#number9dream

Rags, The Wandering Inn

John Granby, Temeraire

Ai Imajo, number9dream

Verity Kindle, To say nothing of the Dog

Sokka, Avatar: The last Airbender

Samwise Gamgee, The Lord of the Rings

Hakram "Deadhand" of the Howling Wolves, A practical Guide to Evil

Anne Bonny, Black Sails

Roronoa Zoro, One Piece

Choosing only 9 characters was kinda hard. I had to leave out so many awesome ones and probably forgot twice as many.

I was thinking of Keats’ poem, Bright Star. You might know that Keats cared for his brother Thomas, who died of tuberculosis. Keats then contracted tuberculosis himself, and died at age 24. He was in love with his neighbor, Fanny Brawne. Keats knew he was dying toward the last year of his life; he saw the same symptoms his brother had. He wrote poetry about his fear of death, fear that his creativity wasn’t adequate for good poetry, fear that he would be forgotten. Being a Romantic poet, he reached out across time to implore modern readers to empathize with him, with the universality of love, with our mortality, with the implacable stars. He compares the brevity of human love to the eternity of the universe.

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—

No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

I think Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish’s performances in the movie “Bright Star” are so gorgeous. You might like it.

I also think Pride and Prejudice is a beautiful book on love. If you haven’t read it, you’ll love it.

Dickinson... too many great poems.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

number9dream by david mitchell

Story: It’s about a young man coming to Tokyo to find his father. But before that happens everything goes wrong - multiple times. There’s nighttime excesses, yakuza mix-ups, a hidden library, a bit of romance, daydreaming and an epic headbutt.

What this book taught me: 

Don’t be rude to waitresses, they’ll kick you in the nuts, hard

People in cowboy hats can definitely be terrifying

Necks can be beautiful

Landlords have mothers

Goats make excellent writers

Chopin’s the man

I don’t know what a mousse boy is and I don’t want to

Old ladies with apricots you meet on the bus are probably witches

Don’t make deals with the thunder god, they will deliver

Momentary accomplishments are not as important as longlasting relationships