In a perverse way, I was glad for the stitches, glad it would show, that there would be scars. What was the point in just being hurt on the inside?
– Janet Fitch, White Oleander, page 131
Version:
ebook, 345 pages
Published September 1st 2006 by Little, Brown and Company
First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?
First Lines:
Suzanne Vale had a problem, and it was the one she least liked thinking about: She’d had a child with someone who forgot to tell her he was gay.
He forgot to tell her, and she forgot to notice.
Interested? Scroll down for the cover and summary!
Suzanne Vale, the Hollywood actress whose drug addictions and rehab rigors were so brilliantly dissected by Carrie Fisher in “Postcards from the Edge,” is back. And this time she has a new problem: She’s had a child with someone who forgot to tell her he was gay. He forgot to tell her, and she forgot to notice. What’s worse, Suzanne’s not sure she has what it takes to be the best mother to her daughter, Honey. She can’t seem to shake the blues from losing Honey’s father, Leland, to Nick — the man who got the man who got away. Or maybe those aren’t the blues, just more symptoms of her sprawling multi-symptom bipolar illness: an illness Suzanne can’t bring herself to take all that seriously, no matter what her doctors say. (After all, how serious can an illness be whose symptoms are spending sprees, substance abuse, and sexual promiscuity?) And now, worst of all, under the watchful round eyes of the pills the doctors plied her with, even her friends are starting to find her a little…boring.
The obvious solution is to take a little walk on the wild side. But what starts out as a brief gambol through the scary/fun world of twenty-first-century dating becomes a vigorous jog-trot through the latest drug wonderland — and finally a wild gallop toward a psychotic break and a stay in “the bin.”
Based on a truant’s story, “The Best Awful” is Carrie Fisher’s most powerful and revealing novel: hilarious, moving, and fully informed by the wisdom of a true survivor.
Run. The word reverberated inside us.
I will always wonder what might have happened if we’d listened.
– Kat Zhang, What’s Left of Me (Hybrid Chronicles, book 1), page 105
Version:
Hardcover, US First Edition, 343 pages
Published September 18th 2012 by HarperCollins
The smell of the smoke always brought me back to my mother, to a rooftop under an untrustworthy moon. How beautiful she had been, how perfectly unhinged.
– Janet Fitch, White Oleander, page 126
Version:
ebook, 345 pages
Published September 1st 2006 by Little, Brown and Company
* April Challenge will be explained in it’s own post soon.
This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week; whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written.
Big weddings meant big money and, with Bee’s fiancé, Kevin Yu, from a family that owned a big pharmaceutical company, big attention. Personally, I wanted to know if she planned to change her name, switching from Bee Little to Bee Yu, but had not found a way to work this into a meeting. Yet.
Summary:
As bubbly as champagne and delectable as wedding cake, Once and for All, Sarah Dessen’s thirteenth novel, is set in the world of wedding planning, where crises are routine.
Louna, daughter of famed wedding planner Natalie Barrett, has seen every sort of wedding: on the beach, at historic mansions, in fancy hotels and clubs. Perhaps that’s why she’s cynical about happily-ever-after endings, especially since her own first love ended tragically. When Louna meets charming, happy-go-lucky serial dater Ambrose, she holds him at arm’s length. But Ambrose isn’t about to be discouraged, now that he’s met the one girl he really wants.
Sarah Dessen’s many, many fans will adore her latest, a richly satisfying, enormously entertaining story that has everything—humor, romance, and an ending both happy and imperfect, just like life itself.
Thank you Bookshelf Fantasies for this fun book meme!
It felt so good to be high. I felt the lid of the pencil-gray sky lift and I could breathe, I didn’t dread the rest of the afternoon now.
– Janet Fitch, White Oleander, page 118
Version:
ebook, 345 pages
Published September 1st 2006 by Little, Brown and Company
So I missed Musing Monday this week due to hospital and the random question was something I actually had things to say about so I’m just going to randomly post it because, who cares, it’s my blog.
The Question: What do you think of required reading in school?
My thoughts:
While I loved the idea of reading novels for credit, and fully appreciate how important a part of the curriculum it is, I never could quite enjoy required reading no matter how much I wanted to.
My problem with required reading was always the way that the books were taught. I mean yes, there were always some boring ones (Animal Farm can die, honestly), but even the good ones were often made boring just by the way they were taught to us.
No original thought allowed, no discussion of the literary impact of the books, no appreciation of their impact on popular culture of the times they were published, no analysis deeper than “can you spot the foreshadowing” was allowed. We weren’t even allowed to voice displeasure with the text. I got kicked out of class for saying that I didn’t like Lord of the Flies. (Literally just that, nothing more, nothing inappropriate.)
It was just ridiculously unenjoyable, almost intentionally so.
I also always thought it might be fun if they would let us vote as a class to pick one book a year (from a list of acceptable books) so that at least once we could be reading something we chose.
I’d love to know what you guys thought of required reading in schools and what made you feel the way you do!
Am I the only one who thinks that Edward/Edythe deciding that they shouldn’t kill/eat rapists and serial killers anymore is worse than the actual killing part?
Like…some people should die, y’all. That’s just how it is. And if you know that someone is a rapist/murderer and you just let them go about their business, you’re shit.
Somebody going through my town and getting rid of all the bad people doesn’t sound like a monster to me. Sounds like a fucking hero. Vigilante Vampires! We could even still use the fucking bat signal.
Help me Sparkle Man, a pedophile moved to my town! Oh, you already ate him on the way here? Cool cool thanks, you rock Sparkle Man.
Just sayin’.
Darkestwings Reads