To the End of the Land | 
pickSummer reading mornings…my book, the sun and my cat.
“To the End of the Land” by David Grossman, translated into Spanish by my Hebrew Language and Literature professor, Ana Bejarano. An antiwar novel about mother‘s love, grief, compassion and hope.
#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain
1 tagged
2 Bibles
3 She saw all this and still couldn't stop herself (page 59)
When evening fell, they both stopped for a moment in front of a giant pine tree that lay in the middle of the path with a giant crack. It was flooded with rays of dying sunlight, and a peculiar purple radiance glowed from between its thin leaves.
They stood looking at it. A glowing ember.
(Israel metaphor?)
pickWhat to say as the bitterness unspoken at the end just hit me and i‘m still dealing with it. I blame the the bookstore clerk on Allenby who insisted I read this and forget a couple others. Grossman does character and of the moment atmosphere and Israel, and a very deep dark reach into being the parent of an IDF soldier. There‘s so much here, on every page. 👇
Breakfast at Brasil (in Houston). Hoping to finish this one and start on One Hundred Years of Solitude
“...but there is only one permanent war play in his mind, staged continually in an utterly empty auditorium that he never enters. Avram has five of these auditoriums, all empty and dark, and in each one a different play is performed nonstop...”
On the day I was born, my life changed unrecognizably.
(Avram‘s shortest story. I‘m slowly reaching the end here)
...he can also sense what she is not disclosing: she always has the feeling that something in the conversation is beyond her grasp, that a subliminal lightning bolt has flashed between them but she hears only the thunder that follows.
Her three cats slunk around between the ladders. One had kidney disease, one was retarded, and one was a reincarnation of her mother, who in this form continued to make Netta‘s life a misery.
“For some reason she remembered something Avram once said, if you look at someone for a long time, at anyone, you can see the most terrible place they might reach in their lifetime. She didn‘t sleep that night. “
With that line, even the cat‘s ponderously depressed
(A bit late, but my first one of these. )
1. New releases
2. Inconceivable!
3. When the Moon Forgot by Jimmy Liao
4. (Sorry, it‘s not Friday anymore)
#fridayfavorites
@Lova
(Cheers to @jfalkens , who tagged me)
She walks almost without looking. Falls through the expanse of an infinite space. She is one human crumb.
(Slowly making my way through this. Just halfway through)
“I was alone with him in the room, and I talked into his ear. I didn‘t want a single word to escape into the air. I gave him an infusion of his history. He lay in total silence and listened. He had huge eyes. He listened to me with his eyes open and I spoke into his ear. “
Working through Ora and Avram‘s outdoor trek in Israel...and feeling the anxiety of being a parent of an Israeli soldier during an uprising.
pickIch habe es abgestoßen verschlungen. Spannend, berührend, sinnstiftend! Perfekt also
pickBasically stream of consciousness book abut two characters walking around, hashing out life and occasionally interacting with the waking world--this has "me" written all over it. Ora drags her PTSD-ridden former lover onto the Israel Trail to recount the life of her son, Ofer, while he's on a dangerous mission. Lots of complex character development and interactions with the Arab/Israeli conflict. Totally engrossed, like I was with them. #JewLit
