Borrowed this from my awesome daughter, The Magic Violinist:
Image From This Summer
Favorite Quote From A Book I Read This Summer
Oh, I have several - all of them striking me as
incredible description from some truly impressive writers.
From Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor and Park:
"Eleanor could swear she heard five hearts racing. Every one of them was stifling a sob. Crying inside out."
"Until this moment, she'd kept Park in a place in her head that she thought Richie couldn't get to. Completely separate from this house and everything that happened here. (It was a pretty awesome place. Like the only part of her head fit for praying.) But now Richie was in there, just pissing all over everything. Making everything she felt feel as rank and rotten as him." . . .
"'Did you get in trouble?'
'Sort of.' She really didn't want to talk to Park about Richie. She'd just about scraped all the Richie off the Park place in her head."
"Holding Eleanor's hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive."
And From John Green's The Fault in our Stars:
"But that wasn't quite right. I called it in a nine because I was saving my ten. And here it was, the great and terrible ten, slamming me again and again as I lay still and alone in my bed staring at the ceiling, the waves tossing me against the rocks then pulling me back out to sea so they could launch me again into the jagged face of the cliff, leaving me floating face up on the water, undrowned."
"The sun was a toddler insistently refusing to go to bed: It was past eight thirty and still light."
" . . . and then I just started muttering stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid over and over again until the sound unhinged from its meaning."
"And then the line was quiet, but not dead. I almost felt like he was there in my room with me, but in a way it was better, like I was not in my room and he was not in his, but instead we were together in some invisible and tenuous third space that could only be visited on the phone."
"As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once."
(Just a plug here - these are a handful of MANY great quotes. I didn't put some on here as they are also spoilers. I loved the flow of both books. I loved the format of Rowell's book. I loved the feel of them. Read these books! This is some seriously great writing.)
This Summer In One Word
Busy.
Most Popular Review This Summer
Well, I haven't officially checked stats or anything,
but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess THIS POST,
since it's got like 50 comments
and the conversation in the comments continues on!
Top Two Books I Read This Summer
1. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell.
2. The Fault in our Stars by John Green.
(Um, you know, in case you couldn't tell from the quotes above)
Two Things I’m Looking Forward To This Fall
1. Fall TV
2. NaNoWriMo
Three New Obsessions This Summer
1. Hamachi Kama (Hands off, Johnson!)
2. Ed Sheeran
3. Getting together regularly with the Johnsons (but not for Hamachi Kama!)
(Oh, and watching "Friends" AND "Gilmore Girls" with my daughter!)
(Oh, and watching "Friends" AND "Gilmore Girls" with my daughter!)
Five Most Popular Blog Posts Overall This Summer
Well, in addition to My Kind of Movie - A List of Great, Off-Beat Films
Five Things That Happened This Summer
1. The Johnsons moved here!
2. We went to the beach with them.
3. We saw Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran in concert.
4. We restructured our homeschool group.
5. Thing 1 attended a writers' camp for a week
and Thing 2 and I enjoyed a great town together
(haven't blogged about that yet).
Six Songs That I Listened To Far Too Often This Summer
(because of overplay on the radio)
1. "Love Somebody" by Maroon 5
2. "Clarity" by Zedd
3. "22" by Taylor Swift
4. "Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons
5."Safe and Sound" by Capital Cities
6. "Can't Hold Us" by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis
But our family's favorite song this summer is this one and we have not tired of it or its message:
How was your summer?
8 comments:
LE'GO MY HAMACHI KAMA! (Somehow it doesn't have the right ring to it, but you get the idea.)
I loved all the quotes, which is not surprising since I also loved those two books. Both of those authors have great ways of expressing themselves.
And now I have all of those songs in my head. Every one.
Really fun post! Thanks for sharing.
Fun post! Now I have to ask: did you have those quotes saved or did you have to go back and find them? Time consuming.
I underlined a bunch of them in the books, so I flipped through and found some.
Love the picture. ;) I wish I thought of using that one!
My summer was fun, but lesson learned: Don't go on summer vacation immediately when school gets out. After our trip to South Padre, the rest of the summer was less exciting. It didn't help that we had a drought during peak camping season, so we didn't get to camp as much as I'd like.
Great quotes. The thing I read this summer that stuck with me most was a commentary from the NY Times where the author realized that the death of a child is every bit as difficult on the parent with many children as it is on the parent with just one child. I wish now I'd saved it, because he said something to the effect of realizing that parents don't just have a bunch of kids, they have a series of only children. It was an interesting, heart-breaking (and in my opinion, accurate) thought.
Jimmy,
That's both a profound and not profound conclusion. I think it's common for people to think "Oh, at least they've got other kids" when a child dies, but when you really think about it, how ridiculous is that? I like the "series of only children" thought. That's a logical way of looking at it.
I loved "The Fault in Our Stars"!
Summer at our house is usually pretty boring. This summer was no exception. We only went to Vernal for a few days, that was the closest we got to a vacation.
That is MY Hamachi Kama!
I'm glad we actually got to be here for most of the summer. You guys are the best guides to the beach and all the other fun stuff we got to do. Both of those books are also on my list to read, which due to insisting on reading time this summer, are much closer to the top of said list now.
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