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506. The Kindness of Strangers: How a Selfish Ape Invented a New Moral Code

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:    Michael McCullough

Genre:  Non Fiction, Psychology, Sociology, Public Policy

368 pages, published May 12, 2020

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

In The Kindness of Strangers, psychologist Michael McCullough explores the issue of why human beings are altruistic.  He first looks at this question through an evolutionary lens and then traces the development of increasing altruism and help to our fellow man throughout human history.

Quotes 

“Natural selection is a penny pincher.  People tend to actively avoid feeling empathy for strangers.”

 

“Reason is the slave of the passions.” David Hume

 

 “Modern humans’ concern for the welfare of perfect strangers has no analog in the rest of the animal kingdom or even in our own history as a species. It’s a true one-off.”

 

“Our stone-age ancestors didn’t care very much at all about the well-being of true strangers.”

 

“The 21st-century explosion of social media revolutionized philanthropy, allowing instant appeals and massive responses from “bathrobe humanitarians” sitting at their computers.”

 

My Take

The Kindness of Strangers and its exploration of the reasons why human beings are altruistic and seek to help their fellow man is a fascinating read.  I was especially interested in the section discussing how altruism is the result of natural selection. Cooperation and tamping down selfish instincts often led to greater survivability.  Worth a look.

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504. The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:    Ainissa Ramirez

Genre:   Non Fiction, Science, History

328 pages, published April 7, 2020

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

In The Alchemy of Us, scientist Ainissa Ramirez explores a variety of different materials (e.g. steel, carbon, silicon, glass, copper) and the impact that inventions using those materials have had on human beings.  Each chapter contains a story about a particular invention, including the creation of steel, Edison’s invention of the light bulb and the phonograph, the invention of the telegraph and telephone, and the development of the hard drive.  Rameriz then describes how these inventions have shaped our world.  For example, the invention of the railroad (after steel was created) helped commercialize Christmas.  The necessary brevity of the telegram influenced Hemingway’s writing style.

Quotes 

“Scientists fail all the time. We just brand it differently. We call it data.”

 

“Standardized testing teaches skills that are counter to skills needed for the future, such as curiosity, problem solving, and having a healthy relationship with failure.”

 

“Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.”

 

My Take

The Alchemy of Us meets one of my tests of a non fiction book in that I learned something new.  Actually, I learned a lot new and was given a lot of food for thought in this easily readable and engaging book.

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503. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Darla Schueth and Sue Deans

Author:   Isabel Wilkerson

Genre:   Nonfiction, History, Cultural

622 pages, published September 7, 2010

Reading Format:   Audiobook

Summary

The Warmth of Other Suns tells the story of the decades-long migration of six million black Americans who fled Jim Crow South in search of a better life and landed in the north and western parts of the United States.  In researching the book, Wilkerson interviewed more than a thousand people, but focuses on three individuals:  Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success; George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where fought for civil rights; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 for Los Angeles to pursue a medical career and became the personal physician to Ray Charles.  All faced discrimination and hardship but still felt that leaving the South was the right thing to do.

Quotes 

“They did what human beings looking for freedom, throughout history, have often done. They left.”

 

“It occurred to me that no matter where I lived, geography could not save me.”

 

“Our Negro problem, therefore, is not of the Negro’s making. No group in our population is less responsible for its existence. But every group is responsible for its continuance…. Both races need to understand that their rights and duties are mutual and equal and their interests in the common good are idential…. There is no help or healing in apparaising past responsibilities or in present apportioning of praise or blame. The past is of value only as it aids in understanding the present; and an understanding of the facts of the problem–a magnanimous understanding by both races–is the first step toward its solution.”

 

 “The measure of a man’s estimate of your strength,” he finally told them, “is the kind of weapons he feels that he must use in order to hold you fast in a prescribed place.”

 

“They traveled deep into far-flung regions of their own country and in some cases clear across the continent. Thus the Great Migration had more in common with the vast movements of refugees from famine, war, and genocide in other parts of the world, where oppressed people, whether fleeing twenty-first-century Darfur or nineteenth-century Ireland, go great distances, journey across rivers, desserts, and oceans or as far as it takes to reach safety with the hope that life will be better wherever they land.”

 

 “Over the decades, perhaps the wrong questions have been asked about the Great Migration. Perhaps it is not a question of whether the migrants brought good or ill to the cities they fled to or were pushed or pulled to their destinations, but a question of how they summoned the courage to leave in the first place or how they found the will to press beyond the forces against them and the faith in a country that had rejected them for so long. By their actions, they did not cream the American Dream, they willed it into being by a definition of their own choosing. They did not ask to be accepted but declared themselves the Americans that perhaps few others recognized but that they had always been deep within their hearts.”

 

 “Jim Crow had a way of turning everyone against one another, not just white against black or landed against lowly, but poor against poorer and black against black for an extra scrap of privilege.”

 

“The revolution had come too late for him. He was in his midforties when the Civil Rights Act was signed and close to fifty when its effects were truly felt. He did not begrudge the younger generation their opportunities. He only wished that more of them, his own children, in particular, recognized their good fortune, the price that had been paid for it, and made the most of it. He was proud to have lived to see the change take place.  He wasn’t judging anyone and accepted the fact that history had come too late for him to make much use of all the things that were now opening up. But he couldn’t understand why some of the young people couldn’t see it. Maybe you had to live through the worst of times to recognize the best of times when they came to you. Maybe that was just the way it was with people.”

 

 “Many of the people who left the South never exactly sat their children down to tell them these things, tell them what happened and why they left and how they and all this blood kin came to be in this northern city or western suburb or why they speak like melted butter and their children speak like footsteps on pavement, prim and proper or clipped and fast, like the New World itself. Some spoke of specific and certain evils. Some lived in tight-lipped and cheerful denial. Others simply had no desire to relive what they had already left. The facts of their lives unfurled over the generations like an over-wrapped present, a secret told in syllables. Sometimes the migrants dropped puzzle pieces from the past while folding the laundry or stirring the corn bread, and the children would listen between cereal commercials and not truly understand until they grew up and had children and troubles of their own. And the ones who had half-listened would scold and kick themselves that they had not paid better attention when they had the chance.”

 

 “That’s why I preach today, Do not do spite,” he said. “Spite does not pay. It goes around and misses the object that you aim and comes back and zaps you. And you’re the one who pays for it.”

 

My Take

In The Warmth of Other Suns,  Pulitizer prize winning author Isabel Wilkerson thoroughly researched her seminal book on the black migration out of the Jim Crow south and is very informative about an often overlooked part of American history.  Her focus on three migrants of different socio-economic classes and their experiences helps bring the story to life and makes the experience much more relatable to the reader.

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499. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Dan Ariely

Genre:   Non Fiction, Psychology,  Self Improvement

400  pages, published  February 19, 2008

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

In Predictably Irrational, MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely looks at situations where people act irrationally.  Among other interesting questions, he asks:  Why do our headaches persist after taking a one-cent aspirin but disappear when we take a 50-cent aspirin?  Why does recalling the Ten Commandments reduce our tendency to lie, even when we couldn’t possibly be caught?  Why do we splurge on a lavish meal but cut coupons to save twenty-five cents on a can of soup?  In answering these other questions about irrational behavior, Ariely highlights a series of surprising experiments and dispels the assumption that we usually act ina mostly rational manner.

Quotes 

“Ownership is not limited to material things. It can also apply to points of view. Once we take ownership of an idea — whether it’s about politics or sports — what do we do? We love it perhaps more than we should. We prize it more than it is worth. And most frequently, we have trouble letting go of it because we can’t stand the idea of its loss. What are we left with then? An ideology — rigid and unyielding.”

 

“Standard economics assumes that we are rational… But, as the results presented in this book (and others) show, we are far less rational in our decision making… Our irrational behaviors are neither random nor senseless- they are systematic and predictable. We all make the same types of mistakes over and over, because of he basic wiring of our brains.”

 

“individuals are honest only to the extent that suits them (including their desire to please others)”

 

 “Giving up on our long-term goals for immediate gratification, my friends, is procrastination.”

 

“we usually think of ourselves as sitting the driver’s seat, with ultimate control over the decisions we made and the direction our life takes; but, alas, this perception has more to do with our desires-with how we want to view ourselves-than with reality”

 

 “People are willing to work for free, and they are willing to work for a reasonable wage; but offer them just a small payment and they will walk away.”

 

“That’s a lesson we can all learn: the more we have, the more we want. And the only cure is to break the cycle of relativity.”

 

“MONEY, AS IT turns out, is very often the most expensive way to motivate people. Social norms are not only cheaper, but often more effective as well.”

 

“A few years ago, for instance, the AARP asked some lawyers if they would offer less expensive services to needy retirees, at something like $30 an hour. The lawyers said no. Then the program manager from AARP had a brilliant idea: he asked the lawyers if they would offer free services to needy retirees. Overwhelmingly, the lawyers said yes. What was going on here? How could zero dollars be more attractive than $30? When money was mentioned, the lawyers used market norms and found the offer lacking, relative to their market salary. When no money was mentioned they used social norms and were willing to volunteer their time. Why didn’t they just accept the $30, thinking of themselves as volunteers who received $30? Because once market norms enter our considerations, the social norms depart.”

 

“human beings are inherently social and trusting animals.”

 

“most people don’t know what they want unless they see it in context.”

 

“There are many examples to show that people will work more for a cause than for cash.”

 

“one that we are just beginning to understand- is that trust, once eroded, is very hard to restore.”

 

 

“Thoreau wrote, “Simplify! Simplify!” And, indeed, simplification is one mark of real genius.”

 

“Resisting temptation and instilling self-control are general human goals, and repeatedly failing to achieve them is a source of much of our misery.”

 

“feeling so far is that standardized testing and performance-based salaries are likely to push education from social norms to market norms. The United States already spends more money per student than any other Western society. Would it be wise to add more money? The same consideration applies to testing: we are already testing very frequently, and more testing is unlikely to improve the quality of education. I suspect that one answer lies in the realm of social norms. As we learned in our experiments, cash will take you only so far—social norms are the forces that can make a difference in the long run. Instead of focusing the attention of the teachers, parents, and kids on test scores, salaries, and competition, it might be better to instill in all of us a sense of purpose, mission, and pride in education. To do this we certainly can’t take the path of market norms. The Beatles proclaimed some time ago that you “Can’t Buy Me Love” and this also applies to the love of learning—you can’t buy it; and if you try, you might chase it away.”

 

“Without constant suspicion, we can get more out of our exchanges with others while spending less time making sure that others will fulfill their promise to us.”

 

“When people think about a placebo such as the royal touch, they usually dismiss it as “just psychology.” But, there is nothing “just” about the power of a placebo, and in reality it represents the amazing way our mind controls our body.”

 

“Tom had discovered a great law of human action, namely, that in order to make a man covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.”

 

“people are sometimes willing to sacrifice the pleasure they get from a particular consumption experience in order to project a certain image to others.”

 

“humans rarely choose things in absolute terms. We don’t have an internal value meter that tells us how much things are worth. Rather, we focus on the relative advantage of one thing over another, and estimate value accordingly.”

 

 “If you’re a company, my advice is to remember that you can’t have it both ways. You can’t treat your customers like family one moment and then treat them impersonally—or, even worse, as a nuisance or a competitor—a moment later when this becomes more convenient or profitable.”

 

My Take

I found Predictably Irrational to be a very interesting read that included a lot of fascinating experiments in its attempt to explain why humans often act irrationally.  Additionally, there is some useful advice on how to forego irrational actions, improve your life and accomplish your goals.

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498. Quit Like a Millionaire: No Gimmicks, Luck, or Trust Fund Required

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung

Genre:    Non Fiction, Personal Finance, Economics, Self Improvement

336  pages, published  July 9, 2019

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

Quit Like a Millionaire is part memoir, part handbook on how to retire early.  Written by husband and wife Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung, the two explain how they retired at the age of 31 with a million dollars.  They did it without doing anything extraordinary like selling a company or buying a hot stock.  Rather, their method of living on a lot less than you earn and steadily investing the savings is accessible to anyone.  They also never bought a house (a decision they passionately advocate for) and spend a lot of their retirement traveling the world.

Quotes 

“The more stuff people owned, the unhappier and more stressed they tended to be. Conversely, the less stuff people owned and the more they spent on experiences like travel or learning new skills, the happier and more content they were.”

 

“One of the biggest lies we´ve been sold is that following our passion is the key . Statistically, following your passion will lead to unemployment or underemployment.”

 

“Whenever someone did you a favor or lent you something, you were expected to repay them, either through political favors or with money. Over time, it became ingrained in the national psyche that being in debt to someone gives them power over you”

 

“The idea of relying on the government was laughable. The government’s job isn’t to help you! Their job is to find new and creative ways of making your life immeasurably worse.”

 

My Take

I really enjoyed Quit Like a Millionaire.  Kristy Shen has an incredibly inspiring story.  Both her parents survived the cultural revolution in China and she was born into an impoverished household.  As a young child, she would look for toys in garabage dumps filled with medical waste.  Things changed when her family immigrated to Canada.  She still grew up without any extras, but along the way figured out how to save and invest so that she and her husband could retire at age 31 to travel the world.  They have a great blog called Millenial Revolution that is worth checking out.

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495. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

  1. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Daniel H. Pink

Genre:   Non Fiction, Psychology, Business, Self Improvement

242  pages, published  December 29, 2009

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

In Drive, Author Daniel Pinkwater explores the question of motivation.  He demonstrates that money is not always the best method.  Rather, he asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction-at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

Quotes 

“Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.”

 

 “Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.”

 

“Greatness and nearsightedness are incompatible. Meaningful achievement depends on lifting one’s sights and pushing toward the horizon.”

 

“The ultimate freedom for creative groups is the freedom to experiment with new ideas. Some skeptics insist that innovation is expensive. In the long run, innovation is cheap. Mediocrity is expensive—and autonomy can be the antidote.”   TOM KELLEY General Manager, IDEO”

 

“The monkeys solved the puzzle simply because they found it gratifying to solve puzzles. They enjoyed it. The joy of the task was its own reward.”

 

“While complying can be an effective strategy for physical survival, it’s a lousy one for personal fulfillment. Living a satisfying life requires more than simply meeting the demands of those in

control. Yet in our offices and our classrooms we have way too much compliance and way too little engagement. The former might get you through the day, but only the latter will get you through the night.”

 

“I say, ‘Get me some poets as managers.’ Poets are our original systems thinkers. They contemplate the world in which we live and feel obligated to interpret, and give expression to it in a way that makes the reader understand how that world runs. Poets, those unheralded systems thinkers, are our true digital thinkers. It is from their midst that I believe we will draw tomorrow’s new business leaders.”  –Sidney Harman, CEO Multimillionaire of a stereo components company”

 

“People can have two different mindsets, she says. Those with a “fixed mindset” believe that their talents and abilities are carved in stone. Those with a “growth mindset” believe that their talents and abilities can be developed. Fixed mindsets see every encounter as a test of their worthiness. Growth mindsets see the same encounters as opportunities to improve.”

 

“As Carol Dweck says, “Effort is one of the things that gives meaning to life. Effort means you care about something, that something is important to you and you are willing to work for it. It would be an impoverished existence if you were not willing to value things and commit yourself to working toward them.”

 

“The problem with making an extrinsic reward the only destination that matters is that some people will choose the quickest route there, even if it means taking the low road. Indeed, most of the scandals and misbehavior that have seemed endemic to modern life involve shortcuts.”

 

“One source of frustration in the workplace is the frequent mismatch between what people must do and what people can do. When what they must do exceeds their capabilities, the result is anxiety. When what they must do falls short of their capabilities, the result is boredom. But when the match is just right, the results can be glorious. This is the essence of flow.”

 

“we have three innate psychological needs—competence, autonomy, and relatedness. When those needs are satisfied, we’re motivated, productive, and happy.”

 

“Children who are praised for “being smart” often believe that every encounter is a test of whether they really are. So to avoid looking dumb, they resist new challenges and choose the easiest path. By contrast, kids who understand that effort and hard work lead to mastery and growth are more willing to take on new, difficult tasks.”

 

“coffee-then-nap combination known as the “nappuccino.”

 

“When the reward is the activity itself–deepening learning, delighting customers, doing one’s best–there are no shortcuts.”

 

“Management isn’t about walking around and seeing if people are in their offices,” he told me. It’s about creating conditions for people to do their best work.”

 

“Goals that people set for themselves and that are devoted to attaining mastery are usually healthy. But goals imposed by others–sales targets, quarterly returns, standardized test scores, and so on–can sometimes have dangerous side effects.”

 

“We leave lucrative jobs to take low-paying ones that provide a clearer sense of purpose.”

 

“For artists, scientists, inventors, schoolchildren, and the rest of us, intrinsic motivation—the drive do something because it is interesting, challenging, and absorbing—is essential for high levels of creativity.”

 

My Take

I found Drive  to be an engaging book that gave me a lot to think about.  Author Daniel Pink is spot on when he observes that money only partially motivates human beings.  Instead, we need to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another to put forward our best efforts and do our best work.  I saw this firsthand with my kids.  My husband and I did not closely monitor their schoolwork.  Rather, we set high expectations, talked often about the importance of doing their best, explained the real world consequences of poor or exemplary performance and left the rest to them.  Over time, they both became internally motivated and achieved impressive results.

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492. The Book of Longings

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Sue Monk Kidd

Genre:    Fiction, Historical Fiction, Theology, Christian

416 pages, published April 21, 2020

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

The Book of Longings is a new take on the story of Jesus Christ.  It is told from the perspective of Ana who was raised in a wealthy family in Sepphoris with ties to the ruler of Galilee.  Ana longs to be a writer and rebels against the stifling expectations and oppression of her family and culture.  Author Sue Monk Kidd engages in poetic license and has Ana marrying Jesus and then making her home with his brothers, James and Simon, and their mother, Mary. Ana and Jesus are separated for several years and are reunited just before the crucifixion.  Ana then carries on, chronicling Jesus’ story and reaching her potential in a small artists’ colony.

Quotes 

“When I tell you all shall be well, I don’t mean that life won’t bring you tragedy. Life will be life. I only mean you will be well in spite of it. All shall be well, no matter what.”

 

“Anger is effortless. Kindness is hard. Try to exert yourself.”

 

“Lord our God, hear my prayer, the prayer of my heart. Bless the largeness inside me, no matter how I fear it. Bless my reed pens and my inks. Bless the words I write. May they be beautiful in your sight. May they be visible to eyes not yet born. When I am dust, sing these words over my bones: she was a voice.”

 

“Each of us must find a way to love the world. You have found yours.”

― Sue Monk Kidd, The Book of Longings

 

“Why should we contain God any longer in our poor and narrow conceptions, which are so often no more than grandiose reflections of ourselves? Let us set him free.”

 

“Your moment will come because you’ll make it come.”

 

“It does the world no good to return evil for evil. I try now to return good to them instead.”

 

“Your moment will come, and when it does, you must seize it with all the bravery you can find.”

 

“Life will be life and death will be death.”

 

“Her mind was an immense feral country that spilled its borders.”

 

“Bless the largeness inside me, no matter how I fear it.”

 

“You think with your head. You know with your heart.”

 

“I went to stand beside him and looked in the same direction as he, and it seemed for an instant I saw the world as he did, orphaned and broken and staggeringly beautiful, a thing to be held and put back right.”

 

“It’s always a marvel when one’s pain doesn’t settle into bitterness, but brings forth kindness instead.”

 

“When I was finally able to read the Scriptures for myself, I discovered (behold!) there were women.”

 

My Take

I had previously read Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings and enjoyed both books, so I was interested in her latest effort.  It’s a good book, not a great one.  Kidd offers a unique perspective on Christianity by imagining Jesus with a wife, but does seem to be accurate with a lot of the other historical details in her story.  Her main character Ana provides an compelling portal to view the life, death and resurrection Jesus.

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486. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   J.D. Roth

Author:   Greg McKeown

Genre:   Non Fiction, Self Improvement, Business, Philosophy

260  pages, published April 14, 2014

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

The theme of Essentialism is that your life can be markedly improved if you focus on the things that are truly important to you and cut out the superfluous.  Author Greg McKeown advocates the Way of the Essentialist which isn’t about getting more done in less time. It’s about getting only the right things done.  It is a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so that we only focus on the things that really matter.

Quotes 

“Remember that if you don’t prioritize your life someone else will.”

 

“You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.”

 

“Weniger aber besser. The English translation is: Less but better.”

 

“The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default. Instead of making choices reactively, the Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates the nonessentials, and then removes obstacles so the essential things have clear, smooth passage. In other words, Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless.”

 

“If it isn’t a clear yes, then it’s a clear no.”

 

“Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.”

 

“What if we stopped celebrating being busy as a measurement of importance? What if instead we celebrated how much time we had spent listening, pondering, meditating, and enjoying time with the most important people in our lives?”

 

“The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years.”

 

“Today, technology has lowered the barrier for others to share their opinion about what we should be focusing on. It is not just information overload; it is opinion overload.”

 

“Essentialists see trade-offs as an inherent part of life, not as an inherently negative part of life. Instead of asking, “What do I have to give up?” they ask, “What do I want to go big on?”

 

“We overvalue nonessentials like a nicer car or house, or even intangibles like the number of our followers on Twitter or the way we look in our Facebook photos. As a result, we neglect activities that are truly essential, like spending time with our loved ones, or nurturing our spirit, or taking care of our health.”

 

“We can either make our choices deliberately or allow other people’s agendas to control our lives.”

 

“Sleep will enhance your ability to explore, make connections, and do less but better throughout your waking hours.”

 

“the killer question: “If I didn’t already own this, how much would I spend to buy it?”

 

My Take

In Essentialism, Author Greg McKeown makes a strong case for the benefit of focusing only on the essential things in your life and eliminating the trivial, superficial and things that are unimportant to you.  By doing so, we can lead a more meaningful life on our own terms.  The book also contains a lot of practical advice (e.g. how to say no tactfully) that I appreciated.

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484. Station Eleven

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Emily St. John Mandel

Genre:    Fiction, Dystopia, Science Fiction

333  pages, published September 9, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

Station Eleven is a dystopian novel set in the days of civilization’s collapse after a virus kills off most of the world’s population.  Author Emily St. John Mandel examines how human beings cope when almost every aspect of the world as they knew it ceases to exist.

Quotes 

“Hell is the absence of the people you long for.”

 

“What I mean to say is, the more you remember, the more you’ve lost.”

 

“No one ever thinks they’re awful, even people who really actually are. It’s some sort of survival mechanism.”

 

“They spend all their lives waiting for their lives to begin.”

 

“She had never entirely let go of the notion that if she reached far enough with her thoughts she might find someone waiting, that if two people were to cast their thoughts outward at the same moment they might somehow meet in the middle.”

 

“The beauty of this world where almost everyone was gone. If hell is other people, what is a world with almost no people in it?”

 

“I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on Earth.”

 

“But anyway, I look around sometimes and I think – this will maybe sound weird – it’s like the corporate world’s full of ghosts. And actually, let me revise that, my parents are in academia so I’ve had front row seats for that horror show, I know academia’s no different, so maybe a fairer way of putting this would be to say that adulthood’s full of ghosts.”

 

 “She was thinking about the way she’d always taken for granted that the world had certain people in it, either central to her days or unseen and infrequently thought of. How without any one of these people the world is a subtly but unmistakably altered place, the dial turned just one or two degrees.”

 

“I’ve been thinking lately about immortality. What it means to be remembered, what I want to be remembered for, certain questions concerning memory and fame. I love watching old movies. I watch the faces of long-dead actors on the screen, and I think about how they’ll never truly die. I know that’s a cliché but it happens to be true. Not just the famous ones who everyone knows, the Clark Gables, the Ava Gardners, but the bit players, the maid carrying the tray, the butler, the cowboys in the bar, the third girl from the left in the nightclub. They’re all immortal to me. First we only want to be seen, but once we’re seen, that’s not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.”

 

“Jeevan found himself thinking about how human the city is, how human everything is. We bemoaned the impersonality of the modern world, but that was a lie, it seemed to him; it had never been impersonal at all. There had always been a massive delicate infrastructure of people, all of them working unnoticed around us, and when people stop going to work, the entire operation grinds to a halt. No one delivers fuel to the gas stations or the airports. Cars are stranded. Airplanes cannot fly. Trucks remain at their points of origin. Food never reaches the cities; grocery stores close. Businesses are locked and then looted. No one comes to work at the power plants or the substations, no one removes fallen trees from electrical lines. Jeevan was standing by the window when the lights went out.”

 

 “An incomplete list:

No more diving into pools of chlorinated water lit green from below. No more ball games played out under floodlights. No more porch lights with moths fluttering on summer nights. No more trains running under the surface of cities on the dazzling power of the electric third rail. No more cities. No more films, except rarely, except with a generator drowning out half the dialogue, and only then for the first little while until the fuel for the generators ran out, because automobile gas goes stale after two or three years. Aviation gas lasts longer, but it was difficult to come by.

No more screens shining in the half-light as people raise their phones above the crowd to take pictures of concert states. No more concert stages lit by candy-colored halogens, no more electronica, punk, electric guitars.

No more pharmaceuticals. No more certainty of surviving a scratch on one’s hand, a cut on a finger while chopping vegetables for dinner, a dog bite.

No more flight. No more towns glimpsed from the sky through airplane windows, points of glimmering light; no more looking down from thirty thousand feet and imagining the lives lit up by those lights at that moment. No more airplanes, no more requests to put your tray table in its upright and locked position – but no, this wasn’t true, there were still airplanes here and there. They stood dormant on runways and in hangars. They collected snow on their wings. In the cold months, they were ideal for food storage. In summer the ones near orchards were filled with trays of fruit that dehydrated in the heat. Teenagers snuck into them to have sex. Rust blossomed and streaked.

No more countries, all borders unmanned.

No more fire departments, no more police. No more road maintenance or garbage pickup. No more spacecraft rising up from Cape Canaveral, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, from Vandenburg, Plesetsk, Tanegashima, burning paths through the atmosphere into space.

No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room. No more avatars.”

 

“He found he was a man who repented almost everything, regrets crowding in around him like moths to a light. This was actually the main difference between twenty-one and fifty-one, he decided, the sheer volume of regret.”

 

My Take

After reading and loving The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, I was intererested to see if she had written any other books.  I discovered that Station Eleven was her breakthrough novel, so added the audio version to my library queue.  While I prefer The Glass Hotel, I did enjoy Station Eleven, especially her fascinating descriptions of how life changes after a pandemic wipes out most of civilization.

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483. A Star is Bored

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Byron Lane

Genre:    Fiction

343 pages, published July 8, 2020

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

A Star is Bored is written from the perspective of Charlie Besson, a young gay man who is hired by movie star Kathi Kannon to work as her personal assistant.  The novel is not so loosely based on author Byron Lane’s time working as Carrie Fisher’s personal assistant.

Quotes 

“Travel is a wonderful alternative to suicide”

 

 “My attorney told me there are a bunch of questions I’m not supposed to ask you, so I’d like to go ahead and get those out of the way,” she says.”

 

“Beautiful people, they’re never really alone.”

 

 “Life only exists in your mind. Everything you see, everything you hear, all of it, it goes through your eyes and ears and is processed by your mind, and the mind can lie, can be sick, can get it wrong”

 

“They’re all little things until one of them kills you.”

 

“Therapista says hating others is hating yourself.”

 

“Therapista says judging others is really judging yourself.”

 

 “Therapista says a wonderful, healthy life doesn’t include a requirement to be constantly entertained. She says what we really want is peace of mind, peace in being. Maybe another word for boredom is peace.”

 

“I’m not exactly suicidal-suicidal—I don’t have a plan or anything—but suicide has always had a spot on my vision board. With my shitty news job and pathetic, lonely life, I admit I think of suicide like some people think of going back to college.”

 

“Waiting for what? For me?” Kathi asks, smiling kindly. “I’m not a leader. I’m a follower. It might look like I’m a leader because I’m in movies, but I’m just a follower who’s in movies and I happen to have other followers following me but we’re just all confused followers following followers following followers and it’s a clusterfuck of following. There’s a line of people following me and thinking I’m leading them and I’m just, like, trying to find somewhere to take a nap.”

 

“We’re all victims of what others think of us, of our identity based on our employer. It doesn’t matter who you really are, it’s how you’re perceived.”

 

My Take

A Star is Bored is a fun, clever read that takes you behind the scenes in the life a personal assistant to a Hollywood star.  Good choice for a beach vacation.

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