Posts

, , , , , ,

565. How to Stop Time

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:    Matt Haig

Genre:   Fiction, Historical Fiction, Romance, Science Fiction, Fantasy

352 pages, published June 11, 2019

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

Tom Hazard has a extremely rare medical condition that does not allow him to age like the rest of us.  While he looks 41 years old, he was born centuries earlier during the Elizabethan Age.  As a member of the Albatross Society, Tom has to follow their cardinal rule:  don’t fall in love.  However, after he moves back to his old home of London and starts working as a history teacher, Tom meets a , his old home, to settle down and become a high school history teacher. And on his first day at school, he becomes smitten with an enchanting French teacher.  He must then navigate the dangerous territory between his heart and his head.

Quotes 

“And, just as it only takes a moment to die, it only takes a moment to live. You just close your eyes and let every futile fear slip away. And then, in this new state, free from fear, you ask yourself: who am I? If I could live without doubt what would I do? If I could be kind without the fear of being fucked over? If I could love without fear of being hurt? If I could taste the sweetness of today without thinking of how I will miss that taste tomorrow? If I could not fear the passing of time and the people it will steal? Yes. What would I do? Who would I care for? What battle would I fight? Which paths would I step down? What joys would I allow myself? What internal mysteries would I solve? How, in short, would I live?”

 

 “Whenever I see someone reading a book, especially if it is someone I don’t expect, I feel civilisation has become a little safer.”

 

“That’s the thing with time, isn’t it? It’s not all the same. Some days – some years – some decades – are empty. There is nothing to them. It’s just flat water. And then you come across a year, or even a day, or an afternoon. And it is everything. It is the whole thing.”

 

“Everything is going to be all right. Or, if not, everything is going to be, so let’s not worry.”

 

“I

Like

The Way

That when you

Tilt

Poems

On their side

They

Look like

Miniature

Cities

From

A long way

Away.

Skyscrapers

Made out

Of

Words.”

 

“People you love never die. That is what Omai had said, all those years ago. And he was right. They don’t die. Not completely. They live in your mind, the way they always lived inside you. You keep their light alive. If you remember them well enough, they can still guide you, like the shine of long-extinguished stars could guide ships in unfamiliar waters.”

 

“To talk about memories is to live them a little.”

 

“Music doesn’t get in. Music is already in. Music simply uncovers what is there, makes you feel emotions that you didn’t necessarily know you had inside you, and runs around waking them all up. A rebirth of sorts.”

 

“It made me lonely. And when I say lonely, I mean the kind of loneliness that howls through you like a desert wind. It wasn’t just the loss of people I had known but also the loss of myself. The loss of who I had been when I had been with them.”

 

“As far as I can see, this is a problem with living in the twenty-first century. Many of us have every material thing we need, so the job of marketing is now to tie the economy to our emotions, to make us feel like we need more by making us want things we never needed before. We are made to feel poor on thirty thousand pounds a year. To feel poorly travelled if we have been to only ten other countries. To feel too old if we have a wrinkle. To feel ugly if we aren’t photoshopped and filtered. No one I knew in the 1600s wanted to find their inner billionaire.  They just wanted to live to see adolescence and avoid body lice.”

 

“Maybe Shakespeare was right. Maybe all the world was a stage. Maybe without the act everything would fall apart. The key to happiness wasn’t being yourself, because what did that even mean? Everyone had many selves. No. The key to happiness is finding the lie that suits you best.”

 

“Human beings, as a rule, simply don’t accept things that don’t fit their worldview.”

 

“She laughs. It is the simplest, purest joy on earth, I realise, to make someone you care about laugh.”

 

“There is only the present. Just as every object on earth contains similar and interchanging atoms, so every fragment of time contains aspects of every other.  In those monents that burst alive the present lasts for ever, and I know there are many more presents to live. I understand you can be free. I understand that the way you stop time is by stopping being ruled by it. I am no longer drowning in my past, or fearful of my future. How can I be? The future is you.”

 

“Maybe that is what it takes to love someone. Finding a happy mystery you would like to unravel for ever.”

 

“The longer you live, the harder it becomes. To grab them. Each little moment as it arrives. To be living in something other than the past or the future. To be actually here.  Forever, Emily Dickinson said, is composed of nows. But how do you inhabit the now you are in? How do you stop the ghosts of all the other nows from getting in? How, in short, do you live?”

 

“History was, is, a one-way street. You have to keep walking forwards, but you don’t always need to look ahead. Sometimes you can just look around and be happy right where you are.”

 

 “She gave me peace just by looking at her, which might explain why I looked at her for too long, and with too much intensity in my eyes. The way people never look at people anymore. I wanted her in every sense.”

 

 “That is one of the patterns: when nothing is happening, nothing continues to happen, but after a while the lull becomes too much and the drums need to kick in. Something has to happen. Often that need comes from yourself. You make a phone call. You say, “I can’t do this life anymore, I need to change.’ And one thing happens which you are in control of. And then another happens which you have no control over. Newton’s third law of motion. Actions create reactions. When things start to happen, other things start to happen. But sometimes it seems there is no explanation as to why the things are happening – why all the buses are coming along at once – why life’s moments of luck and pain arrive in clusters. All we can do is observe the pattern, the rhythm, and then live it.”

 

“This is so often the way with life. You spend so much time waiting for something – a person, a feeling, a piece of information – that you can’t quite absorb it when it is in front of you. The hole is so used to being a hole it doesn’t know how to close itself.”

 

“Nothing fixes a thing so firmly in the memory as the wish to forget it.”

 

“It is strange how close the past is, even when you imagine it to be so far away. Strange how it can just jump out of a sentence and hit you. Strange how every object or word can house a ghost.”

 

“I have been in love only once in my life. I suppose that makes me a romantic, in a sense. The idea that you have one true love, that no one else will compare after they have gone. It’s a sweet idea, but the reality is terror itself. To be faced with all those lonely years after. To exist when the point of you has gone.”

 

“Everything in life is uncertain. That is how you know you are existing in the world, the uncertainty. Of course, this is why we sometimes want to return to the past, because we know it, or think we do. It’s a song we’ve heard.”

 

“I loved her, instantly. Of course, most parents love their children instantly. But I mention it here because I still find it a remarkable thing. Where was that love before? Where did you acquire it from? The way it is suddenly there, total and complete, as sudden as grief, but in reverse, is one of the wonders about being human.”

 

“That is the whole thing with the future. You don’t know. At some point you have to accept that you don’t know. You have to stop flicking ahead and just concentrate on the page you are on.”

 

“There comes a time when the only way to start living is to tell the truth. To be who you really are, even if it is dangerous.”

 

My Take

Having thoroughly enjoyed Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library, I went in search of another book by this very creative, thought-provoking author.  After reading How to Stop Time, I was not disappointed. Like The Midnight Library, Haig takes a very interesting idea, adds in a relateable protagonist and creates a book that is a pleasure to read and to think about long after finishing.  Highly recommended.

/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
, , , , , , ,

559. One by One

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Ruth Ware

Genre:   Fiction, Suspense, Thriller, Crime, Mystery, Foreign

372 pages, published September 8, 2020

Reading Format:   Audio Book

Summary

Getting snowed in at a mountain chalet in the Swiss Alps is just the beginning of the problems facing the membes of the tech company Snoops who are there for a corporate retreat to decide whether or not to take a huge buyout offer.  Bigger problems ensue for them and the two Chalet employees when the murders start, one by one.

Quotes 

“I stop, thinking of Topher and his cushioned, monied existence–the way he has had everything handed to him on a plate, the way he’s never had to scrap for anything, never had to swallow a snub from a boss, or pick up a stranger’s dirty underwear, or do any of the myriad demeaning, boring jobs the rest of us take for granted.”

 

“They are arrogant, that’s what I realize–maybe not Liz and Carl quite so much, but all of them to some degree. They are protected by the magic of their shares and their status and their IP. They think that life can’t touch them–just like I used to do.”

 

“Only now it has. Now life has them by the throat. And it won’t let go.”

 

 “Behind him is a girl with fluffy yellow hair that cannot possibly be her real shade. It’s the color of buttercups and the texture of dandelion fluff.”

 

 “But it’s not just her body language that sets her apart—it’s everything. She’s the only one wearing clothes that look more H&M than D&G, and though she’s not the only one w

earing glasses, the others look like they’re wearing props provided by a Hollywood studio.”

 

My Take

One by One is a crackling thriller.  I had previously read her books In a Dark, Dark Wood and The Woman in Cabin 10 and had really enjoyed them.  I liked One by One even more.  It was very  suspenseful and kept me guessing throughout.  The main character and Chalet Manager Erin is also well developed and gives the reader someone to identify with and root for.

/by
, , , ,

558. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:    V.E. Schwab

Genre:   Fiction, Romance, Fantasy

442 pages, published October 6, 2020

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue tells the story of Addie LaRue, a French woman who makes a deal with the devil in 1714 to avoid an unwanted arranged marriage.  She strikes a bargain that she does not fully appreciate the implications of.  She will live forever, but is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.  We follow Addie over the course of 300 years until she meets a young man who remembers her name and that changes everything.

Quotes 

What she needs are stories.

Stories are a way to preserve one’s self. To be remembered. And to forget.

Stories come in so many forms: in charcoal, and in song, in paintings, poems, films. And books.

Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.”

 

“What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind?”

 

 “…it is sad, of course, to forget.

But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten.

 

 “Because time is cruel to all, and crueler still to artists. Because visions weakens, and voices wither, and talent fades…. Because happiness is brief, and history is lasting, and in the end… everyone wants to be remembered”

 

“Three words, large enough to tip the world. I remember you.”

 

 “There is a defiance in being a dreamer”

 

“Blink, and the years fall away like leaves.”

 

“Stories are a way to preserve one’s self. To be remembered. And to forget.”

 

“Blink and you’re twenty-eight, and everyone else is now a mile down the road, and you’re still trying to find it, and the irony is hardly lost on you that in wanting to live, to learn, to find yourself, you’ve gotten lost.”

 

 “Nothing is all good or all bad,” she says. “Life is so much messier than that.”

 “Being forgotten, she thinks, is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered?”

 

“It is just a storm, he tells himself, but he is tired of looking for shelter. It is just a storm, but there is always another waiting in its wake.”

 

“The old gods may be great, but they are neither kind nor merciful. They are fickle, unsteady as moonlight on water, or shadows in a storm. If you insist on calling them, take heed: be careful what you ask for, be willing to pay the price. And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.”

 

“His heart has a draft. It lets in light. It lets in storms. It lets in everything.”

 

“You know,” she’d said, “they say people are like snowflakes, each one unique, but I think they’re more like skies. Some are cloudy, some are stormy, some are clear, but no two are ever quite the same.”

 

“But this is how you walk to the end of the world. This is how you live forever. Here is one day, and here is the next, and the next, and you take what you can, savor every stolen second, cling to every moment, until it’s gone.”

 

“But a life without art, without wonder, without beautiful things—she would go mad. She has gone mad.”

 

 “I am stronger than your god and older than your devil. I am the darkness between stars, and the roots beneath the earth. I am promise, and potential, and when it comes to playing games, I divine the rules, I set the pieces, and I choose when to play.”

 

 “I remember seeing that picture and realizing that photographs weren’t real. There’s no context, just the illusion that you’re showing a snapshot of a life, but life isn’t snapshots, it’s fluid. So photos are like fictions. I loved that about them. Everyone thinks photography is truth, but it’s just a very convincing lie.”

 

“Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.”

 

“Humans are so ill-equipped for peace.”

 

“And there in the dark, he asks if it was really worth it.

Were the instants of joy worth the stretches of sorrow?

Were the moments of beauty worth the year of pain?

And she turns her head, and looks at him, and says ‘Always.”

 

 “March is such a fickle month. It is the seam between winter and spring—though seam suggests an even hem, and March is more like a rough line of stitches sewn by an unsteady hand, swinging wildly betw

een January gusts and June greens. You don’t know what you’ll find, until you step outside.”

 

My Take

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue was a wonderful read.  The author takes an interesting premise, what would happen if you could live forever but no one would remember you, and goes to town with it.  Addie is a fascinating character and her repartee with Luke (aka the Darkness) who controls her fate is highly entertaining.  I listened to the audio version which was very well done and which I highly recommend.

/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
, , , , ,

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

/by
, , ,

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.

/by
, , ,

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.

/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
, , ,

543. Greenlights

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Heather Ringoen

Author:   Matthew McConaughey

Genre:  Non Fiction, Memoir

308 pages, published October 20, 2020

Reading Format:   e-book

Summary

In Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey tells his life story in an unconventional manner and includes poems, drawings, photos and other material from his 35 years of diaries.  His theme is that life gives you green lights, yellow lights and red lights and that you need to pay attention to the signal you are receiving and act on it or work to change it.

Quotes 

“We all step in shit from time to time. We hit roadblocks, we fuck up, we get fucked, we get sick, we don’t get what we want, we cross thousands of “could have done better”s and “wish that wouldn’t have happened”s in life. Stepping in shit is inevitable, so let’s either see it as good luck, or figure out how to do it less often.”

 

 “Don’t walk into a place like you wanna buy it, walk in like you own it.”

 

“We cannot fully appreciate the light without the shadows. We have to be thrown off balance to find our footing. It’s better to jump than fall. And here I am.”

 

“I believe the truth is only offensive when we’re lying.”

 

 

“When we mentally give a person, place, or point in time more credit than ourselves, we create a fictitious ceiling. A restriction over the expectations that we have over our own performance in that moment. We get tense. We focus on the outcome instead of the activity and we miss the doing of the deed. We either think the world depends on the result or it’s too good to be true. But it doesn’t and it isn’t. And it’s not our right to believe it does or is.

Don’t create imaginary constraints. A leading role, a blue ribbon, a winning score, a great idea, the love of our life, euphoric bliss… Who are we to think we don’t deserve these fortunes when they’re in our grasp? Who are we to think we haven’t earned them?

If we stay and process within ourselves, in the joy of the doing, we will never choke at the finish line. Why? Because we’re not thinking of the finish line. We’re not looking at the clock. We’re not watching ourselves on the Jumbotron performing. We are performing in real time where the approach is the destination.”

 

“The question we need to ask ourselves is: what is success to us? More money? That’s fine. A healthy family? A happy marriage? Helping others? To be famous? Spiritually sound? To express ourselves? To create art? To leave the world a better place than we found it?

What is success to me? Continue to ask yourself that question. How are you prosperous? What is your relevance?

Your answer may change over time and that’s fine but do yourself this favor – whatever your answer is, don’t choose anything that would jeopardize your soul. Prioritize who you are, who you want to be, and don’t spend time with anything that antagonizes your character. Don’t depend on drinking the Kool-Aid – it’s popular, tastes sweet today, but it will give you cavities tomorrow.

 

Life is not a popularity contest. Be brave, take the hill. But first answer the question.”

 

“I’m not perfect; no, I step in shit all the time and recognize it when I do. I’ve just learned how to scrape it off my boots and carry on.”

 

“We all have scars, we gonna have more. Rather than struggle against time and waste it, let’s dance with time and redeem it. Cause we don’t live longer when we try not to die. We live longer when we are too busy living.”

 

“Me? I haven’t made all A’s in the art of living. But I give a damn. And I’ll take an experienced C over an ignorant A any day.”

 

“I’d rather lose money havin fun than make money being bored,”

 

“A denied expectation hurts more than a denied hope, while a fulfilled hope makes us happier than a fulfilled expectation.”

 

“All destruction eventually leads to construction, all death eventually leads to birth, all pain eventually leads to pleasure. In this life or the next, what goes down will come up. It’s a matter of how we see the challenge in front of us and how we engage with it. Persist, pivot, or concede. It’s up to us, our choice every time.”

 

“I have a lot of proof that the world is conspiring to make me happy.”

 

“Sometimes which choice you make is not as important as making a choice and commiting to it.”

 

“No longer chasing butterflies, Camila and I planted our garden so they could come to us.”

 

“Life is our resume. It is our story to tell, and the choices we make write the chapters. Can we live in a way where we look forward to looking back?”

 

 “Guilt and regret kill many a man before their time.”

 

“Make my life my favorite movie. Live my favorite character. Write my own script. Direct my own story. Be my biography. Make my own documentary on me. Non-fiction, live, not recorded. Time to catch that hero I’ve been chasing. See if the sun will melt the wax that holds my wings or if the heat is just a mirage. Live my legacy now. Quit acting like me. Be me.”

 

“Catching greenlights is about skill: intent, context, consideration, endurance, anticipation, resilience, speed, and discipline. We can catch more greenlights by simply identifying where the red lights are in our life, and then change course to hit fewer of them.”

 

 “To lose the power of confrontation is to lose the power of unity.”

 

 “Great leaders are not always in front, they also know who to follow.”

 

“The inevitability of a situation is not relative; when we accept the outcome of a given situation as inevitable, then how we choose to deal with it is relative.”

 

“because we quit early or we didn’t take the necessary risk to get it. The more boots we put in the back side of our if onlys, the more we will get what we want. Don’t walk the it’s too late it’s too soon tightrope until you die.”

 

“Now you can shut that door on me or we can walk through it together.”

 

“We want lovers, friends, recruits, soldiers, and affiliations that support who we are. People, individuals, believe in themselves, want to survive, and on a Darwinistic level at least, want to have more, of ourselves. Initially, this is a visual choice. The where, what, when, and who…to our why. Upon closer inspection, which is the upfall of the politically correct culture of today, we learn to measure people on the competence of their values that we most value. When we do this, the politics of gender, race, and slanderous slang take a back seat to the importance of the values we share. The more we travel, the more we realize how similar our human needs are. We want to be loved, have a family, community, have something to look forward to. These basic needs are present in all socioeconomic and cultural civilizations. I have seen many tribes in the deserts of Northern Africa who, with nine children and no electricity, had more joy, love, honor, and laughter than the majority of the most materially rich people I’ve ever met. We have the choice to love, befriend, recruit, call to arms, associate, and support who we believe in, and more importantly, who, we believe, believes in us.”

 

My Take

“All right, all right, all right.”  Greenlights was a really fun and thought provoking read.  Matthew McConaughey has led a fascinating life and has some wonderful and often hilarious stories to tell.  He has also done a lot of thinking about taking risks and provides some worthwhile advice on how to live your best life in this well written and easy to read memoir.

/by