, , , ,

354. Lethal White

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime

650 pages, published September 18, 2018

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

Lethal White is J.K. Rowling’s fourth book featuring Private Investigator Cormoran Strike and his partner Robin Ellacott.  It opens with Billy, a mentally troubled young man, telling Strike “I seen a kid killed…He strangled it, up by the horse.”  This statement sets Strike and Ellacot off on a hunt that turns into a murder investigation of a member of Parliament.

Quotes 

“Pretending you’re OK when you aren’t isn’t strength.”

“Well, that’s where you’re wrong,” Robin contradicted him. The champagne had fizzed on her tongue and seemed to give her courage even before it hit her brain. “Sometimes, acting as though you’re all right, makes you all right. Sometimes you’ve got to slap on a brave face and walk out into the world, and after a while it isn’t an act anymore, it’s who you are. If I’d waited to feel ready to leave my room after—you know,” she said, “I’d still be in there. I had to leave before I was ready.”

 

“I was in therapy for a bit. Now I do CBT exercises.” “Do you, though?” Strike asked mildly. “Because I bought vegetarian bacon a week ago, but it’s not making me any healthier, just sitting there in the fridge.”

 

“Life had taught him that a great and powerful love could be felt for the most apparently unworthy people, a circumstance that ought, after all, to give everybody consolation.”

 

“How often were you aware, while it happened, that you were living an hour that would change the course of your life forever?”

 

“Because men’s crimes are always ours in the final analysis, aren’t they, Mr. Strike? Ultimate responsibility always lies with the woman, who should have stopped it, who should have acted, who must have known. Your failings are really our failings, aren’t they? Because the proper role of the woman is carer, and there’s nothing lower in this whole world than a bad mother.”

 

“The feel of her was both new and familiar, as though he had held her a long time ago, as though he had missed it without knowing it for years.”

 

“As suddenly as they had reached for each other, they broke apart. Tears were rolling down Robin’s face. For one moment of madness, Strike yearned to say, “Come with me”, but there are words that can never be unsaid or forgotten, and those, he knew, were some of them.”

 

“I think marriage is nearly always an unfathomable entity, even to the people inside it. It took this… all of this mess… to make me realize I can’t go on. I don’t really know when I stopped loving him,”

 

“Look me in the eye and tell me you’ve loved anyone, since, like you loved me.”

“No, I haven’t,” he said, “and thank fuck for that.” 

My Take

The reason to read Lethal White isn’t the mystery at its core, which is fine but a bit convoluted at times.  The reason to read it is the superb portrait painted by J.K. Rowling of Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacot, the two main, recurring characters in the Cormoran Strike series.  They are so richly drawn and so accessible that it makes reading the book worthwhile.

/by

353. Us Against You

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Fredrik Backman

Genre:  Fiction

448 pages, published June 5, 2018

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

Us Against You is the sequel to Beartown, a book by Swedish author Frederik Backman that takes place in a small town in Sweden that lives and dies for youth hockey.  All the same characters from Beartown are back with new conflicts and drama and lots of hockey.

Quotes 

“Everyone is a hundred different things, but in other people’s eyes we usually get the chance to be only one of them.”

 

“He’s twelve years old, and this summer he learns that people will always choose a simple lie over a complicated truth, because the lie has one unbeatable advantage: the truth always has to stick to what actually happened, whereas the lie just has to be easy to believe.”

 

“The worst thing we know about other people is that we’re dependent upon them. That their actions affect our lives. Not just the people we choose, the people we like, but all the rest of them: the idiots. You who stand in front of us in every line, who can’t drive properly, who like bad television shows and talk too loud in restaurants and whose kids infect our kids with the winter vomiting bug at preschool. You who park badly and steal our jobs and vote for the wrong party. You also influence our lives, every second.”

 

“The complicated thing about good and bad people alike is that most of us can be both at the same time.”

 

“It’s so easy to get people to hate one another. That’s what makes love so impossible to understand. Hate is so simple that it always ought to win. It’s an uneven fight.”

 

“Sometimes people have to be allowed to have something to live for in order to survive everything else.”

 

“Life is a weird thing. We spend all our time trying to manage different aspects of it, yet we are still largely shaped by things that happen beyond our control.”

 

“They run only where there are lights. They don’t say anything but are both thinking the same thing: guys never think about light, it just isn’t a problem in their lives. When guys are scared of the dark, they’re scared of ghosts and monsters, but when girls are scared of the dark, they’re scared of guys.”

 

“Unfairness is a far more natural state in the world than fairness.”      

 

“Being a mother can be like drying out the foundations of a house or mending a roof: it takes time, sweat, and money, and once it’s done everything looks exactly the same as it did before. It’s not the sort of thing anyone gives you praise for.”

 

“The best friends of our childhoods are the loves of our lives, and they break our hearts in worse ways.”

 

“It’s hard to care about people. Exhausting, in fact, because empathy is a complicated thing. It requires us to accept that everyone else’s lives are also going on the whole time. We have no pause button for when everything gets too much for us to deal with, but then neither does anyone else.”

 

“What does it take to be a good parent? Not much. Just everything. Absolutely everything.”

 

“Anyone who devotes his life to being the best at one single thing will be asked, sooner or later, the same question: “Why?” Because if you want to become the best at something, you have to sacrifice everything else.”

 

“At some point almost everyone makes a choice. Some of us don’t even notice it happening, most don’t get to plan it in advance, but there’s always a moment when we take one path instead of another, which has consequences for the rest of our lives. It determines the people we will become, in other people’s eyes as well as our own. Elizabeth Zackell may have been right when she said that anyone who feels responsibility isn’t free. Because responsibility is a burden. Freedom is a pleasure.”

 

“Two drowning people with lead weights around their ankles may not be each other’s salvation; if they hold hands, they’ll just sink twice as fast. In the end the weight of carrying each other’s broken hearts becomes unbearable.”

 

“Sons want their fathers’ attention until the precise moment when fathers want their sons’.” 

My Take

While I’m a big fan of Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove, Beartown), I liked, but did not love Us Against You.  The characters, dialogue, ideas and conflicts are interesting at times, but it is re-plowing the same ground as Beartown, a superior book.

/by
, ,

352. Herding cats: a “Sarah’s scribbles” collection

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Sarah Anderson

Genre:  Graphic Novel, Humor

112 pages, published March 27, 2018

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Herding Cats is a humorous graphic novel by Sarah Anderson that takes on topics such meeting deadlines, piles of junk-food wrappers under a glowing computer screen, and an ever-growing horde of pets.

Quotes 

 

My Take

I picked up this book from the library after seeing that it had won a Goodreads 2018 Choice Award.  I also mistakenly thought it was by Alie Brosh, author of Hyperbole and a Half, a graphic novel with similar illustration style that I read earlier in the year (and enjoyed much more).  I found Herding Cats just kind of mehhh.  Try Hyperbole and a Half. 

/by
, , , ,

351. Baby Don’t Hurt Me: Stories and Scars from Saturday Night Live

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Scot Reader

Author:   Chris Kattan

Genre:  Non Fiction, Memoir, Humor

270 pages, published May 7, 2019

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Baby Don’t Hurt Me is the autobiography of Saturday Night Live alum Chris Kattan, best known for his roles as Mango, Mr. Peepers, and one half (along with Will Farrell) of the head-bopping brothers in A Night at the Roxbury.

Quotes 

 

My Take

My husband Scot gave me Baby Don’t Hurt Me as an anniversary gift.  Early in our marriage (before we had kids), we would take in shows at the Groundlings Theater in mid-town Los Angeles.  Chris Kattan (along with Will Ferrell, Cheri Oteri and Lisa Kudrow) is one of the Groundlings that we saw on a regular basis and he was hilarious (especially his Mr. Peepers sketch which worked particularly well in a live performance).  It was fun to read about Kattan’s life and show business experiences and take a trip down memory lane.

/by
, , , , , ,

350. It’s Better Than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Lenna Kotke

Author:   Gregg Easterbrook

Genre:  Sociology, Economics, Public Policy, Politics, Science

352 pages, published February 20, 2018

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

In It’s Better Than It Looks, author Gregg Easterbrook surveys a number of different metrics to see how well the world is doing and makes a convincing case that things are much better than most people think.  Under every meaningful measure, the modern world is better than it ever has ever been.  In the United States, disease, crime, discrimination, and most forms of pollution are in long-term decline, while longevity and education keep rising and economic indicators are better than in any past generation. Worldwide, malnutrition and extreme poverty are at historic lows, and the risk of dying by war or violence is the lowest in human history.

Quotes 

 

My Take

As a naturally optimistic and grateful person, It’s Better Than It Looks is my kind of book.  It is a clear-eyed look at how humanity is actually faring in the 21st century and the answer is amazingly well.  When you think about the fact that 70 to 80 million people died during World War II alone, you have a much better appreciation for how much things have improved worldwide in the past 70 years.  It’s Better Than It Looks reminded a lot of Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, another worthy read on this same topic.

/by
, ,

349. An American Marriage

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Tayari Jones

Genre:  Fiction

308 pages, published February 6, 2018

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

African American newlyweds Celestial and Roy, an aspiring artist and a young executive, are living the American Dream in Atlanta when Roy is wrongly accused and convicted of rape.  How they navigate the ensuing years is the subject of this book.

Quotes 

“But home isn’t where you land; home is where you launch. You can’t pick your home any more than you can choose your family. In poker, you get five cards. Three of them you can swap out, but two are yours to keep: family and native land.”

 

“There should be a word for this, the way it feels to steal something that’s already yours.”

 

“A woman doesn’t always have a choice, not in a meaningful way. Sometimes there is a debt that must be paid, a comfort that she is obliged to provide, a safe passage that must be secured. Everyone of us has lain down for a reason that was not love.”

 

“There are too many loose ends in the world in need of knots.”     

 

“I’m alone in a way that’s more than the fact that I am the only living person within these walls. Up until now, I thought I knew what was and wasn’t possible. Maybe that’s what innocence is, having no way to predict the pain of the future. When something happens that eclipses the imaginable, it changes a person. It’s like the difference between a raw egg and a scrambled egg. It’s the same thing, but it’s not the same at all. That’s the best way I can put it. I look in the mirror and I know it’s me, but I can’t quite recognize myself.”

 

“Marriage is between two people. There is no studio audience.”

 

“I thought of Walter again. “Six or twelve,” he sometimes said when he was depressed, which wasn’t all the time but often enough that I recognized a blue mood when it was settling in. “That’s your fate as a black man. Carried by six or judged by twelve.”

 

“Much of life is timing and circumstance, I see that now.”

 

“I have always let you know how much I care, right? You never had to wonder. I’m not a man for words. Daddy showed me that you ‘do’ for a woman. Remember that time when you damn near had a nervous breakdown because it looked like the hickory-nut tree in the front yard was thinking about dying? Where I’m from, we don’t believe in spending money on pets, let alone trees. But I couldn’t bear to see you fret, so I hired a tree doctor. See, in my mind, that was a love letter.”

 

“Sometimes when you like where you end up, you don’t care how you got there.”

 

“You can never really unlove somebody. Maybe it changes shape, but it’s there.”

 

“Sometimes it’s exhausting for me to simply walk into the house. I try and calm myself, remember that I’ve lived alone before. Sleeping by myself didn’t kill me then and will not kill me now. But this what loss has taught me of love. Our house isn’t simply empty, our home has been emptied. Love makes a place in your life, it makes a place for itself in your bed. Invisibly, it makes a place in your body, rerouting all your blood vessels, throbbing right alongside your heart. When it’s gone, nothing is whole again.” 

My Take

Tayari Jones is a gifted writer and I appreciated the insight that she provided into the lives of people who are typically outside my social circles.  After reading An American Marriage, I felt that I had a better understanding of the African American communities and the issues that they have to contend with, especially African American men.  I was also impressed with the understanding Jones conveys of how a marriage works or doesn’t work.

/by
, , , ,

348. The Sentence is Death

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Anthony Horowitz

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime

384 pages, published June 4, 2019

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

The Sentence is Death is the second in Anthony Horowitz’s bestselling series starring Private Investigator Daniel Hawthorne and himself.  “You shouldn’t be here. It’s too late . . . “

were the last recorded words of successful celebrity-divorce lawyer Richard Pryce, found in his house, bludgeoned to death a £3,000 bottle of wine.  Painted on the wall by the body were three digits.  Enter PI Hawthorne and Anthony Horowitz as they follow a series of bizarre leads to track down the killer.

Quotes 

“I’ve met police dogs with more intelligence than those two. You could tell them everything we’ve done, down to the last word, and they’d still end up running around in a circle, sniffing each other’s arses.” 

My Take

I had a hard time following all of the twists and turns of this mystery.  Part of the problem was that I listened to the audio version, so I couldn’t re-read key passages that contained important clues.  Not quite as good as Magpie Murders which is my favorite mystery of the last ten years, but still a good read.

/by
, , , , ,

347. The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Nick Reader

Author:   Ben Shapiro

Genre:  Non Fiction, History, Philosophy, Theology

288 pages, published March 19, 2019

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

The Right Side of History is Ben Shapiro’s take on the history of religion and philosophy in Western Civilization and how those two things were integral to America becoming a great and unique country.  However, he argues that we are in the midst of a crisis of purpose and ideas.  Our freedoms are built upon the two ideas that every human being is made in God’s image and that human beings were created with reason capable of exploring God’s world.  These precepts led to the birth of science, human rights, prosperity, peace, and artistic beauty.  They also built America, ended slavery, defeated the Nazis and the Communists, lifted billions from poverty and gave billions spiritual purpose. Civilizations that rejected these ideas have collapsed into ignominy.  The USSR, Maoist China, Nazi Germany and modern day Venezuela rejected Judeo-Christian values and Greek natural law, substituting a new utopian vision of “social justice.”  The result was mass starvation and slaughter of tens of millions of human beings.  Shapiro warns that the United States is in the process of abandoning Judeo-Christian values and Greek natural law, favoring instead moral subjectivism and the rule of passion.  The result if civilization collapse into tribalism, individualistic hedonism, and moral subjectivism.  The solution is to regain the moral purpose that drives us to be better individuals and assume the duty of working together for the greater good.

Quotes 

“We don’t live in a perfect world, but we do live in the best world that has ever existed.”

 

“What does this mean for human beings? What makes a man virtuous is his capacity to engage in the activities that make him a man, not an animal—man has a telos, too. What is our telos? Our end, according to both Plato and Aristotle, is to reason, judge, and deliberate.”

 

“The best countries—and the best societies—are those where citizens are virtuous enough to sacrifice for the common good but unwilling to be forced to sacrifice for the “greater” good. Flourishing societies require a functional social fabric, created by citizens working together—and yes, separately—toward a meaningful life.”

 

“Lasting happiness can only be achieved through cultivation of soul and mind. And cultivating our souls and minds requires us to live with moral purpose.”

 

“The creation story itself is designed to demonstrate how the first man, Adam, used his innate power of choice wrongly—and we are all Adam’s descendants.”

 

“What does this mean for human beings? What makes a man virtuous is his capacity to engage in the activities that make him a man, not an animal—man has a telos, too. What is our telos? Our end, according to both Plato and Aristotle, is to reason, judge, and deliberate.”

 

”a society of essential oils and self-esteem has replaced a society of logic.”

 

“That virtue took the form of courage—willingness to sacrifice life, fortune, and sacred honor in pursuit of defending the rights necessary to pursue virtue itself. That virtue took the form of temperance—no better founding document has ever been penned than the Constitution of the United States, the product of compromise. That virtue took the form of prudence—the practical wisdom of The Federalist Papers has not yet been surpassed in political thought. And that virtue took the form of justice—the rule of law, not of men, and the creation of a system where each receives his due.”

 

“Nazism didn’t arise from consumerism. It arose from communal purpose overriding individual purpose, and individual capacity abandoned in favor of worship of the communal capacity of the state. Nazism, in other words, lay a lot closer to Marxism than capitalism did.”

 

“Politics is about working to build the framework for the pursuit of happiness, not the achievement of it; politics helps us establish the preconditions necessary for happiness, but can’t provide happiness in and of itself.”

 

“Evil may so shape events that Caesar will occupy a palace and Christ a cross, but that same Christ will rise up and split history into A.D. and B.C., so that even the life of Caesar must be dated by his name. Yes, ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

 

“Christianity’s focus on grace rather than works makes it a far more accessible religion than Judaism in a practical sense. The commandments of Judaism are intricate and difficult. Christianity dispensed with the need for them. Faith is paramount.”

 

“We receive our notions of Divine meaning from a three-millennia-old lineage stretching back to the ancient Jews; we receive our notions of reason from a twenty-five-hundred-year-old lineage stretching back to the ancient Greeks. In rejecting those lineages—in seeking to graft ourselves to rootless philosophical movements of the moment, cutting ourselves off from our own roots—we have damned ourselves to an existential wandering.”

 

“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society,” Rousseau wrote. 

My Take

The Right Side of History was a Mother’s Day gift from my son Nick, a devotee of Ben Shapiro.  Nick and I share a conservative/libertarian philosophy and I was looking forward to reading Shapiro’s take on Western Civilization.  While the book is a bit dense at times with its lengthy history of philosophy, I wholeheartedly agreed with Shapiro’s conclusions and prescriptions for keeping America from plunging into the historical abyss and towards a free society that recognizes and values the individual while still expecting that individual to work within his or her community to improve the lives of others.  An interesting and worthwhile read.

/by
, , ,

346. The King’s Curse

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Phillipa Gregory

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction

592 pages, published August 14, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

The King’s Curse is the final novel in the Cousins’ War series by renowned historical fiction author Phillipa Gregory.  It tells the fascinating story of the ups and downs of noble woman Margaret Pole, a lady-in-waiting to Katherine of Aragon and cousin of Elizabeth of York (the White Princess).  Margaret had a unique vantage point to witness the rise to power and eventual corruption of Henry VIII, one of history’s great monsters who was cursed to never produce a male heir.

Quotes 

“Thomas More once told me: lion or king, never show fear or you are a dead man.”

 

“A single man’s imperfect conscience can never be superior to centuries of tradition.”

 

“Life is a risk, who knows this better than me? Who knows more surely that babies die easily, that children fall ill from the least cause, that royal blood is fatally weak, that death walks behind my family like a faithful black hound?”

 

“But Elizabeth and I are accustomed to loss, we are Plantagenets—we dine on a diet of betrayal and heartbreak.”

 

“He was such a happy boy, and happiness is not memorable.” 

My Take

I’m a big fan of Philippa Gregory, the prolific writer of historical fiction in Britain.  Since starting my reading quest, I’ve read and enjoyed the following books by Gregory:  The Queen’s Fool, The Taming of the Queen, The Kingmaker’s Daughter, and The Last Tudor.  The King’s Curse did not disappoint.  Gregory makes you feel a part of history, delving into the lives, motivations, hopes and fears of historical figures that brings them and that part of history to life.  I have always had a particular interest in 14th and 15th Century British history and increased my understanding of the players and times of that era after reading The King’s Curse.

 

/by

345. The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America’s Universities

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Stuart Taylor, KC Johnson

Genre:  Non Fiction, Public Policy, Law

384 pages, published May 22, 2018

Reading Format:  e-Book on Hoopla

Summary

The Campus Rape Frenzy is an investigative look into changes in the universities adjudicated sexual assault cases during the Obama/Biden years and the complicity of the media in falsely portraying campuses as hotbeds of violent crime against women.  Taylor and Johnson painstakingly debunk these claims and show how federal bureaucrats forced colleges and universities to essentially presume the guilt of accused students. The result has been a widespread disregard of such bedrock American principles as the presumption of innocence and due process.

Quotes 

 

 

My Take

Reading this book made me very angry.  As an attorney, I have always placed a huge value on the importance of due process to the functioning of our country.  The fact that numerous young men are being expelled from college and having their lives ruined as the result of consensual sexual encounters and are not given the opportunity to confront their accusers or adequately defend themselves is a travesty of justice.  A good companion book is Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case, also by Stuart Taylor.

 

/by