Welcome to bookchat where you can talk about anything...books, plays, essays, and books on tape. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.
As the world turns away from the sun the sun seems to fall below the horizon. For those who stand on a ridge watching it, the clouds light up from the sinking rays and turn orange, lavender, and pink. Then all the light fades away as the tree lines grow dark.
The birds twitter, the insects chime in concert, the ducks splash down onto the lake. Owls call in a soft question or a long twittering whistle. The short yips of the coyotes change and rise up into a long wailing note repeated over and over which echoes loudly across the lake. Frogs chirrup and boom as if complaining about swamp life. There is a brief but loud quarrel among the ducks. The rain falls softly. The wind is magnified by the rustling of leaves on the trees that bow and shake darker against a deep blue black sky.
Settings in a story not only put you in the world with the characters so you can see it and understand how they are interacting with it, but they also set a mood. For those who live in rural areas, the title of tonight’s diary, When Coyotes Sing, Owls Weep, Frogs Gossip, and the Soft Rain Falls sets a peaceful mood. It is what you hear as you fall asleep. For a city person, it might sound less peaceful. The city sounds might keep a rural person awake for hours.
Settings help the reader identify with the protagonist in fiction stories or true stories.
Code Talker by Chester Nez and Judith Avila (on Guadalcanal, Dec. 1942)
Pg. 154
We’d been warned about the crocodiles, which were plentiful and mostly active at night. They made several strange sounds, one that was a dry, trilling rasp, another that sounded like a cross between an inboard motor and the roar of a juvenile lion, and a third that was almost a purr, but very deep and ominous, punctuated with a higher rattle resembling a maraca. All those sounds were chilling at night, when you couldn’t see where the animal was. And they were more chilling when the animal tried to crawl into your foxhole.
Then there were huge crabs, blue-black or red orange in color, some with bodies a foot in diameter…The crabs were ugly with long strong legs and viselike claws that could clip a finger off. They were more aggressive than the crocs. They dug into the sand during the day and came up to the surface at night. You’d hear a cracking noise as the crabs dug up through the sand. When we sent up flares to see whether there were any enemy troops near our foxholes, the red light of the flares would reveal a beach alive with thousands of dark crabs scuttling around looking for food. Crab bites were painful and prone to infection. Once they latched onto a leg or an arm, the crabs refused to release it.
Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie
Pg. 97
Each day, sitting in this tree, eyes drifting over Moussorie’s trees and flowers, some as familiar as the texture of tatami beneath her feet, she strung together different memories of Nagasaki as though they were rosary beads: the faint sound of her father preparing paint on his ink stone, the deepening purple of a sky studded by clusters and constellations of light in an evening filled with the familiar tones of her neighbor’s voices, the schoolchildren rising to their feet as she entered the classroom, the walks along the Oura with Konrad, dreaming of all that would be possible after the war…
Cast in Flame by Michelle Sagara
Pg. 8
The small dragon landed on her shoulders. She had named him Hope, but felt self-conscious actually calling him that, and she hadn’t had time to come up with a name that suited him better. He yawned, folded himself across her shoulders like a badly formed shawl, and closed his eyes. Clearly dragon shouting didn’t bother him in the slightest.
Then again, he probably understood what they were saying.
Abaddon’s Gate by James S. A. Corey
Pg. 20
Holden was flipping back and forth, letting his mind float on the surface of the information, when a red band appeared on one of the newsfeeds. And then another. And then another. The image above the article chilled his blood. The Ring, they called it. The gigantic alien structure that had left Venus and traveled to a point a little less than 2 Au outside Uranus’ orbit, then stooped and assembled itself...
Even with the distance between Ceres and the Ring, the vast empty ocean of space, the news that some idiot’s cheapjack ship had gone in one side of the alien structure and hadn’t come out the other should have only taken about five hours. It had happened two days before. That’s how long the various governments watching the Ring had been able to cover it up.
Wolves at Our Door by Jim and Jamie Dutcher
Pg. 1
From the mountains to the valley floor, the ground is blanketed in white, yet the wind carries the rumor of spring, the smell of moss and damp earth. Lodgepole pines creak and groan, as though awakening from a long sleep. By a swollen stream, the bough of a spruce tree rocks back and forth. Black-capped chickadees hop among the bare red willow branches, looking for insects. Below them, tiny rivulets join in and diverge, etching a lattice work in the retreating snow.
This pattern is interrupted by a straight line of tracks, direct and full of purpose. Dark prints of mud stain the clean white surface, then fade away as the trail moves from the willow bog into the spruce grove.
Rhythmic footsteps whisper in the snow.
The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad
Pgs. 1, 2
In the tangle of crumbling, weather-beaten, and broken hills where the borders of Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan meet is a military outpost manned by about two score soldiers.
Lonely, as all such posts are, this one is particularly frightening. No habitation for miles around, and no vegetation except for a few wasted and barren date trees leaning crazily against one another, and no water other than a trickle among some salt-encrusted boulders, which also dries out occasionally, manifesting a degree of hostility.
Nature has not remained content merely at this. In this land, she has also created the dreaded bad-e-sad-obist-roz, the wind of a hundred and twenty days. This wind rages almost continuously during the four winter months, blowing clouds of alkali-laden dust and sand so thick that men can barely breathe or open their eyes when they happen to get caught in it.
Fool’s Assassin by Robin Hobb
Pg. 18
Every rank and walk of life was reflected there. The gentry and minor nobility of our area were there, finely dressed in lace and linen trousers; Tinker John and the village seamstress and a local cheese maker were there as well. Their festive garments might be a bit more dated, and some were well worn, but they had been freshly brushed for the occasion and the shining holly crowns and sprigs that many wore were newly harvested. Molly had put out her best scented candles, so the fragrances of lavender and honeysuckle filled the air even as the dancing flames painted the walls with gold and honey.
Grand fires blazed in all three hearths, with spitted meats tended by red-faced village lads employed for the occasion. Several maids were busy at the ale keg in the corner, topping mugs on the trays they would offer to the breathless dancers when the music paused.
At one end of the room, tables were laden with breads, apples, dishes of raisins and nuts, pastries and creams, platters of smoked meats and fish…
A famous essay by
Thomas Merton that I love. The whole thing is here:
http://www.mymac.com/...
Rain and the Rhinoceros by Thomas Merton
The rain I am in is not like the rain of cities. It fills the woods with an immense and confused sound. It covers the flat roof of the cabin and its porch with inconsistent and controlled rhythms. And I listen, because it reminds me again and again that the whole world runs by rhythms I have not yet learned to recognize, rhythms that are not those of the engineer.
I came up here from the monastery last night, sloshing through the cornfield, said Vespers, and put some oatmeal on the Coleman stove for supper. It boiled over while I was listening to the rain and toasting a piece of bread at the log fire. The night became very dark. The rain surrounded the whole cabin with its enormous virginal myth, a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, of rumor.
Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the places where men have stripped the hillside! What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows!
Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen.
What are your favorite settings or what setting is in the book you are reading now?
Diaries of the Week:
Write On! Agatha Christie
by SensibleShoes
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Peace and Love
by anotherdemocrat
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Contemporary Fiction Views: Solace in the flow of books and family
by bookgirl
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Robert Fuller says:
A Rowan Tree chapter appears yet again:
http://www.rowantreenovel.com/....
Full version is still available for free on Kindle ($1.99 audiobook available if you download the Kindle ebook): http://amzn.com/....
I thought I'd continue to provide my Smashword's profile page where all of the books I have control over are available for free, including my memoir Belonging and my father's memoir The Making of a Scientist:
https://www.smashwords.com/....
Also, I've been trying to make my memoir Belonging free on Amazon ever since it was published. I just figured out how to lower the price 99 cents. If anyone has the time or inclination, please request a price match to bring that down to "free".
http://amzn.com/....
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NOTE:
plf515 has book talk on
Wednesday mornings early