Shannon > Books: 2013‎ (182)

Baa, Baa, [Red] Sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes, I do. It is all right here.
There are three bags full.

One can make a lobster.
One can make a car.
One can make a bike,
And you can ride it really far.

And it makes all kinds of things.
And it makes all kinds of fun.
And you can make up even more,
When all of these wool bags are done.

But don't just use my wool.
When you want to play pretend.
Life has way more color,
When you share it with a friend.

She watched him, too surprised to comment. He dumped the pan int he sink, ran the water for a moment then helped himself to the cutlery drawer. Seconds later, he was pressing the bowl into her hands, a fork poking out of the top. She gazed down at the spaghetti bolognese.
"Are we sharing?"
He laughed. "No. That's just for you."
"Where's yours?"
"Are you kidding? I don't want to have dinner with you. You're as nuts as they come; you'd probably think it meant something and then go ahead and fall in love with me."
"You're safe there," she muttered, stung yet amused. "I'd never fall in love with someone like you."
"Someone like me?"
"A hopeless case. What's the point of falling in love on your own?"
"I couldn't agree more. And on that note, I'm out of here."

"... I want someone for me. Just for me. Who gives a damn if they don't hear from me during the day, who calls me with their news. I want to be someone's top priority." She pressed her thumb and forefinger to her closed eyes and sighed. "I know it sounds like a lot to ask, but it's really not. I just want to be the one for someone. I want to be a part of something bigger than me."
He was quiet for so long that she lifted her head and opened her eyes.
"This Man Plan..." he said, trailing off.
"Feminists might hate me for saying it, but I need a man. If a man loves me, he might marry me. If he marries me, we might have kids."
"You want to build a family for yourself."
She nodded. "Exactly. My parents met when they were toddlers. My mother once pushed mud into my dad's mouth. They went through school together and became a couple at my mum's fourteenth birthday party. They completed each other, you know? They were all either of them ever needed and they took on the world together. I want that. Even to be a fraction as happy as they were would be a dream come true."

"Tell me this: do you think he is incapable of love?"
"No."
"Then do you believe that when - yes, when he falls in love with you - that he'll do it to whatever capacity he can?"
Something light and ticklish fluttered in her stomach. She pressed a hand there to stop it. "Yes."
He nodded. "Isn't that enough? Isn't that all we can ask of anyone - to love us with all that they are?"
Her hand found her mouth. "I'm being an idiot, aren't I?"
"No, Cora. You're just taking a breath before you take the biggest chance of your life. [...] Don't do this if you're hoping to change him."
She blinked up at her old friend, aghast. But then she considered this more deeply. Will waited in silence, understanding the gravity of the moment, then he smiled when he saw something new in her eyes.
"He's perfect as he is."
"Right answer."

I used to think abortion was a good thing: progress, a woman's free will... Now I find myself struggling in a trap which, like every trap, once smelled sweetly, in this case of freedom. Progress for women, my arse! If I keep the child, I'm guilty vis-à-vis Nicolas, who doesn't want it. If I get rid of it, I am guilty vis-à-vis the baby. Abortion may claim to rescue women from the slavery of motherhood, but it imposes another form of slavery: guilt. More than ever, it is on our own that we handle or mishandle motherhood. [p.89]

On 3 June 1940, the guards had thrown them into the prison courtyard. The government didn't want them to fall into German hands. The Germans would have released them for sure. Ever since the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union, the Communists had been in the Boches' good books. They were being moved to another prison, they had to walk quickly, the guards were hitting them, shouting at them. It was late morning, they were on their way through Paris, when a guard suddenly pushed him out of the group and told him to get the hell out of there and fast, opportunity never knocks twice at anyone's door. They had let him go, and he still could not fathom why, but he was free, that was all that mattered. [pp.102-3]

Hello ,

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Barr.Richard Spencer.

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"Your father signed a document granting power of attorney to the law office of Bello & Usman in Lagos."
"So why aren't you contacting them?" asked Warren.
"Because they don't exist," said Laura. "Jesus Christ, Warren, what part of this don't you understand?"
"Language," said their mother, roused from her indifference.
"What if someone took them up on their offer?" Laura asked. "Flew to Lagos and confronted them face to face?"
Detective Saul looked at her. "People have tried that. They've gone over there and started poking about in the city's underbelly.
"And?"
"Like I said, they usually end up floating in Lagos Lagoon."
"But what if - what if you made them come to you, pretended to be an investor, say? Turned the tables."
"That's a dangerous game. You'd be on their turf."
"But couldn't you meet them on neutral ground? An embassy or something."
"Odds are, even if you made it out alive, you wouldn't get your money back," said Rhodes.
"What if," Laura said, "it wasn't about the money?" [p.139]

One of the boys was wavering on his feet. His eyes were milky and unfocused. It reminded Nnamdi of the glassy gaze of the Egbesu boys, but without the bravado or the gin.
"The hardest part is protecting your line from other boys. We have to stand guard twenty-four hours. Take turns, work it in shifts. But dey fumes is always leaking, from the hose or from the valve. So you inhale a lot of it. Gives you headaches."
Nnamdi looked at his sickly friends, grown wan and thin. "You have to stop," he said. "The gas will make you ill. It will poison you."
"It already has, Nnamdi." And then, in Ijaw: "It was our bad fortune, wasn't it, Nnamdi? To sit on top of wealth that others wanted. Why do you think the gods punished us like that? Cursed us with oil. Why?"
"I don't know."
"Do you suppose the oil is tainted by the souls of the Igbo and others that we captured? Do you suppose it's the blood of those, come back to haunt us?"
"If that was the case, my friend, the oil would make the oyibos [white men] ill as well."
"I think it has, Nnamdi." [pp.289-290]

What was Nigeria?
It was a net, loosely thrown, a name on a map, one created by the British to paper over the gaping cracks in the joinery. A conjurer's trick, where the many became one, a sleight of hand, like the tired magic of old men making coins disappear. "There is no Nigeria." This was the lesson [Amina's] uncle had wished to impart. "There is Fulani and Hausa, Igbo and Tiv, Efik and Kanuri, Gwari and Yoruba. But Nigeria? That is on the pail we carry these in."
But she knew better.
She knew that the naming of a place helped bring it into existence. The naming of a location - or a person, a child - was a way of claiming them. Until you named something, it wasn't fully real. The trick to staying invisible, then, was to remain nameless. Without a name, you couldn't be pinned in place, couldn't be cornered or captured. [p.82]

"Justice for the Fijians is of greater consequence than cotton growing. Or even empire building." He shot a fraught look at [princes] Eddy and George. "I hope Mother England will remember that. God help us if she doesn't. The Fijian is the finest friend you can ever make - and the fiercest, most tenacious foe. You don't want another New Zealand on your hands. Ten million pounds wasted in campaigns, hundreds of settlers slaughtered, half the Maori race destroyed, and no hope of lasting peace except by destroying the rest. Or, at the eleventh hour, admitting them to government. Which is what they should have done from the start." [p.250]

This high wilderness had been a no man's land in ancient times, avoided by the Marquesan tribes except when they swarmed up here to make war in clearings strewn with bones and broken weapons. Again it struck me how Balkanized these islands had become, as if the history of whole continents had had to be repeated here in miniature. The people might know themselves to be descended from a single fleet, yet still they divided and fought - as in human enmity must always fill the space allowed it, whether an island or a world. [pp.318-9]

Doing this right ... means recognizing that there is truth in the old sticks-and-stones chant: most kids do bounce back from cruelty at the hands of other kids. They'll remember being bullied or being a bully; they'll also learn something useful, if painful. "Children need to encounter some adversity while growing up," says Elizabeth Englander, a psychologist who is the guru of bullying prevention in Massachusetts. "Even though it's normal for adults to want to protect them from all meanness, or to rush to their defense, there's a reason why Mother Nature has promoted the existence of run-of-the-mill social cruelty between children. It's how children get the practice they need to copy successfully with the world as adults." [p.11]

The old problem was that adults were too prone to look the other way when powerful kids turned on weaker ones. This, of course, still happens, but we also have a new trap to watch out for: being too quick to slap the label of bully onto some kids and the label of victim onto others. It's a kind of crying wolf, and it does damage. For one thing, calling every mean comment or hallway clash bullying breeds cynicism and sucks precious resources from the kids who need our help. For another, it turns a manageable problem into an overwhelming one. [p.298]

And those are the ideas I'd like to leave you with: character and empathy. Most of the time, the old adage that adversity makes us stronger does hold true. We have to watch out for the kids whose internal makeup means they are the exceptions, but we also have to give the majority of teenagers the space to prove the rule. We have to be there for them, ad we have to stand aside. We have to know when to swoop in and save them, and when they have to learn to save themselves. And we have to make tricky decisions about the gray area in between those two poles.

We also have to instill in kids the paramount value of kindness - to show them that it's more important to come together than to finish first, that other people's feelings can take precedence over one's own, that relationships can matter more than tasks.

These are tall mountains to climb - don't I know it. These days, we have to make decisions about how much freedom to give our kids on two planes: the physical and the virtual. I sometimes fear that parents go too far in confining kids' real-world exploration - and then do little or nothing to track their travels online. And so kids strike out on their own where they can, including on their phones and on the Internet. [p.305]

"I'm sorry you're going to miss the theatricals."
"In Swiffle-on-Exe? It could be worse."
"It is worse: all the boys [from Bunson's] will be attending. [...] Some of the girls even keep score. They use what we learn to make as many boys as possible fall in love with them."
[...] "Isn't Bunson's training evil geniuses?"
"Yes, mostly."
"Well, is that wise? Having a mess of seedling evil geniuses falling in love with you willy-nilly? What if they feel spurned?"
"Ah, but in the interim, think of the lovely gifts they can make you. Monique bragged that one of her boys made her silver and wood hair sticks as anti-supernatural weapons. With amethyst inlay. And another made her an exploding wicker chicken."
"Goodness, what's that for?"
Dimity pursed her lips. "Who doesn't want an exploding wicker chicken?" [pp.162-3]

I came into the world during the Tet Offensive, in the early days of the Year of the Monkey, when the long chains of firecrackers draped in front of houses exploded polyphonically along with the sound of machine guns.

I first saw the light of day in Saigon, where firecrackers, fragmented into a thousand shreds, coloured the ground red like the petals of cherry blossoms or like the blood of the two million soldiers deployed and scattered throughout the villages and cities of a Vietnam that had been ripped in two.

I was born in the shadow of skies adorned with fireworks, decorated with garlands of light, shot through with rockets and missiles. The purpose of my birth was to replace lives that had been lost. My life's duty was to prolong that of my mother. [p.1]

Around that time, my employer, who was based in Quebec, clipped an article from a Montreal paper reiterating that the "Quebecois nation" was Caucasian, that my slanting eyes automatically placed me in a separate category, even though Quebec had given me my American dream, even though it had cradled me for thirty years. Whom to like, then? No one or everyone? I chose to like the gentleman from Saint-Felicien who asked me in English to grant him a dance. "Follow the guy," he told me. I also like the rickshaw driver in Da Nang who asked me how much I was paid as an escort for my "white" husband. And I often think about the woman who sold cakes of tofu for five cents each, sitting on the ground in a hidden corner of the market in Hanoi, who told her neighbours that I was from Japan, that I was making good progress with my Vietnamese.

She was right. I had to relearn my mother tongue, which I'd given up too soon. In any case, I hadn't really mastered it completely because the country was divided in two when I was born. I come from the South, so I had never heard people from the North until I went back to Vietnam. Similarly, people in the North had never heard people from the South before reunification. Like Canada, Vietnam had its own two solitudes. [p.79]

Most of those children of GIs became orphans, homeless, ostracized not only because of their mothers' profession but also because of their fathers'. They were the hidden side of the war. Thirty years after the last GI had left, the United States went back to Vietnam in place of their soldiers to rehabilitate those damaged children. The government granted them a whole new identity to erase the one that had been tarnished. A number of those children now had, for the first time, an address, a residence, a full life. Some, though, were unable to adapt to such wealth.

Once, when I was working as an interpreter for the New York police, I met one of those children, now adult. She was illiterate, wandering the streets of the Bronx. She'd come to Manhattan on a bus from a place she couldn't name. She hoped that the bus would take her back to her bed made of cardboard boxes, just outside the post office in Saigon. She declared insistently that she was Vietnamese. Even though she had cafe au lait skin, thick wavy hair, African blood, deep scars, she was Vietnamese, only Vietnamese, she repeated incessantly. She begged me to translate for the policeman her desire to go back to her own jungle. But the policeman could only release her into the jungle of the Bronx. Had I been able to, I would have asked her to curl up against me. Had I been able to, I'd have erased every trace of dirty hands from her body. I was the same age as her. No, I don't have the right to say that I was the same age as her; her age was measured in the number of stars she saw when she was being beaten and not in years, months, days. [pp.82-3]

"...I sometimes think there's a reason for all these freak accidents. Some message. A message from above."
"What message?"
"I don't know. That the place is dangerous. That we need to be stronger, more aware. Another guy I know got eaten alive by bees. In my high school two kids drowned, and one girl died when a branch fell on her during a hike. I swear, it's weird."
"Those sorts of things happen everywhere, you just don't hear about them. We're a small country, so we hear about every death. We hear, and we also remember. We feel bad, and we remember."
"Yes, that's true. We remember."
"Also people here are careless. They drive like they're homicidal and on amphetamines. They think they have to be tough, so they aren't self-protective. They don't avoid bees and they swim where there aren't any lifeguards. The city doesn't clear boulders. We don't look after ourselves, that's the problem. We're too arrogant and vain and we're obsessed with being tough. Maybe we're also suicidal." [pp.111-2]

He looks at them with smoldering rage, as though they were the ones responsible for all this carnage. He realizes he has said too much, with too much vehemence; he has shown them what he feels, and he hates them for their indiscreet, probing questions, their idle curiosity. He feels empty, as though he has lost something precious, his pride.

[...] He has revealed more than he wanted to, more than they wanted to hear, caught up in the bright light of their interest and what he took for sympathy. He has felt obliged to entertain them, and now he has spoken of these deaths, which mean more than anything else in his life. He has spoken in order to sing for his supper. Now they turn from him, from the emptied shell. They talk among themselves about something entirely unconnected to his tragic tale. [...] He has made a fool of himself, speaking of something intimate that they could never really share. He feels deflated, humiliated, pricked and airless like a balloon. He and his most intimate feelings, the tragedy of his young life, his country, are but a moment of diversion. [pp.64-66]

Generally, he takes care of all the mundane details of her life, leaving her free to write, like so many literary couples before them. He considers himself naturally easygoing, pliable up to a point. He aims to please. He is used to trying to ingratiate himself, to question, to listen, and to give good advice. He was an only child who was often in the company of intelligent adults, courtiers in the various palaces of the Emperor or on trips abroad. He learned at an early age what to say to please his sophisticated father, who had loved him in a distracted, distant way, and how to calm his mother's constant anxiety. Only Solo, though older, followed him around the palace gardens and into the hills. Only Solo deferred to him completely, obeying his every wish.

Dawit adapts to M's schedule, her way of life. He listens to her, gives her good advice, and makes himself available to her. But there is a part of him she never reaches, a secret part that watches her with ironic detachment. Mentally he takes notes on the movements of her fine hands, her every expression, her particular words. He speaks her language perfectly, but she does not know a word of his. Despite her upbringing in Somalia, she has never taken the trouble to learn any of the languages of the country, he notes. He comes to know all about her intimate life, her work, her desires, but she knows very little about him. Like all colonizers, he thinks, she is ultimately the dupe. [p.54]

Everywhere he looks, history was made, Italian history, with all its ambiguity. He thinks of the efforts the Italians made to colonize his country and his countrymen's brave resistance: his grandfather's stories of the Battle of Adwa, where the Italians expected an easy conquest and instead suffered a humiliating defeat. How proud his grandfather was of the soldiers he had led as a very young man into battle. How ironic that Dawit should be here now. [p.176]

One might have missed the soggy handkerchief, the stained headband, the flushed cheeks; such was the rehearsed swing of Pascal's walking stick. Here was a gentleman, one could assume, overdressed for the weather but still at ease with himself and his world, wanting for nothing. For Pascal Normande was in the business of illusion. [p.29]

Red, the thinnest baker might say. The colour of passion, my boy, of beating hearts and action. They're the bold ones, the reds, sure to be full of adventure. Or we could pick the blue ones, like the wide sea and those mermaids singing us home. Or perhaps the green of the trees in our Tuileries.

Octavio knew his father would assign each colour he saw. The golds would contain tales of treasure hunters and lost cities, the purples would conjur [sic] magic and spirits and fairy worlds. He wondered if his father would have considered black a colour at all. Regardless, he would have started with the red ones.

[...] Imagine a woman, my boy. Watch her as she steps out of a pastry shop. She does not look your way but, oh yes, you see her. Her face, her mouth, the curve of those red lips. You cannot resist. You wonder what would it be like to kiss those lips. As red as raspberries. You bump against her and find yourself sitting in the gutter. The red of raspberries, my boy. That is the colour we'll start with. [p.235]

The reds gathered in the attic, two or three at a time. Soon stacks of books threatened to block the doorways, as though a bricklayer was using them to slowly close up the apartment. When the walls could hold no more, the floors took over. In turn they began to sag, creaking bitterly under the weight. The blues descended the spiral staircase, half a dozen books to a step. By the time they reached the bottom tread, Octavio had moved on to the greens. These filled the kitchen. Piled under the sink, wedged behind the taps, thrown on top of the cupboards, jammed into the drawers, displayed on the table, three deep along the windowsill. Books in shades of gold followed the slope from bathroom to bedroom. A platform of editions bound in grey cloth raised the bed enough that Octavio needed four thick volumes as a stool to reach the mattress. He removed the mirrored door of the armoire so the purple ones might fit inside. The drawer where he had slept as a baby now barely closed, filled as it was with books the colour of wine. There were ones that flapped in the rafters: Octavio tied lengths of rope from one beam to the next and hung them open, gently nesting the rope into the gutter of each volume. [pp.239-240]

I take the coffee out of his hands and pour the contents into my own, then toss the mug into the trash can. I walk to the refrigerator, grab a juice, and place it in front of him. [p.80]

"Does he treat you with respect at all times? That's the first question. The second question is, if he is the exact same person twenty years from now that he is today, would you still want to marry him? And finally, does he inspire you to want to be a better person? You find someone you can answer yes about to all three, then you've found a good man." [p.37]

I floundered for a minute trying to remember everything that he and Derek had said, "Because you ... isn't that ... wasn't that why you wanted me to leave?" [p.138]

Right away Kale threw a punch, Brandon leaned back letting it pass an inch from his face, his smile never faltering. [p.88]

First thing Brandon did was thank Bree for her hand in my earlier outfit, she winked at both of us before running back to the side of some new guy named Ryan. [p.99]

I smiled and rushed back to Brandon's room. I had just grabbed my suit when Brandon's phone chimed, I glanced at his desk where it sat and continued to take my shirt off. [p.99]

I slipped off my shorts and tank top, grabbing the gray and white button down shirt he'd been wearing last night, I pulled it on leaving all but one of the middle buttons undone. [p.127]

We'd been fuck buddies for a while by that point, so it was inevitable we would end up having a conversation about long-term unfulfilled fantasies. But as I knocked back a glass of red, told him a vague summation of what had happened with Ryan an my foray into internet smut before shyly admitting I fancied unleashing - or should that be leashing? - my submissive side properly with some experimentation into BDSM, I really didn't see him as the guy who would take me there. And I wasn't even expecting him to become that guy - as far as I was concerned we were having a bit of horny chat as a prelude to a perfect end-of-week pick-me-up fuck. I'd come to appreciate his intelligence and his deliciously dirty mind, but little did I know I had crossed paths with someone who it would turn out was ying to my submissive yang. [pp.63-4]

One of the things I find particularly interesting about the D/s dynamic is that it pushes you to do things that otherwise you might not do. Not because you don't want to do them - so often you really, really do want to - but because they're things that you think might be hot/fun/interesting/unusual but that a small part of your mind baulks at, for some reason - whether that's because you feel it's 'dirty', or it's too embarrassing, or you're worried your arse'll look like a small country or whatever. I love that I can be pushed past the small part of my mind that feels that to experience these amazing new things is wrong. And, no, that's not being pushed into doing something I don't want to do, coerced or whatever - my body simply reacts before my mind has a chance to catch up; my body betrays the fact that it's something I'm into even if my eyes or words might for a time not make that obvious, and even if I can't exactly explain why or how it's making me wet. It's more about someone knowing how far I'd like to go and helping me find the courage to go for it. [p.129]