138, WG81, F64, E131 / NG57, M69, MF5, B2, D6, Frz1, C1, NA1

Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

Auch dieses Buch wollte wiedergelesen werden und schloss natürlich nahtlos an das erste Buch von Hogan an. Neben der nahegehenden Schilderung der Verlustverarbeitung finde ich die Beschreibung des viktorianischen Friedhofes und seiner Grabsteine mit den Biografien der Verstorbenen sehr faszinierend.
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And what's your excuse?' I ask. 'Your beautiful singing is wasted on dead people.'
Sally laughs. 'It's the best audience I've ever had! Besides,' her face was serious again now, 'singing is never wasted. And it is the only music you can carry with you everywhere and always.'
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Unlike the Victorians who built this place, people nowadays seem to think that cemeteries are morbid places and to visit them for recreational purposes is at best creepy and at worst, tempting fate. But perhaps it is the confrontation of their own mortality that really unsettles them. After all, it is the only certainty that we all share. However fit, fabulous, rich, double-jointed, brilliant, brave, funny or fastidious about cleaning our teeth we are, we are all going to die. It may not seem fair, but there it is. As Thomas Gray reminds us, 'The paths of glory lead but to the grave'.
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But a photograph of your dead child was better than no photograph at all, because memories are not enough. The pictures in your heads are unreliable. They shift and face and scatter like broken reflections on restless water, and one day they may disappear completely. A paper picture is insurance.
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Of course, nowadays, people are rather uppity about the Victorians' approach to death, condemning it as excessive, sentimental and overly dramatic. But I'm not sure our attitude towards it is any better. Our considered approach to death is to try very hard to ignore it. We can't even say it. We say someone has 'passed away'. We talk about having 'lost' someone, or someone being 'late'. They are neither lost nor late. We know perfectly well where they are, and they're not late, they're just not coming.
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(Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes, 2018)

135, WG78, M68, E128 / NG57, F62, MF5, B2, D6, Frz1, C1, NA1

Terry Pratchett, The Truth

Irgendwie ist dieser Discworldband ein echter Süchtigmacher, denn anders kann ich es mir nicht erklären, warum ich ihn mir Jahr für Jahr wieder vornehme und immer wieder von neuem gefesselt bin von den ersten Gehversuchen einer Zeitung in Ankh-Morpork, bei denen gleich eine Verschwörung gegen Lord Vetinari aufgedeckt wird. Einfach immer wieder schön.

Und erstaunlicherweise fand sich selbst bei diesem zigsten Wiederlesen etwas neues zum zitieren:

'Look at it like this,' said Sacharissa, starting a fresh page. 'Some people are heroes. And some people jot down notes.'
'Yes, but that's not very -'
Sacharissa glanced up and flashed him a smile. 'Sometimes they're the same person,' she said.
This time it was William who looked down, modestly.
'You think that's really true?' he said.
She shrugged. 'Really true? Who knows? This is a newspaper, isn't it? It just has to be true until tomorrow.'
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It glittered altogether too much; sometimes glass glitters more than diamonds because it has more to prove.
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'But I'm not even sure there is enough news to fill a -' William began, and stopped. That wasn't the way it worked, was it? If it was in the paper, it was news. If it was news it went into the paper, and if it was in the paper it was news. And it was the truth.
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(Terry Pratchett, The Truth, 2000)

134, WG77, M67, E127 / NG57, F62, MF5, B2, D6, Frz1, C1, NA1

Stephen King, Later

Ich dachte tatsächlich, ich hätte das Buch schon letztes Jahr gelesen, aber als ich nachschaute (natürlich nach dem Wiederlesen) war es erst vor einem Dreivierteljahr. Seis drum, beim wiederlesen hatte ich eh das Gefühl, es beim ersten Mal viel zu flüchtig gelesen zu haben. Sovieles fasziniert hier, wie genial King hier Konzepte von The Sixth Sense und auch aus Ghost Whisperer noch erweitert, und dieser trockenhumorige und fast resignierte Ton des Erzählers. Das nächste Wiederlesen kommt vermutlich etwas später (haha), aber auf jeden Fall irgendwann.
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I thought of asking her if it freaked her out to look up at night and see the stars and know they go on forever and ever, but didn't bother. I just said no. You get used to marvelous things. You take them for granted. You can try not to, but you do. There's too much to wonder, that's all. It's everywhere.
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Belief is a high hurdle to get over and I think it's even higher for smart people. Smart people know a lot, and maybe that makes them think they know everything.
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(Stephen King, Later, 2021)

130, NG55, F62, E123 / WG75, M63, MF5, B2, D6, Frz1, C1, NA1

Jodi Picoult, Wish You Were Here

Das neueste Werk von Picoult war das erste Buch für mich, das die Pandemie zum Thema hat, und das auf so geniale Weise, dass es mich völlig gefangen nahm. Besonders nach der völlig unerwarteten Wende in der Mitte war ich komplett fasziniert. Sovieles wird hier so eindringlich beschrieben, die Situation in New York während der ersten Wochen und Monaten des Lockdowns, die Verzweiflung der Ärzte und des Pflegepersonals auf den Intensivstationen, die Erfahrungen der Patienten, die beatmet werden und ihre Halluzinationen, besonders der Protagonistin, die für die Dauer ihres Krankenhausaufenthaltes in einer ganz anderen Welt zu leben scheint.
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Finally, a nurse gave me a plastic bag with the hospital logo on it. Inside was my father's wallet, his reading glasses, his wedding ring. Identity, insight, heart: the only things we leave behind.
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I shrug. "It is what it is," I tell her. "The point is, if someone abandons you, it may be less about you and more about them."
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Busy is just a euphemism for being so focused on what you don't have that you never notice what you do.
It's a defense mechanism. Because if you stop hustling - if you pause - you start wondering why you ever thought you wanted all those things.
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It strikes me that Covid isn't the only thing that can take your breath away.
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The very first things we master as an infant are the last things we lose: the ability to lift one's head from the pillow. The ability to smile.
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"Okay, but what if death wasn't the ending you've been told it is? What if time is like fabric, a bolt that's so long you can't see where it starts or it ends?" She pauses. "Maybe at the moment a person dies, that life gets compressed so small and dense it's like a pinprick in the cloth. It may be that at that point, you enter a new reality. A new stitch in time, basically.
..
"That new reality, it takes place for you at a normal pace, but within that giant fabric of time. What felt like months to you was actually days here, because again, time was compressed the minute you left that other life."
--
I imagine a universe draped with the gauzy textile of millions of lives, tangled and intersecting. I think of needles that might have basted together me and Finn, me and Gabriel, for just a moment in time. I think of yards and yards of cloth as black as night, every fiber twisted into it a different life. In one I am an art specialist. In another, a stranded tourist. There could be infinite versions, some where I can cure cancer, or fall in battle; some where I have a dozen children, break a heart, die young.
"We don't know what reality is," Rayanne says. "We just pretend we do, because it makes us feel like we're in control."
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It's amazing how easily someone can leave your life. It's standing on a beach and stepping back to see the hole of your footprint subsumed by the sand and the sea as if it were never there. Grief, it turns out, is a lot like a one-sided video conversation on an iPad. It's the call with no response, the echo of affection, the shadow cast by love.
But just because you can't see it anymore doesn't make it any less real.
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"You can't plan your life, Finn," I say quietly. "Because then you have a plan. Not a life."
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(Jodi Picoult, Wish You Were Here, 2021)

112, WG62, F54, E106 / NG50, M54, MF4, B1, D6, C0, NA1

J. K. Rowling,Harry Potter The Complete Collection: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Ich war lange hin und hergerissen, ob ich die Harry Potter Serie nochmal wiederlesen sollte oder wenn, ob komplett oder nur die ersten Bände, bevor zu den ganzen Intrigenwirren und komplizierter Historie noch diese ganzen unerträglichen Teenagerängste und Eifesüchteleien hinzukommen und die Stories so aufgebläht werden. Aber dann entschied ich mich doch für das Komplettpaket. Über die störenden Stellen kann ich ja immer noch hinweglesen und so kam es doch günstiger. Die ersten Bände lasen sich denn auch unter der Nase weg - kein Wunder, wenn beide zusammen nur 12 % (!) der Serie ausmachen. Da kann man nur staunen, wie es Rowling gelungen ist in die ersten Bände das ganze Fundament dieser komplexen Welt so dicht zu erschaffen. Meine Lieblingsstellen waren ziemlich unverändert Harrys erster Besuch der Diagon Alley und Gringgotts und der Sorting Hat und im zweiten Band der Flug mit dem Auto und der Basilisk.
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'To one as young as you, I'm sure it seems incredible, but to Nicolas and Perenelle, it really is like going to bed after a very, very long day. After all, to the well-organised mind, death is but the next great adventure. You know, the Stone was really not such a wonderful thing. As much money and life as you could want! The two things most human beings would choose above all - the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things which are worst for them.'

(J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, 1997)

107, NG50, F49, E101 / WG57, M54, MF4, B1, D6, C0, NA1

Veronica Roth, Four. A Divergent Collection

Von den vier Hauptteilen gefiel mir "The Transfer" am besten, die Geschichte wie Four zu den Dauntless kommt und sein dysfunktionales Elternhaus hinter sich lässt. Von den Extras ist "We can be Mended" am besten - 18, bzw. 23 ist wirklich kein Alter um in einer Sackgasse zu bleiben. Vor 40 Jahren hätte ich das vielleicht nicht so gesehen.

"I just keep wanting to see if she'll still be there. I'm just ... waiting for the day when I'm ... past it. When I've moved on."
She laughs a little. "You're not just going to spontaneously be past it."
"What about 'time heals'?"
"Time doesn't do shit." Christina sighs, and for a moment she stands on her tiptoes, pressing out over the railing like a Dauntless on a dare. But then she sinks back to her heels and looks at me sternly, and says, "The thing about moving on is, you have to move."

(Veronica Roth, Four. A Divergent Collection, 2014)

106, NG49, F48, E100 / WG57, M54, MF4, B1, D6, C0, NA1

Veronica Roth, Allegiant. Divergent Trilogy Book 3

Im dritten Teil fand ich den ständigen Wechsel zwischen Tris' und Fours POV etwas anstrengend, aber die Konstruktion und das (viel zu bittere) Ende machten es wohl zwingend notwendig. Eigentlich hatte ich erstmal genug von dieser dystopischen Welt, so faszinierend sie ist, aber der Vollständigkeit halber werde ich mir 'Four' wohl auch noch antun.
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David smiles at us, like it's something we should be proud of, but I am not proud. They created us, they shaped our world, they told us what to believe.
If they told us what to believe, and we didn't come to it on our own, is it still true?
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"I don't know why I'm arguing with you when I'd really like for you to be right," Christina says, laughing. "But don't you think these Bureau scientists could figure out the cause of bad behavior?"
"Sure," I say. "But I think that no matter how smart, people usually see what they're already looking for, that's all."
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(Veronica Roth, Allegiant, 2013)