GREAT LINES:
Yet though the bridge might last still for many years, the rust would eat deeper and deeper. The earthquake would shake the foundations, and then on some stormy day a span would go down. Like the man, so the creation of man would not last forever.
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A young man, Ish, is a graduate student at Berkeley who goes on a camping trip. On this outing he is bitten by a rattlesnake and forced to doctor the wound himself. When he recovers he walks down the mountain and finds that the people of the world have been wiped out by disease. He adopts a dog and takes up residence in his parents’ empty house. On outings he does encounter some survivors but they seem to either be living in the past or have mental problems. In his solitude he drives to New York City and back. Again the people he meets are not those with whom he wants to share his life. Then one evening he sees fireplace smoke coming from West Berkeley. What happens when Ish discovers other people he can form a tribe with gives this early post-apocalyptic story its most human elements. And as an added bonus the descriptions of the landscapes are truly amazing. I cannot get them out of my head!
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Earth Abides
GREAT LINES:
The warm air, the wine, and the melancholy beauty of the night filled me with a delicious sadness. It would always be like this, I thought. The brilliant, friendly island, full of secrets, my family and my animals around me and, for good measure, our friends.
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I think it’s hard to find a more appealing book to read aloud than Gerald Durrell’s accounts of growing up with an eccentric family on the island of Corfu in the 1930s. His two books of memoirs, of which this title is the second (the first being My Family and Other Animals) are a marvelous combination of rich, evocative language and hysterically funny accounts of a family of determined iconoclasts- human, animal and reptile. Durrell later became a famous naturalist, and from birth was fascinated with living things. He collected pets of all sorts, even as a young boy in London, but his passion for animal collecting got a huge shot in the arm when the Durrell family moved to the Greek island of Corfu. It’s hard to say what’s more fun, his accounts of the family (the artsy brother Lawrence, of Alexandria Quartet fame; the gun-toting blowhard brother Leslie; sister Margo, obsessed with fashion and spirituality; their long-suffering mother, who dealt with most situations with remarkable equanimity; and a cast of wonderful Greek characters who become family of choice) or his adventures in the natural world, catching and collecting creatures from octopi and turtles to bats and owls. But the reason I read Durrell aloud to my children is the language: it is sublime. Save for Kipling, there’s no better way to bathe a young ear in beautiful prose and awaken a love of the written and spoken word. The chapter I reread to them most often describes Gerry’s lunch with a crazed gourmand Countess, and the descriptions of food are deliciously over the top. If you didn’t read these as a child or teen, it’s not too late- and indeed, Durrell’s work is intended for an adult audience, but suitable for anyone over 6.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Birds, Beasts and Relatives
OPENING LINES:
I was born in 1960 on Taiwan the island of my father’s exile. War, Communism and the resulting famine had driven Baba from his native Manchuria, in the northeast reaches of China. Later we moved to California via Japan. Baba named me Xuan. It means “Forget Sorrow.”
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This beautiful graphic novel is part memoir and part history as it spans several generations in Yang’s father’s family. In this book her ancestors face war, famine, and communist oppression in Manchuria. The stories of their successes and failures as well as their shifting family dynamics are captivating. And because these stories are recounted to Yang by her father, it means pieces from Yang’s own life are interwoven into the story. Her personal history hiding from an abusive ex-boyfriend stalker and working toward reconciliation with her father in contemporary America add another layer to the narrative. All of this complexity is captured by Yang’s gorgeous black-ink drawings which are evocative of the places and her character’s emotions. I read this book as slowly as possible fearing every time I picked it up that I would finish it and not have it to read the next day. It was wonderful and I highly recommend Forget Sorrow to fans of graphic memoirs.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Forget Sorrow
GREAT LINES:
DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT SHE LOVES YOU?… ARE YOU WAITING FOR HER TO CHANGE?… DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT I LOVE HER?… IF YOU TAKE HER, WILL SHE BE HAPPY?
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Every reader has a book up their sleeve that’s their go-to recommendation when someone asks them, “What should I read?” As She Climbed Across the Table is that book for me. It’s the story of a physicist whose extraordinary discovery gives rise to the most bizarre love triangle in literary history.
Physicist Alice Coombs and her colleagues have just created… nothing. Literally. Their experiments have resulted in an actual hole in the Universe, a void where nothing exists. Naturally they name it Lack. At first, nobody knows what to do with Lack and the experiment is about to be shut down until, in a fit of desperation, Alice empties her pockets and throws the contents through Lack. Just about everything passes safely through and falls to the other side… except Alice’s keys. It seems that Lack has tastes! And if it has taste then perhaps it also has consciousness! As researchers from all over campus and from every discipline descend on Lack to try to make sense of it, Alice becomes increasingly obsessed, much to the chagrin of her boyfriend Philip. Philip, a professor who studies other professors, has just realized how much he loves Alice. As she starts going to greater and greater lengths to win Lack’s favor, Philip realizes he has a rival for Alice’s love… a rival who isn’t there at all.
This is a remarkable book that blends rich comedy, academic politics, and out-there meditations on the implications of quantum physics. It all sounds very postmodern, but author Jonathan Lethem writes in a sharp, wry voice that keeps everything light and engaging. Besides, the main focus here isn’t the science but rather the simple love story between Alice and Philip. The general chaos swirling around is just a backdrop to the very real emotions on display, and anyone who has ever come to the realization that the person they love might be moving on to someone (or something) else will be able to identify with Philip as he strives to regain his sense of the world. Author Jonathan Lethem is known for his quirky characters and this book is full of them. The messes that they make in both science and in love will fascinate adventurous readers.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: As She Climbed Across the Table
GREAT LINES:
Now, get this, you double-crossing chimpanzee: There ain’t going to be any interview and there ain’t going to be any story. And that certified check of yours is leaving with me in twenty minutes. I wouldn’t cover the burning of Rome for you if they were just lighting it up. If I ever lay my two eyes on you again, I’m gonna walk right up to you and hammer on that monkeyed skull of yours ’til it rings like a Chinese gong!
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Reporter Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) plans to quit the newspaper business, get married, and settle down to a quiet life. However she doesn’t count on stumbling upon what could be the biggest story of her career when a convict on death row escapes from custody. She also underestimates the tenacity of her boss and ex-husband, Walter Burns (Cary Grant), who pulls out all the stops to keep Hildy on the job and away from her husband-to-be. But is it because he still loves her or because she is his star reporter? Based on a play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, director Howard Hawks engineers some of the funniest, fastest dialogue ever caught on film. His Girl Friday mixes political satire with screwball comedy to create a classic battle of the sexes.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: His Girl Friday
GREAT LINE:
Always ask yourself what we know about how the world works in fact.
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The trouble with trying to read books about contemporary philosophy is that way too many of them turn out to be blizzards of jargon and obscurity, deal with questions nobody needs to answer, are full of mistakes only a true aficionado could fail to notice, or all of the above. Searle beautifully avoids these problems as he explains and criticizes six contemporary accounts of the scientific question of how the brain manages to give us thinking. What conscious thinking is and how it works is a central question in contemporary psychology, biology, and medicine. Searle is an excellent guide through complex arguments, leading the reader forward with a minimum of jargon. No special knowledge of philosophy or science is required. And if Searle is on the wrong track or makes mistakes along the way, certainly any mistakes are not obvious. This is a difficult book, but it repays reading not just because you will come away with a better understanding of one the all-time great scientific questions, but because it gives you a chance to see how a subtle and ingenious thinker approaches a seemingly impossible problem.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: The Mystery of Consciousness
GREAT LINE:
“Death be not proud.”
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This is one of the most moving and sad films I’ve ever watched. Warning: it is a major tearjerker. It portrays a woman dying of stage IV ovarian cancer, played by the ever-talented Emma Thompson. In her final days she recalls her days as a professor of English literature and reflects upon her life choices and attitudes. It is a film about confronting death, compassion, and kindness versus intellectualism. Based on a Margaret Edson play and directed by Mike Nichols, this film is dialogue-rich. Totally worth watching, but be prepared for some very heavy stuff.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Wit