by Lucille Clifton
how otherwise
could i have come to this
marble spinning in space
propelled by the great
thumb of the universe?
how otherwise
could the two roads
of this tongue
converge into a single
certitude?
how otherwise
could i, a sleek old
traveler,
curl one day safe and still
beside You
at Your feet, perhaps,
but, amen, Yours.
You can find this poem in the collection Book of Light.
I’ve heard nothing but high praise for The Huntress by Kate Quinn. Since I didn’t read The Alice Network, I thought I’d see what all the fuss was about. I placed a hold at the library and as soon as I finished City of Girls (loved it!), I opened it up. Post-WW2, the Nuremberg Trials, two men on the trail of Nazi criminals, a woman fleeing from justice…It could be good, I thought. But six or seven chapters in, I still wasn’t feeling it, so I quit.
What I liked about The Huntress: the writing was solid and the story didn’t stagnate. From one chapter to the next, readers are introduced to the various main characters in turn, each round building on their backstories and moving the plot forward. There was danger, romance, and suspense: all the important elements in a novel.
What I didn’t like: Overall, none of the characters (except Nina) intrigued me or made me want to invest in the story. Also, the huntress is revealed right away, so there’s no mystery as to who she is. I guess the suspense is how she is going to be caught, but that took away a lot of excitement for me.
Also, this is dumb, but one of the characters is a young American woman named Jordan. The novel begins in 1946. Tell me who in white-bread America named their baby girl Jordan in 1928, which would’ve been the year she was born? I have a believability radar for films and novels and this was just off the charts unbelievable and silly. People were naming their girls Doris, Ruth, Mildred, and Betty in 1928–not Jordan.
I also didn’t care for the two men who are tracking down the huntress. Nothing particularly wrong with them, they just seemed run-of-the-mill stock military guys with no real personalities.
I may not have given this book enough time, it’s possible. If you liked it, please don’t be offended! We don’t all like the same things and that’s what makes reading and the reading community so much fun. I learn about books I’d never have dreamt of picking because other readers recommend them.
My reading philosophy is that life is short and there are too many books I want to read, so I better make sure they are books I actually want to read. Because my TBR is always growing, and I don’t read for a living (yet, anyway!), I want to read books that either captivate my attention with the characters or the plot. Recently I listened to the podcast episode of Getting Bookish With Shawna and Lizz where they talk about their DNF (Did Not Finish) books. You might enjoy this episode!
Are you a reader who has to finish whatever she starts? Or do you regularly say no to books that just aren’t for you? I find that the more I read, the more I discard. At least half, if not more, of the books I bring home from the library get sent back with only the first few chapters read.
I’d love to hear what you thought of The Huntress. If you read it, please comment below or tell me about whatever else you’ve picked up or discarded lately.
by Rumi
You are granite.
I am an empty wineglass.
You know what happens when we touch!
You laugh like the sun coming up laughs
at a star that disappears into it.
Love opens my chest, and thought
returns to its confines.
Patient and rational considerations leave.
Only passion stays, whimpering and feverish.
Some men fall down in the road like dregs thrown out.
Then, totally reckless, the next morning
they gallop out with new purposes. Love
is the reality, and poetry is the drum
that calls us to that. Don’t keep complaining
about loneliness! Let the fear-language of that theme
crack open and float away. Let the priest come down
from his tower, and not go back up!
You can find this poem in The Essential Rumi.
Like many other Liz Gilbert readers, I couldn’t wait for the release of the novel City of Girls. Whenever Liz mentioned City of Girls on Instagram, she said it was going to be lighthearted and fun; she said it was going to involve theatre and showgirls; she said it would involve plenty of sex.
City of Girls has all of those elements and much more. The novel is written from the perspective of Vivian, a woman in her nineties, who looks back over her life from age nineteen and on. She writes about arriving in New York City in 1940 and experiencing a very different kind of life from the one she had previously known: sheltered, stuffy, unimaginative. She gets to know all sorts of colorful characters and lives wild and carefree for a time.
As the story unfolds, she makes and loses friends, survives scandal, lives through WW2, fashions a successful and creative career for herself, and, as she lives all these experiences, she learns to know who she is.
I loved the descriptions of old theaters and night clubs, the fashion of the various decades in which Vivian lives, the energy of New York City and how it changed over the years. Overall, the tone is positive, light, and joyful. But, if you’re worried, as I was, that the book is just fluff, think again. There is substance here. There are passages that I will read and reread. Oprah read one during her interview with Liz Gilbert on Super Soul Sunday. And here is words of wisdom from Vivian’s aunt, Peg, that resonated with me: (on page 327)
So, am I going to recommend this novel? Yes! If you’re a reader of fiction, add this to your TBR. Buy a copy or place a hold at your library, but definitely read it. Particularly, I think it’s an important read for women because it’s a story of strong women who lived unusual, successful, and satisfying lives.
And when you read it, comment here, send me an email or DM me on Instagram and let me know what you think!
by David Whyte
Holding hands, we walk
to the very edge of the light,
shyly aware of the way
time radiates from
where we stand.
Our footprints behind us,
are a promise in the sand,
inscribing a joining,
a walking together,
our witness to the ocean,
and as they wait
to disappear
under the flowing tide,
the far, unknown,
and unspeakable
origin from which we came.
Then, all around us,
the felt sense of a courage
needed, a newness in the air,
a touch of the familiar
and ancient in all the tidal vows
the wind can speak,
the strands of your hair
across my face, and then,
suddenly, the sun in your eyes
and the way they closed in surprise
at the first kiss of your salt mouth.
You can find this poem in the collection The Sea in You.
by Jane Kenyon
White peonies blooming along the porch
send out light
while the rest of the yard grows dim.
Outrageous flowers as big as human
heads! They’re staggered
by their own luxuriance: I had
to prop them up with stakes and twine.
The moist air intensifies their scent,
and the moon moves around the barn
to find out what it’s coming from.
In the darkening June evening
I draw a blossom near, and bending close
search it as a woman searches
a loved one’s face.
This poem can be found in the collection Otherwise by Jane Kenyon.
by Lucille Clifton
so knowing,
what is known?
that we carry our baggage
in our cupped hands
when we burst through
the waters of our mother.
that some are born
and some are brought
to the glory of this world.
that it is more difficult
than faith
to serve only one calling
one commitment
one devotion
in one life.
You can find this poem in the collection The Book of Light.
by Eleanor Farjeon
The night will never stay,
The night will still go by,
Though with a million stars
You pin it to the sky;
Though you bind it with the blowing wind
And buckle it with the moon,
The night will slip away
Like a sorrow or a tune.
You can find this poem in Eleanor Farjeon’s Poems For Children.
by David White
When I wake under the moon,
I do not know who I have become unless
I move closer to you, obeying the give and take
Of the earth as it breathes the slender length
Of your body, so that in breathing with the tide that breathes
In you, and moving with you as you come and go,
And following you, half in light and half in dark,
I feel the first firm edge of my floating palm touch
And then trace the pale light of your shoulder
To the faint, moonlit shadow of your smooth cheek
And drawing my finger through the pearl water of your skin,
I sense the breath on your lips touch and then warm
The finest, furthest, most unknown edge of my sense of self,
So that I come to you under the moon as if I had
Swum under the deepest arch of the ocean,
To find you living where no one could possibly live,
And to feel you breathing, where no one could
Possibly breathe, and I touch your skin as I would
Touch a pale whispering spirit of the tides that my arms
Try to hold with the wrong kind of strength and my lips
Try to speak with the wrong kind of love and I follow
You through the ocean night listening for your breath
In my helpless calling to love you as I should, and I lie
Next to you in your sleep as I would next to the sea,
Overwhelmed by the rest that arrives in me and by the weight
That is taken from me and what, by morning,
Is left on the shore of my waking joy.
You can find this poem in the collection The Sea in You.
At night, when the wind is blowing
And the Chestnut’s new leaves are rustling
I think of the first time I climbed the hill
to this house and met you on the steps.
How the spirit of the place made room for me and
invited me to become part of its story.
I remember happy and conflicted days
of everything new and everything
breaking apart. Of wrenching grief and
the starry-eyed hope of starting over.
And I have started over with you.
Who were the first people to walk over
this ground and build their homes here?
To plant fields and grow food for themselves?
Did they feel the land welcome them too?
Did they walk down this road,
when it became a road, hand in hand
in the moonlight, whispering promises?
Did they kiss under the stars and imagine
a life where every day burned bright
like a summer afternoon because they had
found their hearts hidden in each other,
and their home in this place?
The land beneath my feet and the sky over my head
have moved on since that day,
unconcerned through the seasons
summer, fall, winter, spring.
How I have changed and how I have remained myself,
how we have grown together and have begun to live out
the truth about us–that we belong to one another,
that Fate put us in each other’s paths.
I think about this and other things,
at night, when the wind is blowing.
Poem by Kim Pollack/©2019 All Rights Reserved
Life of Kim 