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554. Shame: How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Shelby Steele

Genre:  Non Fiction, History, Race, Public Policy, Politics

208 pages, published February 24, 2015

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

In Shame, Shelby Steele (a Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the grandson of a slave) writes about the roots of the polarization that we are experiencing today in the United States.  Amid the fighting and mistrust, we have squandered the promise of the 1960s when the nation came together to fight for equality and universal justice.  Shelby Steele posits that this impasse can be traced back to the 60’s when we uncovered and dismantled our national hypocrisies of racism, sexism, and militarism which caused liberals to internalize the idea that there was something inauthentic, if not evil, in the America character. Since then, liberalism has been wholly concerned with redeeming modern American from the sins of the past, and has derived its political legitimacy from the premise of a morally bankrupt America. The result has been a half-century of well-intentioned but ineffective social programs including Affirmative Action which have not only failed but caused harm to the minorities they were designed to help.  Steele argues that only by reviving our founding principles of individual freedom and merit-based competition can the troubling legacy of American history be redeemed, and only through freedom can we ever hope to reach equality.

Quotes 

“Poetic truth—this assertion of a broad characteristic “truth” that invalidates actual truth—is contemporary liberalism’s greatest source of power. It is also liberalism’s most fundamental corruption.”

 

“there also comes a time when he must stop thinking of himself as a victim by acknowledging that—existentially—his fate is always in his own hands.”

 

“It was the first truly profound strategic mistake we made in our long struggle for complete equality. It made us a “contingent people” whose fate depended on what others did for us.”

 

 “despite all he had endured as a black in the South in the first half of the twentieth century, he taught the boys that America was rich in opportunities for blacks if they were willing to work.”

 

“The problem is that this “place” is in the past. And it does no good to adapt to a past that is only an echo now. There is no refuge there.”

 

“conservatives suddenly saw that they needed to contest liberalism’s capture of the political and cultural establishment.”

 

My Take

This was a re-read of Shame in preparation for a Rotary Book Group that I was hosting and I got a lot more out of it on the second time through.  After reading two books written by Shelby Steele (White Guilt and Shame), I consider him to be one of the most original and compelling thinkers of the conservative movement.  He writes eloquently about the brutal racism his father experienced and the less than brutal, but still direct and odious, racism that he experienced as a young man.  In Shame, he explores how liberalism since the 1960’s has sought to capitalize on America’s shameful past of racism, sexism, and less than total fealty to the equality promises contained in our founding documents.  However, rather than elevate blacks, the liberal policies of welfare, preferences and affirmative action have hobbled them instead by leading them to believe that they are inferior to whites and need special dispensations to succeed.  Steele argues that only when we embrace a truly colorblind society will blacks rise to meet the challenges that freedom bestows on them.

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553. The Hunting Party

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:    Lucy Foley

Genre:   Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Crime

406 pages, published January 24, 2019

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Hoopla

Summary

The Hunting Party is set in a remote luxury estate in the Scottish Highlands.  A group of friends from Oxford choose this locale for their annual New Year’s reunion/vacation together.  However, they soon discover that one of them is a killer.

Quotes 

“Some people, given just the right amount of pressure, taken out of their usual, comfortable environments, don’t need much encouragement at all to become monsters. And sometimes you just get a strong sense about people, and you can’t explain it; you simply know it, in some deeper part of yourself.”

 

 “But it is a lot easier to face the day when you know you won’t have to face other people and their happiness.”

 

“It is a dark place form which you can never quite return. It does something to you, the first time. An essential change somewhere deep in the soul, the amputation of something important. The first time is the worst, but with each death the soul is wounded further. After a while there is nothing left but scar tissue.”

 

“I suppose we all carry around different versions of ourselves”

 

“Some people, given just the right amount of pressure, taken out of their usual, comfortable environments, don’t need much encouragement at all to become monsters.”

 

“Sometimes these impulses overtake me — the urge to push things a bit further… even the urge to wound. I can’t stop myself, it’s like a compulsion.”

 

“Sometimes solitude is the only way to regain your sanity.”

 

“Here is a person held together by tape and glue and prescription-strength sleeping pills – the only thing I can be persuaded to make a foray into civilisation for, these days.”

 

“There are people who hold out for love, capital letters LOVE, and don’t stop until they’ve found it. There are those who give up because they don’t find it. Boom or bust – all or nothing. And then, perhaps in the majority, there are those who settle. And I think we’re the sensible ones. Because love doesn’t always mean longevity”

 

“Perhaps it’s simply growing older. A sense that she doesn’t have to prove herself any longer, that she knows exactly who she is. I envy that.”

 

“And being around people – people carrying on with their lives, busy and messy, settling down, having children, getting married – just emphasizes how much my own has stalled, indefinitely. Perhaps forever.”

 

“I’ve planned this trip, so I feel a certain ownership of it – the anxiety that people won’t enjoy themselves, that things might go wrong. And also a sense of pride, already, in its small successes … like this, the wild beauty outside the window.”

 

“It’s tricky (…) to be the latest addition to a group of old friends. It seems that I will always be the new girl, however many years pass. I will always be the last in, the trespasser.”

 

“…even if you don’t have much interaction with other human beings – as I do not – it turns out that the instinct to judge one another, that basic human trait, does not leave us.”

 

“They seemed almost at times like actors, I thought, making a great show of what a wonderful time they were having. They laughed a little too hard. They drank a great deal too much. And at the same time, despite all this evidence of merriment, they seemed to watch each other. Perhaps it’s hindsight, making this impression seem like more than it was. I suppose there are probably tensions in most groups of friends. But I was struck by the thought that they did not seem completely comfortable in one another’s company. Which was odd, as they’d told me right at the beginning that they were very old friends. But that’s the thing about old friends, isn’t it? Sometimes they don’t even realise that they no longer have anything in common. That maybe they don’t even like each other any more.”

 

“I was sometimes drawn to men like this. The reticent, brooding sort: the challenge of drawing them out, making them care.”

 

“What’s that expression the French have for it? Jolie laide: ugly beautiful.”

 

“And most people don’t realize how much more they have than they need. They are lazy, and greedy, and blind to how easy their lives are. Perhaps it isn’t their fault. Perhaps they merely haven’t had the opportunity to see how fragile their grip on happiness is. But sometimes he thinks he hates them all.”

 

My Take

Having really loved The Guest List by Lucy Foley, I was looking forward to reading another thriller by this talented writer.  While not quite as good, The Hunting Party was still a very fun, fast read with interesting characters and a few surprising twists.

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552. A Million Years in a Day: A Curious History of Everyday Life from the Stone Age to the Phone Age

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Greg Jenner

Genre:   Non Fiction, History, Science, Anthropology, Humor

368 pages, published January 29, 2016

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

A Million Years in a Day has an interesting premise.  Author and Historian Greg Jenner follows an average person from the beginning of a typical day to the end.  At each juncture, he delves into how that particular daily practice such as brushing your teeth or eating breakfast has evolved and changed over the past million years.

Quotes 

“between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The modern toothbrush probably owes more to a certain William Addis who rediscovered the idea in 1780 while serving time in a London jail for inciting a riot. The story goes that, after becoming understandably disappointed with the cleaning power of tooth rags, Addis drilled holes in a pig bone left over from his dinner and affixed bristles from a handy sweeping brush into the recesses. A mere thousand years after the Chinese had invented the toothbrush, Addis had invented the toothbrush. Of course, he was much better at marketing it, and the company he founded is still making hygienic products today.”

 

 “the Indian entrepreneur Sake Dean Mahomet brought traditional Indian champu head massages and vapour baths to Regency Britain, becoming ‘shampooing surgeon’ to King George IV.”

 

“I grew up believing that drinking cow’s milk was normal, and that those who can’t – because it gives them painful flatulence – are the odd ones. But, it turns out that milk-slurpers are the new kids on the block. Our prehistoric ancestors were hunting animals millions of years ago, but it wasn’t until the Neolithic era that humans actually consumed their milk. Is it simply that it hadn’t occurred to us before? Were we too busy hiding from cave lions? Well, maybe. But in reality it’s biology that determined the success of the switchover, not lack of effort. Until about 7,500 years ago, our adult ancestors simply couldn’t process the sugary lactose in milk, just as 70 per cent of the world’s people can’t today. It was only random mutations in the MCM6 gene that produced an enzyme called lactase that stops the uncomfortable build-up of stomach gas.”

 

“The Reuters News Agency, established in 1851 by the German-born Paul Julius Reuter, was the first major news-gathering organisation to acquire scoops and sell them to other newspapers, relying on carrier pigeons and the electric telegraph to deliver the reports speedily.”

 

“According to one theory, fermentation was the whole reason the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution took off in the first place. Alcohol wasn’t a fun by-product of growing crops; crops were a handy offshoot of making alcohol!”

 

My Take

I found A Million Years in a Day to be a fascinating book.  I learned a lot (always a good thing from a non-fiction book) and really enjoyed the clever, witty writing style of accessible Historian Greg Jenner.

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551. My Name is Lucy Barton

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:  Elizabeth Strout

Genre:   Fiction

193 pages, published January 12, 2016

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

While Lucy Barton, the titular protagaonist, is in a New York City hospital recovering slowly from an confounding infection following an appendectomy, her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to visit and stay with her.  Through mulitiple conversations, Lucy and her mother navigate a difficult past relationship and come to an understanding that finally brings some peace to Lucy.

Quotes 

“It interests me how we find ways to feel superior to another person, another group of people. It happens everywhere, and all the time. Whatever we call it, I think it’s the lowest part of who we are, this need to find someone else to put down.”

 

 “Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me.”

 

 “You will have only one story,” she had said. “You’ll write your one story many ways. Don’t ever worry about story. You have only one.”

 

“Then I understood I would never marry him. It’s funny how one thing can make you realize something like that. One can be ready to give up the children one always wanted, one can be ready to withstand remarks about one’s past, or one’s clothes, but then—a tiny remark and the soul deflates and says: Oh.”

 

“Because we all love imperfectly.”

 

“But I think I know so well the pain we children clutch to our chests, how it lasts our whole lifetime, with longings so large you can’t even weep. We hold it tight, we do, with each seizure of the beating heart: This is mine, this is mine, this is mine.”

“But the books brought me things. This is my point. They made me feel less alone.”

 

“You are wasting time by suffering twice. I mention this only to show how many things the mind cannot will itself to do, even if it wants to.”

 

“This must be the way most of us maneuver through the world, half knowing, half not, visited by memories that can’t possibly be true.”

 

“No one in this world comes from nothing.”

 

“I kept thinking how the five of us had had a really unhealthy family, but I saw then too how our roots were twisted so tenaciously around one another’s hearts.”

 

“I have sometimes been sad that Tennessee Williams wrote that line for Blanche DuBois, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Many of us have been saved many times by the kindness of strangers, but after a while it sounds trite, like a bumper sticker. And that’s what makes me sad, that a beautiful and true line comes to be used so often that it takes on the superficial sound of a bumper sticker.”

 

“I suspect I said nothing because I was doing what I have done most of my life, which is to cover for the mistakes of others when they don’t know they have embarrassed themselves. I do this, I think, because it could be me a great deal of the time.”

 

“… and that was when I learned that work gets done if you simply do it.”

 

“My more tenderhearted daughter, Becka, said to me during this time, “Mom, when you write a novel you get to rewrite it, but when you live with someone for twenty years, that is the novel, and you can never write that novel with anyone again!”

 

“There are times now, and my life has changed so completely, that I think back on the early years and I find myself thinking: It was not that bad. Perhaps it was not. But there are times, too—unexpected—when walking down a sunny sidewalk, or watching the top of a tree bend in the wind, or seeing a November sky close down over the East River, I am suddenly filled with the knowledge of darkness so deep that a sound might escape from my mouth, and I will step into the nearest clothing store and talk with a stranger about the shape of sweaters newly arrived. This must be the way most of us maneuver through the world, half knowing, half not, visited by memories that can’t possibly be true. But when I see others walking with confidence down the sidewalk, as though they are free completely from terror, I realize I don’t know how others are. So much of life seems speculation.”

 

“Sarah Payne, the day she told us to go to the page without judgment, reminded us that we never knew, and never would know, what it would be like to understand another person fully.”

 

“I took myself—secretly, secretly—very seriously! I knew I was a writer. I didn’t know how hard it would be. But no one knows that; and that does not matter.)”

 

“It has been my experience throughout life that the people who have been given the most by our government—education, food, rent subsidies—are the ones who are most apt to find fault with the whole idea of government.”

 

 “She said that her job as a writer of fiction was to report on the human condition, to tell us who we are and what we think and what we do.”

 

“A person gets tired. The mind or the soul or whatever word we have for whatever is not just the body gets tired, and this, I have decided, is—usually, mostly—nature helping us. I was getting tired. I think—but I don’t know—that he was getting tired too.”

 

“At times these days I think of the way the sun would set on the farmland around our small house in the autumn. A view of the horizon, the whole entire circle of it, if you turned, the sun setting behind you, the sky in front becoming pink and soft, then slightly blue again, as though it could not stop going on in its beauty, then the land closest to the setting sun would get dark, almost black against the orange line of horizon, but if you turn around, the land is still available to the eye with such softness, the few trees, the quiet fields of cover crops already turned, and the sky lingering, lingering, then finally dark. As though the soul can be quiet for those moments. All life amazes me.”

 

“I think of Jeremy telling me I had to be ruthless to be a writer. And I think how I did not go visit my brother and sister and my parents because I was always working on a story and there was never enough time. (But I didn’t want to go either.) There never was enough time, and then later I knew if I stayed in my marriage I would not write another book, not the kind I wanted to, and there is that as well. But really, the ruthlessness, I think, comes in grabbing onto myself, in saying: This is me, and I will not go where I can’t bear to go—to Amgash, Illinois—and I will not stay in a marriage when I don’t want to, and I will grab myself and hurl onward through life, blind as a bat, but on I go! This is the ruthlessness, I think.”

 

“What I mean is, this is not just a woman’s story. It’s what happens to a lot of us, if we are lucky enough to hear that detail and pay attention”

 

“Black Hawk was taken on a tour of cities after his capture. I read his autobiography as soon as I could. And I remembered the line he said: “How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.”

 

“But once in a while I see a child crying with the deepest of desperation, and I think it is one of the truest sounds a child can make.”

 

“Do I understand that hurt my children feel? I think I do, though they might claim otherwise. But I think I know so well the pain we children clutch to our chests, how it lasts our whole lifetime, with longings so large you can’t even weep. We hold it tight, we do, with each seizure of the beating heart: this is mine, this is mine, this is mine.”

 

“There is that constant judgment in this world: How are we going to make sure we do not feel inferior to another?”

 

My Take

After reading and really enjoying three previous books by the Pulitizer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge, Olive Again, and The Burgess Boys), I picked this book up from the “Librarian Recommends” section of my wonderful Boulder Public Library.  While not quite as good as the other Strout books that I have read, I did really enjoy “My Name is Lucy Barton.”  Strout has a lot of insight into the human condition and writes in such a way that you become engrossed in the lives of the characters and want to see what happens to them.

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550. The Test

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Sylvain Neuvel

Genre:   Fiction, Science Fiction, Novella

108 pages, published March 1, 2019

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

The Test is a short novella that takes place in the not to distant future of the UK.  Idir, an immigrant from Iran, is taking the 25 question British Citizenship Test.  If he passes, then his entire family will be allowed to stay.  If he fails, they will be sent back to the Middle East.  However, a few questions in and the test takes an unexpected and terrifying turn.

Quotes 

“When faced with a choice, humans almost invariably seek a no-action, no-change option, even when one of the presented alternatives is quantifiably and logically more advantageous.”

 

“System justification is the idea that many of our needs can be satisfied by defending and justifying the status quo. It gives stability to our political and economic systems because people are inherently inclined to defend it. It prevents people at a disadvantage from questioning the system that disadvantages them, makes people buy the inevitability of social inequity, ignore or support policies that hurt them.”

 

“Here the aversion to decision-making is reinforced by a phenomenon called reactance: when we feel that someone, or something, is threatening or eliminating our behavioural freedom, even just limiting our options, our innate reaction is to try to re-establish that freedom.”

 

“People who talk a lot about the environment are always the ones living the farthest away from nature.”

 

“The goal of the values assessment is not the selection of model human beings, but of model citizens. This means the test should favour homogeneity, not atypical attitudes, no matter how commendable they may be.”

 

My Take

An interesting book in parts with some ideas in the middle that made me think about human nature and decision making, especially when under stress.  However, a bit thin on the plot and character development.

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549. Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Jason Riley

Genre:   Non Fiction, Biography, Economics, Politics, Public Policy

301 pages, published May 25, 2021

Reading Format:   E-Book on Overdrive

Summary

Maverick is a biography by the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley of conservative economist and prolific author Thomas Sowell.  Growing up without a mother or father, barely subsisting in Harlem during his teenage years, and belatedly attending college in his late 20’s, Sowell did not have an easy path.  However, he made the most of his opportunities and forged a brilliant path, transferring from Howard to Harvard, receiving a master’s degree from Columbia and a PhD from the University of Chicago (where he studied under Milton Friedman) and then teaching at Cornell and UCLA before landing at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.  Unafraid and dedicated to empiricism, Sowell’s critiques of liberal tenets such as affirmative action has often infuriated those on the left, especially those who think of black conservatives as race traitors.  During his storied career, Sowell has published over 30 books covering topics from economic history and social inequality to political theory, race, and culture and is a National Humanities Medal recipient for innovative scholarship which incorporated history, economics and political science.

Quotes 

Having previously read Discrimination and Disparities by Thomas Sowell and having seen several interviews with him, I was already aware of his intriguing, well reasoned and empirically supported ideas about economics and race.  That understanding was enhanced and deepened after reading this thoroughly engaging and well researched biography by the talented Jason Riley who I always enjoy seeing on The Journal Editorial Report.  The world has benefitted greatly from the life of Thomas Sowell and I look forward to reading more of the books in his canon.

 

My Take

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548. The Guest List

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Lucy Foley

Genre:   Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Crime

330 pages, published June 2, 2020

Reading Format:   Audiobook

Summary

The characters in The Guest List are referred to as the bride, the plus one, the best man, the wedding planner, and the bridesmaid.  They are all gathered on a small island off the coast of Ireland to attend the wedding of Will, a gorgeous reality TV star, and Julia, the publisher of a successful lifestyle website.  Everything is picture perfect until things start going wrong, very wrong.

Quotes 

“In my experience, those who have the greatest respect for the rules also take the most enjoyment in breaking them.”

 

“And I’m not worried about it being haunted. I have my own ghosts. I carry them with me wherever I go.”

 

“The rage is growing inside me, overtaking the shock and grief. I can feel it blossoming up behind my ribs. It’s almost a relief, how it obliterates every other feeling in its path.”

 

“Marriage is about finding that person you know best in the world. Not how they take their coffee or what their favourite film is or the name of their first cat. It’s knowing on a deeper level. It’s knowing their soul.”

 

“It’s always better to get it out in the open – even if it seems shameful, even if you feel like people won’t understand.”

 

“Nowhere on earth could possibly live up to those halcyon days. But that’s nostalgia for you, the tyranny of those memories of childhood that feel so golden, so perfect.”

 

“But it’s all about the moment, a wedding. All about the day. It’s not really about the marriage at all, in spite of what everyone says.”

 

“When he broke up with me, he told me that he would love me forever. But that’s total crap. If you love someone, really, you don’t do anything to hurt them.”

 

“You don’t get this. This isn’t your moment. You didn’t create it. I created it in spite of you.”

 

“…Life is messy. We all know this. Terrible things happen, I learned that while I was still a child. But no matter what happens, life is only a series of days. You can’t control more than a single day. But you can control one of them.  Twenty-four hours can be curated.”

 

“If I didn’t pay attention, one of those currents could grow into a huge riptide, destroying all my careful planning. And here’s another thing I’ve learned – sometimes the smallest currents are the strongest.”

 

“There’s another self that I sometimes feel I lost along the way. The girl who always stayed for one more drink, who loved a dance. I miss her, sometimes.”

 

“When I step outside the sun is just beginning to go down, spilling fire upon water. It tinges pink the mist that has begun to gather over the bog, that shields its secrets. This is my favourite hour.”

 

“I’m not interested in fashion for its own sake, but I respect the power of clothes, in creating the right optics.”

 

“But I wasn’t about to complain; we could never have afforded a florist of our choice. I wonder what it must be like to have the money to do exactly what you want.”

 

My Take

Since I listened to the audio version of The Guest List (a format I highly recommend with great voice work by mulitiple actors), I can’t technically call it a page turner.  However, I had a tough time stopping the playback as I really wanted to see what happened next.  Foley knows how to create suspense and tension and uses this skill to great effect.  With the beautiful, but eerie, setting of a small island with an old castle, The Guest List would make for a great film.  I hope to see it made.

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547. A Long Petal of the Sea

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Isabelle Allende

Genre:   Fiction, Foreign

336 pages, published January 21, 2020

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

A Long Petal of the Sea opens in Spain during the late 1930s.  The country is in the throes of the Spanish Civil War.  After General Franco and the Fascists overthrow the government, hundreds of thousands flee including Roser, a young widow who is pregnant and Victor,  an army doctor and the brother of the deceased father of her child.  To be permitted to immigrate to Chile under a program facilitated by the poet Pablo Neruda, the two marry and agree to raise Roser’s child together. Once in Chile which Neruda described as “the long petal of sea and wine and snow,” Roser and Victor face many hurdles, but ultimately thrive in their adopted country and each grow to love their accidental spouse.

Quotes 

“Pain is unavoidable, but suffering is optional.”

 

“Nothing can grow in the shade of secrets, she would say, love needs light and space to flourish.”

 

“My heart is broken, he told himself. It was at that moment he understood the profound meaning of that common phrase: he thought he heard the sound of glass breaking and felt that the essence of his being was pouring out until he was empty, with no memory of the past, no awareness of the present, no hope for the future.”

 

“The deep Chile of the fascists had always been there, beneath the surface, just waiting to emerge. It was the triumph of the arrogant Right, the defeat of the people who believed in that utopian revolution.”

 

“So much hatred, so much cruelty . . . I don’t understand,’ said Victor. His mouth was dry and the ords stuck in his throat.  ‘We can all turn into savages if we’re given a rifle and an order,’ said another prisoner who had come over to them.”

 

“Humans are gregarious creatures, who are not programmed for solitude, but for giving and receiving.”

 

“All governments have forgotten the poor; that generates violence and sooner or later the

country will pay for that negligence,”

 

“If one lives long enough, the circles close.”

 

“The poet thought this was a splendid riposte, and so accepted him on board, together with fishermen, farm and factory workers, manual laborers, and intellectuals as well, despite instructions from his government to avoid anyone with ideas.”

 

“Maybe the war against this cancer is lost, but meanwhile we can win a few battles.”

― Isabel Allende, A Long Petal of the Sea

 

“Take note: If little by little you stop loving me, I’ll stop loving you little by little. If suddenly you forget me Don’t come looking for me, I’ll already have forgotten you. —PABLO NERUDA

 

“He had always suspected that on her travels she had taken a lover, or perhaps even several, but the confirmation of this longstanding, serious love awoke in him retrospective jealousy that would have destroyed the happiness of the moment had Roser allowed it. With her implacable common sense, she showed him that she had not robbed him of anything to give to Aitor. She had not loved him any the less, because that love was always hidden in another chamber of her heart and didn’t interfere with the rest of her life.”

 

“For him equality was not only possible, but inevitable, and he practiced it as a religion.”

 

“My life has been a series of sailings, I have gone back and forth on this earth. I have been a foreigner without knowing that I had deep roots…”

 

“It made her feel sorry for her husband: she was discovering how vulnerable to flattery a conceited old man could be.”

 

“Without science, industry, and technology, no progress is possible, and without

music and art, there’s no soul,”

 

My Take

It has been a long while since I have read a book by author Isabelle Allende and it was a pleasure to revisit her writing.  While not her best work, A Long Petal of the Sea held enough insights, history and character development to make it more than a worthwhile read.

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546. The Jane Austen Society

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:    Natalie Jenner

Genre:   Fiction, Historical Fiction

309 pages, published May 26, 2020

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

The Jane Austen Society takes place in the small village of Chawton, England (the final home of Jane Austen), just after the Second World War.  An unlikely group that includes the local town doctor and young teacher (both recently widowed), a bachelor farmer, the middle aged woman who stands to inherit the manor house and Austen’s cottage and her family’s lawyer (a spurned old flame), a Sotheby’s estate agent, and a glamorous Hollywood star come together in a quest to preserve Austen’s legacy and form the Jane Austen Society.

Quotes 

“Reading, she now understood, had been her own choice of rebellion.”

 

“And, yes, sadly, no one else can ever understand your loss. It belongs to you. It impacts only you. And guess what? They don’t need to understand.” Mimi paused. “But you do. You need to fully appreciate how this has changed you, so that you can indeed move on and live, but as this changed person, who might now want different things. Who might now want different people about them.”

 

“We love Jane Austen because her characters, as sparkling as they are, are no better and no worse than us. They’re so eminently, so completely, human. I, for one, find it greatly consoling that she had us all figured out.”

 

“Part of the comfort they derived from rereading was the satisfaction of knowing there would be closure—of feeling, each time, an inexplicable anxiety over whether the main characters would find love and happiness, while all the while knowing, on some different parallel interior track, that it was all going to work out in the end.”

 

“Jane Austen knew about money and power, too, Mimi reminded herself, in the specialness of her surroundings that night. Austin saw what lack of money meant for the women in her life, and this consuming fear was what was telegraphed most loudly in all her books, hidden behind the much more palatable workings of the marriage plot. Austin knew that no amount of charity or largesse from their male relatives could ever grant women real independence. Yet, through her genius – – a genius no amount of money or power could buy because it was all inside her head, completely her own – – she had accrued some small degree of autonomy by the end. Enough to work, live, and die on her own terms. It really was a most remarkable achievement, the legacy of those six books, revised and spurred on and cast soley by her own two hands, with no man with inevitably more power or money getting in the way.”

 

“Because—and he still did not understand how people like his brothers could not see this—inside the pages of each and every book was a whole other world.”

 

“The humanity—the love for people—mixed with seeing them for who they really are. Loving them enough to do that. Loving them in spite of that.”

 

“During the Great War, shell-shocked soldiers had been encouraged to read Jane Austen in particular—Kipling had coped with the loss of his soldier son by reading her books aloud to his family each night—Winston Churchill had recently used them to get through the Second World War.”

 

“Reading Jane Austen was making him identify with Darcy and the thunderclap power of physical attraction that flies in the face of one’s usual judgment.”

 

 “some of us are given too much to bear, and this burden is made worse by the hidden nature of that toll, a toll that others cannot even begin to guess at.”

 

“That there might be a place where people were not constantly competing against each other for their very sustenance, but were instead helping each other survive through war and injury and poverty and pain, seemed as much something out of a Jane Austen novel as anything else she could have hoped to find.”

 

“I always find it interesting how Jane Austen’s fans are always romantics to some degree – when I swear she wrote those books with a goose quill dipped in venom.”

 

“It’s no magic prescription, but it’s a start. Reading is wonderful, but it does keep us in our heads. It’s why I can’t read certain authors when I am in low spirits.”

 

“Frances had retreated into these familiar worlds of literature. Something about her favourite books gave her tremendous comfort, and even a strange feeling of control, although she could not quite put her finger on why. She just knew that she did not want to invest her time trying to figure out a new world, whom to like and whom to trust in it, and how to bear the author’s choices for tragedy and closure—or lack thereof.”

 

“Mimi shook her head sadly at the young widow. “Adeline, my father killed himself when I was very young, and it impacts me even as we sit here. It is a part of me, that awful, irrevocable act. And I am never going to be quite whole again because of it. You are not the problem: the loss is.”

 

“It had been nearly seven years, and for the longest time he thought he had been giving something to her by indulging his grief.”

 

“part of it was the heroism of Austen herself, in writing through illness and despair, and facing her own early death. If she could do it, Dr. Gray and Adeline each thought, then certainly, in homage if nothing else, they could, too.”

 

My Take

The Jane Austen Society is a delightful book.  Author Natalie Jenner seamlessly weaves the plots of several Jane Austen books, most notably Pride and Prejudice, into the lives of the charming characters in this work of historical fiction.  I loved spending time in the world of post World War II Chawton, England and was sad to see the book end, but gratified by the clever way everything worked out just right in the end.

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545. The Burgess Boys

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Elizabeth Strout

Genre:   Fiction

320 pages, published Matrch 26, 2013

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

The Burgess Boys tells the story of siblings Jim, Bob and Susan Burgess, Susan’s son Zach, Bob’s ex-wife Pam and Jim’s wife Helen.  Every member of the Burgess family has grown up under the shadow of a freak accident that killed their father when they were children, an event which has shaped their lives.  Bob and Jim escaped their hometown of Shirley Falls, Maine to encamp in New York City where both practiced law, Jim becoming one of the top lawyers in the city and Bob working for a Legal Aid group.  While he revels in all the trappings of success, Jim constantly belittles his younger, bighearted brother Bob.  When teenaged Zach is accused of a hate crime, the entire family rallies to his defense, exposing old fault lines in their relationships and opening new ones.

Quotes 

“And it was too late. No one wants to believe something is too late, but it is always becoming too late, and then it is.”

 

“You have family”, Bob said. “You have a wife who hates you. Kids who are furious with you. A brother and sister who make you insane. And a nephew who used to be kind of a drip but apparently is not so much of a drip now. That’s called family”.”

 

In case you haven’t noticed, people get hard-hearted against the people they hurt. Because they can’t stand it. Literally. To think we did that to someone. I did that. So we think of all the reasons why it’s okay we did whatever we did.”

 

“The facts didn’t matter. Their stories mattered, and each of their stories belonged to each of them alone.”

 

“I wrote the story, but you will bring to it your own experience of life, and some other reader will do the same, and it will become a different story with each reader. I believe that even the time in your life when you read the book will determine how you receive it. Our lives are changing constantly, and therefore not even our own story is always what we think it is.”

 

“And she learned – freshly, scorchingly – of the privacy of sorrow. It was as though she had been escorted through a door into some large and private club that she had not even known existed. Women who miscarried. Society did not care much for them. It really didn’t. And the women in the club mostly passed each other silently. People outside the club said, “You’ll have another one.”

 

“So she lay awake at night and at times there was a curious peacefulness to this, the darkness warm as though the deep violet duvet held its color unseen, wrapping around Pam some soothing aspect of her youth, as her mind wandered over a life that felt puzzingly long; she experienced a quiet surprise that so many lifetimes could be fit into one.”

 

“That happens in hotel rooms, people have bad dreams.”

 

“No exchange rate for the confidence of youth.”

 

“It was a sad moment. There are sad moments in life, and this was one of them.”

 

“Bob was not a young man, and he knew about loss. He knew the quiet that arrived, the blinding force of panic, and he knew that each loss brought with it some odd, barely acknowledged sense of release. He was not an especially contemplative person, and he did not dwell on this. But by October there were many days when the swell of rightness, loose-limbedness, and gentle gravity came to him. It recalled to him being a child, when he found one day he could finally color within the lines.”

 

“Pam replied that she was too old to worry about being cool, but in fact she did worry about it, and that’s one reason it was always nice to see Bobby, who was so uncool as to inhabit—in Pam’s mind—his own private condominium of coolness.”

 

“He knew the quiet that arrived, the blinding force of panic, and he knew too that each loss brought with it some odd, barely acknowledged sense of relief.”

 

“Nothing is what you imagine. Her mind hovered above this simple and alarming thought. The variables were too great, the particularities too distinct, life a flood of translations from the shadow-edged yearnings of the heart to the immutable aspects of the physical world.”

 

“For most of the nineteen years of Zachary’s life, Susan had done what parents do when their child turns out to be so different from what they’d imagined—which is to pretend, and pretend, with the wretchedness of hope, that he would be all right. Zach would grow into himself. He’d make friends and take part in life. Grow into it, grow out of it … Variations had played in Susan’s mind on sleepless nights. But her mind had also held the dark relentless beat of doubt: He was friendless, he was quiet, he was hesitant in all his actions, his schoolwork barely adequate. Tests showed an IQ above average, no discernible learning disorders—yet the package of Zachness added up to not quite right. And sometimes Susan’s melody of failure crescendoed with the unbearable knowledge: It was her fault.”

 

“My mother did not like Unitarians; she thought they were atheists who didn’t want to be left out of the fun of Christmas,”

 

“They say that’s what happens as you get older. You think about the things of your youth.”

 

“The United States is a country of laws and not men and that we will provide safety to those who come to us for safety.”

 

My Take

Having previously read and enjoyed Olive Kitteridge and Olive, Again, I was interested in another book by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout.  It took me a while to get into The Burgess Boys (which includes characters that overlap with her Olive books), but once I did, I thoroughly enjoyed it.  A keen observer of human nature, Strout creates such indelible characters and probes the intracies of their relationships in such a masterful manner that the reader feels an intimacy with them that is rare.  I look forward to reading more by this talented and insightful writer.

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