The Diving Bell and The Butterfly - Jean-Dominique Bauby

After 43 year old Jean-Dominique suffered massive stroke he was only left with the ability to blink his left eye. He was a victim of "locked-in syndrome" - aware and awake but unable to move or communicate because of complete paralysis. Then he wrote this book, choosing each letter of each word by blinking his eye.

It's a simple enough system. You read off the alphabet until, with a blink of my eye, I stop you at the letter to be noted.

Bauby's alphabet was ordered differently than the traditional a,b,c. Rather, he used an order that began with the most frequently used letter and digressed to end with the least used letter. In French, this begins with e,s,e. The amount of effort that went into writing this memoir makes it even more powerful, poignant and unique.

The title for The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (Le Scaphandre et Le Papillon) is an analogy Bauby uses for his condition. "A giant invisible diving bell holds [his] whole body prisoner... and [his] mind takes flight like a butterfly." While parts of this memoir are incredibly heartbreaking, the overall tone is hopeful. It is less a lament of Bauby's paralyzed state and more a celebration of the freedom his conscious mind offers. When reliving favorite moments of his past and creating alternate lives, Bauby uses rich descriptions that captures the power of imagination.

This is one of those books that makes you put your life in perspective and reconsider your priorities, both touching and life-affirming.

Publisher: Vintage, 1997

Amazon Thinks I'm Fat.

Today's Recommendations For You

Here's a daily sample of items recommended for you. Click here to see all recommendations. Everything Is Illuminate...(Paperback) by Jonathan Safran Foer  (436) $10.04 Fix this recommendation The Skinny: What Every Skinny W... (Hardcover) by Patricia Marx  (23)   Fix this recommendation The Karl Lagerfeld Diet(Paperback) by Karl Lagerfeld  (8)   Fix this recommendation

Dear Amazon, 

Are you trying to tell me something? I haven't looked at weight loss books ever, so I can't help but wonder why you are recommending them to me. Maybe you are worried I may put on a little winter weight. You're lucky I'm skinny, or I might consider these recommendations to be offensive. 

Please explain.

Thanks,
Brenna

The Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood

I love Margaret Atwood. She is one of my top three favorite writers. That being said, I didn't love The Edible Woman as much as the other works of hers I have read. Of course the story was interesting and thick with irony and metaphor, but the "umph" that Atwood normally delivers was absent.

This novel is heavy in feminist themes and for me, certain parts even recalled Ibsen's A Doll House. The Edible Woman follows the life of a newly engaged twenty-something, Marian McAlpin. Marian's daily life is surrounded a traditional, consumer society. As Marian struggles to gain control of both her life and her identity, she not only loses her ability to eat, she also feels that she herself is the one being consumed. 

She was becoming more and more irritated by her body's decision to reject certain foods. She had tried to reason with it, and accused it of having frivolous whims, had coaxed it and tempted it, but i was adamant; and if shes used force it rebelled.

To be fair this was Atwood's first published novel so she was just warming up. I should also bear in mind that this novel was written in the 60's and it's themes were much more relevant and perhaps more risque than they are today. The concept of the novel is intriguing and had I not known what Atwood is capable of I probably would have liked The Edible Woman more. But for me, it took awhile for the story to get going and once it did, the denouement was a little lack-luster. 

Publisher: Little, Brown, 1969

A Librarian's Secret

Clearly, I have been underestimating librarians. 

Via Post Secret

Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton

If I were to review this novel using one word, I would say "bleak". After the last novel I read, I wanted to read something a little more uplifting. I picked up Ethan Frome - my first Edith Wharton - thinking it was probably a love story that would leave me smiling. Well, it was a love story, but it is one of the saddest love stories I have read in quite awhile. It's a very beautiful novel, but also incredibly heartbreaking. Since the novel is told in flashback form, the reader knows from the start Wharton does not offer a happy ending. Because of this device each page seems a little heavier, ultimately delivering a deep and emotional punch.

This is a novel about tragic longing and reckless passion. For me, what stood out the most in Wharton's work (besides the beautifully tragic ending) was her winter imagery. She writes of winter in a way that actually makes me yearn for snow, but look forward to Spring:

But at sunset the clouds gathered again, bringing an earlier night, and the snow began to fall straight and steadily from a sky without wind, in a soft universal diffusion more confusing than the gusts and eddies of the morning. It seemed to be a part of the thickening darkness, to be the winter night itself descending on us layer by layer.

The frozen, sparse landscape mirrors the state of Ethan's heart and also works to create a sense of oppressiveness throughout the novel, an oppressiveness that effects each character in the novel: 

He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of its frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface.

I really enjoyed this novel. Wharton is a fantastic writer and I look forward to reading more of her work. 

Publisher: Scribner, 1911

They're in my head, but who knows where!

Margaret Atwood interview with The Paris Review, 1990

INTERVIEWER
Yet you write as if you’ve lived through violence.

ATWOOD
But I write as if I’ve lived a lot of things I haven’t lived. I’ve never lived with cancer. I’ve never been fat. I have different sensibilities. In my critical work I’m an eighteenth-century rationalist of some kind. In my poetry I’m not at all. There’s no way of knowing in advance what will get into your work. One collects all the shiny objects that catch the fancy—a great array of them. Some of them you think are utterly useless. I have a large collection of curios of that kind, and every once in a while I need one of them. They’re in my head, but who knows where! It’s such a jumble in there. It’s hard to find anything.

Read the entire interview at The Art of Fiction no. 121.

Top Ten Books That Made Me Cry

Hosted by The Broke and The Bookish , this week's Top Ten Tuesday will detail books that made be tear up. Let me preface this post by saying books don't often make me cry. It takes something truly touching or heartbreaking, for a book to make me cry. However, considering I did come up with ten books that made me cry, maybe that's not the case.

1. Zeitoun (Eggers): Probably the saddest book I've read in awhile, not only is this story a source of despair, it also enraged me. This story defines heartbreak, and outlines serious problems in our country.

2. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (Beah) : An account of the life and mind of a 12-year-old boy soldier trying to survive in Sierra Leone's civil war.

3. The Time Traveler's Wife (Niffenegger): The love story that gets me every time. I've read it 4 times and without fail, I'm a mess upon completion. A mess.

4. The Diary of a Young Girl (Frank): I'm in love with Anne Frank's story. In college I took a class that was devoted to studying her diary and it's historical implications. Then when I was in Amsterdam I went to see her annex. It's so heartbreaking and heartfelt I can't help but cry.

5. Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck): Lennie!

6. What Is the What (Eggers): Based on the life of a boy soldier and the hardships he faced after moving to the US.

7. Les Misérables (Hugo): Both the book and the play are quite depressing. I mean the title says it all.

8. Cry, the Beloved Country (Paton): A moving and tragic fictional account of apartheid in South Africa.

9. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (Safran Foer): I just finished this yesterday. It's amazing - making me laugh out loud and cry. The descriptions at the end are so beautiful but utterly heartbreaking. I want to give Oskar the biggest hug.

10. Frankenstein (Shelly): No, this book did not make my Top Ten Scariest Books list. It didn't scare me at all. Rather, it made me feel awful. The poor monster, he's so misunderstood. No, I didn't actually cry, but I was really upset.

Honorable Mentions: The Bluest Eye (Morrison), For One More Day (Albom)

There it is; racial injustices and children getting hurt get me every time.

Congratulations to Dave Eggers, who has made me cry twice so far. Two for two isn't bad, hence my hesitation to start A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (it's been sitting on my nightstand TBR for ages).

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer

I'm not quite sure how to review this book, except to say I loved it to pieces. Foer's novel is very post-modern, so it is hard to give it a traditional review. This is a book about making sense of the world around you, coping with loss and learning how to live. 

It was one of the the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn't think about my life at all.

As I mentioned, it's hard to offer a traditional review of this novel, so I am going to offer a list of thoughts:

• Oskar Schell, the novel's protagonist, is one of the most interesting, hilarious and lovable characters I have read since Nichole Krauss' Leo Gursky (The History of Love). 
• This book has more passages that I underlined and circled than any book I've read to date. Foer's prose is beautiful and truthful, and speaks to the reader in a way that makes the ideas very relatable. 
• Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is my favorite piece of fiction I have read so far this year.
• This is one of those books that reminded me why I love books so much. 

Some of my favorite passages:

"I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it."

"sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living."

"I thought, it's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life, because if I'd had two lives, I would have spent one of them with her."

"It made me start to wonder if there were other people so lonely and so close. I thought about "Eleanor Rigby." It's true, where do they all come from? And where do they all belong?"

"Sometimes I imagined stitching all of our little touches together. How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love?"

"I regret that is takes a life to learn how to live"

All in all, I truly can't recommend this book enough.

Publisher: Mariner Books, 2005