Showing posts with label Sebastian Junger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sebastian Junger. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

2011: Favorite Quotes

I love quotes! I collect them just as I collect books. I've done this for years. I highlight them, bookmark them, think about them. I have little post-its and sticky notes all over my books, and a notebook of favorite quotes. Sometimes I re-visit them and depending on depth even have to write something about them!

Here are nine favorite quotes, and an excerpt from a poem, I collected this year.

Romance:
  • "Because" ... "ye've bewitched and bespelled me, my sweet Silence, didn't ye know? I'll agree that the sky is pink, that the moon is made o' marzipan and sugared raisins, and that mermaids swim the muddy waters o' the Thames, if ye'll only stop weepin'. Me chest breaks apart and gapes wide open when I see tears in yer pretty eyes. Me lungs, me liver, and me heart cannot stand to be thus exposed." -- Mickey -- Scandalous Desires by Elizabeth Hoyt
  • "The scent of you," he said so softly. "Heaven help me, the scent of you." -- Clevedon -- Silk is for Seduction by Loretta Chase
  • "To address your question fairly, Miss Eversea... while I understand my broken engagement is a popular topic of conversation among the fashionable set, one must consider the possibility that the end of it was serendipitous for both Lady Abigail and I. And that thus freed our hearts might now love more appropriately and happily." Take that, Miss Eversea. He was rather proud of thatThat epic, steaming mound of balderdash. -- Alex -- What I Did For A Duke by Julie Anne Long
Urban Fantasy
  • "The Beast Lord walked out of the warehouse. The screen went dark. My knight in furry armor." -- Kate Daniels -- Magic Slays by Ilona Andrews
Science Fiction
  • "The beautiful thing about losing your illusions, he thought, was that you got to stop pretending." -- Miller - Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
Historical Fiction
  • "In New York nobody looks at a woman with that arrogance anymore. Measuring her, weighing her, calculating how much flesh there is in each one of her breasts and thighs, how much hair on her pubis, the exact curve of her buttocks. She closes her eyes, feeling slightly dizzy. In New York not even Latins—Dominicans, Colombians, Guatemalans—give such looks. They’ve learned to repress them, realized they mustn’t look at women the way male dogs look at female dogs, stallions look at mares, boars look at sows.." -- Urania -- The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa

Gay Fiction
  • "All men have macho in them. Even gay ones, but there are varying degrees, and while most forms of macho are lethal to the progression of the world and society, there are some acceptable levels, very low levels, that can sometimes be useful." Chulito by Charles Rice-González

Gay Speculative Fiction
  • "I squeeze it in my grasp and it shrinks to a twirlable size, sits comfortably between my fingers, a pen. There is no need for any statement of authority more grand than this, I think, not in this day and age. What was comfortable in one era as a humble reed with a wedge-shaped end, will be comfortable here and now as simple ballpoint. It is the most important of all these objects of power, I think -- though I am prejudiced, I suspect -- the original of all tools for shaping order and chaos." -- "Oneirica by Hal Duncan" -- Wilde Stories 2011: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction edited by Steve Berman
Non-Fiction
  • "Combat isn't where you might die -- though that does happen -- it's where you find out whether you get to keep on living." War by Sebastian Junger
Poetry

"Before Cortés lops off a messenger's
hands and has another trampled,
before the branding and burning,
there is wonderment
and, for a moment, endearment
as Cortés dances, off beat, around
the long neck of his field piece." --
Excerpt from Cortés and Cannon
 Empire by Xochiquetzal Candelaria

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Minis: The Comforts of Home by Jodi Thomas, War by Sebastian Junger

Here are two very different reads, one is very comforting as you can see by the title, the other is not. However, both are excellent books and have much to offer. As different as they are, one made me think of the other.

The Comforts of Home by Jodi Thomas

Harmony, Texas is a town full of great characters perfect for heartwarming stories and touching romances. In The Comforts of Home, Jodi Thomas reached an almost perfect balance for me in her telling of those stories and the creation/development of those romances. As in Harmony, there's more than one story being told, and the small community as a whole becomes part of that telling. Old friends return and new characters are introduced to provide freshness to this contemporary series.

Highlighted in this third book is Ronelle, the ultra shy, almost invisible Harmony postal worker, and Marty Winslow, an ex-skier going through a tough and dark period of adjustment after an accident that left him in a wheelchair. Theirs is a beautiful growing relationship that signals a rebirth for both Ronelle and Marty, where they begin to see each other strictly as a man and a woman. I thoroughly enjoyed them. Then of course there are Reagan and Noel, who is back in Harmony. These two young people are growing up and it's a wonder to see how far Reagan has come since that first introduction. And of course one of my favorite characters, Tyler is also back playing the knight in shining armor and hoping to finally talk his Kate into a happy ending. Ohhh, and I loved Denver's yearning and love for Clare and his hopes for more than just the secretive explosive affair they've been conducting for over a year.

Of course I hoped for more of an ending to some of these wonderful stories, and felt lucky that there's a happy ending to two of them. The fourth book of the series, Just Down The Road is releasing in 2012, and I'll be waiting for it impatiently. I need to know what happens to the wonderful people of Harmony. Grade A- (Berkley, November 1, 2011-Kindle Edition)

❁❁❁❁❁❁

War by Sebastian Junger

Sebastian Junger's prose and writing style in War was gripping enough to basically haul me into reading this book in one sitting. His focus is on the brutal experience of soldiers/grunts, and the bond created while in combat. How not only their training, but that bond keeps them fighting and going back into danger, and how the excitement of combat effects their lives there and later on. All are thoroughly examined while Junger follows a single platoon from Battle Company through a harrowing and brutal 15-month tour in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley (2007-2008).

Mr. Junger is surprisingly and refreshingly apolitical in his approach to the story as are the soldiers. Well documented are the battles and patrols, the men's deprivations, loyalty, grief, love, edginess, tension, as well as the excitement and highs from combat and the boredom that sets in throughout their time in the Valley. The soldiers become individuals to the reader, and after a while I wanted to put faces to the names. Of course I had to watch Restrepo, the 2010 Sundance Film Festival award winning documentary by Sebastian Junger and the late Tim Hetherington to do just that. It helped watching the documentary after reading the book.

My one problem with the book itself is in the way it's organized, it doesn't flow well at times and at others it becomes repetitive. Particularly when Junger is using sections of his research about combat soldiers to make his point. Regardless, War is a fascinating read as the reader gets a journalist's perspective on the soldier/grunt's daily experience of combat, and much, much more. Grade B+ (Twelve, April 23, 2010-Kindle Edition)