Year's end.

This project, as many do, trailed off into obscurity as my year progressed. I didn't achieve what I wished to. I have, frankly, been too overwhelmed to do much more than attempt to keep afloat.

This isn't meant as an excuse--I don't regret beginning this project, and have hope for the future. Maybe next year, friends!

Book #33: Dream Factory

Dream Factory did not impress me as much as Scrambled Eggs At Midnight. Nevertheless, it was a cute story and managed to explore difficult-to-handle themes against a quirky background. In this I commend the authors, as the book isn't too weighty but still makes a valid point. The ending was predictable (who's surprised?) and at times the plot felt altogether too cheesy, but I don't regret reading it.

I've become increasingly quote-happy of late. Here we go!

I shrug, putting the blade of grass into her open hand. "You asked me if I believed in magic, and I said yes, and that's how. You just step out out, start pulling your life of the air. You make friends, you find work you really like doing, you find places. You find diners and Laundromats. You find beaches. You find a junk car and drive it for a month, then leave it beside the road. You find someone to fall in love with you. You make it all up as you go. Or, you know, maybe it makes you up." (106)

It's funny how even when it's just you in your head, you pretend like nothing's wrong. Like everything is just fine, thanks for asking. It's not like I've never thought about Luke in that way-in the more-than-just-friends way. I mean, he's smart and funny, and the look in his eyes when he thinks he's just gotten one over on me makes me want to fall into them, but that's the thing that stops me--the desire for that falling and the knowledge that sometimes when you let yourself fall, you just end up splattered across the rocks. (116-117)

"I think it's easy to confuse intuition with wanting something." (150)

This time we both laugh, and underneath it all I can feel his fingers tighten around mine, trapping each one with his. He's inside the bubble, too, and we're both holding our breath. (203)

It's funny, really, all the ways we tell ourselves every day that things are going to be okay. That things are going to get better, or that things can't possibly get any worse. We all have these elaborate mechanisms to take care of our disappointments, our sadness, our pain. We build these walls around ourselves, placing bricks between us and everyone else, telling ourselves that we're just protecting ourselves, just staying safe. Sometimes the bricks are easy to see, hard things that you bump up against when you try to touch someone. Sometimes they're subtle. A slight turn of the head, a fast good-bye, a faraway look in the eyes. Sometimes I wonder why Disney never took to Repunzel, why they never tried to take that story and put it on lunchboxes and in video stores and on pink sweatshirts. Maybe it's that some fairy tales don't need to be computer animated. Maybe Randy Newman doesn't need their songs. Maybe some fairy tales don't even really need to be told, because they live inside us, scaring us with their witches and their evil spells, making us wonder if maybe this time the prince won't come in time, the princess won't wake up, and maybe for once there won't be any happily ever after. Maybe some fairy tales are just too scary to even think about. (238-239)

Book #32: The Secret Life of Prince Charming

This book. This book. It encapsulates so many themes in my life, so well. The thoughts within it left me scribbling down quotes from page one.

This book left me feeling whole and hopeful.

Love was also an easy word, used carelessly. Felons and creeps would offer it coated in sugar, and users could dangle it so enticingly that wouldn't notice it had things attached--heavy things, things like pity and need, that were as weighty as anchors and iron beams and just as impossible to get out from underneath. (1)

I was sort of the queen of good choices, ruled by niceness and doing the right thing. (2)

Or was I going to be someone who could only continue to stumble and flounder and search, which is what I really felt would happen, since Dad's words sounded as shiny and hollow as Christmas ornaments to me? (3)

I badly wished I could know my own truths and speak them, but they seemed out of reach, and it seemed better to be sure of yourself in secret. (3-4)

Maybe I just wanted to believe in love, even if I didn't all the way believe in me and Daniel Jarvis. (4)

There's something sort of sadistic and voyeuristic about teachers making you do family trees. Family trees should be private matters. No one would ask you to show your family's medical records or list of dirty secrets, and yet it's all there, divorces and marriages and babies, the most private stuff. Or maybe it only seems that way to those of us whose trees have broken branches and sawed-off limbs. (53)

I wanted to understand things, really understand them, in some way that was deep and solid, and yet my own niceness required that I keep skimming along the surface. (63)

I felt that sort of low, vague pissed-off that could turn global. You know, where you get a paper cut and curse not only the paper but the paper factories and the paper factory workers and pulp mills and trees. That's the thing about discontent--it's very flexible. It's perfectly content to invade wherever it happens to land. (72)

Years from then, after Barry, even, I finally learned that it was all right to say something wasn't working for me when it wasn't working. The world doesn't come crashing down when you speak the truth. (Olivia Thornton, 124)

We should not give away a moment to anyone who does not deserve it. (Elizabeth Bennett, 129)

"Trust should be used sparingly, like salt." (137)

We can be so large and then so small, and right then I felt like a tiny little figure sitting on that seat, with a whisper for a voice. (152-153)

The approach of the sea can do that to you, and so can the salty wetness of ocean air. That smell makes you feel that things are on the horizon, and I could feel the heaviness inside life, too, when I saw the glinty white water, sparkly with sun. The sea seemed patient and endless and wise. It was a visual sigh of relief. (161)

"There ought to be some Web site called 'Crap from My Ex dot com.' You could trade the Crock-Pot you got left with for someone else's eight-track player." (183)

Can you feel sentimental about something that never happened? Or that might happen but hasn't yet? Because that's what I felt then, riding in Frances Lee's truck. Jake's voice, soft and low, made everything seem important and full of meaning--EZ Storage places seemed full of meaning, and so did exit signs and flocks of crows and rest stops. Jake sang, and Sprout leaned her cheek against the window and Frances Lee drove with a smile and trick drivers honked and waved at Bob, and this was how we made our way to Elizabeth Bennett's house (mantel clock, hands stopped at 3:30), the second stop of our karmic quest. (184)

Sprout emerged from the bathroom. "The counter has gold glitter in it," she reported.

"Fancy," Frances Lee said. (209)

"I kept wondering what your kitchen looked like, and if you had a dog," Frances Lee said. "Where you went to school. He stopped coming over, but I didn't stop imagining." (213)

I thought about hands, all that they do in a lifetime--plant seeds in dirt, grasp hammers, hold babies, give pills to a loved one. I thought about Jake's own hands, what they'd already touched--beach sand, number 2 pencils, cool sheets, sudsy shampoo, steering wheels, and Christmas wrappings. And what they might one day touch. A hand, the curved space of a hip, smooth hair warmed by the sun. (226)

"A jar is just a jar except when it was in your kitchen growing up. An umbrella is an umbrella, except when the man you love stood under it during a hailstorm when he asked you to marry him," Olivia said, and sipped her tea. (231)

Can I just say one more thing? Ask for the best for yourself, ladies. (Joelle Giofranco, 247)

Long-kept objects were past moments where things felt sweet and right--a shell, curved and white, so full of hope still that it almost feels warm to the touch. (248)

Those questions you have? Whether he's the one, whether you feel about him the way you should, or whether the relationship is going okay?

When you're not sure whether you're in love with someone or not, the answer is not. (Heather Grove, 259)

"This doesn't have to be over," Jake whispered.

They were the best words I'd ever heard. (273)

And mom--I knew I would have to confess the this trip, but I still hoped we would hold this one piece away from her. I hoped Mom would never know we'd been here, in this neighborhood of fat elms and lilacs, suddenly familiar. Tidy brick Tudors with leaded windows and arched doorways. Cars parked along the street and lampposts--actual lampposts, with curved iron arms and round bulbs-- (279)

And when he sees you and he does not reach out, does not reach out but purposefully turns away, when he decides you are not good enough to love, when he does not see your goodness, your beauty, you will have a choice. To be devastated, or to let the truth it, finally, finally, all the way, all the way, all the way, until it fills you with its own strength, with its own knowledge--that love is light and not darkness, that love that is not good is not worthy of you, that love can only truly be given by those who are able, those with hearts of quality and with careful hands. (320)

Book #31: Frankenstein

I don't have excuses any longer. All I can tell you, dear internet of love and kindness, is that I am enamored of you. Would it help if I batted my eyelashes coquettishly?*

Frankenstein was required summer reading. I had to force myself through it; while the writing was often pretty, I couldn't get into it. It was engrossing in places but failed to capture me. Frankly, I found it rather boring. It went on and on without much action. In some ways this is preferable, as I would rather little action than constant turmoil, but in others it drove me up the wall. At one point it was all a bit "story... within a story... within a story... within a story.... what?!" But there you are. Required reading has never sat well with me in the first place.

To stop myself from killing something due to billions of pages still to go, I read this on my phone. Thus, while I have fantastical magical quotes for you, I am without page numbers. I will number them instead.

You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. (1)

. . . their angelic countenances breathed smiles of consolation. (2)

Do not despair. To be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate, but the hearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and charity. Rely, therefore, on your hopes; and if these friends are good and amiable, do not despair. (3)

Believe me, Frankenstein, I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone? (4)

I fell at last in a state of utter exhaustion; a film covered my eyes, and my skin was parched with the heat of fever. (5)

*Yes, I just wanted to use the word "coquettishly." That was pretty much the object there.

Book #30: Scrambled Eggs at Midnight

I have excuses, many of which are valid, for getting so behind in my reading. This does not benefit you, however, and for that I apologize.

Scrambled Eggs at Midnight far exceeded my expectations. At first I was put off by the fact that the main characters were only fifteen, but this quickly changed. The book isn't overly heavy, yet it carries such weight. The themes explored really struck home with me, as clichéd as that may sound. What's more, the way the themes were handled impressed me; had they been written any differently I could definitely see myself disliking the book.

Ultimately, it easily could have ended badly. But it didn't. And sometimes you need that, I think. Sometimes you need a hopeful ending. I know I did. I cannot express how much I enjoyed this book, despite my vagaries here.

But what do I know? I like saying that, because I can pretend not to know everything I know. (19)

You say things that the truth can fit around, and it feels OK. Except, really, it doesn't. Every time I do it, I feel like I'm inside something and only I know what it is, and I'm alone in there, like I've built this big empty room around myself and there's no door. (21)

"Phi's okay," Abel says, taking the tongs and offering me a clean paper towel in exchange. I squint at him and he smiles. "I mean, if you like self-centered, overly muscled alpha males." (127)

"What if they think I'm a heathen?"

I tighten my arms around her. "Are you?" (261)

Book #29: The Catcher In the Rye

Please feel free to leave me hate mail in the comments for not keeping up with this. This past month has been an explosion of stuff happening, and reading fell to the wayside. Which is not at all awesome, but I'm still motivated to do this... so here we are.

I read most of this over a month ago, but I only just finished it now. There were, I kid you not, only about five pages left for me to read. The fact that I do this so often annoys me, but I do. Even more incriminating is the fact that I just looked and I have eight such books awaiting completion. Oops?

In any event, I enjoyed Catcher in the Rye much more than I thought I would. Maybe this sounds odd, but I always figured I might hate it. Holden's way of speaking was really neat to me, and his observations apt, and lots of other nice things.

I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot. (18)

As a matter of fact, my father was a Catholic once. He quit, though, when he married my mother. (112)

It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn't, and you were in the only nice, dry, cosy place in the world. (120)

Book #28: Bless Me, Ultima

I just realized I hadn't blogged about this book yet, despite the fact that it should have been book #23 or so. I could rearrange the order, but I'm not going to, so here goes. This book was assigned in the online English course I took, which was lovely and fun not really at all, which I took about eight or so months procrastinating on. Talk about hardcore subconscious awesomeness.

So I finally read it, which was rather like pulling teeth, but I did it and I don't want to talk about it anymore because ahhhh help I don't know. I just don't want to. It existed. I wrote an essay on it. Great fun, I assure you.