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244. The Child Finder

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Rene Denfeld

Genre:  Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, Crime, Suspense

256 pages, published September 5, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Three years after five year old Madison Culver disappeared without a trace in a snow filled Oregon forest while her family was choosing a Christmas tree, the authorities believe she is dead.  Holding on to hope that their daughter is still alive, her parents turn to Naomi, a private investigator with a track record of finding lost and missing children who is known as The Child Finder.  Naomi understands children like Madison because she herself was once a lost girl.

 

Quotes 

“No matter how far you have run, no matter how long you have been lost, it is never too late to be found.”

 

“Fear never keeps anyone safe.”

 

“No one ever told you what to do when love went away. It was always about capturing love, and keeping love. Not about watching it walk out the door to die alone rather than in your arms.”

 

“In the years since, she had discovered the sacrament of life did not demand memory.”

 

“But he saw Naomi as the wind traveling over the field, always searching, never stopping, and never knowing that true peace is when you curl around one little piece of something. One little fern. One little frond. One person to love.”

 

“I’m afraid,” she confessed, her voice quiet.

“Of what?”

“That if the box is opened I might want and want and never be filled.” She took a breath. “That you will get tired of filling it.” She paused and spoke her deepest fear, turning to his ear. “That you will use me and throw me away.”

 

“A farm without stock, a home without children. The world here was dying.”

 

My Take

The Child Finder is a quick and compelling read that had me hooked from the get go.  The story hums along with well drawn and indelible characters.  While the subject is disturbing (kids kidnapped or disappeared), it is handled well, in a non-gratuitous manner.  Recommended.

 

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243. Bear Town

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Frederik Backman

Genre:  Fiction

432 pages, published September, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Beartown is the name of a small town in Sweden (although it could be anywhere with cold weather that is surrounded by forest) that has seen better days.  The one thing Beartown has going for it is hockey.  The sport is beloved by all, young and old, and the teenage hockey team, especially the very talented Kevin, are treated like Gods by the townspeople.  When Kevin is accused of rape by the manager’s daughter, the town rallies to his defense with a few notable exceptions.  As the case and hockey finals progress, no resident of Beartown is left unaffected.

 

Quotes 

“Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn’t through love, because love is hard, It makes demands. Hate is simple. So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that’s easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe – comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third is that we dehumanize our enemy.”

 

“Everyone has a thousand wishes before a tragedy, but just one afterward.”

 

“All adults have days when we feel completely drained. When we no longer know quite what we spend so much time fighting for, when reality and everyday worries overwhelm us and we wonder how much longer we’re going to be able to carry on. The wonderful thing is that we can all live through far more days like that without breaking than we think. The terrible thing is that we never know exactly how many.”

 

“You never have the sort of friends you have when you’re fifteen ever again. Even if you keep them for the rest of your life, it’s never the same as it was then.”

 

“If you are honest, people may deceive you. Be honest anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfishness. Be kind anyway. All the good you do today will be forgotten by others tomorrow. Do good anyway.”

 

“There are few words that are harder to explain than “loyalty.” It’s always regarded as a positive characteristic, because a lot of people would say that many of the best things people do for each other occur precisely because of loyalty. The only problem is that many of the very worst things we do to each other occur because of the same thing.”

 

“A simple truth, repeated as often as it is ignored, is that if you tell a child it can do absolutely anything, or that it can’t do anything at all, you will in all likelihood be proven right.”

 

“What an uncomfortable, terrible source of shame it is for the world that the victim is so often the one left with the most empathy for others.”

 

“She’s fifteen, above the age of consent, and he’s seventeen, but he’s still “the boy” in every conversation. She’s “the young woman”.

 

“The love a parent feels for a child is strange. There is a starting point to our love for everyone else, but not this person. This one we have always loved, we loved them before they even existed. No matter how well prepared they are, all moms and dads experience a moment of total shock, when the tidal wave of feelings first washed through them, knocking them off their feet. It’s incomprehensible because there’s nothing to compare it to. It’s like trying to describe sand between your toes or snowflakes on your tongue to someone who’s lived their whole life in a dark room. It sends the soul flying.”

 

“Bitterness can be corrosive. It can rewrite your memories as if it were scrubbing a crime scene clean, until in the end you only remember what suits you of its causes.”

 

“But sometimes that’s what it takes, a culture of silence to foster a culture of winning.”

 

“Some people say hockey is like religion, but that’s wrong. Hockey is like faith. Religion is something between you and other people; it’s full of interpretations and theories and opinions. But faith…that’s just between you and God. It’s what you feel in your chest when the referee glides out to the center circle between two players, when you hear the sticks strike each other and see the black disk fall between them. Then it’s just between you and hockey.”

 

“Humanity has many shortcomings, but none is stronger than pride.”

 

“Ignore everything else, just concentrate on the things you can change.”

 

“If you spend your whole life being someone else, who will be you?”

 

“Some of you were born with talent, some weren’t. Some of you are lucky and got everything for free, some of you got nothing. But remember, when you’re out on the ice you’re all equals. And there’s one thing you need to know: desire always beats luck.”

 

“You never stop being scared of falling from the top, because when you close your eyes you can still feel the pain from each and every step of the way up.” 

 

“Another morning comes. It always does. Time always moves at the same rate, only feelings have different speeds. Every day can mark a whole lifetime or a single heartbeat, depending on who you spend it with. ”

 

“The only thing the sport gives us are moments. But what the hell is life, Peter, apart from moments?”

 

“We love winners, even though they’re very rarely particularly likeable people. They’re almost always obsessive and selfish and inconsiderate. That doesn’t matter. We forgive them. We like them while they’re winning.”

 

“On the one hand, our entire species survived because we stuck together and cooperated, but on the other hand we developed because the strongest individuals always thrived at the expense of the weak. So we always end up arguing about where the boundaries should be drawn. How selfish are we allowed to be? How much are we obliged to care about each other?”

 

“What you create, others can destroy. Create anyway. Because in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and anyone else anyway.”

 

“One of the plainest truths about both towns and individuals is that they usually don’t turn into what we tell them to be, but what they are told they are.”

 

“There are two things that are particularly good at reminding us how old we are: children and sports.”

 

“There’s a label she used to love but which she loathes when it’s pronounced in a Beartown accent: “career woman.” Peter’s friends call her that, some in admiration and some with distaste, but no one calls Peter a “career man.” It strikes a nerve because Kira recognizes that insinuation: you have a “job” so you can provide for your family, whereas a “career” is selfish. You have one of those for your own sake.”

 

“The very worst events in life have that effect on a family: we always remember, more sharply than anything else, the last happy moments before everything fell apart.”

 

“David drives back to Björnstad. Sits in the car and cries in anger. He is ashamed. He is disgusted. With himself. For an entire hockey life he has trained a boy, loved him like a son, been loved back as a father. There is no player as loyal as Benji. No bigger heart than his. How many times has David hugged number sixteen after a game and told him that? “You are the bravest bastard I know, Benji.” The bravest bastard I know. ” And after all those hours in locker rooms, all those nights in the bus, all the conversations and blood, sweat and tears, the boy didn’t dare tell his coach his greatest secret. It’s a betrayal, David knows it’s a terrible betrayal. There is no other way to explain how much a grown man must have failed for such a warrior of a boy to make him think his coach would be less proud of him if he was gay. David hates himself for not being better than his father. For that is a son’s job.”

 

“Not a second has passed since she had children without her feeling like a bad mother. For everything. For not understanding, for being impatient, for not knowing everything, not making better packed lunches, for still wanting more out of life than just being a mother.”

 

My Take

Having previously read (and really enjoyed) A Man Called Ove, I was looking forward to another book by Swedish author Frederik Backman.  I was not disappointed by Beartown.  Backman captures the determination, angst, sense of inferiority and pathos of growing up in a small town that isn’t quite making it.  He also shows how the sport of hockey is an all consuming religion for many players.  I’ve seen a bit of this from friends whose kids are hockey players.  A compelling, easy reading book with well drawn characters and an engaging plot that I wholeheartedly recommend.

 

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241. The Blue Zones of Happiness: A Blueprint for a Better Life

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Dan Buettner

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Happiness, Self Improvement, Public Policy, Health

253 pages, published October 3, 2017

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary 

Having previously explored the Blue Zones of the world (those places around the world where people live the longest lives), author and researcher Dan Buettner turns his focus to the world’s happiest places (with in-depth analysis of particular types of happiness in three different locations, Costa Rica (joy and lightheartedness), Denmark (community and purpose) and Singapore (satisfaction and accomplishment) and provides a blue print for applying lessons from these countries to improve our own communities and our lives.

 

Quotes 

“I wake up in the morning and I see that flower, with the dew on its petals, and at the way it’s folding out, and it makes me happy, she said. It’s important to focus on the things in the here and now, I think. In a month, the flower will be shriveled and you will miss its beauty if you don’t make the effort to do it now. Your life, eventually, is the same way.”

 

“knowing your sense of purpose is worth up to seven years of extra life expectancy.”

 

“Eat your vegetables, have a positive outlook, be kind to people, and smile – Kamada Nakasato, 102-y/o-female fr. Okinawa”

 

“Wine @ 5. People in all Blue Zones (even some Adventists) drink alcohol moderately and regularly. Moderate drinkers outlive nondrinkers. The trick is to drink one to two glasses per day with friends and/or with food. And no, you can’t save up all week and have 14 drinks on Saturday.”

 

“Drink without getting drunk

Love without suffering jealousy

Eat without overindulging

Never argue

And once in a while, with great discretion, misbehave”

 

“Gratitude always comes into play; research shows that people are happier if they are grateful for the positive things in their lives, rather than worrying about what might be missing.”

 

“In places where women have achieved gender equality, for instance, men tend to be happier than women. And in places where women are still not treated equally, women are often happier than men. Other studies have shown that, despite the popular belief that nobody wants to get older, most people actually get happier after a certain age.”

 

“WHAT CAN ADD ON MORE GOOD YEARS? Robert Kane: Rather than exercising for the sake of exercising, try to make changes to your lifestyle. Ride a bicycle instead of driving. Walk to the store instead of driving. Use the stairs instead of the elevator. Build that into your lifestyle. The chances are that you will sustain that behavior for a much longer time. And the name of the game here is sustaining. These things that we try—usually after some cataclysmic event has occurred, and we now want to ward off what seems to be the more perceptible threat of dying—don’t hold up over the long haul. We find all sorts of reasons not to do it. The second thing I’d tell you is don’t take up smoking. The biggest threat to improving our lifestyles has been cigarette smoking. That trumps everything else. Once you’re a nonsmoker, I would try to get you to learn to develop a moderate lifestyle in regard to your weight to build into your daily routine enough exercise to keep you going.”

 

“And as we shall see in forthcoming chapters, purpose and love are essential ingredients in all Blue Zone recipes for longevity.”

 

My Take

As a long time student of happiness, I was interested in reading this book.  It’s approach was to focus on three geographic locations known for high happiness levels:  Costa Rica, Denmark and Singapore.  The author discusses how joy, purpose, accomplishment and community are essential aspects of happiness and then shows how these qualities are present in those countries.  Interestingly, there is a chapter that explores the happiest place in the United States:  Boulder, Colorado.  I live in Boulder and agree that it is indeed a very happy place.  There is a tremendous sense of community here and lots of natural beauty and opportunities for outdoor activities.  A quick and engrossing read.

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239. The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt’s Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Michael Koss

Author:  Anne-Marie O’Connor

Genre:  Non Fiction, Foreign, History, Art, Biography

370 pages, published February 7, 2012

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

The Lady in Gold tells the true story behind Austrian artist Gustav Klimt’s portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, known as the Austrian Mona Lisa.  The first part of the book delves into the history of Klimt, a wholly original, headstrong and intriguing figure, and of Adele Bloch-Bauer, a beautiful, free thinking, seductive Viennese woman from a prominent Jewish family who may have been the mistress of Klimt.  After Adele’s death, the Nazi’s marched into Austria and began a wholesale looting of artwork belonging to the country’s Jewish citizens.  One of the paintings they seized was “The Woman in Gold,” Klimt’s portrait of Adele.  Fifty years later, Adele’s niece Maria engaged Randol Schoenberg, a young lawyer related to a friend of hers to engage in an against all odds battle to recover the painting from the Austrian government.  The second part of the book recounts the legal battle which led to justice finally being served.

 

Quotes 

“Happy he who forgets what cannot be changed.”

 

“Any nonsense can attain importance by virtue of being believed by millions of people,” Einstein.

 

“to every age its art; to art its freedom.”

 

“Austrians were allowed to paper over their pasts and portray themselves as unwilling participants. They felt sorry for themselves, and for the proud family names sullied with the taint of Nazi collaboration. The Cold War began in earnest, and the West was eager to hang on to Austria. A 1948 amnesty brought a premature end to Austrian de-Nazification. Austrians began to deny their jubilant welcome of Hitler and to claim that Austria had been “occupied” by Germany.”

 

My Take

A few years ago, I watched the film version of The Lady in Gold (renamed The Woman in Gold) starring Helen Mirren as Maria and Ryan Reynolds as Randy Schoenberg.  It was a very well done, informative and entertaining movie that changed a few of the historical facts, but was otherwise true to the spirit of this fascinating story.  The book version goes several layers deeper and delivers an intriguing read.  As a side note, when I got to the part in the book when Randy Schoenberg (the lawyer played by Ryan Reynolds in the movie), I learned that he was at USC Law School a year before I was.  Sure enough, I googled an image of him and discovered that I remembered him from several classes that we both took.  Later in the book, it is revealed that Randy ended up with close to $100 million in connection with the recovery of The Lady in Gold painting.  Good for him!  Undoubtedly, the most successful of my USC Law School classmates.

 

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238. Gardens of Water

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Terra McKinnish

Author:  Alan Drew

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, Foreign

288 pages, published February 5, 2008

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

In a small town outside Istanbul, Sinan Basioglu, a devout Kurdish Muslim, and his wife, Nilüfer, are preparing to celebrate their nine-year-old son Ismail’s coming-of-age ceremony. Their fifteen-year-old daughter, İrem, resents the attention given by her parents to Ismail.   In contrast, when she came of age, there was no celebration.  Instead, she had to start wearing a hijab and stay hidden away from boys.  After a massive earthquake destroys their home, Sinan focuses all of his attention on finding Ismail, ignoring the plight of his wife and daughter.  Miraculously, Ismail is saved by the expatriate wife of a Marcus, a missionary from America who lives in the same building.  Marcus’ wife dies in the earthquake, leaving behind Dylan, her teenage son who has secretly been developing a relationship with Irem.  The Basioglu family has lost everything and are forced to live as refugees in a Christian Missionary camp run by Marcus.  Sinan struggles with his inability to support his family, the Christian influence of the camp and the pulling away of his daughter as she secretly falls in love with Dylan.

 

Quotes 

“Our children are not ours. That’s our mistake. We think they are. It seems so for a while—a few brief years—but they aren’t. They never were.”

 

“It’s all a gift. All of life is a gift.”

 

“Instead, he stared at every woman he saw in hijab, his anger flaring when he saw a fundamentalist, dressed in black from head to toe, as if she were already dead. It was one thing to be humble and modest, but it seemed to Sinan that the abaya revealed men’s disgust with women, as though men thought God had made a mistake and they needed to hide it. Sinan would never make his wife and daughter wear such a thing; he would never allow them to be so blotted out of existence.”

 

“He was a Kurd and the world would tell him he was nothing. He was poor and the world would give him nothing. He was a Muslim and the world would ignore him, and being ignored was like being dead. The boy had his name and his name was everything. Take away his name and the boy had no future, no honor, no respect, no reason to look in a mirror and see his own perfection. “Ouch, Baba! You’re doing it too hard.” Ismail’s skin was red from the scrubbing. He stopped and told the boy to rinse off. What if Irem did something that denied her entry to Heaven? Skin was only the container of the soul, but the soul was a fragile membrane—it could easily be ripped and once it was, there was no sewing it back together. To kill her before she destroyed that, she would remain innocent, she would enter Paradise as a child, as clean as the day she was born. And Ismail wouldn’t have to feel less than anyone in this world, ever.”

 

“I never gave a damn about independence, anyway. All I really wanted to do was farm. Didn’t care if the land was called Kurdistan or Turkey or Iraq. But the stupid PKK and the military won’t leave you alone; you’re everyone’s enemy if you just want to be left alone. You’ve got to pick a side.” He tossed his cigarette down in disgust. “Is there anywhere in the world you can just be left alone?”

 

My Take

Gardens of Water was an intriguing read that explored universal themes such as the relationships between parents and children, the conflict between the new world and the old, and the strain between tradition and personal freedom.  I didn’t know that much about Islam and felt that I learned a bit about the religion after reading this book, especially the conflict between traditional Islam and the modern world.

 

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Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Katy Fassett

Author:  Bill Browder

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Memoir, History, Foreign, Politics, Business

380 pages, published February 3, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Red Notice is a real-life political thriller memoir written by American businessman Bill Browder who made multi-millions investing in Russia in the early days after the Berlin Wall came down.  After the Russians started to target Browder and his Hermitage Fund, his attorney Sergei Magnitsky was ruthlessly jailed and murdered by the Kremlin.  Browder then led an effort to expose the corruption inside Russia and obtain justice for Sergei.

 

Quotes 

“Seventy years of communism had destroyed the work ethic of an entire nation. Millions of Russians had been sent to the gulags for showing the slightest hint of personal initiative. The Soviets severely penalized independent thinkers, so the natural self-preservation reaction was to do as little as possible and hope that nobody would notice you.”

 

“I arrived in the late afternoon at Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport. I stared out of my window as the plane taxied to the terminal and was astonished to see the burned-out carcass of an Aeroflot passenger plane lying on the side of the runway. I had no idea how it had gotten there. Apparently it was too much of a bother for the airport authorities to have it moved. Welcome to Russia.”

 

“There’s a famous Russian proverb about this type of behavior. One day, a poor villager happens upon a magic talking fish that is ready to grant him a single wish. Overjoyed, the villager weighs his options: “Maybe a castle? Or even better—a thousand bars of gold? Why not a ship to sail the world?” As the villager is about to make his decision, the fish interrupts him to say that there is one important caveat: whatever the villager gets, his neighbor will receive two of the same. Without skipping a beat, the villager says, “In that case, please poke one of my eyes out.”

 

“After Khodorkovsky was found guilty, most of Russia’s oligarchs went one by one to Putin and said, ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich, what can I do to make sure I won’t end up sitting in a cage?’ I wasn’t there, so I’m only speculating, but I imagine Putin’s response was something like this: ‘Fifty per cent.”

 

“The imagination is a horrible thing when it’s preoccupied with exactly how someone might try to kill you.”

 

“This whole exercise was teaching me that Russian business culture is closer to that of a prison yard than anything else. In prison, all you have is your reputation. Your position is hard-earned and it is not relinquished easily. When someone is crossing the yard coming for you, you cannot stand idly by. You have to kill him before he kills you. If you don’t, and if you manage to survive the attack, you’ll be deemed weak and before you know it, you will have lost your respect and become someone’s bitch. This is the calculus that every oligarch and every Russian politician goes through every day.”

 

“While Putin expected a bad reaction from the United States, he had no idea what kind of hornet’s nest he’d stirred up in his own country. One can criticize Russians for many things, but their love of children isn’t one of them. Russia is one of the only countries in the world where you can take a screaming child into a fancy restaurant and no one will give you a second look. Russians simply adore children.”

 

“Early in this book, I said that the feeling I got from buying a Polish stock that went up ten times was the best thing to ever happen to me in my career. But the feeling I had on that balcony in Brussels with Sergei’s widow and son, as we watched the largest lawmaking body in Europe recognize and condemn the injustices suffered by Sergei and his family, felt orders of magnitude better than any financial success I’ve ever had. If finding a ten bagger in the stock market was a highlight of my life before, there is no feeling as satisfying as getting some measure of justice in a highly unjust world.”

 

“This was not what they wanted to hear because ever since Barack Obama had become president in 2009, the main policy of the US government toward Russia had been one of appeasement.”

 

My Take

Author Bill Browder knows how to tell a compelling tale and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the audio version of Red Notice.  The first half of the book takes you through his interesting childhood.  His Grandfather ran for President of the United States representing the Communist Party and his parents were both Socialists.  Browder rebelled by going into business with the aim of making as much money as possible.  He was able to do this by capitalizing on unique opportunities in Eastern Europe and then Russia.  During the second half of the book, the Russian government turned on Browder and killed his attorney, the idealistic Sergei Magnitsky.  Browder then recounts his pursuit of justice against Vladimir Putin and his henchmen in honor of Sergei.  A captivating read from start to finish.

 

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228. The Alchemist

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Paul Coelho

Genre:  Fiction, Fantasy, Foreign, Happiness

197 pages, published May 1, 1993

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Paulo Coelho’s extremely popular master work tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different—and far more satisfying—than he ever imagined. Santiago’s journey teaches us about the wisdom of listening to our hearts, of recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life’s path, and, most importantly, to follow our dreams.

 

Quotes 

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

 

“It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”

 

“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”

 

“One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.”

 

“I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living now.”

 

“When each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.”

 

“Don’t give in to your fears. If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart.”

 

“This is what we call love. When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there’s no need at all to understand what’s happening, because everything happens within you.”

 

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

 

“We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.”

 

“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”

 

“I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.”

 

“To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation.”

 

“It’s one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it’s another to think that yours is the only path.”

 

“There is only one way to learn. It’s through action. Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey.”

 

“It is said that all people who are happy have God within them.”

 

“The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.”

 

“If someone isn’t what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”

 

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”

 

“Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.”

 

“You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it’s better to listen to what it has to say.”

 

“If you start by promising what you don’t even have yet, you’ll lose your desire to work towards getting it.”

 

My Take

Like The Richest Man in Babylon, The Alchemist is falls into a category of allegorical books that I usually enjoy reading.  Through the simple tale of boy on a quest to find his treasure and fulfill his destiny, The Alchemist imparts numerous pearls of wisdom about life, love, dreams, fear, hope and happiness.  I highly recommend the audio version which is perfectly narrated by the wonderful Jeremy Irons.

 

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225. Little Fires Everywhere

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Celeste Ng

Genre:  Fiction

352 pages, published September 12, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Little Fires Everywhere opens with the revelation that Isabelle, the youngest of four children in the Richardson family of Shaker Heights, Ohio has burned down the family home.  As the story unwinds, we learn that even in a picture perfect family and community, things are not always as ideal as they seem.  This revelation is laid bare after the arrival of Mia Warren, an artist and single mother to teenage daughter Pearl, who lives life completely on her own terms, with little regard for the consequences.

 

Quotes 

“Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground, and start over. After the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow. People are like that, too. They start over. They find a way.”

 

“Rules existed for a reason: if you followed them, you would succeed; if you didn’t, you might burn the world to the ground.”

 

“Most of the time, everyone deserves more than one chance. We all do things we regret now and then. You just have to carry them with you.”

 

“To a parent, your child wasn’t just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all at the same time. You could see it every time you looked at her: layered in her face was the baby she’d been and the child she’d become and the adult she would grow up to be, and you saw them all simultaneously, like a 3-D image. It made your head spin. It was a place you could take refuge, if you knew how to get in. And each time you left it, each time your child passed out of your sight, you feared you might never be able to return to that place again.”

 

“Anger is Fear’s Bodyguard.”

 

“One had followed the rules, and one had not. But the problem with rules… was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time they were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure what side of the line you stood on.”

 

“It came, over and over, down to this: What made someone a mother? Was it biology alone, or was it love?”

 

“The occasional embrace, a head leaned for just a moment on your shoulder, when what you really wanted more than anything was to press them to you and hold them so tight you fused together and could never be taken apart. It was like training yourself to live on the smell of an apple alone, when what you really wanted was to devour it, to sink your teeth into it and consume it, seeds, core, and all.”

 

“I’ll tell you a secret. A lot of times, parents are not the best at seeing their children clearly.”

 

“It bothers you, doesn’t it?” Mia said suddenly. “I think you can’t imagine. Why anyone would choose a different life from the one you’ve got. Why anyone might want something other than a big house with a big lawn, a fancy car, a job in an office. Why anyone would choose anything different than what you’d choose.”

 

“Most communities just happen; the best are planned.”

 

“All her life, she had learned that passion, like fire, was a dangerous thing. It so easily went out of control. It scaled walls and jumped over trenches. Sparks leapt like fleas and spread as rapidly; a breeze could carry embers for miles. Better to control that spark and pass it carefully from one generation to the next, like an Olympic torch. Or, perhaps, to tend it carefully like an eternal flame: a reminder of light and goodness that would never – could never – set anything ablaze. Carefully controlled. Domesticated. Happy in captivity. The key, she thought, was to avoid conflagration.”

 

“All up and down the street the houses looked like any others—but inside them were people who might be happy, or taking refuge, or steeling themselves to go out into the world, searching for something better. So many lives she would never know about, unfolding behind those doors.”

 

“The firemen said there were little fires everywhere,” Lexie said. “Multiple points of origin. Possible use of accelerant. Not an accident.”

 

My Take

After reading and thoroughly enjoying Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You, I had high expectations for Little Fires Everywhere.  I was not disappointed.  Ng, who has a great talent for character development and dialogue, is a wonderful storyteller who also makes you think.  In Little Fires Everywhere, I was left reflecting on relationships between mothers and daughters and the value and cost of a perfectly planned life.  Highly recommended.

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224. Celine

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Blair Norman

Author:  Peter Heller

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller

352 pages, published March 7, 2017

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Celine tells the story of Celine, a private investigator with a blue blood background who specializes in reuniting families.  After she is approached by Gabriela, a young woman who asks for help in finding out what happened to her missing father, Celine is drawn into a new mystery and a shadowy past.

 

Quotes 

“No: Human beings, by orders of magnitude, remained the most vicious animal on the planet.”

 

“A road trip frees the mind, revitalizes the spirit, and infuses the body with Dr Pepper and teriyaki jerky.”

 

“There might not be a measure of happiness left in a life, but there could be beauty and grace and endless love.”

 

“Pursuing fun is exhausting. Having fun is just fun. Much more relaxing just to do your work, don’t you think? I mean if you enjoy it.”

 

“Happiness was not a word that seemed to apply anymore, when she had lost so many close to her. There was a contentment that felt deeper, that acknowledged and accepted the quieter offerings of small joys– of love and occasional peace in a life that was full of pain.”

 

“The most indisputable beauty may be the one that people cannot ever touch. That God exists up there somehow, in the peaks and remote lakes and the sharp wind. Who knows why that picture stirs joy. It speaks directly to our impermanence and our smallness.”

 

“When we are most scared is the time to summon our clearest concentration and move forward, not back.”

 

“Dusk was moving over the water with a stillness that turned half the world to glass. The wall of mountains had gone to shadow as had the reflections at their feet. In the stillness the rings of rising trout appeared like raindrops. Slowly, in silence, the dark water tilted away from the remaining daylight.”

 

My Take

I went back and forth as to whether to give Celine 3 ½ stars or 4.  I ultimately decided on 4 based on the two things:   the finely drawn character portraits (especially of Celine) painted by author Peter Heller and his beautiful descriptions of the natural world.  The mystery at the center of this book is what weighed on the side of 3 ½.  I found the plot a bit thin and uninteresting.  However, I still really enjoyed this book and can recommend it.  Also, if you like Heller’s writing style, check out The Dog Stars, which is a great dystopian read.

 

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222. Five-Carat Soul

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  James McBride

Genre:  Fiction, Short Stories

320 pages, published September 26, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Winner of the U.S. National Book Award, Five-Carat Soul is a selection of short stories which focus on different African-American experiences. The stories feature a purgatory where a boxer and the other souls must make a case for themselves, a poor Pennsylvania neighborhood called The Bottom, telepathic zoo animals, a zealous toy collector and an eavesdropping Abraham Lincoln.

 

Quotes 

“The sadder the story, the more valuable the toy. That is a human element and it’s one that no painting has. The specific history of sorrow or joy in a child’s life, when determining the price, means the sky’s the limit.”

 

..an innocent child paying for generations of stolen trains, stolen cars, stolen land, stolen horses, stolen history, stolen people arriving at a strange land inside a merchant…                      

 

“Most cars drove through there because the drivers is either from The Bottom and wanna get home – or they ain’t from The Bottom and wanna get home in one piece.”

 

My Take

I really enjoyed all of the stories in Five-Carat Soul, especially the first one which delves into the arcane field of toy collecting. McBride, a masterful writer, draws the reader in with rich details into the various worlds he creates.  I listened to the audio version of this book and highly recommend it.  There are different narrators for each story and the voice work is excellent.

 

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