Harriet the Spy

This one's a re-read. I was going through some things and found my favorite book from childhood, Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh. It was published in 1964. Looking back, this book inspired me in more ways than I'd remembered, and not all of them good. From playing Town and doing science experiments to observing (spying on) neighbors. I could certainly relate to feeling like everyone hated me. Harriet wrestles with figuring out the world, her place in it, how to think about things, and how to treat others. She wants to be a writer and so "works" at noticing details about people, and she fills notebooks with her observations and musings. Harriet's nurse is always quoting books. Mr. Withers named his twenty-six cats after writers and story characters, like Puck and Faulkner. Kids at school get a hold of her notebook, and Harriet has to deal with the consequences of her words. This story is a gem. 

Page 30:  Ole Golly says there is as many ways to live as there are people on the earth and I shouldn't go round with blinders but should see every way I can. Then I'll know what way I want to live and not just live like my family. 

Page 43:  "Writers don't care what they eat. They just care what you think of them..." 

Page 44:  "... Writers have a lot of bad dreams." 

Page 56:  The Robinsons were sitting, as they always were, staring into space. They never worked, and what was worse, they never even read anything. They bought things and brought them home and then they had people in to look at them. Otherwise they didn't seem to do a blessed thing. 

Page 106-7:  "I mean, what does it feel like to have somebody ask you?" Harriet was getting very impatient. 

            Ole Golly looked toward the window, folding something absently. "It feels... it feels-- you jump all over inside... you... as though doors were opening all over the world... It's bigger, somehow, the world." 

            "That doesn't make any sense," said Harriet sensibly. She sat down with a plop on the bed. 

            "Well, nonetheless, that's what you feel. Feeling never makes any sense anyway, Harriet; you should know that by now," Ole Golly said pleasantly. 

            "Maybe--" Harriet knew as she said it that it was a baby thing to say but she couldn't help it-- "maybe there's a lot of things I don't know." 

Playground

 Richard Powers' most recent novel, Playground, is an ambitious tale of themes as grand as planetary survival and as intimate as trust and friendship. I found it complex and lovely, and quite quotable.  

Page 6:  The world with all its bright and surprising contents was created out of boredom and emptiness. Everything started by holding still and waiting. 

Page 44:  Power, the mayor decided, was an isolating thing, especially when power was powerless. 

Page 59:  Play was evolution's way of building brains, and any creature with a brain as developed as a giant oceanic manta sure used it. If you want to make something smarter, teach it to play. 

Page 138:  I've started to wander and not just at night. I'll materialize in the kitchen without having gone there. Or out in the garage. Or in the park two blocks down the street... I'm going to need an ID bracelet. 

Page 155:  Of all the things we humans excel at, moving the goal posts may be our best trick. 

Page 200:  "Decisions are rarely made by reason but almost always by temperament, and that doesn't change much as people get older." 

Page 214:  "... People are like sculptures. You can mold them a little when they start out, but not much. A body wants to be what a body wants to be. ..."

To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf is a formidable force. I'll admit that her novel, To the Lighthouse, was not an easy read, but the rumination of it, after, was delicious. It read as a stream-of consciousness, the point of view flitting from one character to another. Flitting emotions as well. This was dizzying and yet satisfying. Absolutely worth it. 

Consider this delightful exchange between husband and wife:

Page 23:  There wasn't the slightest possible chance that they could go to the Lighthouse tomorrow, Mr. Ramsey snapped out irascibly. 

                How did he know, she asked. The wind often changed. 

                The extraordinary rationality of her remark, the folly of women's minds enraged him. He had ridden through the valley of death, been shattered and shivered; and now she flew in the face of facts, made his children hope what was utterly out of the question, in effect, told lies. He stamped his foot on the stone step. 'Damn you,' he said. But what had she said? Simply that it might be fine tomorrow. So it might. 

                Not with the barometer falling and the wind due west. 

                To pursue truth with such astonishing lack of consideration for other people's feelings, to rend the thin veils of civilization so wantonly, so brutally, was to her so horrible an outrage of human decency that, without replying, dazed and blinded, she bent her head as if to let the pelt of jagged hail, the drench of dirty water, bespatter her unrebuked. There was nothing to be said. 

                He stood by her in silence. Very humbly, at length, he said that he would step over and ask the Coastguards if she liked. 

                There was nobody whom she reverenced as she reverenced him.