Review: Angels

Angels by Denis Johnson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars



View all my reviews

Angels by Denis Johnson-Notes & Highlights

I have to say that this book was interesting and depressing at times to read. I was also surprised to read that most of the book was set in my city and so close to where I live at the moment (Van Buren). I was constantly thinking about how Alan would perceive this book. It is quite a gruesome read and I’m still unsure why he would read this. Also, it was a sad ending to a sad book. By the way, I forgot to say why I even decided to read this book in the first place. So I've been obsessed with Alan Palomo (Neon Indian) since February 2021 (I was first interested in his music since high school and college, but I've recently got back into him because I heard one of his songs in GTA 5) and I saw this Instagram post he made that showed him reading this book and then I wanted to read that book. I would post the picture here, but you can see it on my Spotify playlist. If you want more Neon Indian check out my channel dedicated to him here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrfT5sioaQc8xez7blK78kA

Free Ebook:

https://booksvooks.com/nonscrolablepdf/angels-pdf-denis-johnson.html?page=21

Angels by Denis Johnson Spotify Playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4D4OnVSEsxGF77BPnEHY61?si=df87c4bd6ffb42bc

I got this one from Amazon when I was at the trailer. It went to an Amazon Locker by a Circle K.

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“She’d discussed killing herself, she confessed, with Sarah Miller, her best friend, who’d gone to the same high school in West Virginia. Discussed how she’d do it in the style of Marilyn Monroe. She’d clean the trailer completely, and dress up in her black negligee. She’d use Sarah’s ex-husband’s revolver, and Sarah would listen in the night for the shot, and then listen in case the kids woke up. She’d stand right in the doorway when she did it, so she’d be the first thing he found when he came home late from running around on her, stretched out on the floor like a dark Raggedy Ann doll with her brains in the kitchen. Because already he’d stayed out two nights in a row. That was that, that was all, so long. The note would go like this: No Thanks” (14).

I thought the “no thanks” was funny because of how blunt it was lol

“Anne Murray’s voice singing ‘(You Are My) Highly Prized Possession’” (50).

“Peace settled down upon the midnight. Burris sat back into the silence that isn’t empty and the blindness that isn’t dark” (92).

“Stevie said, 'Just temporary means you can remember back when it was different. But it'll never be the same'” (95).

Lol me/us! This statement reminded me of our current situation. How we lost the house and now live in a trailer "temporarily" until we get a new house.

“A rapid changing in the timbre of the atmosphere, as clouds formed out of nothing overhead and oppressed the light, gave to these few moments the unreal quality of an animated cartoon.

…lightning passed from cloud to land at the horizon, and great drops of water started falling all around them. The smell of it on the asphalt streets left them breathless. ‘I never mind this kind of a storm,’ James said. Its clatter on the awning over their heads was deafening” (102).

“His voice seemed to wash away on the damp noise of the rain.

…as the rain came down in sheets onto the patio, filling the air with the musty odor of ammonia and wetting down a city that had seen no moisture in weeks” (104).

"She kept the volume on the radio very low, and the music faded in and out, an old Four Tops tune which Bill Houston recognized from another time and another place" (113).

“In the center of his heart, the tension of a lifetime dissolved into honey” (124).

“At this moment, the vision of Burris’s spirit was riveted on the single fact he could be certain of: he was a wasted and desperate human being who hated himself” (129).

me

“In a sea of noise the cigar-smoking lady's radio played ‘Louie Louie’" (133).

“‘Like a Rolling Stone’ was playing on the cigar lady's radio" (134).

“He sensed, standing here in the court with the heat climbing over the walls as morning became noon, how all the circumstances had tangled themselves around his head and made him blind; how things were so confused he’d never even begun to think about them, never been able to see how, in general, his life made him feel terrible, and his mother’s life, and all the people he knew. But now it was plain to him, because suddenly he had a vision of everybody in this prison yard rising up out of the husk of himself, out of his life, and floating away. And what remained was trash.

Oh man, it must be a hundred and twenty degrees in this place. He could feel the heat against his eardrums, and behind his eyes. He shook his head to clear it, but things were already unbearably sharp and clear” (167).

“‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he asked Brian. Over the small window cut into the door, on the inside, ran a semicircular line of words in Old English lettering, something to read while the hydrocyanic gas swirled up toward your nostrils: Death Is The Mother Of Beauty.

‘I don’t know what it means,’ Brian said. ‘I guess you’ll find out, won’t you?’

But Bill Houston already knew” (175).

“‘I admire your spunk,’ Bill Houston admitted.

‘I just can’t stop

when my spunk get hot,’

Richard sang—words from ‘Disco Inferno,’ most beloved of his stereo cassette tapes and one he played as often and as loudly as he himself could bear it” (186).

“And as best they could, they had to find out what it was like.

How does it feel.

Tell me how does it feel.

With no direction home.

A complete unknown . . .

But Fredericks didn’t hear that song, except as it issued from their collective dream of suffocation” (203).

Review: My Policeman

My Policeman by Bethan Roberts
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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My Policeman by Bethan Roberts-Notes & Highlights

My Policeman by Bethan Roberts Spotify Playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6mlgSszQbo1dR6iMUtfbNB?si=d60296f8de5746dc

This is the fourth book from our Sister Book Club.

Ale wanted to read this book because Harry Styles is gonna be in the movie.

Thursday, June 3, 2021 at 8:58 PM

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Chapter 2

Highlight(pink) - Location 103

I let Sylvie copy my homework, and she played me her records: Nat King Cole, Patti Page, Perry Como.

Highlight(pink) - Location 103

Together, under our breath, we sang Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger as we stood at the back of the queue for the vaulting horse, letting all the other girls go before us.

Chapter 5

Highlight(pink) - Location 701

Tom put on a Tommy Steele record and shouted, ‘Who’s for another?’ while I made my way to Sylvie’s room.

Chapter 8

Highlight(pink) - Location 1328

Whistling Bizet wherever I went. I knew. That’s what it was. I just knew. It was only a matter of time.

Chapter 9

Highlight(pink) - Location 1407

Then Sarah Vaughan singing ‘The Nearness of You’.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1409

hummed along to ‘Danny Boy’, and, in return, he danced in my arms.

Chapter 13

Highlight(pink) - Location 1702

‘Stormy Weather’ coming from the Oriental boy on the piano.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1714

‘And how are we?’ she asked. ‘Oh, tolerable.’

Note - Location 1714

Me

Highlight(pink) - Location 1781

I walked fast but felt no sense of exertion, and may even have whistled ‘Stormy Weather’.

Chapter 15

Highlight(pink) - Location 1926

I took Mother her cheese on toast in the conservatory. The sun had warmed the furniture and I could smell the earth of the large potted fern by the door. She was asleep in her wicker chair–her head hadn’t drooped, but it was resting at an angle I recognised. She didn’t stir, so I stood for a moment and looked out at the garden. Some roses were still hanging on and there were a few dried-out purple chrysanthemums, but the overall impression was one of bareness. We moved here when I was sixteen, so I don’t feel very attached to the place. It was Father’s way of starting again after the incident with the girl who worked at his tailor’s, whom he was careless enough to impregnate. Mother cried for a week, so by way of atonement he allowed her to move back to Surrey.

Note - Location 1931

Literally ale

Highlight(pink) - Location 1961

‘Tricky’s not made that way.’ Amen to that.

Note - Location 1961

Ale liked that part because she thought it sounded funny.

Chapter 24

Highlight(pink) - Location 2439

When he was gone, I put Quando me’n vo’ soletta per la via on the record-player.

Chapter 26

Highlight(pink) - Location 2769

I wondered how anyone could bring themselves to eat such a foul-smelling substance. To me it smacked of nothing so much as overripe sweat.

Note - Location 2769

That’s my da when he eats stinky cheese

Chapter 28

Highlight(pink) - Location 3364

The high sun felt like a slap in the face, I remember,

Note - Location 3365

That’s Arizona for ya 👏🏼

Part V

Highlight(pink) - Location 4055

Anna Karenina