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Cracking his knuckles, Cary dramatically prepared to open his fortune cookie. “Let’s see. Will I be rich? Famous? About to meet Mr. or Ms. Tall, Dark, and Tasty? Traveling to distant lands? What’d you guys get?” “Mine’s lame,” I said. “In the end all things will be known. Duh. I didn’t need a fortune to figure that out.” Gideon opened his and read, “Prosperity will knock on your door soon.” I snorted. Cary shot me a look. “I know, right? You snatched someone else’s cookie, Cross.” “He better not be anywhere near someone else’s cookie,” I said dryly. Reaching over, Gideon plucked half of mine out of my fingers. “Don’t worry, angel. Your cookie is the only one I want.” He popped it in his mouth with a wink. “Gag,” Cary muttered. “Get a room.” He cracked his fortune with a flourish, and then scowled. “What the fuck?” I leaned forward. “What’s it say?” “Confucius say,” Gideon ad-libbed, “man with hand in pocket feel cocky all day.” Cary threw half his cookie at Gideon, who caught it deftly and grinned. “Give me that.” I snatched the fortune out from between Cary’s fingers and read it. Then laughed. “Fuck you, Eva.” “Well?” Gideon prodded. “Pick another cookie.” Gideon smiled. “Pwned by a fortune.” Cary threw the other half of his cookie. ↗
I wondered if I could get a witch to cast a truth spell on Debbie Pelt, whom I despised because she had been cruel to Alcide, insulted me grievously, burned a hole in my favorite wrap and--oh--tried to kill me by proxy. Also, she had stupid hair. ↗
An Irishman walks into a pub,” she begins and the bar went silent. “The bartender asks him, ‘What'll you have?’” Her Irish accent was spot on. “The man says, ‘Give me three pints of Guinness, please.’ The bartender brings him three pints and the man proceeds to alternately sip one, then the other, then the third until they're gone. He then orders three more. “The bartender says, ‘Sir, no need to order as many at a time. I’ll keep an eye on it and when you get low, I'll bring you a fresh one.’ The man replies, ‘You don't understand. I have two brothers, one in Australia and one in the States. We made a vow to each other that every Saturday night we'd still drink together. So right now, me brothers have three Guinness stouts too, and we're drinking together.’ “The bartender thought this a wonderful tradition and every week the man came in and ordered three beers.” January’s playing and voice became more solemn, dramatic. “But one week, he ordered only two.” The crowd oohed and ahhed. “He slowly drank them,” she continued darkly, “and then ordered two more. The bartender looked at him sadly. ‘Sir, I know your tradition, and, agh, I'd just like to say that I'm sorry for your loss.’ “The man looked on him strangely before it finally dawned on him. ‘Oh, me brothers are fine - I just quit drinking. ↗
It may be escapist, but if I have a choice between watching the news or reading a book which gets me to see the world through different eyes, I will always choose the latter! ↗
Reading's ability to beam you up to a different world is a good part of the reason why people like me do it in the first place---because dollar for dollar, hour per hour, it's the most expedient way to get from our proscribed little "here" to an imagined, intriguing there". Part time machine, part Concorde, part ejector seat, books are our salvation. ↗
As soon as I got into the library I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I got a whiff of the leather on all the old books, a smell that got real strong if you picked one of them up and stuck your nose real close to it when you turned the pages. Then there was the the smell of the cloth that covered the brand-new books, books that made a splitting sound when you opened them. Then I could sniff the the paper, that soft, powdery, drowsy smell that comes off the page in little puffs when you're reading something or looking at some pictures, kind of hypnotizing smell. I think it's the smell that makes so many folks fall asleep in the library. You'll see someone turn a page and you can imagine a puff of page powder coming up real slow and easy until it starts piling on a person's eyelashes, weighing their eyes down so much they stay down a little longer after each blink and finally making them so heavy that they just don't come back up at all. Then their mouths open and their heads start bouncing up and down like they're bobbing in a big tub of of water for apples and before you know it... they're out cold and their face thunks smack-dab on the book. That's the part that makes librarians the maddest. They get real upset if folks start drooling in the books ↗
#falling-asleep #librarian #library #newberry #newberry-medal-winner
In this way, I was able to place my own concerns aside and curl myself up in the cocoon of somebody else's imagination. My life was suspended - I was in neither one place nor the other. ↗
The American writer and dilettante Logan Pearsall Smith once said: 'Some people think that life is the thing; but I prefer reading.' When I first came across this, I thought it witty; now I find it—as I do many aphorisms—a slick untruth. Life and reading are not separate activities. The distinction is false (as it is when Yeats imagines a choice between 'perfection of the life, or of the work'). When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape—into different countries, mores, speech patterns—but what you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life's subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths. Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic. And for this serious task of imaginative discovery and self-discovery, there is and remains one perfect symbol: the printed book. ↗
#books #life #reading #truth #imagination
