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579.    The Island of Sea Women

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Nancy Sissom

Author:   Lisa See

Genre:   Fiction, Historical Fiction, Foreign, World War II

374 pages, published March 5, 2019

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

Set on the Korean island of Jeju, The Island of Sea Women tells the story of Mi-ja and Young-sook, two young girls who work together as sea divers in their village’s all-female diving collective. The book covers the ups and downs of their relationship through the period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, World War II, the Korean War, until the modern era.

Quotes 

“They did this to me. They did that to me. A woman who thinks that way will never overcome her anger. You are not being punished for your anger. You’re being punished by your anger.”

 

“How do we fall in love? … How different it is with friendship. No one picks a friend for us. We come together by choice. We are not tied together through ceremony or the responsibility to create a son. We tie ourselves together through moment. The spark when we first meet. Laughter and tears shared. Secrets packed away to be treasured, hoarded, and protected. The wonder that someone can be so different from you and yet still understand your heart in a way no one else ever will.”

 

“To understand everything is to forgive.”

 

“Fall down eight times, stand up nine. For me, this saying is less about the dead paving the way for future generations than it is for the women of Jeju. We suffer and suffer and suffer, but we also keep getting up. We keep living. You would not be here if you weren’t brave. Now you need to be braver still.”

 

“The sea is better than a mother. You can love your mother, and she still might leave you. You can love or hate the sea, but it will always be there. Forever. The sea has been the center of her life. It has nurtured her and stolen from her, but it has never left.”

 

“You are not being punished for your anger. You’re being punished by your anger.”

 

“Her house is the nest where she hides the joy, laughter, sorrows, and regrets of her life.”

 

“Parents exist in children,” Grandmother said to bolster my confidence. “Your mother will always exist in you. She will give you strength wherever you go.”

 

“I’ve had to think about the dark shadow side of friendship. This is the person who knows and loves you best, which means she knows all the ways to hurt and betray you.”

 

“Who can name a death that was not tragic?” the speaker asks. “Is there a way for us to find meaning in the losses we’ve suffered? Who can say that one soul has a heavier grievance than another? We were all victims. We need to forgive each other.”

 

Remember? Yes. Forgive? No.”

 

“How can I help change things if I sit by and do nothing?”

 

“For a tree that has many branches, even a small breeze will shake some loose.”

 

“They did this to me. They did that to me. A woman who thinks that way will never overcome her anger. You are not being punished for your anger. You’re being punished by your anger.”

 

“And it confused me to think that the cloven-footed ones could have so many marvelous creations.”

 

“Every woman who enters the sea carries a coffin on her back,” she warned the gathering. “In this world, in the undersea world, we tow the burdens of a hard life. We are crossing between life and death every day.”

 

“As the eldest daughter, I had always been responsible for my younger siblings. Now I had to provide their food and clothing and be a second mother to them. My father was no help. He was a kind man, but he shuddered under the added responsibility. Too often I found him outside, alone with his sadness. No man was built to shoulder the full weight of feeding and caring for his family. That was why he had a wife and daughters.”

 

“You have been a good mother to your children, but now you must be an even better and stronger mother. Children are hope and joy. On land, you will be a mother. In the sea, you can be a grieving widow. Your tears will be added to the oceans of salty tears that wash in great waves across our planet. This I know. If you try to live, you can live on well.”

 

“Women live quietly,” I said. “However angry or broken a woman might get, she does not think about beating someone, does she?”

 

“If there is happiness at age three, it will last until you reach eighty.”

 

“I was a haenyeo—independent and resilient—but I’d missed my husband.”

 

“Confucius didn’t care much for women: When a girl, obey your father; when a wife, obey your husband; when a widow, obey your son.”

 

“The saying You aren’t aware your clothes are getting wet in the rain suggests a gradual change and can be interpreted in two ways, one positive, the other negative. A positive story might involve friendship, which grows over time. First you are acquaintances, then friends, then a closer relationship develops, until you realize that you love each other. A darker example might be about a criminal. A person steals a small thing, then a larger thing, until finally he’s become a thief. The point is, you’re not aware just how wet you’re getting when the drizzle starts.”

 

“No one picks a friend for us; we come together by choice. We are not tied together through ceremony or the responsibility to create a son; we tie ourselves together through moments. The spark when we first meet. Laughter and tears shared. Secrets packed away to be treasured, hoarded, and protected. The wonder that someone can be so different from you and yet still understand your heart in a way no one else will.”

 

 “When the string breaks while working, there is still the rope. When the oars wear out, there is still the tree, ” she recited. “You feel you can’t go on, but you will.”

 

“You aren’t aware your clothes are getting wet in the rain.”

 

“No one picks a friend for us; we come together by choice.”

 

“A monument will never change how she feels. It’s unfair that victims should have to forgive those who raped, tortured, and killed, or burned villages to the ground. On an Island of World Peace, shouldn’t those who inflicted terrible harm on others be forced to confess and atone, and not make widows and mothers pay for stone monuments?”

 

My Take

I found The Island of Sea Women to be a fascinating piece of historical fiction.  I learned a lot about the Korean people, especially their suffering under the brutal Japanese occupation during the World War II era.  Author Lisa See brings this time period to life with a compelling tale of two best friends who belonged to an elite group of female divers who were torn apart by events and misunderstandings.  Well worth a read.

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578.    The Reckoning

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:    John Grisham

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

420 pages, published October 23, 2018

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

The Reckoning tells the story of Pete Banning, a decorated World War II hero who survived the Bataan death march.  Shortly after returning home to his hometown of Clanton, Mississippi he coldbloodedly walked into his church and calmly shot and killed the Reverend Dexter Bell, his pastor and friend.  In response to all questions, even when facing execution, Pete’s only answer is “I have nothing to say.”  Not until the end of the story do we find out the reason for Pete’s actions.

Quotes 

“Meanness does not inspire loyalty.”

 

“Hearing the truth is like grabbing smoke in our family,”

 

 “Between 1818 and 1940, the state hanged eight hundred people, 80 percent of whom were black. Those, of course, were the judicial hangings for rapists and murderers who had been processed through the courts. During that same period of time, approximately six hundred black men were lynched by mobs operating outside the legal system and thoroughly immune from any of its repercussions”

 

 “Although he performed no acts of combat valor, as required by law, and left his troops behind, MacArthur was awarded the Medal of Honor for his gallant defense of the Philippines. The emaciated men he left on Bataan were in no condition to fight. They suffered from swelling joints, bleeding gums, numbness in feet and hands, low blood pressure, loss of body heat, shivers, shakes, and anemia so severe many could not walk.”

 

 “Pete became the trusty. As such, he served the much improved meals to the other four white prisoners, and to the six or seven black ones on the back side of the jail. Since all prisoners soon knew where the food was originating, Pete was a popular trusty. He organized work details to clean up the jail, and he paid for a plumber to modernize the equipment in both restrooms. For a few bucks, he devised a venting system to clear the smoke-clogged air, and everyone, even the smokers, breathed easier. He and a black prisoner overhauled the furnace and the cells were almost toasty at night. He slept hard, napped frequently, exercised on the hour, and encouraged his new pals to do likewise.”

 

“The Bannings were farmers and landowners, but they were workers, not gentrified planters with decadent lives made possible by the sweat of others.”

 

“Pete offered his reading materials to the others, but there was little interest. He suspected they were either fully or partially illiterate. To pass the time, he played poker with Leon Colliver, the moonshiner across the hall. Leon was not particularly bright, but he was sharp as hell at cards and Pete, who had mastered all card games in the army, had his hands full. Cribbage was his favorite, and Florry brought his cribbage board. Leon had never heard of the game, but absorbed it with no effort and within an hour was up a nickel.”

 

 “Her husband, a devout servant and follower of Christ, was reading his Bible and preparing his sermon, at church, when he was murdered. Why couldn’t God protect him, of all people? Upon deeper reflection, this often led to the more troubling question, one she never asked aloud: Is there really a God? The mere consideration of this as a passing thought frightened her, but she could not deny its existence.”

 

“In August of 1941, the United States supplied Japan with 80 percent of its oil. When President Roosevelt announced a complete oil embargo, Japan’s economic and military strength was imperiled.”

 

“She entered her home and stood in the kitchen, stopped cold by an aroma that was so thick and familiar it overwhelmed her: a mix of cigarette smoke and coffee, bacon grease, fruity pies and cakes, thick beef and venison stews that Nineva simmered on the stove for days, steam from the canning of stewed tomatoes and a dozen vegetables, wet leather from Pete’s boots in a corner, the sweet soapy smell of Nineva herself. Liza was staggered by the dense fragrances and leaned on a counter. In the darkness, she could hear the voices of her children as they giggled over breakfast and got themselves shooed away from the stove by Nineva. She could see Pete sitting there at the kitchen table with his coffee and cigarettes reading the Tupelo daily. A cloud moved somewhere and a ray of moonlight entered through a window. She focused and her kitchen came into view. She breathed as slowly as possible, sucking in the sweet smells of her former life.”

 

My Take

Another enjoyable read from the eminently readable John Grisham.  In addition to the compelling story, I learned a lot about the horrific conditions in the Pacific theater during World War II.  Grisham also makes a strong case against the death penalty with his detailed account of how the electric chair was administered.

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577.   You

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Caroline Kepnes

Genre:   Fiction, Thriller, Suspense, Mystery

422 pages, published August 28, 2018

Reading Format:   Audiobook

Summary

When the beautiful young writer Guinevere Beck meets Joe Goldberg at the East Village bookstore where he works, she has no idea what she has gotten into.  The two develop a relationship and she is still in the dark.  Goldberg is an obsessive stalker who wants to control every aspect of Beck’s life.  Through a smartphone and social media, he comes disturbingly close to achieving his objective.

Quotes 

“The only thing crueler than a cage so small that a bird can’t fly is a cage so

large that a bird thinks it can fly.”

 

“If we were teenagers, I could kiss you. But I’m on a platform behind a counter wearing a name tag and we’re too old to be young.”

 

“The problem with books is that they end. They seduce you. They spread their legs to you and pull you inside. And you go deep and leave your possessions and your ties to the world at the door and you like it inside and you don’t want for your possessions or your ties and then, the book evaporates.”

 

“Work in a bookstore and learn that most people in this world feel guilty about being who they are.”

 

“I don’t say anything. I know the power of silence. I remember my dad saying nothing and I remember his silences more vividly than I remember the things he said.”

 

“Happiness is believing that you’re gonna be happy. It’s hope.”

 “And then it happens, the most dreaded response in the world, more terse than any word, more withholding than a “no,” and strictly verboten for someone as in love with language and me as you claim to be.  You: “K”

 

“Some people, it’s like they care more about their status updates than their actual lives.”

― Caroline Kepnes, You

 

“Some people on this earth receive love, get married, and honeymoon in Cabo. Others do not. Some people read alone on the sofa and some people read together, in bed. That’s life.”

 

“My middle school health teacher told us that you can hold eye contact for ten seconds before scaring or seducing someone.”

 

 “Your lips were made for mine, Beck. You are the reason I have a mouth, a heart.”

 

 “But the most important thing I know is that I want the possibility of you more than the reality of [her].”

 

“If you don’t start with crazy, crazy love, the kind of love that Van Morrison sings about, then you don’t have a shot to go the distance. Love’s a marathon, Danny, not a sprint.”

 

 “And I will never again underestimate the power of anticipation. There is no better boost in the present than an invitation into the future.”

 

“I love Stephen King as much as any red rum drinking American, but I resent the fact that I, the bookseller, am his bitch.”

 

“Eye contact is what keeps us civilized.”

 

“Louisa May Alcott is right. An extraordinary girl can’t have an ordinary life. Don’t judge yourself. Love yourself.”

 

“Don’t make a baby if you’re not capable of unconditional love.”

 

“A poet is different. A poet transforms the world with Such small hands.”

 

“When I’m nervous, I get nasty. It’s a problem.”

 

“And when a girl likes talking about you more than talking to you, well, in my experience, that’s the end.”

 

My Take

You is an intriguing, but very disturbing, read.  It is told from the point of view of psychologically deranged stalker who presents as normal to his subject.  The author does a great job with tone, character and pacing.

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576.    Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:    Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein

Genre:   Non Fiction, Science, Business, Sociology, Economics, Psychology

454 pages, published May 18, 2021

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

In Noise, Economist, Social Scientist and Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman, along with Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein, explore the concept of noise, i.e. why most people make bad judgments, and how to correct for it.​  Noise is the variation in outcomes due to human decision making.  For example, when two different claims adjusters at the same insurance company come to radically different conclusions on the value of the same claim.  While noise contributes to significant errors in a diverse spectrum of fields, the individuals and organizations making decisions are usually unaware of the role played by chance in their judgments and in their actions.

Quotes 

“To understand error in judgment, we must understand both bias and noise.”

 

“wherever there is judgment, there is noise—and more of it than you think.”

 

“Bias and noise—systematic deviation and random scatter—are different components of error.”

 

“Judgment can therefore be described as measurement in which the instrument is a human mind.”

 

“There is at least one source of occasion noise that we have all noticed: mood.”

 

“When physicians are under time pressure, they are apparently more inclined to choose a quick-fix solution, despite its serious downsides.”

 

“Averaging two guesses by the same person does not improve judgments as much as does seeking out an independent second opinion. As Vul and Pashler put it, “You can gain about 1/10th as much from asking yourself the same question twice as you can from getting a second opinion from someone else.” This is not a large improvement. But you can make the effect much larger by waiting to make a second guess.”

 

“When Vul and Pashler let three weeks pass before asking their subjects the same question again, the benefit rose to one-third the value of a second opinion.”

 

 “Herzog and Hertwig then averaged the two estimates thus produced. Their technique, which they named dialectical bootstrapping, produced larger improvements in accuracy than did a simple request for a second estimate immediately following the first. Because the participants forced themselves to consider the question in a new light, they sampled another, more different version of themselves—two “members” of the “crowd within” who were further apart. As a result, their average produced a more accurate estimate of the truth. The gain in accuracy with two immediately consecutive “dialectical” estimates was about half the value of a second opinion.”

 

 “A study of thousands of juvenile court decisions found that when the local football team loses a game on the weekend, the judges make harsher decisions on the Monday (and, to a lesser extent, for the rest of the week). Black defendants disproportionately bear the brunt of that increased harshness. A different study looked at 1.5 million judicial decisions over three decades and similarly found that judges are more severe on days that follow a loss by the local city’s football team than they are on days that follow a win.”

 

 “Vul and Pashler drew inspiration from the well-known phenomenon known as the wisdom-of-crowds effect: averaging the independent judgments of different people generally improves accuracy. In 1907, Francis Galton, a cousin of Darwin and a famous polymath, asked 787 villagers at a country fair to estimate the weight of a prize ox. None of the villagers guessed the actual weight of the ox, which was 1,198 pounds, but the mean of their guesses was 1,200, just 2 pounds off, and the median (1,207) was also very close. The villagers were a “wise crowd” in the sense that although their individual estimates were quite noisy, they were unbiased. Galton’s demonstration surprised him: he had little respect for the judgment of ordinary people, and despite himself, he urged that his results were “more creditable to the trustworthiness of a democratic judgment than might have been expected.”

 

“Most organizations prefer consensus and harmony over dissent and conflict. The procedures in place often seem expressly designed to minimize the frequency of exposure to actual disagreements and, when such disagreements happen, to explain them away.”

 

“Some judgments are biased; they are systematically off target. Other judgments are noisy, as people who are expected to agree end up at very different points around the target. Many organizations, unfortunately, are afflicted by both bias and noise.”

 

“In a negotiation situation, for instance, good mood helps. People in a good mood are more cooperative and elicit reciprocation. They tend to end up with better results than do unhappy negotiators.”

 

“On the other hand, a good mood makes us more likely to accept our first impressions as true without challenging them.”

 

“As you can guess, this is a test of the readers’ vulnerability to stereotypes: do people rate the essay more favorably when it is attributed to a middle-aged man than they do when they believe that a young woman wrote it? They do, of course. But importantly, the difference is larger in the good-mood condition. People who are in a good mood are more likely to let their biases affect their thinking.”

 

“Inducing good moods makes people more receptive to bullshit and more gullible in general; they are less apt to detect deception or identify misleading information. Conversely, eyewitnesses who are exposed to misleading information are better able to disregard it—and to avoid false testimony—when they are in a bad mood.”

 

“However, when the subjects were placed in a positive mood—induced by watching a five-minute video segment—they became three times more likely to say that they would push the man off the bridge. Whether we regard “Thou shalt not kill” as an absolute principle or are willing to kill one stranger to save five should reflect our deepest values. Yet our choice seems to depend on what video clip we have just watched.”

 

“A study of nearly seven hundred thousand primary care visits, for instance, showed that physicians are significantly more likely to prescribe opioids at the end of a long day.”

 

My Take

While Noise is a bit on the dense side, it did introduce me to some new concepts and change the way I look at the world.  For a non-fiction book, that is high praise.

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575.  A Time for Mercy

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:    John Grisham

Genre:   Fiction, Legal, Thriller, Suspense, Crime

480 pages, published October 13, 2020

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

In A Time for Mercy, author John Grisham revisits Jake Brigance, the protagonist from  A Time to Kill, and many of the same characters from that incredibly popular book.  In this book, Brigance has been assigned to serve as the public defender for Drew Gamble, teenaged boy accused of murdering a local deputy who was abusing his mom.

Quotes 

“Murder must be punished, but murder can also be justified.”

 

“Being fearless, unafraid to take unpopular cases, fighting like hell for the little people who have no one to protect them. When you get the reputation as a lawyer who’ll take on anybody and anything—the government, the corporations, the power structure—then you’ll be in demand. You have to reach a level of confidence, Jake, where you walk into a courtroom thoroughly unintimidated by any judge, any prosecutor, any big-firm defense lawyer, and completely oblivious to what people might say about you.”

 

“Those pricks down at the Rotary Club and the church and the coffee shop will not make you a lawyer and will not make you a dime.” And, “To be a real lawyer, first you grow a thick skin, and second you tell everybody but your clients to go to hell.” And, “A real lawyer is not afraid of unpopular cases.”

 

 “You were enduring these terrible attacks, yet you never sought help?” “From who?” “What about law enforcement? The police?” Jake’s heart froze at the question. He was stunned by it, but prepared, as was his witness. With perfect timing and diction, Kiera looked at Dyer and said, “Sir, I was being raped by the police.”

 

“He prayed long and hard for justice and healing, but was a bit light on mercy.”

 

“They will follow the lawyer who tells them the truth.” Word for word, same as always. “So, what’s the truth with Drew Gamble?” Jake asked. “Same as Carl Lee Hailey. Some people need killing.” “That’s not what I told the jury.” “No, not in those words. But you convinced them that Hailey did exactly what they would do if given the chance. It was brilliant.” “I’m not feeling so brilliant these days. I have no choice but to put a dead man on trial, a guy who can’t defend himself. It will be an ugly trial, Lucien, but I see no way around it.”

 

“He was still wet with sweat and the coffee did little to cool things, but he needed it because it was an old friend and starting the day without it was unthinkable.”

 

“The only way to improve Noose’s favorite courtroom was to burn it.”

 

“They filed in, dressed for the day in short-sleeve shirts and cotton dresses. As they took their seats, a bailiff handed each a funeral fan—a decorative piece of cardboard glued to a stick—as if flapping it back and forth in front of their noses would bring relief from the stifling heat. Many of the spectators were already waving them.”

 

“IN THE PARLANCE of the Bible Belt, those within the faith used many words and terms to describe those outside of it. On the harsher end of the spectrum, the “lost” were referred to as heathen, unsaved, unclean, hell-bound, and just old-fashioned sinners. More polite Christians called them nonbelievers, future saints, backsliders, or—the favorite—unchurched.”

 

“But most Christians I know are quite good at cherry-picking their way through the Holy Scriptures.”

 

 “Dyer was quick to rise and object. He should have remained quiet. “Objection, Your Honor. I object to the word ‘rape,’ which implies a—” Jake went berserk. He turned to Dyer, took a step, and yelled, “Good God, Lowell! What do you want to call it?! She’s fourteen years old, he was thirty-three.” “Mr. Brigance,” Noose said. Jake ignored him and took another step toward Dyer. “You want to use something a bit lighter than ‘rape,’ say ‘sexual attack,’ ‘molestation,’ ‘sexual abuse’?”

 

 “And from the testimony given by your mother and sister, we know that before the camper you lived in a car, in an orphanage, in foster care, and in a juvenile detention center. Anywhere else?” What a stupid mistake! Bust him, Drew, Jake wanted to yell. “Yes sir. We lived under a bridge one time for a couple of months, and there were some homeless shelters.” “Okay. My point is that the home Stuart Kofer provided was the nicest place you ever lived, right?” Another mistake. Do it, Drew! “No sir. A couple of the foster homes were nicer, plus you didn’t have to worry about gettin’ slapped around.”

 

My Take

Another thoroughly enjoyable John Grisham read.  Its not fine literature, but Grisham (like Stephen King and Liane Moriarity) know how to tell a story with believable, real world characters that keeps you reading, wanting to find out what happens next.  I was also happy to catch up again with protagonist Jake Brigance having enjoyed A Time to Kill many years ago.

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574.  The Hypnotist’s Love Story 

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:    Liane Moriarity

Genre:   Fiction, Romance, Mystery

466 pages, published October 1, 2011

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

Ellen O’Farrell is a professional hypnotherapist with a home office on an Australian beachfront.  With a history of relationship failures, she is excited and hopeful when she begins dating widower Patrick who is an attractive man with a young son.  When Ellen discovers that Patrick’s ex-girlfriend is stalking him, Ellen’s life starts to change in surprising ways.

Quotes 

“The suffragettes didn’t starve themselves for the vote, so that you girls could starve yourselves for a man.”

 

“Dying was such an elegant way to leave a relationship. No infidelity, no boredom, no long, complicated conversations late into the night. No “She’s still single, I hear.” No running into each other at parties and weddings. No “She’s stacked on the weight” or “She’s showing her age.” Dying was final and mysterious and gave you the last word forever.”

 

“Perhaps all grown-ups were just children carefully putting on their grown-up disguises each day and then acting accordingly.”

 

“I understand, intellectually, that the death of a parent is a natural, acceptable part of life. Nobody would call the death of a very sick eighty-year-old woman a tragedy. There was soft weeping at her funeral and red watery eyes. No wrenching sobs. Now I think that I should have let myself sob. I should have wailed and beaten my chest and thrown myself over her coffin. I read a poem. A pretty, touching poem I thought she would have liked. I should have used my own words. I should have said: No one will ever love me as fiercely as my mother did. I should have said: You all think you’re at the funeral of a sweet little old lady, but you’re at the funeral of a girl called Clara, who had long blond hair in a heavy thick plait down to her waist, who fell in love with a shy man who worked on the railways, and they spent years and years trying to have a baby, and when Clara finally got pregnant, they danced around the living room but very slowly, so as not to hurt the baby, and the first two years of her little girl’s life were the happiest of Clara’s life, except then her husband died, and she had to bring up the little girl on her own, before there was a single mother’s pension, before the words “single mother” even existed. I should have told them about how when I was at school, if the day became unexpectedly cold, Mum would turn up in the school yard with a jacket for me. I should have told them that she hated broccoli with such a passion she couldn’t even look at it, and that she was in love with the main character on the English television series Judge John Deed. I should have told them that she loved to read and she was a terrible cook, because she’d try to cook and read her latest library book at the same time, and the dinner always got burned and the library book always got food spatters on it, and then she’d spend ages trying to dab them away with the wet corner of a tea towel. I should have told them that my mum thought of Jack as her own grandchild, and how she made him a special racing car quilt he adored. I should have talked and talked and grabbed both sides of the lectern and said: She was not just a little old lady. She was Clara. She was my mother. She was wonderful.”

 

“If she was handing over a slice of her heart, she wanted the exact same size given back in return. Actually, she really preferred a bigger piece, thank you very much.”

 

“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”

 

“Ellen came out of the nursery from checking on Grace and said, “I love her so much it’s just…” “Excruciating,” supplied her mother. “I know. It doesn’t really get any better. You just learn to live with it.”

 

“It sometimes seemed so peculiar and wrong to her that you could be that intimate with someone, to go to sleep with them and wake up with them, to do really quite extraordinarily personal things together on a regular basis, and then, suddenly, you don’t even know their telephone number, or where they’re living, or working, or what they did today or last week or last year… That’s why break‐ups felt like your skin was being torn from your body. It was actually strange that more people weren’t like Saskia, instead of being so well‐behaved and dignified about it.”

 

“You think love is black and white. All women think that. And they’re wrong. Women are really intelligent except for when they’re being really stupid.”

 

“He was a selfish, pompous, egocentric, nasty man. She did not want to be married to him, but she did not want him to marry someone else. She did not want him, but she wanted him to want her.”

 

“Mum used to say that when she met my dad it was like a perfect love story. I thought Patrick was my perfect love story. Except he’s not. He’s the hypnotist’s love story. I’m the ex-girlfriend in the hypnotist’s love story. Not the heroine. I’m only a minor character.”

 

 “You weren’t meant to admit, even to yourself, how badly you wanted love. The man was meant to be the icing, not the cake.”

“she couldn’t stand to look up another profile on that awful internet dating site and find another middle-aged, bald, chubby man staring smugly at her out of the computer screen, demanding a ‘slim lady who takes care of herself, for snuggles and long walks along the beach’. Yes, she wanted this child to love her and approve of her and save her from snuggles with chubby, smug men.”

 

“Sometimes she felt like she was always dragging the memories of these relationships along with her, like three old tin cans on a string.”

 

“How do you make a man do something without nagging?” “That,” said Madeline, “is the billion-dollar question.”

 

“I didn’t have enough other people in my life to cover the loss of this many people at once. I didn’t have spare aunties or cousins or grandparents. I didn’t have backup. I didn’t have insurance to cover a loss like this.”

 

“It gave me a shock. A sudden shock of indescribable pain, like when you’re a kid, and you’re hit on the nose with a basketball on a cold morning, and you cannot believe how much it hurts, and your friends all laugh and you want your mother so bad.”

 

“Now for the first time she understood that her mother wasn’t resisting love so much as bearing it. Now she knew that you could love so much it literally hurt: an actual pain in the center of her chest.”

 

My Take

I read The Hypnotist’s Love Story while on a trip to Greece and it was the perfect vacation read.  Hard to put down, fascinating characters who seem like real people and several plot twists to keep things humming along.  I’ve read many Liane Moriarty books and she knows how to spin a compelling tale.

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573.    Long Walk to Freedom

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:    Nelson Mandela

Genre:   Non Fiction, Foreign, History, Memoir, Race

497 pages, published

Reading Format:   Audiobook

Summary

Long Walk to Freedom is Nelson Mandela’s memoir for the first part of his life, from childhood, his years as a freedom fighter, his long years of imprisonment to finally his realease and election as Prime Minister of South Africa.

Quotes 

“I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.”

 

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

 

“A leader. . .is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.”

 

“A Nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but it’s lowest ones”

 

“And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

 

“I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities and a thousand unremembered moments produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people. There was no particular day on which I said, Henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people; instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise.”

 

“Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.”

 

“Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs.”

 

 “I have never cared very much for personal prizes. A person does not become a freedom fighter in the hope of winning awards.”

 

“Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farmworkers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.”

 

“I could not imagine that the future I was walking toward could compare in any way to the past that I was leaving behind.”

 

“A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle,and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor.  At a point, one can only fight fire with fire”

 

 “I always knew that deep down in every human heart, there is mercy and generosity. No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. Even in the grimmest times in prison, when my comrades and I were pushed to our limits, I would see a glimmer of humanity in one of the guards, perhaps just for a second, but it was enough to reassure me and keep me

 

“I learned that to humiliate another person is to make him suffer an unnecessarily cruel fate. Even as a boy, I defeated my opponents without dishonoring them.”

 

“I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.”

 

“In another conversation I said, ‘Tell me the truth. When you were leaving prison after twenty-seven years and walking down that road to freedom, didn’t you hate them all over again?’ And he said, ‘Absolutely I did, because they’d imprisoned me for so long. I was abused. I didn’t get to see my children grow up. I lost my marriage and the best years of my life. I was angry. And I was afraid, because I had not been free in so long. But as I got closer to the car that would take me away, I realized that when I went through that gate, if I still hated them, they would still have me. I wanted to be free. And so I let it go.”

 

“As a leader, one must sometimes take actions that are unpopular, or whose results will not be known for years to come.”

 

“It was a useful reminder that all men, even the most seemingly cold-blooded, have a core of decency, and that if their heart is touched, they are capable of changing.”

 

“Like the gardener, a leader must take responsibility for what he cultivates; he must mind his work, try to repel enemies, preserve what can be preserved, and eliminate what cannot succeed.”

 

“life has a way of forcing decisions on those who vacillate.”

 

“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.”

 

“Losing a sense of time is an easy way to lose one’s grip and even one’s sanity.”

 

My Take

My husband Scot and I listened to Long Walk to Freedom before a trip to South Africa.  Nelson Mandela is truly an inspirational figure with a compelling story to tell and much wisdom to impart.  During our trip, we were saddened to see that for most black South Africans their material conditions had not improved since Arpatheid was struck down with millions living in impoverished townships.  Mandela helped bring equality and democracy to a country separated by race.  Whether prosperity will flow to the poor of South Africa is an open question that will not be easily solved.

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572.    The Four Winds

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Pam Dupont

Author:   Kristin Hannah

Genre:   Fiction, Historical Fiction

464 pages, published February 2, 2021

Reading Format:   Audiobook

 

Summary

The Four Winds takes place in Texas, during the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression, and follows the story of Elsa Martinelli.  Elsa, who never felt good enough for her family, is thrown out of her home when she finds herself pregnant by a younger man from an Italian immigrant farming family.  Elsa fights to keep her two children fed and sheltered as she faces one hardship after another, eventually moving them to California for the false hope of a better life. 

 

Quotes 

“A warrior believes in an end she can’t see and fights for it. A warrior never gives up. A warrior fights for those weaker than herself. It sounds like motherhood to me.”

 

“It wasn’t the fear that mattered in life. It was the choices made when you were afraid. You were brave because of your fear, not in spite of it.”

 

“Courage is fear you ignore.”

 

“Love is what remains when everything else is gone.”

 

“Books had always been her solace; novels gave her the space to be bold, brave, beautiful, if only in her own imagination.”

 

“Don’t worry about dying, Elsa. Worry about not living. Be brave.”

 

“As we know, there are lessons to be learned from history. Hope to be derived from hardships faced before. We’ve gone through bad times before and survived, even thrived. History has shown us the strength and durability of the human spirit, In the end, it is our idealism and our courage and our commitment to one another–what we have in common–that will save us.”

 

 “I say folks who hang on to the past miss their chance for a future.”

 

“You are of me, Loreda, in a way that can never be broken. Not by words or anger or actions or time. I love you. I will always love you.”

 

 “Elsa knew that a library card—a thing they’d taken for granted all of their lives—meant there was still a future.”

 

 “Apparently you couldn’t stop loving some people, or needing their love, even when you knew

, The Four Winds

 

“There was a pain that came with constant disapproval; a sense of having lost something unnamed, unknown. Elsa had survived it by being quiet, by not demanding or seeking attention, by accepting that she was loved, but unliked.”

 

“We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure. —CÉSAR CHÁVEZ”

 

“Although she hadn’t seen her parents for years, it turned out that a parent’s disapproval was a powerful, lingering voice that shaped and defined one’s self-image.”

 

“Heartache had been a part of her life so long it had become as familiar as the color of her hair or the slight curve in her spine. Sometimes it was the lens through which she viewed her world and sometimes it was the blindfold she wore so she didn’t see. But it was always there.”

 

“The four winds have blown us here, people from all across the country, to the very end of this great land. And now, at last, we make our stand, fight for what we know to be right. We fight for our American dream, that it will be possible again.”

 

“That was the first time her grandfather had leaned down and whispered, Be brave, into her ear. And then, Or pretend to be. It’s all the same.”

 

“Jean reached over for Elsa’s hand and held it. Elsa hadn’t known until right then how much difference a friend could make. How one person could lift your spirit just enough to keep you upright.”

 

“Passion is a thunderstorm, there and gone. It nourishes, si, but it drowns, too.”

 

“Fear is smart until…” He headed for the door, paused as he reached for the knob. “Until what?” He looked back at her. “Until you realize you’re afraid of the wrong thing.”

 

“The things your parents say and the things your husband doesn’t say become a mirror, don’t they? You see yourself as they see you, and no matter how far you come, you bring that mirror with you.”

 

“There was something she hadn’t known when she went into marriage and became a mother that she knew now: it was only possible to live without love when you’d never known it.”

 

My Take

Having read and previously really enjoyed booksby the talented Kristin Hannah (Winter Garden, The Nightingale, The Great Alone), I had high hopes for The Four Winds.  While not quite the caliber of The Nightingale, it was nevertheless a very good read.  Hannah creates identifiable, indelible, engaging characters and I got a really feel for how desperate times were during the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.

 

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571.    Cry the Beloved Country

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Alan Paton

Genre:   Fiction, Foreign, Historical Fiction

316 pages, published 1948

Reading Format:   Audiobook

Summary

Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic novel about South Africa during the Arpatheid period about Stephen Kumalo, a Zulu pastor, and his son, Absalom, who is charged with murdering a white man.

Quotes 

“The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that things are not mended again.”

 

“But there is only one thing that has power completely, and this is love. Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power.”

 

“Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that’s the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing. Nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him if he gives too much.”

 

“ — This world is full of trouble, umfundisi.

— Who knows it better?

— Yet you believe?

Kumalo looked at him under the light of the lamp. I believe, he said, but I have learned that it is a secret. Pain and suffering, they are a secret. Kindness and love, they are a secret. But I have learned that kindness and love can pay for pain and suffering. There is my wife, and you, my friend, and these people who welcomed me, and the child who is so eager to be with us here in Ndotsheni – so in my suffering I can believe.

— I have never thought that a Christian would be free of suffering, umfundisi. For our Lord suffered. And I come to believe that he suffered, not to save us from suffering, but to teach us how to bear suffering. For he knew that there is no life without suffering.”

 

“Sorrow is better than fear. Fear is a journey, a terrible journey, but sorrow is at least an arrival.

When the storm threatens, a man is afraid for his house. But when the house is destroyed, there is something to do. About a storm he can do nothing, but he can rebuild a house.”

 

“The truth is, our civilization is not Christian; it is a tragic compound of great ideal and fearful practice, of loving charity and fearful clutching of possessions.”

 

“The Judge does not make the law. It is people that make the law. Therefore if a law is unjust, and if the Judge judges according to the law, that is justice, even if it is not just.”

 

“For it is the dawn that has come, as it has come for a thousand centuries, never failing.”

 

“There is not much talking now. A silence falls upon them all. This is no time to talk of hedges and fields, or the beauties of any country. Sadness and fear and hate, how they well up in the heart and mind, whenever one opens pages of these messengers of doom. Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved. Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end. The sun pours down on the earth, on the lovely land that man cannot enjoy. He knows only the fear of his heart.”

 

“We do not know, we do not know. We shall live from day to day, and put more locks on the doors, and get a fine fierce dog when the fine fierce bitch next door has pups, and hold on to our handbags more tenaciously; and the beauty of the trees by night, and the raptures of lovers under the stars, these things we shall forego. We shall forego the coming home drunken through the midnight streets, and the evening walk over the star-lit veld. We shall be careful, and knock this off our lives, and knock that off our lives, and hedge ourselves about with safety and precaution. And our lives will shrink, but they shall be the lives of superior beings; and we shall live with fear, but at least it will not be a fear of the unknown. And the conscience shall be thrust down; the light of life shall not be extinguished, but be put under a bushel, to be preserved for a generation that will live by it again, in some day not yet come; and how it will come, and when it will come, we shall not think about at all.”

 

“Who indeed knows the secret of the earthly pilgrimage? Who indeed knows why there can be comfort in a world of desolation? Now God be thanked that there is a beloved one who can lift up the heart in suffering, that one can play with a child in the face of such misery. Now God be thanked that the name of a hill is such music, that the name of a river can heal. Aye, even the name of a river that runs no more.

 

“because life slips away, and because I need for the rest of my journey a star that will not play false to me, a compass that will not lie.”

 

“I see only one hope for our country, and that is when white men and black men, desiring neither power nor money, but desiring only the good for their country, come together to work for it.  I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find we are turned to hating.”

 

“It was not his habit to dwell on what might have been but what could never be.”

 

“And were your back as broad as heaven, and your purse full of gold, and did your compassion reach from here to hell itself, there is nothing you can do.”

 

“For mines are for men, not for money. And money is not something to go mad about, and throw your hat into the air for. Money is for food and clothes and comfort, and a visit to the pictures. Money is to make happy the lives of children. Money is for security, and for dreams, and for hopes, and for purposes. Money is for buying the fruits of the earth, of the land where you were born.”

 

 “In the deserted harbour there is yet water that laps against the quays. In the dark and silent forest, there is a leaf that falls. Behind the polished panelling the white ant eats away the wood. Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools.”

 

My Take

I read Cry, the Beloved Country just before a trip to South Africa with the hope of gaining insight into that country and its history of racial injustice.  It delivered this through the story of a black family coming to grips with the execution of their son after he kills a white man.   The book is written in a lyrical, poetic style that enhances its impact.

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570.    Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by: 

Author:   Tiffany Dufu

Genre:   Non Fiction, Self Improvement, Memoir

304 pages, published February 14, 2017

Reading Format:   Book

 

Summary

In Drop the Ball, Tiffany Dufu the changes she made after realizing that trying to do it all as a working mother and wife wasn’t working for her and was causing her to feel major stress and resentment.  Her solution was to let things go, especially her preconceived ideas of what success in her professional and personal life looked like, and to enlist the help of her husband, friends and family. 

 

Quotes 

“[These] powerful women understood that success in imperfect. What would happen if we all started speaking honestly and openly about our priorities and the choices we make about how we spend our time? How inspiring would it be to the young women in our offices if they saw female executives who don’t pretend to do it all, but are open and honest about the balls they have dropped to get where they are today? Women need to support one another by being honest about the compromises we make and by speaking openly about the help we require from our partners and other support systems.”

“What you do is less important than the difference you make.”

 

“Just because you’re better at doing something doesn’t mean you doing it is the most productive use of your time.”

 

“Drop the Ball: to release unrealistic expectations of doing it all and engage others to achieve what matters most to us, deepening our relationships and enriching our lives”

 

“Trying to meet impossible expectations will only continue to harm our physical and psychological well-being.”

 

“Done is better than perfect.”

 

“The greatest privilege that men in the workplace have had isn’t a corporate or public policy. It’s a partner at home. A nonpaid working dad (a.k.a. Stay-at-home dad) might be some working moms’ idea of a superhero. But nonpaid working dads are not the ultimate solution. We do not need role reversal; rather, we need a new model of teamwork in which both parents are meaningfully engaged at work and at home, collaboratively making decisions that reflect what matters most to them.”

 

“In 2014, researchers at Penn State found that women who juggle work and home were proportionately much more likely to experience higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol than were men.”

 

“I used to be the queen of domesticity, a Good Housekeeping cover model in the making. I was also an ambitious professional. These two identities had always been on a collision course. But I was oblivious to that fact until after the crash.”

 

“Many women experience a sense of pressure that men rarely do—the pressure to succeed at work and to keep things running smoothly at home, especially when children arrive on the scene.”

 

My Take

As a recent retiree who just dropped her youngest child off at college, I am not the target audience for this book which focuses on strategies for working moms.  However, I found that for the most part the advice offered by Dufu would have been helpful during my busy working mom years.  I definitely recommend it for young women who are in that phase of their life.

 

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