SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS

I am currently re-reading Special topics in calamity physics by Marisha Pessl (which I thought was the best book of 2008 (however, it was published in 2007)). The best thing about the book is that it is oh so quoteable. So the next posts will probably just be me quoting it capisce?

"Dad was a man who, due to his underprivileged background perhaps, never hesitated when it came to the verbs to get or to take. He was always getting something off the ground, his act together, his hands dirty, the show on the road, someone's goat, the message, out more, on with things, lost, laid, away with murder. He was also always taking charge, the bull by the horns, back the night, something in stride, someone to the cleaners, a rain check, an ax to something, Manhattan."

""Always live your life with your biography in mind", Dad was fond of saying. "Naturally, it won't be published unless you have a Magnificent Reason, but at the very least you will be living grandly.""

TIME WENT ON AS THE CLOCK DOES

"Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen."
- Lady Chatterley's lover, D.H. Lawrence

AND THAT, MY FRIEND, IS WHAT THEY CALL CLOSURE

"Det finns dom som gjort dig illa,

det finns dom som inget vet,

det finns dom som gjort en grej av

att skrika ut din hemlighet.

Det finns dom som stal din stolthet.

Det finns dom som stal ditt mod.

Och dom som ingenting förstod.

Dig som ingen känner,

dig som ingen ser.

Du som saknar vänner

och knappt vill andas mer.

Hör på mig min kära,

hur ska jag få dig att förstå:

Du måste resa dig och gå!

Men det finns nåd för nya världar

mycket större än den här,

nya skapelser och tider,

nåd för allt som blir och är.

Och alla deras lögner betyder ingenting.

Tro mig när jag säger:

Skammen var aldrig din."

- Jonas Gardell

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for my name is Richard. I was born in 1974."

- The beach, Alex Garland

This is still one of the best openings of a book I have ever read.

"On a different note, the author feels obligated to acknowledge that yes, the success of a memoir - of any book, really - has a lot to do with how appealing its narrator is. To adress this, the author offers the following:

a) That he is like you.
b) That, like you, he falls asleep shortly after he becomes drunk.
c) That he sometimes has sex without condoms.
d) That he sometimes falls asleep when he is drunk having sex without condoms.
e) That he never gave his parents a proper burial.
f) That he never finished college.
g) That he expects to die young.
h) That, because his father smoked and drank and died as a result, he is afraid of food.
i) That he smiles when he sees young black men holding babies.
One word: appealing.

- A heartbreaking work of staggering genius, Dave Eggers

Lately I have bought or been given these books:
Dorothy Whipple - Someone at a distance
Don DeLillo - White noise
Ulf Lundell - Jack
Douglas Coupland - The gum thief
Jonas Gardell - Ett ufo gör entré
Jonas Gardell - Jenny
The romance of London, a collection of strange stories, scenes, adventures and vicissitudes
Tobias Wolff - Old school
Jack Kerouac - Windblown world: The journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954
Claude Houghton - I am Jonathan Scrivener
Chuck Palahniuk - Rant
Junot Díaz - The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao
Iris Murdoch - A fairly honoruable defeat
J.M. Coetzee - Diary of a bad year
Jonas Hassen Khemiri - Invasion!

EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED

"and he said he tied one around his index finger to remember something terribly important, and fearing he would forget the index finger, he tied a string around his pinky, and then one from waist to neck, and fearing he would forget this one, he tied a string from ear to tooth to scrotum to heel, and used his body to remember his body, but in the end he could remember only the string."

- Everything is illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer

"Jag har inget alls emot dom, inte det minsta, inte över huvud taget skulle det någonsin för minsta lilla sekund ens falla mig in att närma mig ens ett relativt ogillande."

- Invasion!, Jonas Hassen Khemiri

"It was some time before he continued, then I learnt all that the past three months had meant to him. It was a complex, chaotic confession, full of repetitions, a strange mixture of self-pity and bitter denunciation, I was amazed by the intensity of the inner drama which was making his life an impossibility. Pauline had awakened everything which he had believed was dead in him; Francesca had made him a stranger to himself, for under her influence he had become aware of passions and desires of which he had been ignorant, and of which he was afraid."

- I am Jonathan Scrivener, Claude Houghton

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING IDLE

Lately I've read/re-read this:

Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole
George Orwell - 1984
Oscar Wilde - The Importance of Being Earnest

And probably some other things that are not on my mind for some reason and probably don't deserve any mention anyway.

I HAVE NOW ASSUMED TIME WILL PROVIDE AN EXPLANATION

"Yes. I feel that I am involved. I have never felt that with anyone else. There's a problem in his life. I do not know what it is but I feel the way in which he deals with it affects me. I've told no one that and - like anything that is really true - it sounds quite ridiculous when it is put into words. It may be all nonsense. He may be simply amusing himself with me."
"In one sense, then, you don't trust him at all."
(...) "I shan't be able to explain, but I'll try if you like."
"Try", I said with a smile.
"It seems to me that here and there are people who simply cannot be judged by accepted standards. Because they are what they are, they have temptations of a different order from other people. This is partly Jonathan's theory. Sometimes the more highly developed they are, the greater becomes the attraction of the abyss. The sins they commit are different in kind from the sins of others."
(...) And you think accepted standards are irrelevant where Scrivener is concerned?"
"I am certain of it," she said quietly.

- I am Jonathan Scrivener, Claude Houghton