Wednesday, June 3, 2009
I Wrap My Thoughts in Watered Silk by Louada Voellner
The author was elderly when she wrote it, which is a testimony to the art of poetry never leaving the soul. I'm going to share my favorite poem yet from this collection:
Faceless and formless
but real to my mind,
my Other Self.
a witch I call "Majesty,"
stands still as a hummingbird
in midair,
watching me.
-Louda Voellner
J.L.Wills
Averno by Louise Gluck
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
When I picked this up, I had no idea what to expect. My mouth stands open. I feel like I've read a map to the entryway of my soul. I keep going back and reading my favorite parts over and over. I am in love with these words. They come off the page in my own voice, like they speak from somewhere I have been already, remember acutely. Gibran himself is a prophet, only a prophet could speak such true words. I want to quote him here to give you a taste, here the prophet is speaking of love:
"For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.
...
But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears."
-Kahlil Gibran
Hungry Woman in Paris by Josefina Lopez
Wow, it's been a long time since I've read a streamline sensuality novel. Can't really call it romance, as Canela ends up single. Single and happy with her many sexual adventures. It was a good change from the usually heavy novels I pick up. And a much needed break from the work of non-fiction I am currently trapped in, reading as a personal gain of knowledge. Which I want...but don't enjoy nearly as much as a good, long, well-told lie. I enjoyed this little book. An easy read sure to make women of any shape and size repect it's story.
J.L.Wils
Thursday, April 2, 2009
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Saturday, March 14, 2009
The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K.Rowling
Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
The book reviews on this are great, the novel...not so much. To wrap it up in one fair sweep: I was bored. The entire time, bored. There was no connection between the main character and his situation. He was stale and distant from everything about his wife leaving him to his mother's death. Finally in the last paragraph, the very ending of the book does he show this bit of humanness, this bit of reality that is poetic and genuine. Oh, I tried so hard to enjoy this book, I pressed on with it though I wanted to fling it to the floor. And still after getting over half way through I hadn't even touched on anything minutely interesting, so I skipped to the last ten pages or so and claimed it finished. And even those last few pages were stale as last year's bread and I found myself blah-blahing through sentences, trudging toward the ending like through two feet of wet sand. There is nothing compelling in the story, nothing to move you forward because the main character is not compelled, he cares nothing for what comes his way, for the people around him, whether his wife comes back to him. Certainly I don't blame his wife for leaving him in the first place (which, by the way, is not even pondered by the character on why she left) because I was also ready to fly to another country and be done with this man. I'm sorry, I don't agree with the famous reviews of this one. I am dissappointed and can't believe I bought a hardback edition of this, which is going to the used bookstore today. These are the kind of books that make me think some of these book reviews have cash incentives behind them. Simply boring, a waste of my time.
J.L.Wills