The Secret Lives of People in Love by Simon Van Booy

I picked up The Secret Lives of People in Love at Nithya's place last week. This particular story in the book was titled 'The World laughs in Flowers'. I love these lines where he describes Samantha.

Evocative writing, always leaves me wanting for more. It's a no-brainer that I fell for the title of the book as well.

I also love the phrase Serendipitous Clumsiness. How adorable! 

Margaret Atwood on Reading and the 'Unknown Unknowns'

I love reading lists. I love finding out what a person is consuming as information or otherwise. I remember reading the reading lists of Hollywood actors and celebrities on Oprah.com and wondering which book to add to my list of 'To Read' books.

That said, Konkona Sen Sharma (@konkonas) reviews a lot of books on Twitter. I find some of those reviews and thoughts useful when I pick my books.

This article was featured in the Media Diet series in The AtlanticWire. Here, Margaret Atwood talks about reading and serendipity. Finding random reads and the joy one gets in realizing that they are valuable.

I'm a reading junkie, I guess. It's the fault of my upbringing. I was brought up in the north where there weren't any other forms of media--other than print. I certainly learned my first French off the backs of cereal boxes. This is Canada: "Eh! Les enfants! Special offer. Collect the box tops."

I think it's curiosity that drives me to read. I don't think "entertainment" quite covers it. It's not that I'm indiscriminate in my appreciation--I like to feel that I can tell an apple from a pear, and I don't expect from the pear what I might expect from the apple. In other words, if I'm reading Conan the Conqueror I'm not demanding that it be Middlemarch. They have different things to offer. But in some cases you get led to fine experiences through very devious pathways. Do you remember that spate of people parodying a movie called Downfall on YouTube? That led me to watch the original movie--actually quite an astounding movie. (The parodied scene is the one in which Hitler's losing it. ­Everyone from Hillary Clinton to who knows who, done with subtitles.)

Nobody ever gets quite the information they really want because often the information they really want is something they don't know they want. Or, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, it's a case of the "unknown unknowns"--the things you would have loved to have heard about, but you don't know what they are. There's a lot serendipity involved. Some of the books that have been quite valuable to me I've picked off second-hand sales shelves. I've just stumbled across them.

Being Rejected and Scaring Yourself Everyday

I thought about that rejection often. I couldn’t help it. I stopped thinking about screenwriting because it made me depressed. When I saw his post announcing who was hired, I went home and drank so I didn’t have to think about it. I never read John’s site again.

And SYED has been the best thing that’s happened to me. Better than that job because this is something I did on my own. Something that actually affected other people. Something that inspired. If you said I could go back in time and get that job but SYED would not have happened, I’d never take that deal. Not in a million years.

So maybe things really do happen for a reason. It’s just sometimes, it takes a little while to see why.

I loved this blog the minute I found it. Also, there is a post on a Pheromone Party (Things like this exist!) and execution.

Jodi Picoult on Writing

‎"I don’t believe in writer's block. Think about it—when you were blocked in college and had to write a paper, didn't it always manage to fix itself the night before the paper was due? Writer's block is having too much time on your hands. If you have a limited amount of time to write, you just sit down and do it. You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page." - Jodi Picoult 

On Grieving

One of the most despicable religious fallacies is that suffering is ennobling—that it is a step on the path to some kind of enlightenment or salvation. Isabel’s suffering and death did nothing for her, or us, or the world. We learned no lessons worth learning; we acquired no experience that could benefit anyone. And Isabel most certainly did not earn ascension to a better place, as there was no place better for her than at home with her family. Without Isabel, Teri and I were left with oceans of love we could no longer dispense; we found ourselves with an excess of time that we used to devote to her; we had to live in a void that could be filled only by Isabel. Her indelible absence is now an organ in our bodies, whose sole function is a continuous secretion of sorrow.

We grieve in so many different ways. So many ways to cry. To experience sadness. To express.

I am glad that someone said the line I have highlighted in bold. There really is no way to replace someone. No right or wrong way to deal with loss.

We always believe we know the right thing to say or do. I read this article and halfway through the names and procedures I stopped. I stopped to wonder about families and people who haven't expressed their journey at all. What must they feel? What do you want a family to say to you? Is there something one should do or not do? Is something appropriate? 

Read the entire article here.