Thoughtful: What does Time feel like?

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For my English class this semester, we're currently reading Ray Bradbury's short story "August 2002: Night Meeting." I love Bradbury's style over all and always have. After a few years of not reading him, this piece feels like coming home. One quote early on in the story caught my attention though;

"What did Time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if you wondered what Time sounded like it sounded like water running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down upon hollow box lids, and rain. And going further, what did Time look like? Time looked like snow dropping silently into a black room or it looked like a silent film in an ancient theater, one hundred billion faces falling like those New Year balloons, down and down into nothing."

Do you agree with Bradbury? I do, to an extent, but I feel there are a million other ways to explain Time. The real question, which Bradbury doesn't explain is what does Time feel like? Not the passing of time, but the feeling of Time itself.

I think time feels like a rabbit's fur tickling across your face as the summer heat sets in, like the massaging of the one stubborn tense muscle that hurts too much to continue and feels to good to stop, like the air of the night when you reach up toward the stars and just, for a moment, grasp the light of the moon only to have nothing to show for it.

What do you think Time feels like?

Halloween Reads

I promised earlier today that I'd have more on Halloween and here it is! I love Halloween. I think the history of the holiday and everything about it is amazing. Maybe it's the strange morbid side of me that loves to see the skeletons and creepy things around. This year, in honour of Life Ducks' first Halloween I thought I'd share some of my favorite spooky/scary/ghostly reads.

In no particular order, here are some great ones!

I figured we'd start with an undeniably creepy but little known classic, Henry James's short story "The Turn of the Screw." This is a lovely gothic horror story by a wonderful American writer. You can certainly read this one in one creep filled night!

What good is a Halloween list without witches? This one is actually a 4 novel volume about witches in modern day New Orleans. It's a great story of magic. Check out my review of Balefire.

Speaking of witches, how about some vampires? This little known vampire novel (in fact a trilogy) is about the family line of Vlad Dracul. I read these books in high school and plan to read them again. These are certainly creepy enough to keep you up at night.

Here's another amazing contemporary YA book. This one doesn't have magic or monsters but it does have a sufficient creep factor to make you wary of any alley or warehouse you walk by at night, or even in the day. I loved this one and you can find my review here.

Speaking of creep factors, this one kept me up reading all night! I couldn't put it down! When I finally finished it, I caught myself jumping at every little sound and every doll I saw for weeks! Certainly worth checking out! I reviewed it here.

Here's another classic creeper. I'd never read this one until it was required for my European history course. Man was I missing out on one of the most amazing Victorian books I've ever read! I love this one and read it in one night! So spooky it really makes you wary of science and people in general!

As if those weren't enough to fill your nights with terror, how about this classic vampire tale? Anne Rice has such a great way of writing. It's no wonder this is one of the most beloved classic vampire novels (after Dracula, of course). 

Obviously, I've left out some classics like Dracula, Frankenstein, but I figure those are well - loved enough to be remembered during the Halloween season so I chose to showcase some lesser known titles and some of my favorites! Hope you all have a horror filled Halloween!

What are some of your favorite Halloween/spooky/horror reads? 

Let's Talk: A Moveable Feast

Note: "Let's Talk" is a discussion post in which I discuss my opinions and thoughts on a book that I don't want to review or want to discuss informally and perhaps more in-depth and hitting closer to spoilers than in a review. This one does not contain any spoilers, only adoration.

It has been a while since I've posted on a weekend! I don't really want to review A Moveable Feast by Earnest Hemingway, but I certainly do want to talk about it! Firstly, I'd like to say I do not like Hemingway. The Old Man and the Sea, The Sun Also Rises, I highly dislike all of it, but this one little memoir of the "early" Paris is absolutely beautiful and I adore it.

This is one of the several book I'm reading for my English 101 class. The theme is Americans in Paris, so the other classics we read were The American, The Age of Innocence, and The Sun Also Rises by Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Ernest Hemingway (respectively). To be honest, I didn't finish The Age of Innocence, but the other two were extremely unimpressive and I disliked them, which is very sad for me to say about anything Henry James wrote because I adore his short stories. End English major rant. 

Start adoration.

This book is so different from any other book I've read by Hemingway. In truth, it's almost a collection of short stories and moments of his life. It's a fictional non-fiction. In that I mean it's the events as he remembers them (and adds in the case of dialogue) so we cannot be sure the truth of the episodes, but to Hemingway these stories were true. 

I got the restored edition which has several added pieces. This was publish posthumously and was compiled by Hemingway's last wife. This edition was restructured by Hemingway's grandson and some of the pieces that were added, specifically in the "Addition Sketches of Paris" section were fantastic! I love the characters, the way Hemingway perceived, described, and remembered his friends in the early Paris scene. 

The relationship between Hadley and "Tatie" is so romantic! I adore that and truly hope for a love like theirs in the early years, before "the rich" appears and ruins it. This edition also has "Fragments" which were different ways Hemingway was trying to open the book and in it he says that Hadley is the heroine and is the one who wins the most over all. I'm amazed to see an ex-husband so happy and obviously still loving his first wife. I adore it. You see real emotion in this book, particularly the added pieces, that you (at least I) don't usually see in Hemingway's works. 

If you don't like Hemingway, I'd definitely say give this one a try. Maybe it's not for everyone, but I adore it so much and will most likely reread it many times throughout my life.

Have you read A Moveable Feast? What did you think? What is your general opinion of Hemingway?