Red Pen’s blog

June's nearly over, and I'm just now getting around to posting May's books.

Favorites: Doomsday Book, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, and Finding Nouf.

Share a sentence from one of your favorite books.

Petropolis

"Sasha watches him flick bits of chocolate off his BriteSmile Labs T-shirt, and her anger seeps away, replaced by pity so intolerable it feels like love."

Favorites: City of Thieves, The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden, and If I Stay.

Here are a couple of quotations from the amazing City of Thieves. It's one of the best books I've read this year and I highly recommend it.

"I never understood people who said their greatest fear was public speaking, or spiders, or any of the other minor terrors. How could you fear anything more than death? Everything else offered moments of escape: a paralyzed man could still read Dickens; a man in the grips of dementia might have flashes of the most absurd beauty."

"The days had become a confusion of catastrophes; what seemed impossible in the afternoon was blunt fact by the evening. German corpses fell from the sky; cannibals sold sausage links made from ground human in the Haymarket; apartment blocs collapsed to the ground; dogs became bombs; frozen soldiers became signposts; a partisan with half a face stood swaying in the snow staring sad-eyed at his killers. I had no food in my belly, no fat on my bones, and no energy to reflect on this parade of atrocities. I just kept moving, hoping to find another half slice of bread for myself and a dozen eggs for the colonel's daughter."

beach flower, originally uploaded by MsRedPen.

I've scarcely been on Vox since posting last Friday's flower. Hopefully the week ahead will be less hectic.

"Love at first sight is easy to understand; it's when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle."

–Amy Bloom