May Book Love, I

May 1-7

"Rejoicing with the morning stars that Thou art our God and we Thy children. Make strong and wild this secret song within until it bursts forth at last to thy glory and our saying."

The Hungering Dark

"Was not everything, after all, like this bewildering woodland, this dance of dark and light? Everything only a glimpse, the glimpse always unforeseen."

The Man Who Was Thursday

"Don't believe the newspaper reports. Juliet was not arrested and taken away in handcuffs . . . She DID throw a teapot at Gilly Gilbert's head."

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society

May 8-14

"There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady... Don't you know that secret yet? And don't you know- listen to me, now - don't you know who that Fat Lady really is?. . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy."

Franny and Zooey

"Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating." He lifted his hands high above his head as if stretching for the sky. "But there are other ways to understanding!" he shouted, laughing like a child. He threw both arms to the cloudless arch of sky above us still laughing. "Look!" he shouted tilting his head back. "Blue! Blue! Blue!"

The Name of the Wind

And we need reminding of what time can do, must only do; churn out enormity at random and beat it, with God's blessing, into our heads: that we are created, created, sojourners in a land we did not make, a land with no meaning of itself and no meaning we can make for it alone. Who are we to demand explanations of God. (And what monsters of perfection should we be if we did not?) We forget ourselves, picnicking; we forget where we are. There is no such thing as a freak accident. "God is at Home," says Meister Eckhart, "We are in the far country."

Holy the Firm

May 15-16

No quotes here, just some beautiful books with one of the most vulnerable, human, and absolutely wonderful protagonists in modern fantasy literature. The first book doesn't really hold a candle to the its sequels, but it's still good.

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I know some of these quotes may not make sense taken out of context, but these books deserve to be read from cover to cover. Some turned my world upside-down (notably, The Man Who Was Thursday and Franny and Zooey), and others came very close to it. I loved them all. So far, May has been a delightful month of reading.