Rating: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Comments: Brilliantly introspective.
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And this is God’s own truth: the more often I cried in my room in Ixtapa and felt just generally wretched, the more often I started to have occasional moments of utter joy, feeling aware of each moment shining for its own momentous sake.

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But the bad news is that whatever you use to keep the pain at bay robs you of the flecks and nuggets of gold that feeling grief will give you. A fixation can keep you nicely defined and give you the illusion that your life has not fallen apart. But since your life may indeed have fallen apart, the illusion won’t hold up forever, and if you are lucky and brave, you will be willing to bear disillusion. You begin to cry and writhe and yell and then to keep on crying; and then, finally, grief ends up giving you the two best things: softness and illumination.

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Again and again I tell God I need help, and God says, “Well, isn’t that fabulous? Because I need help too. So you go get that old woman over there some water, and I’ll figure out what we’re going to do about your stuff.”

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In fact, not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.

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If you want to be forgiven, if you want to experience that kind of love, you have to forgive everyone in your life– everyone, even the very worst boyfriend you ever had– even, for God’s sake, yourself.

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If you are what you do– and I think my parents may have accidentally given me this idea– and you do poorly, what then?

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I have learned that most of the time, all you have is the moment, and the imperfect love of people.

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… I believed them when they said that we are as sick as our secrets.

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I think that’s why most of us stay close to our families, no matter how neurotic the members, how deeply annoying or dull– because when people have seen you at your worst, you don’t have to put on the mask as much. And that gives us license to try on that radical hat of liberation, the hat of self-acceptance; we’re allowed to escape from underneath one of the fatwas.

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This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we’re most sure that love can’t conquer all, it seems to anyway.

Rating: ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Comments: Such a beautiful book. There are so many hidden layers to this one. So simple, yet so profound.

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“There’s a great line by Groucho Marx,” I said. “She’s so in love with me she doesn’t know anything. That’s why she’s in love with me.”

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I love that line. That’s gotta be one of the principles behind reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving them that way. And bleeding. Shooting and bleeding.

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Every story has a time to be told, I convinced her. Otherwise you’ll forever be a prisoner to the secret inside you.

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We each have a special something we can get only at a special time of our life. Like a small flame. A careful, fortunate few cherish that flame, nurture it, hold it as a torch to light their way. But once that flame goes out, it’s gone forever.

One of the things I love to do when I read is underline sentences and passages that speak to me or that are exceptionally well-written, no matter whether the book is fiction or non-fiction. When I borrow a book from a friend, I sometimes make note of what they’ve underlined or scribbled in the margins. When people borrow my books, I encourage them to note their thoughts in it. It’s why I love used books– they’re so personal. I understand this is something a lot of readers do.

I recently sent a book to someone in Japan. “It’s aged, torn and yellowed,” I told him. The book is, very surely, older than I am by a few decades. I’m not even sure you can read it properly. Send it anyway, he said. He received it a couple of weeks ago and e-mailed me. “It’s an antique!” he wrote. “Thanks so much for sending it.” I have a feeling he’s going to save it for as long as my mother and I did until another person with a love of crumbling yellow pages comes along. I can see him underlining passages, turning pages very carefully, and reading everything that’s been written by previous readers in the blank spaces.

So instead of recommending books on this blog or reviewing them, I’ve decided instead to share some of those passages that I’ve found fascinating in books I’ve enjoyed. Whether or not you pick up the book based on those is up to you. Reviews are pretty subjective and can be found elsewhere. Here, I’ll give you a taste of the actual thing. I’ll start tomorrow.

As writers and book lovers, you’ve probably noticed the disappearance of newspaper book sections and book reviews. To fill the void, some of my friends have created The Internet Review of Books (http://www.internetreviewofbooks.com). I hope you will support them.

From the press release:

When The Internet Review of Books (IRB) made its debut this month Carter Jefferson said, “Reviewing books to give literature a voice is the goal of IRB. We intend to fill the void left as more and more newspapers cut down on the space they give to reviews of important books, especially non-fiction.”

The October 2007 Volume one, Issue one contains seven reviews of such books as, “Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism,” by John Updike; “Leading Ladies: American Trailblazers,” by Kay Bailey Hutchinson; “A Contract With The Earth,” by Newt Gingrich and Terry L. Maple; and (out-of-print) “Something About A Soldier,” by Charles Willeford.

I have about a hundred unread ones in my bookshelf right now (don’t you just hate me?), but these are on my immediate TBR list. What’s on yours?

1. Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan

2. The Woods by Harlan Coben

3. The Pact by Jodi Picoult (probably the best book I’ve read this year; an intense love story)

4. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

5. Water for Elephants: a Novel by Sara Gruen

6. Look Me in the Eye by John Robison

7. 102 Minutes by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn (Very powerful.)

8. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

9. The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart

10. The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy