#reading2017

[duh-duh-duh-face]

Reading 2017. (Why I felt the need to wear two pairs of glasses, I do not know)

[thesharpoint-blog]

III.

[richardgansey]

BOOKS I READ - 2017 // Dangerous Girls and Dangerous Boys by Abigail Haas

“Any one of us could be made to look a monster, with selective readings of our history.”

[bloomandbotanicstudies]

★★★★★★★★★★★★★Book Review: 24.06.17★★★★★★★★★★★★

A Fierce and Subtle Poison By: Samantha Mabry “How Would you describe your condition?” I asked. Isabel didn’t respond. Instead, her eyes landed on a wasp, possibly the same one that had been buzzing around my ear earlier. Isabel turned her chin slightly in its direction. She blew out as if extinguishing a candle flame. For a split-second the wasp hovered in the air. Then it dropped dead to the ground. -An excerpt from 'A Fierce and Subtle Poison' In a small Puerto Rican town, legend and superstition still run rampant. There is one legend in particular that seventeen year old Lucas Knight is drawn to. He grows up hearing tales of the cursed girl from the local señoras. It is said she has green skin and grass for hair. Some say she grants wishes, some say her touch kills. When Lucas receives notes in his hotel room from the cursed girl and his girlfriend along with other local girls go missing he turns to Isabel for answers. But the girl with poison running through her veins is dying. She is the only one with the knowledge of the missing girls location. On a race to escape death and save the missing girls, Lucas and Isabel are thrown into a heart wrenching adventure and only one of them is coming back alive. I fell in love with the book cover, but the words are just as beautiful. I really enjoyed the supernatural and forbidden love aspects of this book. The suspense and mystery the author creates throughout the pages will take your breath away. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who loves books full of myths, legends, and mystery.

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

[adrina-stark]

everything i read in 2017: deltora quest series by emily rodda

“the enemy is clever and sly, and to its anger and envy a thousand years is like the blink of an eye”

[wordsworkweekly]

Reading 2017 # 1: LETTERS TO A YOUNG CONTRARIAN

By Christopher Hitchens

I have a vague memory of Christopher Hitchens. It was a late night. I was young. It was Jay Leno, I think, or some other late night fella who introduced me. There was something romantic in the way he held himself, Hitchens, and his scotch, and, maybe, a pack of cigarettes and an unlit smoke pinched between clubby fingers and a wallet or a tiny notebook, it was leather but I can’t remember it all just that there were things in his hand, objects that cluttered up his grip making the handshake awkward. I didn’t shake his hand, if that was what you were thinking. Leno did. On TV. Or it was some other late night fella who seemed so lame (and sober) in comparison. I remember a wrinkly suit that I got the sense didn’t need to be as wrinkled as it was. There was scruff or a clean shave, but definitely a shadow. There was a flip of hair that would sometimes slip over the shiny parts that had long receded and made a nuisance of themselves until he combed them back with the flat of his hand. This was a rebel without a cause. A writer. A real live writer. On TV. Of all places.

I didn’t get around to reading him for some time. I’d only read 3 books at that point (15-years-old, football prodigy according to my father with middling grades and no intellectual curiosity beyond a desire to seem smart - to myself, to others - despite all objective evidence to the contrary). But, that late night, hearing Hitchens speak, seeing him move, smoke, drink - it was a trick. It was memorable. Impressionable. Or I was, I suppose. So 20 years later, here I am. Reading him. For the first time. All the way through. 

Of course, I find, we align in many ways. Not politically, or socially, or by need of attention or accolade (though sometimes we overlap in these areas). No, we align in our attempt to think, how we choose to be a citizen of the human race, and to think and be and propagate the bliss of that fight to others, to challenge people to think and be themselves (the only thing they were born to be and nothing more and nothing less). The fight, like art, is an art in and of itself. But sometimes, between the strum and drang (the sounds not the movement), there might be a place for pivot, a place for reflection and growth. Civilization is born from my lips to your ears and back again, from lips to ears ad infinitum. Talk it out, kids. Fight and argue and know that no one ever wins because this is not a game. 

[maysilleedonner]

books read 2017: the ersatz elevator by lemony snicket

the table of elements does not contain one of the most powerful elements that make up our world, and that is the element of surprise

[maysilleedonner]

books read 2017: the slippery slope by lemony snicket

if you feel that well-read people are less likely to be evil, and a world full of people sitting quietly with good books in their hands is preferable to world filled with schisms and sirens and other noisy and troublesome things, then every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, ‘The world is quiet here,’ as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good