December | 2011 | Book Chatter

Last week I attended a retirement party for a very close friend. Great party, but man…such horrible photos of me. After viewing them, there must have been about five horrid ones and one where I looked somewhat human. Just to prove that I can laugh at myself, I will share one of those horrid photos with you.

What exactly am I thinking about here? GAH! So horrible. Enough to give me a complex. I felt a little bit better when the market clerk “carded” me yesterday. I get carded sometimes by young men, who don’t know any better, but this was a forty-something woman who carded me. That made me feel a little bit better but just a little bit.

Today, I am making pasta sauce and not much else. Maybe some reading. I just finished The Language of Flowers and for whatever reason, I don’t feel like launching into a new book. But a little warning sound is going off in my head because usually, if I do not begin another book right away, I hit a rut. We’ll see how that plays out.

Hope you are all done with your shopping and that your Sunday and a nice and easy one.

The Secret Lives of People in Love
By Simon Van Booy
Short Stories (single author)
(Harper Perennial, Paperback, 9780061766121, March 2010, 208pp.)

The Short of It:

Lovely and quiet.

The Rest of It:

This collection of short stories was sent to me some time ago. I can remember the day clearly. It arrived, I plunked myself down to read the first story, sighed and then placed the book on my nightstand. You might think it odd, but for me, it was the perfect reaction. The writing in that first story blew me away. I think I was a little bit awestruck and needed to take some time to process the beauty of the words themselves.

What happened next was odd, though.

I did the exact same thing every time I picked it up. There are nineteen stories and over the course of the year, I’d choose one to enjoy. Not every night (obviously) and not even every week, but whenever I felt like it. I just finished the book last month and it was such a pleasure to take the time to really enjoy this one.

These stories deal with people in love… or various stages of love and sometimes (often) loss. They are simply told, yet with beautiful, flowery prose. Here are some examples of the writing:

This morning I woke up and I was fifteen years old. Each year is like putting a new coat over all the old ones. Sometimes, I reach into the pockets of my childhood and pull things out. (Little Birds)

…her life, like a cloud, split open, and she lay motionless in a rain of moments. (French Artist Killed in Sunday’s Earthquake)

Words fell from their minds like a rain of hard stones, snapping branches of blind desire, trapping the fresh blooms of feeling within the darkness of meaning. (The Mute Ventriloquist)

I really enjoyed peeling away the layers and enjoying this one in small bits. Although it wasn’t my intention to take an entire year to read it, reading it this way seemed proper. These are not stories to rush through. This was my first experience with Van Booy’s writing but it definitely won’t be my last.

Source: Sent to me by the publisher.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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