I finished Home yesterday afternoon. I had struggled through it a bit, but I was very pleased with the end. It made the struggle worth it and somehow when it started to wind down, I finally started to gain some deeper understanding of what the book was trying to say.
Here are some quotes I wrote down since last time:
"I am hungry in general. It is the particulars that discourage me." (198)
"How to announce the return of comfort and well being except by cooking something fragrant. That's what her mother always did." (252) - This quote and other parts of the book where food was discussed make me want to cook more and provide that kind of comfort.
"You can hate thoughts. That's interesting. I hate most of my thoughts." (287)
"... the table and sideboard with their leonine legs and belligerently clawed feet, like some ill-considered, doiley-infested species of which they were the last survivors." (299)
"His hair had been brushed into a soft white cloud, like harmless aspiration, like a mist given off by the endless work of dreaming." (304)
"If Jack had been here, he'd have felt that terrible shock of joy- no, worse than joy, peace- that floods in like blood pushing into a limb that has been starved of it, like wild rescue, painful and wonderful and humbling- humiliating as she remembered it becasue she had been so helpless against it." (322)
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The changing gears refers to going from the above book to my next book, which is The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer. When I went to the library the other day, none of the books I was looking for on my list were in and so I started to browse. I recognized this title and then remembered it was a book from the Top 100 list. It is a war novel set in the South Pacific during World War II. Definitely a change of scenery from Home, which is about coming back to a home in Gilead, Iowa.
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