My week in words: Cloud Atlas

Source: celebquotes.com

I believe in the providential roles of books. Cloud Atlas came my way only when I was ready for it. I started reading it a few times before and abandoned it every time, only to pick it up again. But not sooner than when I was prepared, I actually started reading this book, which talks about souls and reincarnation without being prescriptive. Only now I find myself open to the idea of eternal souls (souls passing through time like clouds in the sky), of people being bound to eachother, 'birthing' through their crimes and acts of kindness, their future.

My fascination with this book is too intense to put into words, and yet I have grown as a reader to the extent that I am actually enjoying it slowly. I'm not gulping it down like I did with others in the past, I'm reading it with the respect one should give to the savouring of caviar. I won't even start talking about the many literary merits of this extraordinary book, and just share a few quotes, whose strenght and relevance might ensure that they will forever live in my memory. 


“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.” 

“My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”  

“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.” 

“Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible.”  

“I believe there is another world waiting for us. A better world. And i'll be waiting for you there.” 

“You say you're 'depressed' - all i see is resilience. You are allowed to feel messed up and inside out. It doesn't mean you're defective - it just means you're human.”  

“All revolutions are the sheerest fantasy until they happen; then they become historical inevitabilities.” 

“We looked at each other for the last time; nothing is as eloquent as nothing.”

“Travel far enough, you meet yourself.”  

“...there ain't no journey what don't change you some.” 

“Times are you say a person's b'liefs ain't true, they think you're sayin' their lifes ain't true an' their truth ain't true.”  

“If losers can exploit what their adversaries teach them, yes, losers can become winners in the long term.” 

“The uncreated and the dead exist solely in our actual and virtual pasts.”  

“As an experienced editor, I disapprove of flashbacks, foreshadowings, and tricksy devices; they belong in the 1980s with M.A.s in postmodernism and chaos theory.” 


In an essay for Random House, David Mitchell, the author of 'Cloud Atlas', wrote:

"I knew I wanted to be a writer since I was a kid, but until I came to Japan to live in 1994 I was too easily distracted to do much about it. I would probably have become a writer wherever I lived, but would I have become the same writer if I'd spent the last 6 years in London, or Cape Town, or Moose Jaw, on an oil rig or in the circus? This is my answer to myself."

The Help

If you haven't read it, then I can tell you there's no time to waste! Go on, get yourself a copy and start reading now. It will have you laughing and it will have you crying. And to me, that's what a good story is all about: emotions you can't contain, whether you're on the tube, waiting for the water to boil or queueing at the bank.

It's a story about courage which will inspire you!

'The sun is bright by my eyes is open. I stand at the bus stop like I been doing for forty-old years. In thirty minutes, my whole life's...done. Maybe I ought to keep writing, not just for the paper but something else. about all the people I know and the things I seen and done. Maybe I ain't too old to start over, I think I laugh and cry at the same time at this. Cause just last night  I thought I was finished with everything new.'





It will tell you a thing or two about friendship:

'I ain't appologising to no drunk. I never apologised to my daddy and I sure ain't apologising to her.'
(...)
'I tell you, that Celia must be worst one you ever had to tend to.'
'They all bad. But she the worst of all.'
'Ain't they? You remember that time Miss Walters make you pay for the crystal glass you broke? Ten dollars out of you pay? Then you find out them glasses only cost three dollars a piece down at Carter's?'
'Mm-hmm.'
'Oh, and you remember that crazy Mr Charlie, the one who always call you nigger to your face like he think it's funny. And his wife, the one who make you eat lunch outside, even in the middle of January? Even when it snowed that time?'
'Make me cold just thinking about it.'
(...)
'What about that Miss Roberta? Way she make you sit at the kitchen table while she try out her new hair dye solution on you?'
(...)
'Took me three weeks and twenty five dollars to get my hair black again.;
'Miss Celia though' she says. 'Way she treat you? How much she paying you to put up with Mister Johnny and the cooking lesson? Must be less than all of them.'
' You know she paying me double.' 
'Oh, that's right. Well, anyway, with all her friends coming over, specting you to clean up after them all the time.'
(...)
'I think you done made your point, Aibeleen.'

 It will tell you a thing or two about self-esteem:

' You is kind. You is smart. You is important.'

It will show where a Mother's love really is:

'Don't let him cheapen you.' 
I look back at her, eye her suspiciously, even though she is so frail under the wool blanket. Sorry is the fool who ever underestimates my Mother.
(...) She narrows her eyes out at the winter land.
'Frankly, I don't care much for Stuart. He doesn't know how lucky he was to have you.'

It will make you think twice about letting a guy get away with being rude:

'Isn't that what you women from Ole Miss major in? Professional husband hunting?'
(...)
'I'm sorry but were you dropped on your head as an infant?
(...)
'Jesus, I've never met a woman with such long arms.' he says.
'Well, I've never met anybody with such a drinking problem.'

It will remind you that there are no real lines and that we are all just people.

'I watch Lou Anne slip away in the parking lot thinking. There is so much you don't know about a person. I wonder if I could've made her days a little bit easier, if I'd tried. If I'd treated her a little nicer. Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought.'

The Help - Kathryn Stockett

May the odds...

Call me a hopeless romantic but I am reading the Hunger Games and more often than not my eyes are full of tears. I live this book so intensely that sometimes, when drowned in it and magically transported to the universe of hunger, death and repression, but also love and courage I must remind myself that I still do live in the real world.
I'm only half way through and I think I am in love with Peeta. I am so in love with Peeta and his quiet reliability, charming nature strong presence that I totally forgot about the guy I've been dating for two months, who texted me about a week ago that he would call me later and never did contact me again. Nor answered any of my calls... 
I'm so madly in love with the idea of a man who would sacrifice himself for me because I matter that much to him. And who would hold me at night in his arms with such protective intent that my episodes of waking up in the middle of the night with a sense of loneliness, desperation and hollowness (which sadly occur sometimes) would totally dissipate as if erased from my memory.
I'm almost surprised how many feelings get stirred inside of me while reading these books. I thought I had grown bitter, that I developed a protective crust around my soul which stops me from feeling anything anymore and that the only thing left for me to do is to look distrustful around and expect the next guy to do the same and get away unpunished. I almost thought I'd end up writing another bitter post about how coward and rude break-ups should be punished by law, how I deserve at least a bit of respect and how people should not just look at me and shake their heads saying 'That happened to me so many times in the past too...' as if it's normal!
Instead, I don't care. Because none of these men who can't look you in the eye (or at least press the send button) and say what they have to say to you clearly and honestly ever were men. Expecting them to act as they ought to it's as if you'd expect a donkey to win horse race. They just can't. And you can't be upset with a donkey for not having been built like a horse. Or get upset with the rain or the cold for making you feel miserable. They just exist... Your feelings are your own responsibility though...
So what are my feelings then? My feelings are that I am ok. I am ok and I know what I am looking for. I am looking for a man. And if there aren't any more out there, I'll just have to do with the heart warming image of an imaginary Peeta, but certainly nothing less than this...
Oddly enough I went to see the Hunger Games (the movie) with the same guy. And while I was entirely enchanted by the story (even by the brutality... after all, isn't it all a metaphor or the world we live in today,  yet we carry on eating or little sandwich on our lunch break when somewhere else in the world people have to fight for a piece of stale bread, without feeling overly appalled?...) he looked totally unimpressed. While I was hoping to share my enthusiasm with him all he wanted to share with me was a bored comment of how late it was and how the film was not well executed. Looking back, that's when I probably realised he wasn't the guy for me and yet I let another couple of weeks go by before facing that reality. Next time, promise I'll trust my instincts. They're never wrong. They are invaluable for survival... And may the odds be ever in my favour!

One day

I can honestly say that no words can be enough for 'One Day'. It's made me laugh out loud without embarassment (I always thought laughing on the tube while reading a book can look a bit ridiculous so I am a little self conscious about it, but really it's like pretending you don't like snogging in public until you're with someone you really like and then you don't care who's looking) and it's made me swallow down tears and curse that my station's up and all I want to do is keep on reading, and reading and reading.

I like to think of myself as a select reader. I don't pretend to like a book just because it's a classic or because it's in. I only like books with soul, books that talk to me, that are telling me something, that are making me laugh and weep inside as if I was made or words, and ink and paper.

I also like to think I'm one of the fortunate people who's life has been blessed and enriched by a number of exquisite, beautiful and impactful books. 'One Day' is well high up with the best of them. From classics like Charles Dickens and Dostoyevski, Gogol and Hugo, to wonderful and incredibly talented contemporary authors like Salman Rushdie, Milan Kundera and Khaled Husseyni.

I must confess that despite being reluctant at first to read books that have sold millions of copies worldwide (I am yet untouched by the Stieg Larsson trilogy, the Harry Potter phenomenon or the Da Vinci Code - although mind you I do like the genre as I devoured 'Foucault's Pendulum' of Umberto Eco in a matter of weekly commutes) , I have fallen hopelessly in love with some of them. Probably the best example is 'Shadow of the Wind' which I read with an unsatiable hunger and the thought of finishing made me very very sad. I also really, really loved 'The Kite Runner' but after reading 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' I felt even more adoration for the person capable of putting such a tale into words. I was bewildered by how a story can be so excruciatingly tragic and yet ever so tenderly told.

'One Day' is even more special because in a very deep sense it talks a lot about me. I know we all see pieces of ourselves in the characters we love, but I am still shocked of how much of Emma Morley there is in me...

I've always worn spectacles and dreamt about making the world a better place. I have always been clever and even a bit arrogant about it, but with no confidence in me as a woman, whatsoever. Like Emma, I've been a singleton for almost all my life, but a good friend to have around. I've always fancied being a writer and like Emma (or maybe an earlier version of her than the accomplished writer she became later) I started a lot of projects and finished none. Like Emma, I like to think that I am funny and I believe I was blessed with an excellent self-deprecating sense of humour. Like Emma, I can just decide to go to Paris if I so wish but never do...

Anyway, like I said, we all see pieces of ourselves in the characters we love. But there's more to Emma than pieces of me... So if you haven't read the book yet and decided to sleep with it under your pillow too, get to know Emma. She's an amazing woman and a faithful friend...

Am terminat "Umbra vantului". Am stat azi noapte pana tarziu si am terminat-o. Ceea ce la inceput imi acordam in doze mici zilnice (ca pe o ciocolata grozava din care mananci numai cate un patratel pentru a o savura pentru un timp mai indelungat) a devenit de nestavilit un ultimele capitole. Le-am devorat hulpav si am plans cand am terminat-o. Nu ma intrebati de ce. Am plans pur si simplu...

Regasesc un motiv care m-a preocupat destul de mult in ultima vreme. Cartea ca subtitut al vietii, cartea ca ghid de existenta, cartea ca alinare, cartea ca tovaras de drum... O carte care te marcheaza e greu de gasit. E ca un suflet pereche ratacind printre mii de alte carti. E ca oamenii care te inconjoara...Fete/coperti... majoritatea straini...