Notes on Books & Life
I won a copy of The Girl Next Door by Selene Castrovilla during Book Blogger Appreciation Week last month. It arrived in the mail last week, and I started reading right away. About the Book: “While most seniors at her high school are worrying about prom and final exams, seventeen-year-old Sam is desperately trying to …
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I have been putting off writing my review of Daniel Pennac’s The Rights of the Reader. Quite honestly, the tasks of weeding through all the amazing quotes I wanted to share and shrinking all my comments down into a manageable review were rather daunting. Really, I would recommend that anyone even remotely interested in the …
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Holden Caulfield has been kicked out of multiple well-known boys’ schools. In fact, he begins his story just after he’s been expelled from Pencey, his latest, and is waiting out the final days of the term before Christmas holidays, when he will leave Pencey for good and return to New York City. One night, a few days before winter break begins, Holden decides he’s too “sad and lonesome” to wait the term out at Pencey. He packs his bags, gets on a train to New York, and spends the next few days killing time in the city, wandering from hotel to bar to museum, calling anyone he can think of, and avoiding his parents.
Holden’s voice is what made The Catcher in the Rye for me. It’s rambling and unfiltered and exaggerated, teeming with verbal idiosyncracies and reeking of Holden’s personality.
Martin, a middle-aged man with OCD tendencies, runs a thriving business. He is maintains successful relationships with many long-term clients and is constantly acquiring new ones. His work ethic is admirable, his self discipline unswerving. He’s even read Jim Collins.
So what does Martin do? He is a professional thief. But he isn’t the sort of thief that draws attention to himself. Instead, he takes only small items — some Advil, a can of tomatoes, half a bottle of laundry detergent — that will not be missed, and he takes them only after prolonged and painstaking observation. His key to success, he knows, is his unerring adherence to the rules he’s developed.
And then, one day, he breaks a rule. He manages to wriggle out of a potentially disastrous situation, but something he overhears alters his sense of purpose. As he becomes a little too involved in his clients’ lives, Martin inadvertently sets off down a one-way path that will forever change his life.
10-year-old Milo isn’t interested in anything at all. Life is boring, ho-hum. That is, until he comes home one day to find a mysterious package in his room. “ONE GENUINE TURNPIKE TOLLBOOTH,” reads the accompanying card. “EASILY ASSEMBLED AT HOME, AND FOR USE BY THOSE WHO HAVE NEVER TRAVELED IN LANDS BEYOND.” Confused, but having nothing better to do, Milo assembles the tollbooth (signs and all), hops into his small mechanical car, and drives through.
In short, The Phantom Tollbooth is a lot of fun. Anyone who enjoys light fantasy, likes words and language, or has a penchant for well-done allegory will no doubt be glad they spent a few hours breezing through this childhood classic.
