Demon: A Memoir

I finished reading a book this week - Demon, A Memoir (by Tosca Lee) - and I just cannot say enough about it.  Oh my word - So. Good.  I Relished it.  Felt it. Couldn't put it down. Read and reread it.  Marked it all up.  Just loved it.  (Kind of didn't love the way it ended and some loose ends that I thought could have stood a little more resolution, but I'm willing to overlook all that in lieu of much I loved the rest of it).  In short - I totally recommend it.  Don't let the title scare you off; it is christian fiction and it is not scary in the least.  It's an account of heaven, earth, eden, fall of angels, creation, humans, sin, and salvation as told from the viewpoint of one of those fallen angels.  Such an interesting perspective!

Here's one of my million favorite excerpts to lure you into reading this book yourself:

Clay: "So why did he make you?  Especially if he knew you would turn out ... like this."
Lucian: "I could ask you the same thing .... Why El made us, I've never known.  One could surmise that El was lonely, but the fact is that he didn't really need us.  You, created in his image, might actually have more insight into that question than I do.  We're not so privileged as you in that way.  As for me, my purpose for living, my role in this great scheme was clear to me from the first: to fall down, to worship, to praise, to wait upon the word of El."
Clay: "That sounds really boring."
Lucian: "Really? Imagine the bliss of fulfilling one's created purpose."

And another excerpt - Lucian, speaking about the creation of Adam:

"We on the periphery lingered in the humid air.  What was he doing?  There was God, doing something in the muck.  We looked at each other.  Even Lucifer stared, dumbfounded.  You should have seen the look on his face!.... El was sculpting the earth into some thing, some likeness, creating this time not by word...but in person.... In person, Clay.  As though by hand! ... We were all staring, gape-mouthed as you, by then.  And then he surrounded this thing.  He was everywhere around it, as if he had gathered the dirty thing in his arms and cupped it by the head.  And then I heard it. ...  The sound, it was the same expectant sound at the dawn of all the world.  A breath exhaled into the mud!  Given to the mud things as surely as if he had set his mouth against those dirty lips and breathed.  Oh, divine exhale!  It was himself.  Much more than life, it was everything - the awareness, all the emotion, the propensity to love, to nurture, to create.  And he endowed it all upon this new creature made of mud. ... Image of El, breath of God.  In such an unworthy vessel.  Something far more precious than diamonds, denied even to us but entrusted to a container of mud."

And as always, I collected a handful of delicious, well-chosen, and/or new-to-me words from the book:

pickax, ankh, cudgel, brooked, seminormalcy, preamble, narthex, baritone, masterwork, seraphim, lore, unflappability, a brief infinity, lilt, eiditic, dandled, pintingled, rivulets, sibilant, append, molder, Shekinah, quicksilver, pave, coalesced, compatriots, alchemy, interlopers, specter, wrest, dispassionate, iteration, eddy, chinoiserie, stratum, acumen, discordant, pulpous, wending, gauche, convivial, mania, lothario, cusp, besieged, peckish, rejoinder, privy, pantheon, specificity, celebrants, briny, moue, blithe, odium, cohere, pathos, hauteur, lorelai, nutriment, rictus, unflappable, crux, scrabbling, despoil, ziggurats, showcase, proxy, hitherto, steeliness, chronograph, banshee, expansive, recumbent, gabardine, bulwark, festooned, panache, rankling, arcing, berserkers, forfeiture, pell-mell, emotive, longsuffering, jubilation, disquiet, heartened, dispassion, patrician, menage, idyll, pastiche