Thursday Quotables: The Sun Is Also A Star

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

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The Sun Is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon
(published 2016)

There was so much lovely writing in this new YA novel. Here’s a little snippet:

“You can’t really be falling for me,” she says, quieter now. Her voice is somewhere between distress and disbelief.

Again I don’t have anything to say. Even I’m surprised by how much I’ve been feeling for her all day. The thing about falling is you don’t have any control on your way down.

Check out my review of this new release!

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: Thanksgiving

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

Reblogging my Thanksgiving Thursday Quotables from last year, since I really don’t think I can do better than celebrating with Buffy!

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 In honor of Thanksgiving, I thought I’d depart book-world for this week’s Thursday Quotables post and turn instead to one of my very favorite Thanksgiving moments, the “Pangs” episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

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Willow: Buffy, earlier you agreed with me about Thanksgiving. It’s a sham. It’s all about death

Buffy: It *is* a sham. But it’s a sham with yams. It’s a yam sham.

Willow: You’re not gonna jokey-rhyme your way out of this one.

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Giles – “…It’s very common for Indian spirits to change to animal form.”
Buffy – “Yeah, well it’s plenty uncommon for me to freeze up during a fight. I mean, I had the guy, I was ready for the takedown and I stopped. And ‘Native American’.”
Giles – “Sorry?”
Buffy – “We don’t say ‘Indian’.”
Giles – “Oh, right. Yes, yes. Um, always behind on the terms. Still trying not to refer to you lot as ‘Bloody Colonials’.”

Wishing you all a very happy Thanksgiving, filled with friends, family, laughter… and pie.

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What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: Good Morning, Midnight

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

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Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton
(published 2016)

I just finished this unusual book, which tells the story of a lone astromoner at the North Pole and the crew of a spaceship returning from exploring Jupiter, all of whom appear to be the last remaining human beings after an unknown event leaves them unable to communicate with anyone else. I liked this passage about the older man’s view of the world around him:

There was a time when the changes in the sky meant more to him than the ground beneath his feet, but not right then. He had been looking up for long enough; it felt good to think of the dirt instead, to imagine the life that would soon return to the land.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Happy Election Day!

Due to my inability to think about much today except the election, my regular weekly features — Shelf Control and Thursday Quotables — will not be happening this week. If you’re participating in either meme this week, please leave your post link in the comments!

Meanwhile…

hilaryIt’s a day of pride, excitement, anticipation, and anxiety. I don’t remember ever feeling this way on election day before. It’s scary, and exhilarating, and it’s history in the making.

Of course, here in California, there are other issues on the ballot besides our next President, such as school bonds, plastic bags, soda taxes, and…

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Still, we all know what’s at stake. I don’t use my blog to get political, but today’s a big day, and I can’t wait to cast my vote for our next President.

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and therefore:

 

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Happy Election Day, all!

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Thursday Quotables: Harmony

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

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Harmony by Carolyn Parkhurst
(published 2016)

I loved this short but powerful novel about family, trust, hope, and love. My review is here… and here are two small samples that show some of the book’s terrific writing:

Happiness, as it exists in the wild — as opposed to those artificially constructed moments like weddings and birthday parties, where it’s gathered into careful piles — is not smooth. Happiness in the real world is mostly just resilience and a willingness to arch oneself toward optimism. To believe that people are more good than bad. To believe that the waves carrying you are neither friendly nor malicious, and to know that you’re less likely to drown if you stop struggling against them.

I liked this reflection on our digital lives:

Look at your Google history, and there it is, your mind, all its secret curves rolled out flat, like a map. Preoccupations and idle curiosities, mottled hopes and scribbled-out fantasies beating wildly on the screen. Everything you were, are, could be.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling
(published 2003)

It’s never not a good time to revisit Harry at Hogwarts. I’m having a blast listening to the audiobook of HP5. And sure, Harry spends a lot of time feeling angry and ignored, and some very bad things that I refuse to think about happen later on… but meanwhile, there are also all sorts of gems along the way.

“Don’t you understand how Cho’s feeling at the moment?” she asked.

“No,” said Harry and Ron together.

Hermione sighed and laid down her quill.

“Well, obviously, she’s feeling very sad, because of Cedric dying. Then I expect she’s feeling confused because she liked Cedric and now she likes Harry, and she can’t work out who she likes best. Then she’ll be feeling guilty, thinking it’s an insult to Cedric’s memory to be kissing Harry at all, and she’ll be worrying about what everyone else might say about her if she starts going out with Harry. And she probably can’t work out what her feelings toward Harry are anyway, because he was the one who was with Cedric when Cedric died, so that’s all very mixed up and painful. Oh, and she’s afraid she’s going to be thrown off the Ravenclaw Quidditch team because she’s been flying so badly.”

A slightly stunned silence greeted the end of this speech, then Ron said, “One person can’t feel all that at once, they’d explode.”

“Just because you’ve got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn’t mean we all have,” said Hermione nastily, picking up her quill again.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten creepy, gross, scary horror books for getting in the Halloween mood

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Happy (almost) Halloween!

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is a Halloween freebie!

I’ve decided to focus on great books to scare or give the willies. To mix things up, I’m highlighting five books that I’ve read, and five from my TBR list:

Icky, squicky, creepy, scary books that I’ve read (with links to my reviews):

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NOS4A2 by Joe Hill (review)

The Girl with All the Gifts by M. R. Carey (review)

The Dead Lands by Benjamin Percy (review)

Breed by Chase Novak (review)

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix (review)

Creepy, chilling, horrifying-sounding books that I really want to read:

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Red Moon by Benjamin Percy

Bird Box by Josh Malerman

Wraith by Joe Hill

A Love Like Blood by Marcus Sedgwick

Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day by Seanan McGuire

What scary books do you love to recommend? What’s on your Halloween TTT? Share your link, please, and I’ll come check out your top 10!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider following Bookshelf Fantasies! And don’t forget to check out my regular weekly features, Shelf Control and Thursday Quotables. Happy reading!

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Do you host a book blog meme? Do you participate in a meme that you really, really love? I host a Book Blog Meme Directory, and I’m always looking for new additions! If you know of a great meme to include — or if you host one yourself — please drop me a note on my Contact page and I’ll be sure to add your info.

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Thursday Quotables: Small Great Things

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

small great things

Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult
(published 2016)

I’ve only read 10% of Jodi Picoult’s newest novel, but I can tell already that this book will be both disturbing and thought-provoking. I really like this passage from an early chapter, from the point of view of a labor and delivery nurse:

A mother has nine months to get used to sharing the space where her heart is; for a father it come on sudden, like a storm that changes the landscape forever.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Top Ten Tuesday: Top ten character names for my imaginary babies and pets

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Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Ten Characters I’d Name A Child/Dog/Cat/Car/Etc. After — which strikes me as a really funny topic, but, hey, I’m game!

As I already have all the kids I intend to have and am not in the market for any fur (or fin) babies, I’ll just focus on character names which I think are cute or clever or cool or funny enough to become the NEXT BIG THING in baby and pet names.

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For girls:

  • Demelza – inspired by the Poldark series of books by Winston Graham
  • Marsali – inspired by Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series
  • Cosette – inspired by Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
  • Minerva – in honor of my favorite Hogwarts professor, thanks to Harry Potter and J. K. Rowling

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For boys:

  • Rhett – inspired by Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
  • Tyrion – inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin
  • Quentin – inspired by The Magicians by Lev Grossman
  • Roland – inspired by The Dark Tower series by Stephen King

animals-47877_1280For the non-human family members, I’d want:

  • A dog named Rollo – inspired, once again, by the Outlander series
  • Three bearded dragon lizards, named Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion – another inspiration from the world of GRRM
  • Two fish (preferably big ones) names Ishmael and Queequeg – inspired by Moby Dick by Herman Melville

Oops! I realize that’s more than 10…

What character names do you think would be awesome people/pet names? Share your link, please, and I’ll come check out your top 10!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider following Bookshelf Fantasies! And don’t forget to check out my regular weekly features, Shelf Control and Thursday Quotables. Happy reading!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Do you host a book blog meme? Do you participate in a meme that you really, really love? I host a Book Blog Meme Directory, and I’m always looking for new additions! If you know of a great meme to include — or if you host one yourself — please drop me a note on my Contact page and I’ll be sure to add your info!

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Thursday Quotables: Karen Memory

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Karen Memory

Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear
(published 2015)

I’m at about the halfway point in this steampunk-western whose main characters are the working girls (“seamstresses”) at Madame Damnable’s fine house. It took me a few chapters to get into Karen’s speech patterns, but by now, I’m totally charmed:

I could feel Priya watching. When I looked at her, she gave me a flicker of a smile. I wondered if she was figuring out how, in this house, we lived together mostly by doing one another favors. I mean, I know there’s houses where it’s every girl for herself, and constant knives in the back. But Madame won’t cotton to that, and any girl who tries to import that sort of behavior and don’t take a warning or two winds up plying her trade elsewhere. Madame’s even less keen on mean than she is on drunk. She might forgive a girl who miscalculates how much liquor she can hold, as long as she don’t do it regular.

Another moment of unabashed Karen:

I liked to have turned my head and spat, but I remembered at the last minute that I was out on the street and ought to comport myself as a lady. Cussing aside, but it was too late to rein that wagon.

And finally, a little passage giving a flavor of life in the city — what to do before heading out for a day of errands:

Then we checked the barometer, which was uncharacteristically heartening, and I flipped open the morning paper to check the Mad Science Report. No experiments were scheduled, and no duels had been announced — at least among the Licensed Scientists — but you never knowed when a giant automaton was going to run rogue unscheduled. Mostly the city makes the inventors keep to the edge of town. Mostly.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!