Random Wisdom from Girl Goddess #9

I had probably done this before, but since I saw it off The Sandwich Maker's blog, might as well post it again:

1. Grab the nearest book
2. Open book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post text of sentence on your blog. Please include book and author along with these instructions.
5. No digging about for the "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! (I know you were thinking about it!) Just pick up whatever is closest.

My sentence is this:

"If there was going to be beauty she would have to make it herself."



That's from the story "The Canyon," found in Francesca Lia Block's Girl Goddess #9, which I just finished reading. The weirdest story in that collection was "Dragons in Manhattan." It's about a girl who runs away from her two moms, Izzy and Anastacia, to look for her father. One of the women is her birth mother, but the bizarre thing is that one of them turns out to be her father as well. When I got to that part, I was already going like, "You've got to be kidding me."

Anyway, I used to like reading Block when I was in college. She writes about kids talking to blue creatures from their closets because their mom just died, a groupie who followed and slept with rock stars, girls who know Cocteau and fall in love with boys because he can name all the rose varieties in the garden. All her characters have weird names like Lady Ivory or Tuck Budd or Pony and Pixie. Probably why I had characters named Ludovico. Weh. I wasn't able to read this book the first time it came out because it probably was too expensive at the time. But I got this particular book for 20 pesos in this small bookstore near Morato. Not bad.