karen > Books: bossy-book-titles‎ (154)

“I surprised her, you see,” he said, grinning, “as you would be surprised if this insect suddenly spoke to you. Hri and her sisters have been aware of

“I surprised her, you see,” he said, grinning, “as you would be surprised if this insect suddenly spoke to you. Hri and her sisters have been aware of Origin Earth since the first multicellular creatures swam in its oceans. And they did not pay us much heed, even as we spread across the stars, because our works were so small and transient compared to (missing word [sic]). They did not think it was possible for us to develop the states of consciousness necessary to commune with them.

“Yet my mind, out here at the galaxy’s edge, unpolluted by the noise of humanity, refined by meditation, sharpened by fasting, touched their realm. I swam in cosmic seas you could not comprehend. I saw all time and space spread before me like an ocean, past and future intermingling in universe-sized waves. “This”—he waved at the meadow—“is nothing compared to that.”

As always, it's tremendously difficult to talk about Comfort Me With Apples without giving away the whole game. From the jump, we ruefully laughed about how hard it would be to market a book with such a massive twist that we can only vaguely tell anyone what it's about beyond: You just have to read it. Trust us.

"I am happy, ████████*. How could I be otherwise? I am fed, I am housed, I am busy, I am loved."

Her voice catches on the last word.

There was power in unifying their voices, these mothers learned. A combined strength.

Unity.

They could harness their concerns and make it one voice. One loud, determined voice.

...Condrey considers us all to be one big, happy academic family. As in, "arguing-with-your-right-wing-uncle-about-whether-or-not-Obama-was-born-in-the-USA-during-Thanksgiving-dinner" type of family. That's what kind of family our faculty is.

She could be mute for hours, but if someone mentions a film title, the words pour out. Maddy had once told her that movies were her version of wine coolers. They really loosen you up.

Charlie knows it's true, which is why asking people about their favorite movies is the only icebreaker she has. It instantly tells her how much time and energy she should spend on a person. If someone mentions Hitchcock or Ford or Altman or even Argento, they're probably worth talking to. On the flip side, if someone brings up The Sound of Music, Charlie knows it's best to just walk away.

Never go out alone at night.
Always walk in pairs.
Always tell someone where you're going.
Never trust a stranger.

...according to the Take Back the Night flyer, she shouldn't even be here at all, alone at the curb with suitcases and a box, clearly looking like someone about to leave and who no one would miss for a few days.

"Instead of what's really happening, I see a heightened version of the scene. Like my brain is playing tricks on me. I hear conversations that aren't happening and see things that aren't really there. It feels like life..."

"Only better?"

Charlie shakes her head. "More manageable."

She had always thought of it as seeing things in wide-screen. Not everything. Just certain moments. Difficult ones. A Steadicam operator gliding through the rough patches of her life. It wasn't until she was forced to see the psychiatrists who prescribed the little orange pills that Charlie realized what the movies in her mind really were.

Hallucinations.

That was what the psychiatrist called them.

She said it was like having a mental circuit breaker, triggered when Charlie's emotions threaten to overwhelm her. In times of grief or stress or fear, a switch flips in Charlie's brain, replacing reality with something more cinematic and easier to handle.

Byam turned for its last look at the earth as an imugi. The lake shone in the sun. It had been cold, and miserable, and lonely, full of venomous water snakes that bit Byam’s tail. Byam had been dying to get away from it.

But now, it felt a swell of affection. When it returned as a dragon, it would bless the lake. Fish would overflow its banks. The cows and pigs and goats would multiply beyond counting. The crops would spring out of the earth in their multitudes…

A thin screechy noise was coming from the lake. When Byam squinted, it saw a group of little creatures on the western bank. Humans.

One of them was shaking a fist at the sky. “Fuck you, imugi!”

“Oh shit,” said Byam.

“Sometimes,” it said, “you try really hard and it’s not enough. You put in all you’ve got and you still never get where you thought you were meant to be...It hurts. Knowing it wasn’t enough, even when you gave it the best of yourself. But you get over it.”

The world is not tame.

People forget that. The glossy brochures for state parks show nature at its most photogenic, like a senior picture with all the

The world is not tame.

People forget that. The glossy brochures for state parks show nature at its most photogenic, like a senior picture with all the pores airbrushed away. They never feature a coyote muzzle-deep in the belly of a still-living deer, or a chipmunk punctured by an eagle's talons, squirming as it perishes in midair.

If you're quiet in the woods long enough, you'll hear something die. Then it's quiet again. There's no outrage about injustice, or even mourning. One animal's death is another's dinner; that's just the way it is. What remains will go to the earth, yesterday's bones sinking into today's dirt..

…the scar on my calf, the remnant of a deep cut from the steel siding of a neighbor’s trailer that opened me down to the muscle when I was trick-or-treating, my Wonder Woman cape getting stuck in between the stacked cinder blocks they used for steps.

I pulled my sock up and told them I was fine, because they were a nice old couple that gave out whole candy bars instead of bite-size, and I’d never had a whole candy bar to myself in my life. I limped home, shoe full of blood, and ate the candy bar in the back of the truck while Dad took me to the urgent care where they charge only half what the ER does and do stitches as good as anybody else.

Quickly as it had risen, the wind did not fall at once. On it went, moaning and rushing past the house, at times rising to a cry so desolate that, as Parkins disinterestedly said, it might have made fanciful people feel quite uncomfortable; even the unimaginative, he thought after a quarter of an hour, might be happier without it.

...it is a whole lot better than i thought it was going to be. i’d always kind of lumped m.r. james in with algernon blackwood in my mind as “contemporaneous english writers of dry and boring ghost stories that do not scare me one bit.”

and all of that holds up except for the “boring” part. this story was funny and pretty modern, not at all the stuffy atmospheric "mayyyyyybe it’s a ghost but maybe it’s maaaaadnessss” kind of thing i was expecting.