I finished reading this book on Monday, November 3, 2025 at 3:41 p.m.
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I first came across this book when I went to visit the Georgia T. Lord library in Goodyear for the first time. I’ve always wanted to visit that branch because of the pictures I saw. It’s part of the Maricopa County Library District. I went to their book sale area first and saw this book in the stacks. I liked the story. I bought it for one dollar.
“He sighed. It struck her as a poetic sigh, but she was prepared to find poetry in anything he did” (7).
This kind of freaked me out lol.
“But whenever Heather felt uncertain about whether to do something, she did it. She had decided long ago that you never learn anything by holding back” (8).
I like this quote.
* The main girl is giving me psycho vibes. That hand kiss was way too much, in my opinion.
* I’d never thought that Heather would want to sleep with Schiller. I was surprised when they did.
“They left the bar; at almost two in the morning Second Avenue was still throbbing, and Heather felt the power and splendor of the city as vividly as if she’d just arrived” (123).
“The incredible brownness of his eyes. Everything worldly in them was burned away: all vanity gone, all ambition, all disappointment” (133).
“Spring was approaching, and every living being must respond or die.
He wanted to respond. He wanted to open himself—open himself like some … He didn’t know what smile to use. Everything that came to mind was a cliché. Maybe that’s the problem: when you open yourself to life, you begin to think in clichés. It’s better to be guarded.
But that can’t be true. The thing is to let life assault you, make yourself as defenseless as you can. If it bruises you, don’t protest. Love your fate” (138).
* I agree with Heather. Maybe Schiller’s last two books were bad to her because he essentially stopped having a life. He lost his passion. Or it just could be that she didn’t connect with the last two novels. I thought that it was weird when she kissed that picture of Schiller when he was young.
“And then he had a revelation. He understood why we dream. During the night the body shuts down, and the mind receives little information from the outside world; but the narrative function of the mind remains awake, laboring to make stories out of the little information it receives—out of hints and scents and glimmers and tapping sounds from fifteen floors below. The story-making organ never sleeps” (184-185).
“But somehow Paris made everything different. Being in a new place and speaking a new language made every encounter more interesting. A trip to the market in the morning to buy bread, an afternoon spent reading in a café—nothing was routine; a strange place helped you find the poetry in everyday life” (221).
* I felt kind of sad when Heather said goodbye to Schiller for good. 😔
* It took me three months to finish reading this book in my head and I have to say that it was kind of worth it. In the end, it was a story about an out of print author and the people in his life. I enjoyed it some.
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| 7/28/2025 |
🔆 THE SUMMER READING GAME BOOK PICK:
🌆 Starting Out In The Evening by Brian Morton
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| 8/6/2025 |
Nothing like a good old fashioned reading light.
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