, , , , , , ,

564. The $64 Tomato

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Frank and Lisanne

Author:    William Alexander

Genre:   Non Fiction, Humor, Memoir, Environment, Food, Nature

304 pages, published March 2, 2007

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

Bill Alexander writes about his struggles to create an ideal garden on the acreage that comes with a house he and his wife buy in the Hudson River Valley of New York.  What follows is an adventure rivaling the Perils of Pauline.

Quotes 

“Gardening is, by its very nature, an expression of the triumph of optimism over experience. No matter how bad this year was, there’s always next year. Experience doesn’t count.”

 

“The great, terrifying existentialist question: If you were doomed to live the same life over and over again for eternity, would you choose the life you are living now? The question is interesting enough, but I’ve always thought the point of asking it is really the unspoken, potentially devastating follow-up question. That is, if the answer is no, then why are you living the life you are living now? Stop making excuses , and do something about it.”

 

“Environmentalists blame the farmers for overdosing with pesticides, and the farmers blame the consumers for demanding blemish-free fruit.”

 

 “One event is an anomaly, two is a coincidence, and three a pattern.”

 

“but I had set the precedent of declaring my preference for the solitary pleasures of gardening over social events.”

 

“Well, ah don’t weed; ah cultivate. (As it turns out, ah will cultivate a lot.) Whereas weeding evokes images of backbreaking labor, kneeling under a broad-brimmed hat while hand-yanking weeds into a basket to be dumped in a remote corner of the yard, cultivating suggests nurturing, caring for tender shoots, feeding, and raising. All of which you accomplish, of course, by kneeling and hand-yanking weeds into a basket to be dumped in a remote corner of the yard.”

 

My Take

The $64 Tomato was a very fun read.  With acerbic and humorous anectdotes, author Bill Alexander brings to life his mighty struggles to create the perfect garden.  This book confirmed my life long aversion to the big garden and made me happy with the few potted herbs and plants that I maintain along with the volunteers who populate our outdoor mountain area.

/by
, , , , ,

562. The Final Solution

Rating:  ☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Michael Chabon

Genre:   Fiction, Mystery, Crime, Historical Fiction

131 pages, published November 2005

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

After finishing this hard to follow book, I’m not really sure what it is about.  The characters include Linus Steinman, nine years old and mute, who has escaped from Nazi Germany with his African gray parrot and 89 old man who was once a famous detective.

Quotes 

“Long life wore away everything that was not essential.”

 

“The application of creative intelligence to a problem, the finding of a solution at once dogged, elegant, and wild, this had always seemed to him to be the essential business of human beings—the discovery of sense and causality amid the false leads, the noise, the trackless brambles of life. And yet he had always been haunted—had he not?—by the knowledge that there were men, lunatic cryptographers, mad detectives, who squandered their brilliance and sanity in decoding and interpreting the messages in cloud formations, in the letters of the Bible recombined, in the spots on butterflies’ wings. One might, perhaps, conclude from the existence of such men that meaning dwelled solely in the mind of the analyst. That it was the insoluble problems—the false leads and the cold cases—that reflected the true nature of things. That all the apparent significance and pattern had no more intrinsic sense than the chatter of an African gray parrot. One might so conclude; really, he thought, one might.”

 

“A delicate, inexorable lattice of inferences began to assemble themselves, like a crystal, in the old man’s mind, shivering, catching the light in glints and surmises.”

 

“it was the insoluble problems—the false leads and the cold cases—that reflected the true nature of things.”

 

“He did not fear death exactly, but he had evaded it for so many years that it had come to seem formidable simply by virtue of that long act of evasion. In particular he feared dying in some undignified way, on the jakes or with his face in the porridge.”

  

My Take

This book was in the Boulder Library’s “Recommended by a Librarian” and had the advantage of brevity, so I gave it a try.  What a disappointment! I cannot even tell you what the plot was.  I’ve enjoyed my previous readings of Michael Chabon (especially The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay), but this book was a Super Dud.  By all means, skip.

/by
, , , , , , ,

561. Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Bill Perkins

Genre:   Non Fiction, Personal Finance, Happiness, Self Improvement, Business, Psychology, Economics

240 pages, published July 28, 2020

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

The premise of Die with Zero is that too many people save all of their lives for their retirement and that by the time they retire they can’t enjoy their money.  Instead, author Bill Perkins advocates a different approach to spending where you can maximize your enjoyment of your money throughout your life.

Quotes 

“At the high end, retirees who had $500,000 or more right before retirement had spent down a median of only 11.8 percent of that money 20 years later or by the time they died. That’s more than 88 percent left over—which means that a person retiring at 65 with half a million dollars still has more than $440,000 left at age 85! At the lower end, retirees with less than $200,000 saved up for retirement spent a higher percentage (as you might expect, since they had less to spend overall)—but even this group’s median members had spent down only one-quarter of their assets 18 years after retirement.”

 

“You might think that as people get older, they spend money more freely out of the sheer desire to make the most of it before it’s truly too late. But the opposite tends to happen. In general, spending among American households declines as people age. For example, the Consumer Expenditure Survey, conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, found that in 2017, average annual spending for households headed by 55-to-64-year-olds was $65,000; average spending fell to $55,000 for those between 65 and 74; and spending fell again to $42,000 for those 75 and older. This overall decline occurred despite a rise in healthcare expenses, because most other expenses, such as clothing and entertainment, were much lower. The decline in spending over time was even more acute for retirees with more than $1 million in assets, according to separate research conducted by J.P. Morgan Asset Management, which analyzed data from more than half a million of its customers.”

 

“The insurance companies that create annuities often make them seem like investments,” he wrote in a recent explainer about annuities. “But really they’re more like insurance.” Lieber went on: “Like insurance to stave off financial disaster, an annuity is something you purchase to guarantee that you won’t run out of money if you live a long time.” In fact, thinking of annuities as insurance makes them a lot more sensible than thinking of them as investments—because as investments they are not good at all. But that’s not their goal—their goal is to insure you against the risk of outliving your money.”

 

“It’s called consumption smoothing. Our incomes might vary from one month or one year to another, but that doesn’t mean our spending should reflect those variations—we would be better off if we evened out those variations. To do that, we need to basically transfer money from years of abundance into the leaner years. That’s one use of savings accounts. But in my case, I had been using my savings account totally backwards—I was taking money away from my starving younger self to give to my future wealthier self! No wonder Joe called me an idiot.”

 

 

My Take

Die with Zero met one of my basic criteria for a non-fiction book, e.g. it made me think about things in a new way.  My husband Scot and I retired in 2020 (after several years of tapering off) in our early and mid 50’s and have already adopted a lot of the ideas Perkins advocates.  We are spending a lot of money on travel to experience as much of the world as possible before we are too old and/or infirm to do so.  We also plan to use our money to help our kids while we are still alive and it will have the most benefit. We don’t plan to “die with zero,” but we do plan to maximize our enjoyment of life while we can.

/by
, , , , , ,

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.

/by
, , , , ,

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.

/by
, , ,

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.

/by
, , , ,

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.

/by
, ,

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.

/by
, ,

541. Dear Edward

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Ann Napolitano

Genre:  Fiction

340 pages, published January 6, 2020

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

When a flight from Newark to Los Angeles crashes in Colorado, twelve year old Edward Adler survives while all of the other 183 passengers and crew perish.  Instead of relocating to LA with his parents and brother, Edward must start a new life with an aunt and uncle who he doesn’t know well and deal with the rapt attention of a nation that considers his survival a miracle.

Quotes 

“The air between us is not empty space.”

 

“Humans need community, for our emotional health. We need connection, a sense of belonging. We are not built to thrive in isolation.”

 

“So much could be solved, she thinks, if we simply held hands with each other more often.”

 

“What happened is baked into your bones, Edward. It lives under your skin. It’s not going away. It’s part of you and will be part of you every moment until you die. What you’ve been working on, since the first time I met you, is learning to live with that.”

 

“There was no reason for what happened to you, Eddie. You could have died; you just didn’t. It was dumb luck. Nobody chose you for anything. Which means, truly, that you can do anything.”

 

“Everything ends,” she says. “That’s nothing to be sad about. What matters is what starts in that moment.”

 

 “This was not a tragedy. Dying on your couch watching TV by yourself is a tragedy. Dying while doing something you love with every part of your body is magic. I wish you magic, Edward.”

 

“My wife is pregnant, and her physician told her that physiologically and medically speaking, there are three different kinds of humans: men, women, and pregnant women. I think the same idea applies to you, Edward. There are grown-ups, children, and then you. You don’t feel like a kid anymore, right?” Edward nods. “But you won’t be an adult for years. You’re something else, and we need to figure out what you are, so we can figure out how to help you.”

 

“When in doubt, read books. Educate yourself. Education has always saved me Edward.  Learn about the mysteries.”

 

“Eddie was leaning against his father’s chest, and the sensation of that weight — the complete trust and lack of inhibition with which the boy relaxed every ounce of his body into his father’s — was one of the things that made parenthood unmissable.”

 

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?” —GEORGE ELIOT”

 

“It feels unkind that they are shoving their emotions at him when his own sadness and fear are so vast that he has to hide from them.”

 

 “All motivators are valid if they produce good work, son. And frustration can be a powerful

 

“that the smallest, truest reason he will never fly again is that the last airplane seat he ever sits in has to be the one beside his brother.”

 

“When frazzled, people tend to revert to the familiar and the well rehearsed.”

 

“if you think about one memory for most of a day, is that not your present? Some people live in the now; some people prefer to reside in the past—either choice is valid.”

 

“Edward wasn’t supposed to leave Jordan, though. They were meant to age together. That loss continues to be spiked with pain; it will never be soothed. And he can see, objectively, that Shay’s life without him would have been woven with different moments, friends or lack of friends, different fights with Besa, different books and different struggles.”

 

My Take

First off, I made the mistake of starting this book while on a flight without knowing its subject matter.  I recommend you avoid that since it deals with a plane that crashed, killing almost everyone on board.  I finished it in the comfort of my home and, since I didn’t have to worry about crashing, really enjoyed the rest of it.  Author Ann Napolitano has some interesting insights into the human condition and weaves a believeable and compelling tale of what it would be like to be the sole survivor of a plane crash.

/by
, , ,

540. Migrations

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Terra McKinish

Author:   Charlotte McConaghy

Genre:  Fiction, Environment

256 pages, published August 4, 2020

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

Migrations chronicles the life and adventures of bird specialist Franny Stone who leaves behind everything to trek to Greenland so that she can follow the last Arctic terns in the world on what might be their final migration to Antarctica.  Franny joins the crew of a fishing boat as her only hope of completing her mission.  Set in a world where all animal species are quickly becoming extinct, Migrations contemplates the ramifications of a climatic apocalypse.

Quotes 

“It isn’t fair to be the kind of creature who is able to love but unable to stay.”

 

“A life’s impact can be measured by what it gives and what it leaves behind, but it can also be measured by what it steals from the world.”

 

“But there won’t be any more journeys after this one, no more oceans explored. And maybe that’s why I am filled with calm. My life has been a migration without a destination, and that in itself is senseless. I leave for no reason, just to be moving, and it breaks my heart a thousand times, a million.”

 

“It’s not life I’m tired of, with its astonishing ocean currents and layers of ice and all the delicate feathers that make up a wing. It’s myself.”

 

“I don’t know how to force the world into a shape I can manage.”

 

“We are, all of us, given such a brief moment of time together, it hardly seems fair. But it’s precious, and maybe it’s enough, and maybe it’s right that our bodies dissolve into the earth, giving our energy back to it, feeding the little creatures in the ground and giving nutrients to the soil, and maybe it’s right that our consciousness rests. The thought is peaceful.”

 

“It’s impossible to control someone else’s capacity for forgiveness.”

 

“He said our lives mean nothing except as a cycle of regeneration, that we are incomprehensibly brief sparks, just as the animals are, that we are no more important than they are, no more worthy of life than any living creature. That in our self-importance, in our search for meaning, we have forgotten how to share the planet that gave us life.”

 

“We’re the only planet that has oceans. In all the known universe, we’re the only one sitting in the perfect spot for them, not too hot and not too cold, and it’s the only reason we’re alive, because it’s the ocean that creates the oxygen we need to breathe.”

 

“I think there is meaning, and it lives in nurturing, in making life sweeter for ourselves, and for those around us.”

 

“think of the courage of this and I could cry with it, and maybe there’s something in his eyes that suggests he understands a little of that.”

 

“Yours is a terrible will,” he told me once. And that is true, but I have been a casualty of it far longer than he has.”

 

My Take

While there is some interesting imagry and concepts in Migrations, I had a hard time warming up to this book.  Probably because I really didn’t like the self absorbed and self destructive protagonist Franny.  However, others in my book group really liked it, so it might just be me.

/by