badass women in literature (part 2)

Read part 1 here 

More inspiring ladies from literature...

if there is a book you want to read

If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.

–Toni Morrison

present ideas for readers

I've got a slightly smug face on as I've only got one Christmas present left to buy, but if you're struggling to think of something to buy for the reader in your family I've got some ideas.

List under the jump:-

Christmas ideas- Non fiction

One of my new years resolutions for 2014 was to read more non-fiction- I've kind of failed on this one.

Still, here are some non-fiction releases that have caught my eye, and are potential ideas for Christmas presents:-

You'd be ruined as God

stories

laughing children, dancing men, crying women

'After situating herself on a huge flat rock, Baby Suggs bowed her head and prayed silently. The company watched her from the trees. They knew she was ready when she put her stick down. Then she shouted, "Let the children come!" and the ran from the trees towards her.
"Let your mothers here you laugh," she told them, and the woods rang. The adults looked on and couldn't help smiling.
Then "Let the grown men come" she shouted. They stepped out one by one from among the ringing trees.
"Let your wives and children see you dance," she told them, and groundlife shuddered under their feet.
Finally she called the women to her. "Cry," she told them. "For the living and the dead. Just cry". And without covering their eyes the women let loose.
It started that way: laughing children, dancing men, crying women and then it got mixed up [...] in the silence that followed, Baby Suggs, holy, offered up them her great big heart. 
[...]
"Here," she said "in this place we flesh; we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard.' 
- Toni Morrison, Beloved 

first lines 2

Following on from my post last week (here), here are more first lines that I admire:

1.

'The sea has many voices. The voice this man is listening for is the voice of his mother. He lifts his head, turns his face to the chill air that moves across the gulf, and tastes the sharp salt on his lip. The sea surface bellies and glistens, a lustrous sliver blue- a membrane stretched to a fine transparency where once, for nice changes of the moon, he had hung curled in a dream of pre-existence and was rocked and comforted.' 

-David Malouf, Ransom 

2.

 'I stand at the window of this great house in the south of France as night falls, the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life. I have a drink in my hand, there is a bottle at my elbow.'

-         -James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room 

3. 

'Like most people I lived a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle; it didn’t matter what. She was in the white corner and that was that. She hung out the largest sheets on the windiest days. She wanted the Mormons to knock on the door. At election time in a Labour mill town she put a picture of the Conservative candidate in the window.'

-          Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

4

4. 

'I still get nightmares. In fact I get them so often I should be used to them by now.  I’m not. No one ever really gets used to nightmares. For a while I tried every pill imaginable. Anything to curb the fear. Excedrian PMs, Melatonin, L-tryptophan, Valium, Vicodin, quite a few members of the barbital family. A pretty extensive list, frequently mixed, often matched, with shots of bourbon, a few lung rasping bong hits, sometimes even the vaporous confidence-trip of cocaine. None of it helped.'

-          Mark Z. Danielwski, House of Leaves  

skilful openers

These aren't necessarily the best first lines in books ever to be written, but I still think they're pretty accomplished and make you want to read more:

1.

"5^th, I know that woman. She used to live with a flock of birds on Lenox Avenue. Know her husband, too. He fell for an eighteen-year-old girl with one of those deepdown, spooky loves that made him so sad and happy he shot her just to keep the feeling going." 
Toni Morrison, Jazz 

2. 

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

-          Gabriel García Márquez, A Hundred Years of Solitude   

3.

"Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw’, that shadowy dark crack running down the middle of life, exist outside of literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs."

-          Donna Tartt, The Secret History 

4.

 "When I think of my wife, I always think of her head. The shape of it, to begin with. The first time I saw her it was the back of her head I saw, and there was something lovely about it, the angles of it. Like a shiny, hard corn kernel or a riverbed fossil. She had what the Victorians would call a finely shaped head. You could imagine the skull quite easily."

-Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl 

What do you think of my choices? Do you have a favourite opening line? 

writing is editing

"People think that writing is writing, but actually writing is editing. Otherwise, you're just taking notes"
-Chris Abani, taken from an interview with Sampsonia Way

accept

"Accept who you are; and revel in it."

-Mitch Alborn, Tuesdays with Morrie 

Penguin Postcards

I finally got round to putting some of the Penguin Postcards up on my walls.

I had a bit of difficultly choosing a frame. Each postcard measures 9.8cm x 15.3cm (including a thin white border) and it hard to find a standard frame that would allow me to fill the frame without cutting a postcard in half. In the end I went for this Ikea Ribba frame (40x50) which enables me to have two rows of postcards, four across.  Eventually I would like a larger frame, as it looks slightly small hanging above my double bed, but as the frame was only £7 it was a bit of a bargain.

As I was limited by how many postcards I could have I selected only ones with the classic Penguin striped design. I chose cards not that I'd necessarily read, but ones that reflected my personality and interests.   As I got loads of the cards still to use I'm very tempted to make some more as gifts for friends and family.

I also framed this iconic A Clockwork Orange design for on my night stand. The frame is this small Ribba frame (18x24, £2.75).

I'm really pleased with my bookish decor, what do you think?