"We Build Our Identities From That Detritus of Regret. Every Relationship Worth Keeping Sustains, at the Very Least, Splintered Glazes, Hairline Fractures, Cracks. And Aren't These Flaws the Prerequisites of Intimacy?"

There is nothing I would rather do on vacation than wake up, have a cup of coffee, preferably outside with a cool early morning sun, and read a book for hours. And fortunately for me, that's exactly what I did for the last week. During that time, I flew through a casual, non-list book that I've had on my bookshelf for a while, Broken for You, by Stephanie Kallos.

The story is about an elderly recluse with an extensive antique porcelain collection who finds out she has a brain tumor and decides to take in boarders in her Seattle mansion. One of these boarders, Wanda, is a stage manager from New York on a mission to find her ex-boyfriend who she believes is in the city (kind of in a manic, stalking kinda way). The story initially seemed a bit slow and straightforward, but then morphed into a much more compelling story about how the antiques were obtained (stolen from Jews during WWII), and Wanda's painful transformation into a mosaic artist, using the shattered antiques as her tesserae (the 50 cent word I learned while reading this book) and also tells the stories of many of the unique boarders and their attempts of connect with something and assemble the pieces of their own lives (mosaic pun fully intended).

Overall, I liked the book. It was a pleasant, quick summer read. What I liked the most, were some of the breaks in prose for some sweeping statements. Ones that made me smile. That made me dog ear the page.

"Be true to what attracts you had become her motto. Keep it near. Its voice may be far away and faint, unformed and obfuscated, but that's no reason to shutter it in darkness."

"Look then at the faces and bodies of people you love. The explicit beauty that comes not from smoothness of skin or neutrality of expression, but from the web of experience that has left its mark. Each face, each body is its own living fossilized record. A record of cats, combatants, difficult births; of accidents, cruelties, blessings. Reminders of folly, greed, indiscretion, impatience. A moment of time, of memory, preserved, internalized, and enshrined within and upon the body. You need not be told that these records are what render your beloved beautiful. If God exists, He is there, in the small, cast-off pieces, rough and random and no two alike."

Moving on, next up the docket is Kim, by Rudyard Kipling. It should be an interesting read after having read Heart of Darkness not that long ago. One with a very negative portrayal of Belgian imperialism, one favoring British imperialism (or so the introduction seems to indicate). Hopefully the lazy days of summer will allow me to continue lovely mornings of coffee and reading!