#Travels with Charley

[sunsetquotes]

She wasn’t happy, but then she wasn’t unhappy. She wasn’t anything. But I don’t believe anyone is a nothing. There has to be something inside, if only to keep the skin from collapsing.

John Steinbeck; Travels with Charley

[the-hearth-and-the-wild]

The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It’s not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.

John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

[litandlifequotes]

I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger.

Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck

[qvotable]

I was born lost and I take no pleasure in being found.

John Steinbeck; Travels with Charley

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

I find most interesting the conspiracy of life in the desert to circumvent the death rays of the all-conquering sun. The beaten earth appears defeated and dead, but it only appears so…the desert, the dry and sun-lashed desert, is a good school in which to observe the cleverness and the infinite variety of survival under pitiless opposition. Life could not change the sun or water the desert, so it changed itself.

—John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley (1962)

[Robert Scott Horton]

[murderballadeer]

oh mr steinbeck...

[bellasbookclub]

Reccer Spotlight: Sophie!

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

Dark Water: Art, Disaster and Redemption in Florence

Travels With Charley

Ann Veronica

The Eye of the Heron

Sophie's recs have the range—you've got your nonfiction, your memoir, your classics, and your fantasy. Full text available in their tab of the Bella’s Book Club Summer Reading ‘23 Reclist!

more info on BBC Summer Reading 2023

more Reccer Spotlights

[anicarissi]

In TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY, Steinbeck wrote, “All I knew about Deer Isle was that there was nothing you could say about it” and, “I can’t describe Deer Isle. There is something about it that opens no door to words.” Yet I tried my best to capture it in this book.

WISHING SEASON is a love letter to the place where I grew up—to the saltwater-spruce-granite air, the pets and wild animals, and the community of storytellers that shaped me. This is my fifteenth book, but it’s the first set on Deer Isle, and I was more nervous about getting the island “right” and trying to capture the spirit of this place that means so much to me than I’ve been about anything else I’ve written. In part those nerves stem from the fact that although I was born in Maine and raised on the island, my parents and grandparents are “from away,” so I am not quite considered *from* there by many of the people I’ve known my entire life. I tried to capture the feeling of that in this book too.

So it means the world to me that early reviews have noticed that this is a book about siblings, yes, and about friendship, grief, isolation, change, and hope—but at its heart is the small Maine island where the story is set: the people and landscape that make Deer Isle a singular place. (Steinbeck again: “One doesn’t have to be sensitive to feel the strangeness of Deer Isle.”) Lily’s barn is my barn. Her tire swing was my tire swing. We skate on and catch frogs in the same pond, perch on the same granite rocks, dip our toes in the same cold ocean, love the same woods, field, and clam flats. She lives on my hill, in a house slightly different from but inspired by mine. We share a few neighbors. We pick blueberries from the same wild patch. We love the same place, for many similar reasons. I hope when you read WISHING SEASON you will love Deer Isle too.

[lurkinginth3background]

[mavidin]

This is not said in criticism of one system or the other but I do wonder whether there will come a time when we can no longer afford our wastefulness - chemical wastes in the rivers, metal wastes everywhere, and atomic wastes buried deep in the earth or sunk in the sea.

[censoredsnippets]

[litandlifequotes]

I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.

Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck

[rubypomegranates]

"What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness."

John Steinbeck "Travels with Charley: In Search of America"

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

JLB by CTB (by Dreaming in the deep south)

Out for a 1915 drive. This is my grandmother, peeking over her shoulder at  my grandfather.  They were just becoming “an item.” Sometimes I think that this is how the ancestors peek in on us.  They  have that loving expression on their faces.  They wish us well.

dreaminginthedeepsouth

* * * *

“A journey is like marriage.

The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.”

― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

[silverfoxstole]

Paul, India and co in rehearsals for The Stuff of Legend Live this week.

[madcatdaderpydrawer-blog]

Charley once pet Pedro cause he confused him for Pablo, and died of embarrassment when he realized his mistake. That was like the first time the two of them met too XD. Normally the penguin would be quite irritated by this sort of thing but Pablo told him about how he feels on Charley so he’s slightly more lenient. Though he did fuck with him a wee bit by pretending to be confused why he pets Pablo, “is that a normal thing for your friends?” Knowing damn well it isn’t. He’s just happy his cousin got a crush on someone whose as much of a dork as he is