Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Best quotes from I Was Told There'd Be Cake


“Life starts out with everyone clapping when you take a poo and goes downhill from there. ”
Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake 
 
There are two kinds of people in this world: those who know where their high school yearbook is and those who do not.”
Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake 
 
“I do want to get married. It's a nice idea. Though I think husbands are like tattoos--you should wait until you come across something you want on your body for the rest of your life instead of just wandering into a tattoo parlor on some idle Sunday and saying, 'I feel like I should have one of these suckers by now. I'll take a thorny rose and a "MOM" anchor, please. No, not that one--the big one.”
Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake
“It is my belief that people who speak of high school with a sugary fondness are bluffing away early-onset Alzheimer's. ”
Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake
“I called my mother immediately to inform her that she was a bad parent. "I can't believe you let us watch this. We ate dinner in front of this."

"Everyone watched Twin Peaks," was her response.

"So, if everyone jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it, too?"

"Don't be silly," she laughed, "of course I would, honey. There'd be no one left on the planet. It would be a very lonely place.”
Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake

“I never asked my mother where babies came from but I remember clearly the day she volunteered the information....my mother called me to set the table for dinner. She sat me down in the kitchen, and under the classic caveat of 'loving each other very, very much,' explained that when a man and a woman hug tightly, the man plants a seed in the woman. The seed grows into a baby. Then she sent me to the pantry to get placemats. As a direct result of this conversation, I wouldn't hug my father for two months.”
Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake

“Because, ten-year-olds of the world, you shouldn't believe what your teachers tell you about the beauty and specialness and uniqueness of you. Or, believe it, little snowflake, but know it won't make a bit of difference until after puberty. It's Newton's lost law: anything that makes you unique later will get your chocolate milk stolen and your eye blackened as a kid. Won't it, Sebastian? Oh, yes, it will, my little Mandarin Chinese-learning, Poe-reciting, high-top-wearing friend. God bless you, wherever you are.”
Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake
“Uniqueness is wasted on youth. Like fine wine or a solid flossing habit, you'll be grateful for it when you're older.”
Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake
“I find that anything culturally significant that happened before '93 I associate with the decade before it. In fact, Oregon Trail is one of a handful of signposts that middle school existed at all.”
Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake
 
“Ladies. Large masses of girls are often prone to this salutation. I hate being mollified with this unsolicited "ladies" business. I know we're all women. I am conscious of my breasts. Do I have to be conscious of yours as well? Do men do this? Do they go, "Men: Meet for ribs in the shed after the game. Keg beer, raw eggs, and death metal only." I would imagine not.”
Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake
“You feel like telling him you're not single in the way that he thinks you're single. After all, you have yourself.”
Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake
“I still think of Oregon Trail as a great leveler. If, for example, you were a twelve-year-old girl from Westchester with frizzy hair, a bite plate, and no control over your own life, suddenly you could drown whomever you pleased. Say you have shot four bison, eleven rabbits, and Bambi's mom. Say your wagon weighs 9,783 pounds and this arduous journey has been most arduous. The banker's sick. The carpenter's sick. The butcher, the baker, the algebra-maker. Your fellow pioneers are hanging on by a spool of flax. Your whole life is in flux and all you have is this moment. Are you sure you want to forge the river? Yes. Yes, you are.”
Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake
 

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

October 2012 pick: The Almost Moon

For October 2012, my book selection is "The Almost Moon" by Alice Sebold. The book has been on my shelf for awhile and I'd like to read it. So let's do it!

One review says: "Book clubs, take notice: practically every paragraph is a talking point." - Newsweek

So we should have lots to discuss!! (Not that I was worried.)


ABOUT THE NOVEL
For years Helen Knightly has given her life to others: to her haunted mother, to her enigmatic father, to her husband and now grown children. When she finally crosses a terrible boundary, her life comes rushing in at her in a way she never could have imagined. Unfolding over the next twenty-four hours, this searing, fast-paced novel explores the complex ties between mothers and daughters, wives and lovers, the meaning of devotion, and the line between love and hate. It is a challenging, moving, gripping story, written with the fluidity and strength of voice that only Alice Sebold can bring to the page.

Friday, August 3, 2012

VIDEO Sloan Crosley

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Ten Books That Helped Me to Write My Name Is Mary Sutter


The following is by no means an exhaustive accounting of the myriad books that helped me to understand not only the Civil War and its effect on its participants, but also the 19th century and its transportation systems, cities, and values. If I were to inventory my bibliography it its entirety, the list would go on for pages and pages. Numerous rare books, diaries, surgeons’ manuals and government documents aided my research, including, for example, Hermann Haupt’s excellent memoirs and the surgery manual mentioned in My Name Is Mary Sutter. To compose this suggested reading list, I sampled my bookshelf. Some of these are reference books, some memoir, some great narratives of history. The books are readily available, with the exception of The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, which, however, is obtainable either through inter-library loan or in many libraries’ rare books collections. And finally, I would consider myself remiss if I did not include one very special work of fiction that influenced me tremendously as a writer, which I have listed first.
--Robin Oliveira


1) The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard
2) The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, all six volumes (Now available as The Medical and Surgical History of the Civil War, but I used the original volumes to do my research)
3) Too Afraid to Cry: Maryland Civilians in the Antietam Campaign by Kathleen A. Ernst
4) Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (The History of New York City) by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace
5) An Albany Girlhood by Huybertie Pruyn Hamlin
6) Our Army Nurses by Mary Gardner Holland
7) Revelle in Washington, 1860-1865 by Margaret Leech
8) The Civil War Day By Day: An Almanac, 1861-1865 by E. B. Long and Barbara Long
9) Mr. Lincoln’s City: An Illustrated Guide to the Civil War Sites of Washington by Richard M. Lee
10) Doctors in Blue: The Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil War by George Worthington Adams
(Photo of Robin Oliveira © Fred Milkie, Jr.)

September's book: My Name is Mary Sutter

Karla has chosen "My Name is Mary Sutter" by Robin Oliveira for our September 2012 read.


ABOUT THE BOOK


"A simply remarkable book. Robin Oliveira brings the Civil War era vividly alive with a heroine no reader will ever forget." -Ron Rash, author of Serena

Mary Sutter is a brilliant young midwife who dreams of becoming a surgeon. Eager to run away from recent heartbreak, Mary travels to Washington, D.C., to help tend the legions of Civil War wounded. Under the guidance of two surgeons, who both fall unwittingly in love with her, and resisting her mother's pleas to return home to help with the difficult birth of her twin sister's baby, Mary pursues her medical career against all odds. Rich with historical detail-including cameo appearances by Abraham Lincoln and Dorothea Dix, among others-My Name Is Mary Sutter is certain to be recognized as one of the great novels about the Civil War.


From Publishers Weekly

The Civil War offers a 20-year-old midwife who dreams of becoming a doctor the medical experience she craves, plus hard work and heartbreak, in this rich debut that takes readers from a small upstate New York doctor's office to a Union hospital overflowing with the wounded and dying. Though she's too young for the nursing corps, Mary Sutter goes to Washington, anyway, and, after a chance meeting with a presidential secretary, is led to the Union Hotel Hospital, where she assists chief surgeon William Stipp and becomes so integral to Stipp's work she ignores her mother's pleas to return home to deliver her sister's baby. From a variety of perspectives—Mary, Stipp, their families, and social, political, and military leaders—the novel offers readers a picture of a time of medical hardship, crisis, and opportunity. Oliveira depicts the amputation of a leg, the delivery of a baby, and soldierly life; these are among the fine details that set this novel above the gauzier variety of Civil War fiction. The focus on often horrific medicine and the women who practiced it against all odds makes for compelling reading. (May)