Distant Heartbeats

And... it's over.

I’ve finished reviewing all the books I’ve read and not reviewed (since the summer). Next review will come when I’m done with The Princess Bride.

Book Review: Letters to a Young Poet

“So you mustn’t be frightened, if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realise that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.” ~ Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke

Confession: I have never read any poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke. But you can bet your ass that after reading these letters, I will be, very soon. The above quote just embodies the book. Rilke writes to a young poet in search for advice, but instead of critiquing his work, they strike up a friendship and he writes to him about how to live his life, or how to deal with loneliness and the nature of writing.

Kappus, the man Rilke was writing to, was only 19 when they first started corresponding. I’m also 19. Kappus was a poet in search for advice from someone who has experienced the condition. I’m a poet, and I would love to pick a poet I admire’s brain for advice.

But overall, it’s just beautifully written, doesn’t take long to get through, and very touching.

Book Review: The World According to Garp

(Photo is mine)

I love John Irving. I don’t think I’ve read a writer that I can compare him to, which is always a compliment, in my opinion. He’s harsh, and honest, often gruesome or exceedingly sexual, but everything always ties in beautifully with the storyline and you always feel like you are genuinely getting every aspect of his characters. There are no smoke screens and no illusions, we are not ‘left to our devices’ to figure out what’s going on in the bedroom, we’re taken there. Very few people could make something like this work, and he does.

The World According to Garp does not disappoint. It sees the character through his life and the events the unfold are something you would never have imagined. It’s not my favourite Irving novel, Until I Find You firmly holds the lead (right now, anyway), but it is brilliantly written and realised, and if ever there was a time to say that a character came alive, it would be this. It would be Irving’s characters.

Book Review: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“She loved to jump on her bed. She jumped on her bed for so many years that one afternoon, while I watched her jump, the seams burst. Feathers filled the small room. Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds. Could they fly if there wasn’t someone, somewhere, laughing?” ~ Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

I just completely adored this book. It’s the first of his that I’ve read, and before I even finished it, I walked to the bookstore and bought Everything Is Illuminated. He is a wonderful writer, whose words shows the world through the eyes of a wounded nine-year-old who still looks at the world in a sense of wonder, but who is intelligent and thus Safran Foer touches us by exploiting the child within. As a writer, I’m extremely attached to this story. The more we grow up the more we seem to lose the ability to look at something and see it in a unique way. There are just so many instances where you want to look up and say to the author, Exactly! You got that exactly right.

Oskar’s story is touching, and I especially like how Safran Foer came at the story of 9/11 from a completely different angle. It’s a novel I’ll come back to time and again for inspiration.

Read it.