

 

“When each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.”

 

“Don’t give in to your fears. If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart.”

 

“This is what we call love. When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there’s no need at all to understand what’s happening, because everything happens within you.”

 

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

 

“We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.”

 

“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”

 

“I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.”

 

“To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation.”

 

“It’s one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it’s another to think that yours is the only path.”

 

“There is only one way to learn. It’s through action. Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey.”

 

“It is said that all people who are happy have God within them.”

 

“The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.”

 

“If someone isn’t what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”

 

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”

 

“Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.”

 

“You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it’s better to listen to what it has to say.”

 

“If you start by promising what you don’t even have yet, you’ll lose your desire to work towards getting it.”

 

My Take

Like The Richest Man in Babylon, The Alchemist is falls into a category of allegorical books that I usually enjoy reading.  Through the simple tale of boy on a quest to find his treasure and fulfill his destiny, The Alchemist imparts numerous pearls of wisdom about life, love, dreams, fear, hope and happiness.  I highly recommend the audio version which is perfectly narrated by the wonderful Jeremy Irons.

 

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200. The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Marianne Boeke

Author:   Douglas Adams

Genre:  Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Humor

193 pages, published June 23, 1997

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Right before the Earth is to be destroyed to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is saved by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor.  Together, Arthur and Ford journey through space aided by a galaxyful of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, three-armed, ex-hippie and totally out-to-lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian (formerly Tricia McMillan), Zaphod’s girlfriend, whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant, and chronically depressed robot; and Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student obsessed with the disappearance of all the ballpoint pens he’s bought over the years.

 

Quotes 

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”

 

“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”

 

“This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”

 

“He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.”

 

“A towel, [The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.”

 

“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”

 

“If there’s anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.”

 

“I’d far rather be happy than right any day.”

 

“You know,” said Arthur, “it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.”

“Why, what did she tell you?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t listen.”

 

“For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.”

 

“So this is it,” said Arthur, “We are going to die.”

“Yes,” said Ford, “except… no! Wait a minute!” He suddenly lunged across the chamber at something behind Arthur’s line of vision. “What’s this switch?” he cried.

“What? Where?” cried Arthur, twisting round.

“No, I was only fooling,” said Ford, “we are going to die after all.”

 

“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”

 

My Take

While preparing the summary for this book, I was reminded of the reasons that it didn’t really do it for me (it seemed better suited for the geeky teenage boy cohort).  However, while pulling out some quotes (which, more often than not, were very clever), I found myself liking the book a bit better.  What can I say, a mixed bag.

 

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190. The Sparrow

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Mary Doria Russell

Genre:  Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Theology

431 pages, published September 8, 1997

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

In the year 2019, we find proof of extraterrestrial life when a listening post picks up exquisite singing from a planet that will come to be known as Rakhat.  While the UN debate and try to figure out what to do, the Society of Jesus quietly organizes an eight-person scientific expedition.  The journey to and the discoveries on Rakhat lead the crew to ponder the meaning of life and God.

Quotes 

“There’s an old Jewish story that says in the beginning God was everywhere and everything, a totality. But to make creation, God had to remove Himself from some part of the universe, so something besides Himself could exist. So He breathed in, and in the places where God withdrew, there creation exists.”

So God just leaves?”

No. He watches. He rejoices. He weeps. He observes the moral drama of human life and gives meaning to it by caring passionately about us, and remembering.”

Matthew ten, verse twenty-nine: Not one sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it.”

But the sparrow still falls.”

 

“The Jewish sages also tell us that God dances when His children defeat Him in argument, when they stand on their feet and use their minds. So questions like Anne’s are worth asking. To ask them is a very fine kind of human behavior. If we keep demanding that God yield up His answers, perhaps some day we will understand them. And then we will be something more than clever apes, and we shall dance with God.”

 

“I believe in God the way I believe in quarks. People whose business it is to know about quantum physics or religion tell me they have good reason to believe that quarks and God exist. And they tell me that if I wanted to devote my life to learning what they’ve learned, I’d find quarks and God just like they did.”

 

“Faced with the Divine, people took refuge in the banal, as though answering a cosmic multiple-choice question: If you saw a burning bush, would you (a) call 911, (b) get the hot dogs, or (c) recognize God? A vanishingly small number of people would recognize God, Anne had decided years before, and most of them had simply missed a dose of Thorazine.”

 

“I do what I do without hope of reward or fear of punishment. I do not require Heaven or Hell to bribe or scare me into acting decently.”

 

“See that’s where it falls apart for me!” Anne cried. “What sticks in my throat is that God gets the credit but never the blame. I just can’t swallow that kind of theological candy. Either God’s in charge or he’s not…”

 

“There are times…when we are in the midst of life-moments of confrontation with birth or death, or moments of beauty when nature or love is fully revealed, or moments of terrible loneliness-times when a holy and awesome awareness comes upon us. It may come as deep inner stillness or as a rush of overflowing emotion. It may seem to come from beyond us, without any provocation, or from within us, evoked by music or by a sleeping child. If we open our hearts at such moments, creation reveals itself to us in all it’s unity and fullness. And when we return from such a moment of awareness, our hearts long to find some way to capture it in words forever, so that we can remain faithful to it’s higher truth ….When my people search for a name to give to the truth we feel at those moments, we call it God, and when we capture that understanding in timeless poetry, we call it praying.”

 

“That is my dilemma. Because if I was led by God to love God, step by step, as it seemed, if I accept that the beauty and the rapture were real and true, the rest of it was God’s will too, and that, gentlemen, is cause for bitterness. But if I am simply a deluded ape who took a lot of old folktales far too seriously, then I brought all this on myself and my companions and the whole business becomes farcical, doesn’t it. The problem with atheism, I find, under these circumstances…is that I have no one to despise but myself. If, however, I choose to believe that God is vicious, then at least I have the solace of hating God.”

 

“Watching him with one eye, she wondered if men ever figured out that they were more appealing when they were pursuing their own work than when they were pursuing a woman.”

 

“You know what’s the most terrifying thing about admitting that you’re in love? You are just naked. You put yourself in harm’s way and you lay down all your defenses. No clothes, no weapons. Nowhere to hide. Completely vulnerable. The only thing that makes it tolerable is to believe that the other person loves you back…”

 

“we all make vows, Jimmy. And there is something very beautiful and touching and noble about wanting good impulses to be permanent and true forever,” she said. “Most of us stand up and vow to love, honor and cherish someone. And we truly mean it, at the time. But two or twelve or twenty years down the road, the lawyers are negotiating the property settlement.”

“You and George didn’t go back on your promises.”

She laughed. “Lemme tell ya something, sweetface. I have been married at least four times, to four different men.” She watched him chew that over for a moment before continuing, “They’ve all been named George Edwards but, believe me, the man who is waiting for me down the hall is a whole lot different animal from the boy I married, back before there was dirt. Oh, there are continuities. He has always been fun and he has never been able to budget his time properly and – well, the rest is none of your business.”

“But people change,” he said quietly.

“Precisely. People change. Cultures change. Empires rise and fall. Shit. Geology changes! Every ten years or so, George and I have faced the fact that we have changed and we’ve had to decide if it makes sense to create a new marriage between these two new people.” She flopped back against her chair. “Which is why vows are such a tricky business. Because nothing stays the same forever. Okay. Okay! I’m figuring something out now.” She sat up straight, eyes focused somewhere outside the room, and Jimmy realized that even Anne didn’t have all the answers and that was either the most comforting thing he’d learned in a long time or the most discouraging. “Maybe because so few of us would be able to give up something so fundamental for something so abstract, we protect ourselves from the nobility of a priest’s vows by jeering at him when he can’t live up to them, always and forever.” She shivered and slumped suddenly, “But, Jimmy! What unnatural words. Always and forever! Those aren’t human words, Jim. Not even stones are always and forever.”

 

“The poor you will always have with you,’ Jesus said. A warning, Emilio wondered, or an indictment?”

 

“It is the human condition to ask questions like Anne’s last night and to receive no plain answers,” he said. “Perhaps this is because we can’t understand the answers, because we are incapable of knowing God’s ways and God’s thoughts. We are, after all, only very clever tailless primates, doing the best we can, but limited. Perhaps we must all own up to being agnostic, unable to know the unknowable.”

 

“Consider the Star of David,” he said quietly. “Two triangles, one pointing down, one pointing up. I find this a powerful image—the Divine reaching down, humanity reaching upward. And in the center, an intersection, where the Divine and human meet. The Mass takes place in that space.” His eyes lifted and met hers: a look of lucid candor. “I understand it as a place where the Divine and the human are one. And as a promise, perhaps. That God will reach toward us if we reach toward Him, that we and our most ordinary human acts—like eating bread and drinking wine—can be transformed and made sacred.”

 

My Take

When I started The Sparrow, I was expecting a science fiction story, a genre I hadn’t read in awhile.  While there is plenty of science fiction to keep the reader interested, there is a lot more to this book.  Against the backdrop of a journey and investigation of another planet inhabited by intelligent life, Author Mary Doria Russell explores the eternal question of the meaning of God and how we, as “clever apes,” are meant to relate to Him.  A fascinating and thought provoking book.

 

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171. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Robin Sloan

Genre:  Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery

288 pages, published October 2, 2012

Reading Format:  Audiobook on Hoopla

 

Summary

The Great Recession finds protagonist Clay Jannon working in the San Francisco bookshop known as Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.  Clay soon discovers that there is more to Mr. Penumbra and his bookstore than meets the eye.   There are only a few customers, but they come in repeatedly and never seem to actually buy anything, instead “checking out” obscure volumes from strange corners of the store, all according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the enigmatic Mr. Penumbra.  A curious Clay and his archetypical friends (including a love interest who works for Google) embark on an adventure to discover the secrets hidden inside Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.

 

Quotes 

“After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this:  A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.”

 

“Walking the stacks in a library, dragging your fingers across the spines — it’s hard not to feel the presence of sleeping spirits.”

 

“…this is exactly the kind of store that makes you want to buy a book about a teenage wizard. This is the kind of store that makes you want to be a teenage wizard.”

 

“Why does the typical adventuring group consist of a wizard, a warrior, and a rogue, anyway? It should really be a wizard, a warrior, and a rich guy. Otherwise who’s going to pay for all the swords and spells and hotel rooms?”

 

“But I kept at it with the help-wanted ads. My standards were sliding swiftly. At first I had insisted I would only work at a company with a mission I believed in. Then I thought maybe it would be fine as long as I was learning something new. After that I decided it just couldn’t be evil. Now I was carefully delineating my personal definition of evil.”

 

“You know, I’m really starting to think the whole world is just a patchwork quilt of crazy little cults, all with their own secret spaces, their own records, their own rules.”

 

“I’ve never listened to an audiobook before, and I have to say it’s a totally different experience. When you read a book, the story definitely takes place in your head. When you listen, it seems to happen in a little cloud all around it, like a fuzzy knit cap pulled down over your eyes.”

 

“Let me give you some advice: make friends with a millionaire when he’s a friendless sixth-grader.”

 

“So I guess you could say Neel owes me a few favors, except that so many favors have passed between us now that they are no longer distinguishable as individual acts, just a bright haze of loyalty. Our friendship is a nebula.”

 

“Have you ever played Maximum Happy Imagination?”

“Sounds like a Japanese game show.”

Kat straightens her shoulders. “Okay, we’re going to play. To start, imagine the future. The good future. No nuclear bombs. Pretend you’re a science fiction writer.”

Okay: “World government… no cancer… hover-boards.”

“Go further. What’s the good future after that?”

“Spaceships. Party on Mars.”

“Further.”

“Star Trek. Transporters. You can go anywhere.”

“Further.”

“I pause a moment, then realize: “I can’t.”

Kat shakes her head. “It’s really hard. And that’s, what, a thousand years? What comes after that? What could possibly come after that? Imagination runs out. But it makes sense, right? We probably just imagine things based on what we already know, and we run out of analogies in the thirty-first century.”

 

“… nothing lasts long. We all come to life and gather allies and build empires and die, all in a single moment – maybe a single pulse of some giant processor somewhere.”

  

My Take

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore was an entertaining audio book (I especially enjoyed the voice of narrator Ari Fliakos).  The characters are engaging, there is an appealing fantasy oriented plot and there is a nice little romantic connection between the main character and a charming girl from Google.  However, while it was enjoyable to listen to at the time, once finished, it fades quickly, leaving not much to remember.   A far superior book in this genre is Ready Player One.

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153. The Wish Granter

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   C. J. Redwine

Genre:  Fiction, Young Adult, Fantasy

432 pages, published February 14, 2017

Reading Format:  e-Book on Overdrive

 

Summary

The Wish Granter is a romantic, action-packed young adult fantasy novel loosely based on the tale of Rumpelstiltskin.  It centers on the story of Ari Glavan, who along with her brother Thad, are the bastard twins of Súndraille’s king.  Ari must take on the Wish Granter Alistair Teague, an evil fae, to save her brother’s soul.  Thad, who has traded his soul to save his people, sits on the throne of a kingdom whose streets are suddenly overrun with violence he can’t stop.  Growing up on the edges of society, Ari never wanted to be a proper princess and rebels against the royal expectations of her.  In her attempt to best Teague, Ari recruits Sebastian Vaughn, her brother’s new weapons master, to teach her how to fight.  With their souls and the kingdom on the line, it all comes down to an epic battle between Ari and Sebastian against the powerful Wish Granter.

 

Quotes

“Sometimes having courage means the hardest tasks fall onto your shoulders, and those leave the biggest scars.”

 

“There’s a restless, pent-up power in the sea, and you know if it ever decided to stop respecting its boundaries, it could destroy you. But it does respect its boundaries. It stays where it should, so its power feels safe. When you stand here, surrounded by mystery and beauty and power, you feel safe.”

 

“Coin didn’t protect you. It didn’t save you from your secrets. Only absolute power did that.”

  

My Take

I can’t remember how I found this book.  I think I was traveling and was scanning Overdrive for available books.  The Wish Granter was available for check out, had good reviews and I hadn’t read many fantasy books since starting my quest, so I decided to give it a read.  It was fine, but unlike the Twilight and Hunger Games books, I think I am too old for this series.  Maybe if I read while I was a teenager I would have enjoyed it more.  Recommended for the under 15 set.  Adults should find something better.

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148. The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Neil Gaiman

Genre:  Fiction, Fantasy, Horror

181 pages, published June 18, 2013

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The Ocean at the End of the Lane opens with a middle-aged man returning to his childhood home in Sussex, England to attend a funeral.   Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother.  He hasn’t thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she’d claimed was an ocean) behind the dilapidated old farmhouse, the past comes flooding back.  It is a past too bizarre, frightening, and dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

 

Quotes

“I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.”

 

“Growing up, I took so many cues from books. They taught me most of what I knew about what people did, about how to behave. They were my teachers and my advisers.”

 

“I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy.”

 

“Different people remember things differently, and you’ll not get any two people to remember anything the same, whether they were there or not.”

 

“Grown-ups don’t look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they’re big and thoughtless and they always know what they’re doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren’t any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.”

 

“That’s the trouble with living things. Don’t last very long. Kittens one day, old cats the next. And then just memories. And the memories fade and blend and smudge together.”

 

“Oh, monsters are scared,” said Lettie. “That’s why they’re monsters.”

 

“I was a normal child. Which is to say, I was selfish and I was not entirely convinced of the existence of things that were not me, and I was certain, rock-solid, unshakeably certain, that I was the most important thing in creation. There was nothing that was more important to me than I was.”

 

“Nothing’s ever the same,” she said. “Be it a second later or a hundred years. It’s always churning and roiling. And people change as much as oceans.”

 

“Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren’t.”

 

“Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences. I was a child, which meant that I knew a dozen different ways of getting out of our property and into the lane, ways that would not involve walking down our drive.”

 

My Take

Nominated and awarded multiple honors in the fantasy genre, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is creates a fantastical parallel world of monsters, one of whom eerily takes on human form, seen through the eyes of young English boy. Reading it, you are never quite sure how much of the book is the boy’s imagination and how much actually happened.  That juxtaposition of fantasy and reality, as well as the skilled pen of author Neil Gaiman, is what makes The Ocean at the End of the Lane an appealing read.

 

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59. Red Rising

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Pierce Brown

Genre:  Young Adult, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Dystopia

382 pages, published January 28, 2014

Reading Format:  E-Book on Overdrive

Summary 

The dystopian future world of Red Rising is a place where people are strictly segregated by class and color.  Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest and relegated to a life underground working in the dangerous mines of Mars.  Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations.  Soon Darrow discovers that humanity already reached the surface generations ago and that vast cities and sprawling parks spread across the planet.  He and all Reds are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.  When Darrow’s wife Eo is executed, he is chosen by a group of rebels to undergo a physical transformation that will turn him into a member of the Gold ruling caste.  His body successfully altered, Darrow’s challenge is just beginning.  He is thrown into a battle among young Golds to see who will emerge as the victor.

 

Quotes

“I live for the dream that my children will be born free.  That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.’  ‘I live for you,’ I say sadly.  She kisses my cheek.  ‘Then you must live for more.”

 

“Funny how a single word can change everything in your life.”

“It is not funny at all.  Steel is power.  Money is power.  But of all the things in all the worlds, words are power.”

 

“You do not follow me because I am the strongest. Pax is.  You do not follow me because I am the brightest. Mustang is. You follow me because you do not know where you are going.  I do.”

 

“The measure of a man is what he does when he has power.”

 

“The world is soundless. We cannot hear, but a pack of wolves does not need words to know that it is time to hunt.”

 

“The fleas would jump and jump to heights unknown. Then a man came along and upturned a glass jar over the fleas. The fleas jumped and hit the top of the jar and could go no farther.  Then the man removed the jar and yet the fleas did not jump higher than they had grown accustomed, because they believed there to still be a glass ceiling.”

 

“Society has three stages:  Savagery, Ascendance, Decadence.  The great rise because of Savagery. They rule in Ascendance. They fall because of their own Decadence.”

 

Read more

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