Beautiful Books:: The Elementals

Currently reading FLBs "The Elementals".

It had a slow start, I think, but I've fallen in love. Very pretty. Very ... relatable, if that's even a word. In fact, I find it more relatable than some of her other books. 

There's just something much more relatable and understanding about a girl entering college after traumatic setbacks and feeling lost, alone, and grasping onto the things she finally finds magical. 

 "That was when I started to run. I ran and ran as fast as I could along the pavement. Sweat poured down my face, mixing with the tears that had started to come. I could run fast. But you just can't run faster than time, not faster than death and, as I'd find out, not faster than love."

-- page 8

Weetzie Bat led a beautiful life, but it's not one everyone gets, or understands, or even necessarily wants. But Ariel is so real and complex in her fears and desires that I see myself behaving much the same way as her in many of the situations she faces. Her fear and anxiety and loneliness and desire to find her friend (and herself) definitely reflect me back at myself in a sad, beautiful way. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

"I walked past groups of laughing frat boys in monster masks and sorority girls dressed as sexy cats, sexy witches or sexy fairies in accessorized leotards and tights. The homeless were out in full force as well but the Greek kids were ignoring them in the usual way, as if they were invisible, phantoms. But I saw. The woman with the wings held a skeleton mask over her face and her small companion was dressed head to toe in clothes that looked as if they had been dipped in blood. The man with dreadlocks had twisted them into horns. He approached me, mumbling and waving his hands. I froze. As he got closer he shouted, 'The end is near and the parallel universe is not near complete!' He kept walking past me and I resumed breathing. The air smelled of coffee and chocolate. I stopped at the corner and looked around. People were sitting in the cafe. It seemed so warm and cozy in there."

  -- page 29

It reminds me a little of Echo, in the searching, and Quakeland in its self aware anxiety, The Hanged Man in its views of life and the self, and Ecstasia in its lush sensory descriptions.

But all of these in a much more narrative, realistic, understandable way. I can see myself as Ariel in ways I couldn't with other characters. I don't aspire to be like her or in her life; I just could be. Anyone could be.

The story is part coming-of-age, part supernatural, and part crime mystery. It's lovely and touching and sad and scary, and reminds you of those times when you just want to run and jump and dance, dress up, play, light candles and kiss and write and sing and be alive as much as possible.

"Everywhere I went I imagined she was walking with me. I tried to see things through her eyes; it wasn't hard. I knew how she thought. The faces she would find beautiful or interesting, the scruffy and disabled dogs she would stop to pet, the jewelry she would life from black velvet on the street vendor's table, examining to see how it was made, the buildings she would want to live in."

--page 17

It's also incredibly grounded in its representation of love and fear and tragedy, and I swear it's a wonderful read, Teen-Fiction or not. 

It's amazing.

Beautiful Books :: Frenzy

The Frenzy

By Francesca Lia Block

(HarperCollins 2010)

"He would look into my eyes the next time I saw him ans sense that I had moved further away, become less like him." 

The Frenzy is s little different than the other FLB books I've read.
There's more of a plot, less imagery and metaphor/symbolism, and less steam of consciousness/quickly told sorry points. This one is slow -- a little repetitive-- and let's you admire the story-- one about love, loss, rage, being different, and finding yourself-- as it comes, without rushing you or overpowering your senses.

"May the river of peace flow through me. May the winds of calm blow anger from my mind. May love's fire burn away my pain. May the great mother protect me and may I know how to protect her as I go."

Plot-wise, I think this quickly became one of my favorites of hers, maybe just because after twenty-some books, little else but imagery and sensual writing, with light, airy plots--though usually steeped in an underlining layer of realism-- can get a little tiring, so a very straight forward, emotional, uniquely FLB, book like this was refreshing and lovely.

"The engine revved and roared like a beast as we took off into the night. Wind grabbed at my hair, flaring red strands around us. I held on tight to Corey's waist and I could smell his sweat-- a scent of adventure and hope and love."

Not to mention that throughout FLB's repetoiure of fantastical, lyrical, surreal and sensual texts, the characters in The Frenzy, somehow, felt the most real to me. The most solid.

"I let you down. I turned away from you. Without your love and acceptance... I could have been where you are now. Love is the only thing we have to save us."

 

Loving Anais

Still reading the wonderful Diary of Anais Nin. As such, here are my favorite quotes for the 2nd ...eighth? of the book! These selections aren't so much inspiring as they are beautiful writing (to me).

On a side note; I believe this is post #200!!!!! 

I am excite.

 

From, The Diary of Anais Nin, Volume 1. Pages 47-105

"I was upset as a child to discover that we only had one life."

"[She has] increased the dose of love as the poor addict increases his dose of drugs."

"...they grappled body to body, breath to breath, tongue against tongue, as if to enclose, enmesh, imprison once and forever..."

"I could not life any longer in an empty world. I must have much to love, much to hate, much to grapple with."

"Again and again I return to poetry."

"Anger incites him: fuels him. Anger poisons me."

"...[she] stopped them an angry way which revealed her love of me. As i f I were sacred."

"To destroy is easy."

"I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation."

"He wills the whole world to fire and floods..."

"Today I feel my past like an unbearable weight..."

"To me the truth is something which cannot be told in a few words... those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning."

"I could already see how contagious a full life can be."

"I keep a kind of shell around me, because I want to be loved."

"...so I cover all this up with understanding, wisdom, interest in others, with my mind's agility, with my writing... I cover the woman up, to reveal only the artist, the confessor..."

"I want my Dionysian life, drunkenness and passion and chaos; and yet here I am, sitting at a kitchen table and working..."

"For this is the moment when I relive my life in terms of a dream, a myth, an endless story."

"I have constructed a style, a manner, affable, gay, charming, and within this I am hidden."

"He gets drunk on words."

"The old pattern of my life is shattered."

 "To be unhappy is not a sign of weakness"

"I have never seen anyone so withered from within, so dead in life."

"...an initial shock has shattered my wholeness, that I am like a shattered mirror. Each piece has gone off and developed a life."

"...writing, for me, is an expanded world, a limitless world, containing all."

"Her love was brave and virile."

"The room feels heavy and deeply anchored in the earth."

"Enter this laboratory of the soul where incidents are refracted into a diary, dissected to prove that everyone of us carries a deforming mirror where he sees himself too small or too large, too fat or too thin... Enter here where one discovers that destiny can be directed... Once the deforming mirror is smashed, there is a possibility of wholeness; there is a possibility of joy."

Emptiness and Nin

I don't have anything clever to say today. I am sorry.

When you're in a good place, emotionally/psychologically, you forget how bad things are when you're not. You forget the empty feeling in your head that grows into a gnawing discontent, then a deep, aching misery. You forget how your soul just doesn't seem to accept joy anymore. Every possible pleasant or useful activity is more work than it's worth, because afterwards you won't feel any better. 

This, too, shall pass.

Right?

I have miles to go before I sleep.

I have, however, restarted the Diary of Anais Nin for... about the tenth time. I always start, fall in love, and then set it down after a hundred pages or so and get distracted for a few years.
It's very beautiful, and very much of the sensual, artistic (yet realistic) beauty that I love about Francesca Lia Block's stories, but through the words and thoughts and life of a person who actually did live and love and was kind of amazing. Anais Nin sought a life of both hard realism and truth, and also the beautiful, ethereal life of sensualism; love and fantasies and beauty.
Her many many journals record her (amazing) thoughts and feelings throughout her life, including about friends, lovers, and life in general. She is kind of my literary hero, and there's no (or at least very little) fiction to it.

To entertain you in my place, I present my favorite lines so far from The Diary of Anais Nin (Volume One, pages 1-46). The bold ones, of course, are my favorite favorites.

"I know that human beings place upon an object, or a person, this responsibility of being the obstacle when the obstacle lies always within one's self."

"I had a sense of preparation for a love to come."

"I want to prove that there is infinite space, infinite meaning, infinite dimension."

"I have days of illuminations and fevers. I have days when the music in my head stops."

"You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book ... or you take a trip, or to talk ... and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating."

"...then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death."

"I have always believed ... to write as one thinks, in the order and disorder in which one feels and thinks..."

"She was color and brilliance and strangeness."

"She lives on the reflections of herself in the eyes of others. She does not dare to be herself."

"'I will never know again who I am, what I am, what I love, what I want. Your beauty has drowned me, the core of me.'"

"'...if I love you it means we share the same fantasies, the same madness."

"...[we] have paid with our souls for taking fantasies seriously, for living life as a theatre..."

"She is a personality expanded to the limit."

"...she walked into my house and I was willing to endure any pain at her hands."

"Our love would be death."

"We were walking above the world, above reality, into pure, pure ecstasy."

"In his love for her he has endured so many torments that the lover took refuge in the writer."

"I have the power to burn like a flame"

"To be fully alive is to live unconsciously and instinctively in all directions..."

"All but freedom, utter freedom, is death."

"I go out into the world to seek life."

"She is so busy just BEING, talking, walking, making love, drinking, that she can achieve nothing else."

"She lives within chaos."

"You cannot possess without loving."

More to come, I'm sure.

Beautiful Blogs :: Feral Doe

Beautiful Blogs

Feral Doe

This isn't a full BB write-up, but I did want to give a shout-out to this (new?) blog I caught sight of in my Follower list.

It looks like she's just started out, and her blog is mostly short bits of fiction, but I loved the first one so much I copied quotes of it for my Inspiration Board (more on that when it's a little more finished).

"She wanted the right one, the key, to unlock the spill of her voice."

Doesn't that just scream Francesca Lia Block!??!

Very beautiful; I love it.

Will definitely go back for more 

<3

Beautiful Books :: Daughter of the Forest

Beautiful Books

Daughter of the Forest

Juliet Marillier

I spent a while longing for the kind of book I love to read. Epic, sweeping books that pick you up and wrap you in another world, with a strong female that sweeps you off your feet with adventure and romance. After getting through the best of the Kushiel Legacy, and waiting patiently for the next (even though I knew it would never be as good as the first three) I was in a void for a sweeping, epic fantasy. 

But then I started going through my bookshelf, reading books off of a stack of random ones I've owned forever and never really picked up.

Daughter of the Forest was one of these. 

I've owned the book for years. Picked it up at some point as a teenager and just never really felt like reading it.

And now finally I did, and I will never regret it. It is amazing.

"When was the beginning? When my father met my mother, and lost his heart, and chose to wed for love? Or was it when I was born? I should have been the seventh son of a seventh son, but the goddess was playing tricks, and I was a girl." {page 4}

If you've ever heard the fairy tale about the girl who's brothers are turned into swans (sometimes ravens) and she has to stay silent and weave clothing for them for a number of years to save them, this is the story. But amplified, intensified, romanticized, and epic-ized to the power of ten.
It's strong, beautiful, epic, thrilling, and heartbreaking.

The writing is lush and beautiful, and the books that follow are similar in their wonderful details, even if they don't come nearly as close to the amazingness that is this first one.

"I have spoken of the keep where my family lived, a stark stone tower set deep in the forests, its walls pierced here and there by narrow window slits. Its courtyard, its hedges, its kitchen garden did little to soften the grim profile. But there was more to Sevenwaters than this. Without our walled fields, our thatched barns to house herd and flock over winter, our gardens with their rows of carrots, parsnips, and beans, our mill and our straw-rope granaries, we could not have survived in such isolation." {page 45}

The story starts off following the character as a child, and I wasn't sure how I felt about it, but after a few chapters, things pick up quickly, and once they do, events unfold quite suddenly and the intensity spikes like crazy.
This book will make you cry and scream and also, very strangely, make you want to stay very, very quiet.

"'But remember, you must not make a sound, you must not tell your tale, even to them, or they will be swans forever. The task will be long, Sorcha.'" {page 154}

At every moment, my heart ached for Sorcha, the beautiful storyteller, sworn to desperate silence. I was so invested in her strong, silent struggle that when someone interuppted my reading, I'd just stare at them for long moments, trying to regain my bearings in the real world, and having to remind myself that I could speak.

"As for me, I could hardly imagine a life without my brothers, for they had always been there, sometimes kind, sometimes gruff, always ready to help when I was in trouble. They were a part of me, and I of them. Now I was alone, and I must manage without them, for to fail in this task was to lose them forever." {page 157}

Watching Sorcha navigate through her test, her pains (which are, several times, very intense- you have been warned), and the entire struggle of it all was epic and wonderful and I couldn't even describe how much I loved it. Though, obviously, I'm using the words epic and amazing a lot; so there's that.
Even the romance was unexpected. Unlike many female-driven adventures, there is not a set, obvious love interest, and that was a little more beautiful for me as well. It sweeps you off your feet and makes it all the more intense.

"There was a pause. Perhaps only I knew how he used it to marshal his thoughts, to force his breathing to be slow and steady, to draw deep on his will so his voice remained confident. For the others, it was still just a tale, like all the tales we told, night by night, tales comical and strange, tales heroic and awe-inspiring, the tales that formed the fabric of our spirits." {page 526}

This is, by far, on my list of favorite books in all of the books I've ever read. And next to Kushiel's Dart, it's the most amazing epic adventure I've fallen in love with.

Worth reading? Holy. Frack. Yes.

See Also: Beautiful Reading Label

Beautiful Books :: A Certain Slant of Light

Beautiful Books :: A Certain Slant of Light

by Laura Whitcomb

I'm going to be lazy, here, and use my GoodReads review from this, with some lovely quotes added in.

I was really surprised by this book. I came in with no expectations whatsoever. I knew (assumed) it was teen fiction and about ghosts...it seemed. But I'm a sucker for pretty covers and I'd seen some buzz about this one, so I snatched it up when I saw it at the library.

"I was too fascinated to be afraid now. Everything was astounding. Being touched. Smelling people, their sweat, and perfume, and even the soap they used to wash their clothes as they gave me hugs goodbye. The power of all those eyes, shining right into mine. The weight of things, like punch in the cup. The weight of me as I stood and moved. I was lightheaded with curiosity. I wanted to run and sing and walk down a street where people would turn a shoulder to pass without colliding into me." [120]

I kind of loved it. It's not actually about teenagers, since the "ghosts" involved were in their late twenties when they died, which I think gives it some extra depth, but it also deals with some very normal, realistic teen problems that were pretty believable.

"I couldn't take my eyes off him. Like a dessert wanderer afraid of mirages, I gazed at my oasis, but he was real." [21]

The writing was very pretty, and I love overly descriptive prose, so that was perfect. Plus it had a nice blend of times that was also pretty believable, melding old and new.

"As light dappled across the forest of faces, I could watch them create inside their hearts each a different story from the same images. It was a shame the way modern movies smothered their stories with songs and loaded every moment with noises and words. Little was left to the imagination." [91]

I was very surprised by how much the story pulled me in, keeping me up late night after night to finish. It wasn't so intensely emotional that I cried at any point (I usually on cry when there's an epic scale involved, sorry), but I was definitely invested.

Another point that I liked was that although this does deal with a concept of heaven and hell, I was delighted by the idea that **SPOILER, sort of** escaping hell had little to do with forgiveness from "God", and pretty much everything to do with forgiveness from yourself, which was lovely.

Definitely enjoyed it, although some of that might be from my "no expectations" beginning. Still, very nice, very pretty. Worth reading.

Beautiful Books :: The Fault in Our Stars

Beautiful Books

The Fault in Our Stars

John Green

"Even then, it hurt. The pain was always there, pulling me inside of myself, demanding to be felt." {142}

I don't think I ever created a post about Looking for Alaska. It's a very good book, and I was happy to get through it, and really liked it. It has one of my favorite quotes in all of literature. The image to the right. Absolutely beautiful.

However, as much as I was impressed by Looking for Alaska, The Fault in Our Stars really really blew me away. 

"'It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing.'" 

{page 20}

The entire book is wonderfully written. It (and its characters) are insightful, beautiful, and so very quotable. The story is about a girl who has cancer, and a boy she meets. It's both funny, quirky, fun, sad, and incredibly moving.

"I liked Augustus Waters. I really, really, really liked him. I liked the way his story ended with someone else. I liked his voice. I liked that he took existentially fraught free throws. I liked that he was a tenured professor in the Department of Slightly Crooked Smiles with a dual appointment in the Department of Having a Voice That Made My Skin Feel More Like Skin." {31}

Some people might be disappointed with an ending that doesn't "solve" everything, however, but I feel like that is part of the realism of it, and I'm okay with that.

"...I felt robbed. I would probably never again see the ocean from thirty thousand feet above, so far that you can't make out the waves or any boats, so that the ocean ins a great and endless monolith. I could imagine it. I could remember it. But I couldn't see it again..." {305}

I don't want to talk to much about it, or hype it up too much. But the writing is beautiful and I was genuinely happy with it. 

It's also being made into a movie, apparently, which is kind of cool. I'm not sure how well it would translate into film, but since Green is involved in the creation, I've got good thoughts.

"We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either." {312}

Read it. It's lovely.

Worlds of Taste {5} :: Pink Smog

Worlds of Taste

Part {5} :: Pink Smog

(Francesca Lia Block, 2012)

"I got myself a bowl of Lucky Charms. The pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, and green clovers ached my molars as the milk turned rainbow colors." (1)

"...watching the clock and eating the lunch I'd made-- an apple and a pack of orange cheese spread and crackers." (5)

"I got a can of Tab, sleek and sweaty with cold. ... I drank my Tab. It tasted like sweet liquid metal." (11)

"I heated up some frozen mac and cheese for us and sat next to her..." (11)

"I brought her Brazil nuts and ginger ale and red licorice. I would have tried to cook but I always burned the grilled cheese sandwiches or let the rice bubble over. The only thing I could make was instant mac and cheese but she didn't want that and neither did I. I wished she had taught me to cook when I was littler and she was happy..." (25-26)

"... the cute waiter sand me Cat Stevens songs and brought me a Cobb salad and a piece of birthday cake." (29)

"They served veggie burgers and sprouts and hibiscus lemonade. Carney's was a hot-dog place inside and old train car. Butterfield's was a sunken garden at the bottom of the stairs, like someone's run-down mansion where you could have elegant brunches with quiche, fresh fruit, and champagne among lacy trees." (33)

"We ate little pieces of raw fish and candied ginger and my parents had cocktails and wine." (35)

"They stay in a tiny, lovely Victorian hotel on a steep hill and eat fettuccine at an Italian restaurant." (49)

"I ate my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and she massacred her apple. I offered her half a frosted Pop-Tart but she looked at it like it might bite back so I quickly returned it to my lunch box." (57)

"Bobby and I got ice-cream cones but Lily didn't want one and I didn't push-- she looked as if I were going to stab her with my swirly pink-and-white confection." (71)

"...afterward we made Pillsbury chocolate chip cookies and at the whole batch... I have to admit chocolate never tasted so good." (101)

"...we were home stuffing our faces with the 3 Musketeers bars Bobby had brought over for trick-or-treaters..." (123)

"...her mother was a professional housewife who liked to cook elaborate meals to entice her daughter into eating. The huge, fatty dishes only made Lily starve herself more." (132)

"I wanted to make her soup but I was a lousy cook and I knew she didn't want any either. ... He... came back with a large green apple and a cup of peppermint tea with lemon and honey." (133)

"I wanted to make pancakes, bacon, and scrambled eggs for dinner. Sometimes it cheered me up to eat meals at the "wrong times"." (134)

""We'll have pressed turkey and cranberry jelly and pumpkin pie under the cuckoo clocks, okay?"" (137)

"When I was little he liked to take me to Norms Coffee Shop for hamburgers and vanilla shakes that we ate in the vinyl booths,... or ...you could make your own toast at the toasters at your table. We had ice-cream cones at Wil Wright's.... Farrell's where they made a huge ice-cream birthday concoction called the Zoo that was covered in little plastic animals. ... We sat down under the wooden birds and ate the orange sticky buns the restaurant was famous for, as well as turkey dinners with pressed turkey and cranberry jelly and mashed potatoes." (145)

"In the same way I ate a double-scoop pistachio-and-cherry ice-cream cone and then had popcorn and a large Sprite at the movie theater..." (147-148)

"...bought ingredients to make pasta with pesto sauce and a spinach salad with walnuts and dried cranberries and balsamic vinegar..." (161)

"I was going to make turkey sandwiches, green beans with candied almonds, yams with marshmallows, and cranberry sauce." (161)

"...we drank the cold, bitter white wine from plastic cups and chewed Bubble Yum to take the edge off." (166)

"We hate gnocchi and ravioli, Indian curries and samosas, pork buns and chow mein. ... while we went to buy oranges, milk, and cornflakes at the corner market." (183)

The Worlds of Taste series here is a collection of all the mentions of food that occurs in the books of Francesca Lia Block. Sometimes accompanied by photos from the web, or sometimes just colored with glitter and shine, these posts remind me of the luxurious world of food within the FLB books. Read others at Worlds of Taste {3}: Weetzie Bat, or {4} : Ecstasia

Beautiful Books :: Pink Smog

Beautiful Books

Pink Smog

Francesca Lia Block

"I don't know if I can do this myself," I said, meaning everything, meaning life.

"Yes you can. You can do anything you put your mind to. You just needed a little help through adolescence..."

Ever wonder how Weetzie Bat became so slam glam fabulous and in love with the world? 

Well it turns out she wasn't always a life-loving city goddess, she was once just Louise Bat, a shy brunette who skated to school, got picked on, and never felt sure of herself.

But after her dad leaves home, Louise has to find a way to bring herself up to the top. There's a strange new family in her building, with a chic purple-eyed woman, a devilish girl who terrorizes Louise, and an Angel Boy who watches over her. At school the popular girls tease her and put gum in her hair. Her mother stays at the bottom of a bottle. And her dad is nowhere to be found. 

"I realized that mean people had their purpose, too. They brought you together. They unified you. They made you find your friends."

Now Weetzie has to figure out how to navigate through it all and make herself happy even when everything is going wrong.

"I had this city and I decided I had better fall in love with her again because she wasn't going anywhere and neither was I.

The black pavement, dark to hide the dirt, sparkled with diamond chips in the burning sun."

This quick novel isn't the burning, flashing, life-changing manifesto of life and love and beauty that the original Weetzie Bat book(s) was, but it is still amazing in its own way. 

We don't pop out of the box cool and glam like Weetzie Bat. And the more we struggle to "be like Weetzie", the more we tend to forget that. This story shows that even Weetzie didn't start out as Weetzie, she had to create herself. And we all start off as Louise, struggling to make sense of a world that is constantly against us. And seeing that transformation, from Louise to Weetzie, is a very simple but beautiful story that still manages to resonate with the reader who's been there; young and alone and unhappy.

"And smog is like sadness. It slips stealthily inside of you,  with every breath, poisoning you before you realize it..."

Hell, at 23, it resonates perfectly with me now. That empty, alone feeling that crawls into your stomach and up into your brain and whispers and scratches at you, reminding you of all the things that keep going wrong. That will always go wrong.

But Pink Smog reminds us that sometimes we need to push that feeling away, find the beauty in our lives, and even reinvent ourselves to find who we really are, and what we really want.

See Also: Beautiful Reading :: Wasteland, Beautiful Reading :: White Oleander

Beautiful Blogs :: carry me away

"always carried away"

http://mademoiselledeva.blogspot.com/

A beautiful blog of snippets.

Photos (I assume from the internet)

Quotes

And simple blog entries.

Sometimes about life, love, work, or Mademoiselle Deva's personal life.

Beautiful images.

Often equally beautiful words.

I love that this blog doesn't require a lot of commitment or reading. 

Flip through this scrapbook-esque collection of beauty and life.

(With several different formats to choose from)

♥ I am LOVE.

Let's love more.

I love LOVE.

I need love.

I breathe love.

I am LOVE.

I am realistic.

I expect miracles.

I believe in magic.

It's easy to get lost, 

and easy to become enamored.

Perfect for a daily dose of inspiration.

Worlds of Tastes {1}

Worlds of Taste

Food in the world of Francesca Lia Block

Part One :: Echo 
(Francesca Lia Block, 2001)

"her fruit trees bear lemons that taste like oranges and oranges the size of grapefruits." [2]

"She makes tamale pies, spinach lasagnas, Indian saffron curries, coconut and mint Thai noodles, grilled salmon tacos with mango salsa, persimmon bread puddings and lemon-raspberry pies, each one in minutes and without ever glancing at a recipe.

She can never duplicate a dish twice since she doesn't write anything down and is always too excited about what she will make next, so my father and I are sometimes left pining for a reenactment of the almond enchiladas or the garlic-tomato tart." [5]

"cakes so delectable as to be almost hallucinogenic-" [6]

"She is his unprecedented blossom, his chocolate-cherry-swirl birthday cake..." [8]

"She made brown rice and tofu and miso soup from a golden paste." [17]

"i went to all-night fast-food stands and ate burritos in my car in big gulps, squishing the beans and cheese out of the flour tortilla." [21]

"Sometimes instead of burritos I ate powdered sugar donuts with colored sprinkles. The powdered sugar cut and stung my mouth. The sprinkles reminded me of the lights of the city, shiny and sugary and fake and promising and nothing.

That summer tasted like a powdered sugar donut stinging my mouth." [21-22]

"He smelled of sea and salt and blueberries. I wondered if he tasted that way. My mouth tasted of blueberries when I was with him." [36]

"I attempted to make sweet green corn tamales but they hardened and stuck to the corn husk so I brought him cheese and apples instead." [36]

"She picked oranges and avocados when she was hungry..." [48]

"taught her about curries, the aphrodisiac properties of certain spices and how to make a mango yogurt concoction that was refreshing on the most burning days..." [50]

"his mother's secret recipe for risotto that shone in the dark." [51]

"window boxes of herbs and tiny vegetables." [54]

"She was sipping root beer in a state of bliss." [57]

"All summer we had looked out at the fruit-heavy plum tree and the honeysuckle vines..." [60]

"slurping coffee from huge cut-glass goblets..." [63]

"...all the Sunday croissants that soaked buttery stains through the napkins, the Kahlua and milks,..." [69]

"...I had dreams of chocolate cakes ascending stairs and smothering me in my my sleep." [71]

"I wanted Thorn to take me out to dinner and order brown rice and vegetables and white wine." [74]

"We built a fire in the shivery living room and ate our pasta in front of it." [79]

"...then they ate chocolates and kissed for hours..." [91]

"They had eaten curry and samosas at a restaurant shaped like a camera..." [94]

"...had a part at his glass house in the hills...champagne, sushi, coke." [104]

"...what if Smoke and I had made love, slept in, gone out for pancakes, walked in the hills..." [109]

"I bought some carrot juice and avocado sandwiches from the health food market..." [112]

"I picked some flowers from the garden and made green tea and lit candles." [113]

"Nothing to go home to except the canned soups and crackers she had started eating, the bottles of gin." [117]

"I made myself a salad for dinner and drank mineral water with lime." [132]

"'I live on fish and brown rice and vegetables..." [136]

"We ordered and the waiter brought carrot juice, miso soup, cold cold salads with grated vegetables, a basket of corn bread." [138]

""'Fish is the perfect food.' He squeezed a lemon slice, lifted a pink segment of salmon with his chopsticks. 'But he eats steak, too,' Nina said. 'Really bloody.'" [139]

"lick nonfat frozen yogurt, get our fortunes told..." [140]

"...we went out for sushi and sake. Mark ordered for us and we tried all different kinds of fish- translucent, firm, glossy pieces on neat beds of rice. Mark and Nina had a contest to see who could handle the most wasabi. They gobbed the pale green stuff into their mouths until their eyes teared. We laughed, sipping the rice wine that seemed to shine in our throats." [141]

"impossible to eat anything except a light vegetable broth. But I thought about food all the time. Muscles and bones and blood pleading: steak, sweet potatoes, buttery corn-on-the-cob quarts of vanilla-bean ice cream, pizza, pancakes, grilled pink salmon steaks." [148]

"Skye took a roll from under white linen, cracked the gold crust, buttered the soft inside, handed it to me over the red candle. My stomach was better. He ordered angel hair pasta for us." [153]

"Skye's hair smelled of smoke, corn bread and leaves." [154]

"We made chicken soup and potato latkes with apple sauce and sour cream. We made a large green salad and a side dish of peas, carrots, and pearl onions. Chocolate macaroons." [191]

"The book was full of mixed-up world cuisine-- Japanese burritos with fresh seared tuna, sweet rice and wasabi; Greek pasta with olives, tomatoes and feta cheese; Jewish pizza with smoked salmon and cream cheese." [192]

"I moved into the tiny room with the thirteen cats and got a job as a waitress serving blue corn tamales and kiwi margaritas at a Caribbean restaurant/gallery decorated with alters of roses and candles..." [195]

"I had taken myself to dinner at a Thai restaurant decorated in purple silk where they served rose petals in the salad, chunks of tofu with jasmine rice, hunks of sugared ginger, mangoes in coconut milk." [200]


~*~

"Other boys were happy enough to enjoy the show, they just wanted to be entertained in the body's shadow theater. But Michael had to come backstage. He went down into the mines, into the dark, and brought up the gold, your new self, a better self." 

-Janet Fitch, Paint it Black

Beautiful Reading :: Wasteland

Book: Wasteland
By: Francesca Lia Block

"But the way I saw you was pieces refracting the light, shifting into an infinite universe of flowers and rainbows and insects and planets, magical dividing cells, pictures no one else knew."

-pg 4

I've only gotten half way through this book, and I'm still a little confused about it, but the words are still beautiful, just like FLB books tend to be. Like the quote above, images of light and music and the world around the characters, Marina, Lex, and West.
From what I've read in reviews, the story is a blend of a (controversial) romantic relationship between siblings Lex and Marina. From what I've read, this story falls behind, mentioned, implied, and described through the strange, building relationship between the two. But it's not the primary focus, which actually seems to be Lex's untimely, mysterious death, and classmate West's attempts to help Marina get through it.

"You remember the ones who die when you're a kid. You remember them because it's so out of control and it reminds you that it's not just old people even though you feel in a million years nothing could happen to you."
-pg 30

Like I said, I'm only half way through, and the plot is a definitely a little confusing, the point of view and timeline changing often, making it hard sometimes to tell what is going on, who is talking, and when it's happening. I'm thinking this may work better on a second reading, after I've been through the text and soaked in the story.
But the emotion is raw and beautiful, and the descriptions, as would be expected, are amazing. I'm not sure this will be among my favorite FLB books, but I definitely won't regret it, turning each page with a solemn ache in my heart for Marina's pain.

"My mind is like the Valley- this vast barren waste. Car lots. Malls.  Tract homes. I know there are other worlds beyond it-- of canyons full of coyote and monarch butterflies, squirrels, bunnies, purple and yellow wildflowers, of magical boulevards lined with palatial movie theaters and movie-star haunted mansions, of parks and palms and palisades, especially, especially, especially of the ocean, where it all ends and everything begins."

-pg 11

PS.

Are you ready for Christmas? If not an Xmas person, what other Holidays do you celebrate this time of year?