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554. Shame: How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Shelby Steele

Genre:  Non Fiction, History, Race, Public Policy, Politics

208 pages, published February 24, 2015

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

In Shame, Shelby Steele (a Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the grandson of a slave) writes about the roots of the polarization that we are experiencing today in the United States.  Amid the fighting and mistrust, we have squandered the promise of the 1960s when the nation came together to fight for equality and universal justice.  Shelby Steele posits that this impasse can be traced back to the 60’s when we uncovered and dismantled our national hypocrisies of racism, sexism, and militarism which caused liberals to internalize the idea that there was something inauthentic, if not evil, in the America character. Since then, liberalism has been wholly concerned with redeeming modern American from the sins of the past, and has derived its political legitimacy from the premise of a morally bankrupt America. The result has been a half-century of well-intentioned but ineffective social programs including Affirmative Action which have not only failed but caused harm to the minorities they were designed to help.  Steele argues that only by reviving our founding principles of individual freedom and merit-based competition can the troubling legacy of American history be redeemed, and only through freedom can we ever hope to reach equality.

Quotes 

“Poetic truth—this assertion of a broad characteristic “truth” that invalidates actual truth—is contemporary liberalism’s greatest source of power. It is also liberalism’s most fundamental corruption.”

 

“there also comes a time when he must stop thinking of himself as a victim by acknowledging that—existentially—his fate is always in his own hands.”

 

“It was the first truly profound strategic mistake we made in our long struggle for complete equality. It made us a “contingent people” whose fate depended on what others did for us.”

 

 “despite all he had endured as a black in the South in the first half of the twentieth century, he taught the boys that America was rich in opportunities for blacks if they were willing to work.”

 

“The problem is that this “place” is in the past. And it does no good to adapt to a past that is only an echo now. There is no refuge there.”

 

“conservatives suddenly saw that they needed to contest liberalism’s capture of the political and cultural establishment.”

 

My Take

This was a re-read of Shame in preparation for a Rotary Book Group that I was hosting and I got a lot more out of it on the second time through.  After reading two books written by Shelby Steele (White Guilt and Shame), I consider him to be one of the most original and compelling thinkers of the conservative movement.  He writes eloquently about the brutal racism his father experienced and the less than brutal, but still direct and odious, racism that he experienced as a young man.  In Shame, he explores how liberalism since the 1960’s has sought to capitalize on America’s shameful past of racism, sexism, and less than total fealty to the equality promises contained in our founding documents.  However, rather than elevate blacks, the liberal policies of welfare, preferences and affirmative action have hobbled them instead by leading them to believe that they are inferior to whites and need special dispensations to succeed.  Steele argues that only when we embrace a truly colorblind society will blacks rise to meet the challenges that freedom bestows on them.

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548. The Guest List

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Lucy Foley

Genre:   Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Crime

330 pages, published June 2, 2020

Reading Format:   Audiobook

Summary

The characters in The Guest List are referred to as the bride, the plus one, the best man, the wedding planner, and the bridesmaid.  They are all gathered on a small island off the coast of Ireland to attend the wedding of Will, a gorgeous reality TV star, and Julia, the publisher of a successful lifestyle website.  Everything is picture perfect until things start going wrong, very wrong.

Quotes 

“In my experience, those who have the greatest respect for the rules also take the most enjoyment in breaking them.”

 

“And I’m not worried about it being haunted. I have my own ghosts. I carry them with me wherever I go.”

 

“The rage is growing inside me, overtaking the shock and grief. I can feel it blossoming up behind my ribs. It’s almost a relief, how it obliterates every other feeling in its path.”

 

“Marriage is about finding that person you know best in the world. Not how they take their coffee or what their favourite film is or the name of their first cat. It’s knowing on a deeper level. It’s knowing their soul.”

 

“It’s always better to get it out in the open – even if it seems shameful, even if you feel like people won’t understand.”

 

“Nowhere on earth could possibly live up to those halcyon days. But that’s nostalgia for you, the tyranny of those memories of childhood that feel so golden, so perfect.”

 

“But it’s all about the moment, a wedding. All about the day. It’s not really about the marriage at all, in spite of what everyone says.”

 

“When he broke up with me, he told me that he would love me forever. But that’s total crap. If you love someone, really, you don’t do anything to hurt them.”

 

“You don’t get this. This isn’t your moment. You didn’t create it. I created it in spite of you.”

 

“…Life is messy. We all know this. Terrible things happen, I learned that while I was still a child. But no matter what happens, life is only a series of days. You can’t control more than a single day. But you can control one of them.  Twenty-four hours can be curated.”

 

“If I didn’t pay attention, one of those currents could grow into a huge riptide, destroying all my careful planning. And here’s another thing I’ve learned – sometimes the smallest currents are the strongest.”

 

“There’s another self that I sometimes feel I lost along the way. The girl who always stayed for one more drink, who loved a dance. I miss her, sometimes.”

 

“When I step outside the sun is just beginning to go down, spilling fire upon water. It tinges pink the mist that has begun to gather over the bog, that shields its secrets. This is my favourite hour.”

 

“I’m not interested in fashion for its own sake, but I respect the power of clothes, in creating the right optics.”

 

“But I wasn’t about to complain; we could never have afforded a florist of our choice. I wonder what it must be like to have the money to do exactly what you want.”

 

My Take

Since I listened to the audio version of The Guest List (a format I highly recommend with great voice work by mulitiple actors), I can’t technically call it a page turner.  However, I had a tough time stopping the playback as I really wanted to see what happened next.  Foley knows how to create suspense and tension and uses this skill to great effect.  With the beautiful, but eerie, setting of a small island with an old castle, The Guest List would make for a great film.  I hope to see it made.

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510. Shame: How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Shelby Steele

Genre:  Non Fiction, History, Cultural, Public Policy, Politics

208 pages, published February 24, 2015

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

In Shame, Shelby Steele (a Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the grandson of a slave) writes about the roots of the polarization that we are experiencing today in the United States.  Amid the fighting and mistrust, we have squandered the promise of the 1960s when the nation came together to fight for equality and universal justice.  Shelby Steele posits that this impasse can be traced back to the 60’s when we uncovered and dismantled our national hypocrisies of racism, sexism, and militarism which caused liberals to internalize the idea that there was something inauthentic, if not evil, in the America character. Since then, liberalism has been wholly concerned with redeeming modern American from the sins of the past, and has derived its political legitimacy from the premise of a morally bankrupt America. The result has been a half-century of well-intentioned but ineffective social programs including Affirmative Action which have not only failed but caused harm to the minorities they were designed to help.  Steele argues that only by reviving our founding principles of individual freedom and merit-based competition can the troubling legacy of American history be redeemed, and only through freedom can we ever hope to reach equality.

Quotes 

“Poetic truth—this assertion of a broad characteristic “truth” that invalidates actual truth—is contemporary liberalism’s greatest source of power. It is also liberalism’s most fundamental corruption.”

 

“there also comes a time when he must stop thinking of himself as a victim by acknowledging that—existentially—his fate is always in his own hands.”

 

“It was the first truly profound strategic mistake we made in our long struggle for complete equality. It made us a “contingent people” whose fate depended on what others did for us.”

 

 “despite all he had endured as a black in the South in the first half of the twentieth century, he taught the boys that America was rich in opportunities for blacks if they were willing to work.”

 

“The problem is that this “place” is in the past. And it does no good to adapt to a past that is only an echo now. There is no refuge there.”

 

“conservatives suddenly saw that they needed to contest liberalism’s capture of the political and cultural establishment.”

 

My Take

After reading two books written by Shelby Steele (White Guilt and Shame), I consider him to be one of the most original and compelling thinkers of the conservative movement.  He writes eloquently about the brutal racism his father experienced and the less than brutal, but still direct and odious, racism that he experienced as a young man.  In Shame, he explores how liberalism since the 1960’s has sought to capitalize on America’s shameful past of racism, sexism, and less than total fealty to the equality promises contained in our founding documents.  However, rather than elevate blacks, the liberal policies of welfare, preferences and affirmative action have hobbled them instead by leading them to believe that they are inferior to whites and need special dispensations to succeed.  Steele argues that only when we embrace a truly colorblind society will blacks rise to meet the challenges that freedom bestows on them.

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508. One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Ted Cruz

Genre:  Non Fiction, Law, Public Policy, Politics, Memoir

271 pages, published September 29, 2020

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

In One Vote Away, Senator (and former Supreme Court litigator as Texas Solicitor General) Ted Cruz writes about seminal Constitutional law cases before the Supreme Court and how the decision was often rendered by a single vote.  His detailed discussion includes cases impacting school choice, abortion rights, the right to bear arms, religious liberty, state and national sovereignty, freedom of speech, capital punishment, the rights of criminal defendants, and the criteria Republicans should use when selecting judges.

Quotes 

“The Supreme Court is supposed to protect our constitutional rights. It is also charged with securing our Constitution’s defining structural features, federalism and the separation of powers. Both doctrines protect Liberty by dividing power, by establishing checks and balances to prevent any branch of government from becoming too powerful…Over the past six decades, the Court has arrogated to itself far too much power– well beyond what it is entitled to under the Constitution. It has seized this power at the expense of Congress, the executive branch, the states, and We the People alike.

 

“An individual’s life prospects increase dramatically with each successfully completed phase of education.”

 

“Education is antecedent to most of our other public policy concerns. From poverty to crime to healthcare to substance abuse, if kids don’t get an education, we know that those other challenges are far more likely to follow; conversely, if children do get an excellent education, each of those problems is much more likely to be overcome. It is a damning stain on America’s conscience that a child’s chances of life success are so heavily influenced by– perhaps dictated by– the zip code in which he or she is raised. It is a profound civil rights crisis… the urgent need to secure access to a quality education– and access to educational choice, in particular– for every young American… In a just world, teachers unions would enthusiastically support school choice…But the union bosses who lead the teachers unions have decided that school choice is an existential threat to their power, and so they demand partisan fealty above all.

 

“There is no moral and just government that does not respect the religious liberty protections of its people. True political liberty, free speech, social stability,and human flourishing all depend upon a robust and durable protection, under the rule of law, of our fundamental right to choose our faith. And, on the flip side, efforts to undermine religious liberty and to persecute religious minorities are a telltale sign of tyrannical government.”

 

“In the Citizens United fight for free speech rights, “ While Senate Democrats sought to empower Congress to restrict individual citizens’ political speech rights, they did not want to apply that same treatment to giant media corporations like CNN and the New York Times…Citizens United was a conservative nonprofit corporation that made a movie critical of Hillary Clinton. And Senate Democrats now wanted to give the federal government the constitutional authority to punish anyone for criticizing Hillary Clinton or any other political candidate.”

 

“I believe in capital punishment. I believe in carrying out justice for those who commit unspeakable crimes, retribution for those who have been horribly victimized, and strong deterrence for the community to prevent horrific crime from happening again.”

 

“The way the First Step Act passed, through policy, legal, and constitutional arguments about what is right, appropriate, and just, through a consideration of facts and data and evidence about what is most effective in deterring crime and preventing recidivism– all of it was done through the legislative process That is how our system is supposed to work. Elected legislatures exist to consider and to weigh policy arguments and to reflect the wishes and values of the voters who elected them. When unelected judges seize issues of the criminal law and mandate that violent criminals receive lesser punishments, they are going against both the constitutional structure and their responsibility as judges.”

 

“If history teaches anything, it is that when people tell you they want to kill you, believe them. Or, at a minimum, don’t give them hundreds of billions of dollars to help them accomplish their objective. But, for whatever reason, Obama desperately wanted a deal with Iran.”

“Republicans have, historically speaking, been absolutely terrible at judicial nominations–…Republicans at best bat .500. Once confirmed as justices, at most, half of Republicans’ Supreme Court nominations actually behave as we hoped they might behave in terms of remaining faithful to their oath of office and the Constitution…The most important criteria that I believe should be applied is whether that individual (1) has a demonstrated proven record of being faithful to the Constitution and (2) has endured pounding criticism– has paid a price for holding that line.

 

My Take

One Vote Away was a quick and fascinating read.  I especially enjoyed all of the behind the scenes details that Cruz provides.  Rising from poverty, he has had quite the life.   However, I am an attorney and a Republican so I am the choir that Ted Cruz is preaching to.  Liberals may not like this book too much.

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502. Moonflower Murders

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Anthony Horowitz

Genre:    Fiction, Crime, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense

608  pages, published  November 10, 2020

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

In Moonflower Murders, best selling author and creator of Foyle’s War and Midsomer Murders Anthony Hororwitz picks up where his mystery Magpie Murders left off. As with Magpie Murders, Moonflower Murders cleverly features a book within a book.  The protagonist of the modern day mystery is Susan Ryeland, a book editor who returns to the United Kingdom after several years decompressing in Greece.  She comes home to solve a mysterious disappearance that is connected to a mystery novel she previously edited.  That novel features the famous literary detective Atticus Pund and is included in the book in its entirety.

Quotes 

“Everything in life has a pattern and a coincidence is simply the moment when the pattern becomes briefly visible.”

 

“What makes them dangerous is their belief that they should not be stopped, that they are justified in what they do. I will not speak of my experiences in the war, but I will say this. The greatest evil occurs when people, no matter what their aims or their motives, become utterly convinced that they are right.”

 

“On the one hand, they’re monstrous egotists. Self-confidence, self-examination, self-hatred even … but it’s all about self. All those hours on their own! And yet at the same time, they’re genuinely altruistic. All they want to do is please other people. I’ve often thought it must demand a sort of deficiency to be a writer.”

 

“Pünd had never seen murder as a game, not even as a puzzle to be solved. His work was an examination of humanity at its darkest and most desperate. You could not solve crime unless you understood its genesis.”

 

“There were books everywhere, hundreds of them on shelves that had been designed to fit into every nook and cranny, and it goes without saying that anyone who collects books can’t be all bad.”

 

 “I do not know what has brought you here or how you have been driven to an action as extreme as the one you are now contemplating,’ he said. ‘You must be very unhappy. Of that I am sure. Will you believe me if I say that no matter how bad things may appear, they will be better tomorrow if you allow tomorrow to do its work? That is the way of things, Miss Mitchell, and I am the living proof of it.”

 

“Atticus Pünd had no time for religion. During the war, he had been persecuted not for what he believed but for what he was, a Greek Jew whose great-grandfather had emigrated to Germany sixty years before he was born, unaware that although he was bettering his own life, his decision would lead to the extinction of almost his entire bloodline.”

 

 “We had managed to drift into that awful arena, so familiar to the long-term married couple, where what was left unspoken was actually more damaging than what was said. We weren’t married, by the way. Andreas had proposed to me, doing the whole diamond-ring-down-on-one-knee thing, but we had both been too busy to follow through, and anyway, my Greek wasn’t good enough yet to understand the service.”

 

 “It wasn’t that she would judge me. It was more that I would feel myself being judged.”

 

My Take

I read Magpie Murders during the second year of my reading quest and loved it.  I followed that with several more books by the incredibly talented writer Anthony Horowitz, but have not liked any of them nearly as much as Moonflower Murders, the sequel to Magpie Murders.  Horowitz knows how to spin a complex, incredibly clever trail that keeps you turning the pages long after bedtime.  I highly recommend (but read Magpie Murders first).

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496. The Last American Man

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Elizabeth Gilbert

Genre:   Non Fiction, Biography, Nature

241 pages, published  December 23, 2009

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Elizabeth Gilbert

Genre:   Non Fiction, Biography, Nature

241 pages, published  December 23, 2009

Reading Format:   Book

Quotes 

“I live in nature where everything is connected, circular. The seasons are circular. The planet is circular, and so is the planet around the sun. The course of water over the earth is circular coming down from the sky and circulating through the world to spread life and then evaporating up again. I live in a circular teepee and build my fire in a circle. The life cycles of plants and animals are circular. I live outside where I can see this. The ancient people understood that our world is a circle, but we modern people have lost site of that. I don’t live inside buildings because buildings are dead places where nothing grows, where water doesn’t flow, and where life stops. I don’t want to live in a dead place. People say that I don’t live in a real world, but it’s modern Americans who live in a fake world, because they have stepped outside the natural circle of life.

 

Do people live in circles today? No. They live in boxes. They wake up every morning in a box of their bedrooms because a box next to them started making beeping noises to tell them it was time to get up. They eat their breakfast out of a box and then they throw that box away into another box. Then they leave the box where they live and get into another box with wheels and drive to work, which is just another big box broken into little cubicle boxes where a bunch of people spend their days sitting and staring at the computer boxes in front of them. When the day is over, everyone gets into the box with wheels again and goes home to the house boxes and spends the evening staring at the television boxes for entertainment. They get their music from a box, they get their food from a box, they keep their clothing in a box, they live their lives in a box.

 

Break out of the box! This not the way humanity lived for thousands of years.”

 

“Show up for your own life, he said. Don’t pass your days in a stupor, content to swallow whatever watery ideas modern society may bottle-feed you through the media, satisfied to slumber through life in an instant-gratification sugar coma. The most extraordinary gift you’ve been given is your own humanity, which is about conciousness, so honor that consciousness.

Revere your senses; don’t degrade them with drugs, with depression, with wilful oblivion. Try to notice something new everyday, Eustace said. Pay attention to even the most modest of daily details. Even if you’re not in the woods, be aware at all times. Notice what food tastes like; notice what the detergent aisle in the supermarket smells like and recognize what those hard chemical smells do to your senses; notice what bare feet fell like; pay attention every day to the vital insights that mindfulness can bring. And take care of all things, of every single thing there is – your body, your intellect, your spirit, your neighbours, and this planet. Don’t pollute your soul with apathy or spoil your health with junk food any more than you would deliberately contaminate a clean river with industrial sludge.”

 

“He told me that one of the reasons people are so unhappy is they don’t talk to themselves. He said you have to keep a conversation going with yourself throughout your life to see how you’re doing, to keep your focus, to remain your own friend. He told me that he talked to himself all the time, and that it helped him to grow stronger and better everyday.”

 

“only those who live in the wilderness can recognize the central truth of existence, which is that death lives right beside us at all times, as close and as relevant as life itself, and that this reality is nothing to fear but is a sacred truth to be praised.”

 

 “Clever, ambitious, and always in search of greater efficiency, we Americans have, in two short centuries, created a world of push button, round the clock comfort for ourselves. The basic needs of humanity – food, clothing, shelter, entertainment, transportation, and even sexual pleasure – no longer need to be personally laboured for or ritualised or even understood. All these things are available to us now for mere cash. Or credit. Which means that nobody needs to know how to do anything any more, except the one narrow skill that will earn enough money to pay for the conveniences and services of modern living.

 

But in replacing every challenge with a short cut we seem to have lost something and Eustace isn’t the only person feeling that loss. We are an increasingly depressed and anxious people – and not for nothing. Arguably, all these modern conveniences have been adopted to save us time. But time for what? Having created a system that tends to our every need without causing us undue exertion or labour, we can now fill those hours with…?”

 

“Not making a living,’ he wrote, on his first trip to Alaska, ‘just living.”

 

“We are not alien visitors to this planet, after all but natural residents and relatives of every living entity here. This earth is where we came from and where we’ll all end up when we die, and during the interim, it is our home, And there’s no way we can ever hope to understand ourselves if we don’t at least marginally understand our home.”

 

“Revere your senses; don’t degrade them with drugs, with depression, with willful oblivion. Try to notice something new every day, Eustace said. Pay attention to even the most modest of daily details. Even if you’re not in the woods, be aware at all times. Notice what food tastes like, notice what the detergent aisle in the supermarket smells like and recognize what those hard chemical smells do to your senses; notice what bare feet feel like; pay attention every day to the vital insights that mindfulness can bring. And take care of all things, of every single thing there is – your body, your intellect, your spirit, your neighbors, and this planet. Don’t pollute your soul with apathy or spoil your health with junk food any more than you would deliberately contaminate a clean river with industrial sludge. You can never become a real man if you have a careless and destructive attitude, Eustace said, but maturity will follow mindfulness even as day follows night.”

 

“Only through constant focus can you become independent. Only through independence can you know yourself. And only through knowing yourself will you be able to ask the key question of your life: What is is that I am destined to accomplish, and how can I make it happen?”

 

“Train them to pay attention to their choices. (“Reduce, Reuse and Recycle are good ideas,” he would lecture, “but those three concepts should only be the last resort. What you really need to focus on are two other words that also begin with R- Reconsider and Refuse. Before you even acquire the disposable good, ask yourself why you need this consumer product. And then turn it down. Refuse it. You can.”)”

 

“On this day, Eustace was heating iron rods to fix a broken piece on his antique mower. He had a number of irons cooking in his forge at the same time and, distracted by trying to teach me the basics of blacksmithing, he allowed several of them to get too hot, to the point of compromising the strength of the metal. When he saw this, he said, “Damn! I have too many irons in the fire.”  Which was the first time I had ever heard that expression used in its proper context. But such is the satisfaction of being around Eustace; everything suddenly seems to be in its proper context. He makes true a notion of frontier identity that has long since passed most men of his generation, most of whom are left with nothing but the vocabulary.”

 

 “Think of the many articles one can find every year in the Wall Street Journal describing some entrepreneur or businessman as being a “pioneer” or a “maverick” or a “cowboy.” Think of the many times these ambitious modern men are described as “staking their claim” or boldly pushing themselves “beyond the frontier” or even “riding into the sunset.” We still use this nineteenth-century lexicon to describe our boldest citizens, but it’s really a code now, because these guys aren’t actually pioneers; they are talented computer programmers, biogenetic researchers, politicians, or media monguls making a big splash in a fast modern economy.

 

But when Eustace Conway talks about staking a claim, the guy is literally staking a goddamn claim. Other frontier expressions that the rest of us use as metaphors, Eustace uses literally. He does sit tall in the saddle; he does keep his powder dry; he is carving out a homestead. When he talks about reining in horses or calling off the dogs or mending fences, you can be sure that there are real horses, real dogs or real fences in the picture. And when Eustace goes in for the kill, he’s not talking about a hostile takeover of a rival company; he’s talking about really killing something.”

 

“The problem was that, while the classic European coming-of-age story generally featured a provincial boy who moved to the city and was transformed into a refined gentleman, the American tradition had evolved into the opposite. The American boy came of age by leaving civilization and striking out toward the hills. There, he shed his cosmopolitan manners and became a robust and proficient man. Not a gentleman, mind you, but a man.”

― Elizabeth Gilbert, The Last American Man

 

“..there’s no way we can ever hope to understand ourselves if we don’t at least marginally understand our home. That is the understanding we need to put our lives in some bigger metaphysical context. Instead, Eustace sees a chilling sight- a citizenry so removed from the rhythm of nature that we march through our lives as mere sleepwalkers, blinded, deafened, and senseless. Robotically existing in sterilized surroundings that numb the mind, weaken the body, and atrophy the soul.”

 

“Over the course of the summer, he taught the children to eat foods they had never known, to sharpen and use knives, to carve their own spoons, to make knots and play Indian games and- every time they cut a branch off a living tree- to cut away a small lock of their own hair, to leave as an offering of thanks.”

 

“Where it gets tricky is our deciding what we want Eustace Conway to be, in order to fulfill our notions of him, and then ignoring what doesn’t fit into our first-impression romantic image. My initial reaction on witnessing Eustace Conway’s life was relief. When I first heard of his life and his adventures, all I could think was Thank God. Thank God somebody in America was still living this way. Thank God there was at least one genuine mountain man, frontiersman, pioneer, maverick out there. Thank God there was one truly resourceful and independent wild soul left in this country. Because, at some deep emotional level, Eustace’s existence signified to me that somehow it’s still true, that we Americans are, against all other available evidence, a nation where people grow free and wild and strong and brave and willful, instead of lazy and fat and boring and unmotivated.”

 

My Take

I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Last American Man written by the talented writer Elizabeth Gilbert (made famous by her memoir Eat, Pray, Love).  Her subject, the anachronistic and fascinating Eustace Conway, who lives and preaches his ethos of living in complete harmony with nature seems out place in our modern, technological world.  However, his message resonated with me and made me contemplate how I live my life and the changes I could make to be more in synch with the natural world.

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494. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   J.K. Rowling

Genre:   Fiction, Young Adult, Fantasy

759 pages, published  July 21, 2007

Reading Format:   Audiobook

Summary

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the final book in the classic series by JK Rowling.  The book, and the series, build to a final confrontation between Harry and Voldemort.  Only one can survive.

Quotes 

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

 

“It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.”

 

“Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all those who live without love.”

 

“Death’s got an Invisibility Cloak?” Harry interrupted again.

“So he can sneak up on people,” said Ron. “Sometimes he gets bored of running at them, flapping his arms and shrieking…”

 

“Dumbledore watched her fly away, and as her silvery glow faded he turned back to Snape, and his eyes were full of tears.

“After all this time?”

“Always,” said Snape.”

 

“He can run faster than Severus Snape confronted with shampoo.”

“Cinderella? Snow White? What’s that? An illness?”

 “Albus Severus,” Harry said quietly, so that nobody but Ginny could hear, and she was tactful enough to pretend to be waving to Rose, who was now on the train, “you were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew.”

 

 “There was a clatter as the basilisk fangs cascaded out of Hermione’s arms. Running at Ron, she flung them around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. Ron threw away the fangs and broomstick he was holding and responded with such enthusiasm that he lifted Hermione off her feet.  “Is this the moment?” Harry asked weakly, and when nothing happened except that Ron and Hermione gripped each other still more firmly and swayed on the spot, he raised his voice. “OI! There’s a war going on here!”  Ron and Hermione broke apart, their arms still around each other.  “I know, mate,” said Ron, who looked as though he had recently been hit on the back of the head with a Bludger, “so it’s now or never, isn’t it?”

“Never mind that, what about the Horcrux?” Harry shouted. “D’you think you could just — just hold it in, until we’ve got the diadem?”  “Yeah — right — sorry —” said Ron, and he and Hermione set about gathering up fangs, both pink in the face.”

 

 “I’m going to keep going until I succeed — or die. Don’t think I don’t know how this might end. I’ve known it for years.”

 

 “Does it hurt?” The childish question had escaped Harry’s lips before he could stop it.

“Dying? Not at all,” said Sirius. “Quicker and easier than falling asleep.”

 

“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.”

 

 “Every second he breathed, the smell of the grass, the cool air on his face, was so precious: To think that people had years and years, time to waste, so much time it dragged, and he was clinging to each second.”

 

 “Here lies Dobby, a free elf.”

 

“Snape’s patronus was a doe,’ said Harry, ‘the same as my mother’s because he loved her for nearly all of his life, from when they were children.”

 

“The last words Albus Dumbledore spoke to the pair of us?’

Harry is the best hope we have. Trust him.”

 

My Take

I read through the entire Harry Potter set with my son Nick while he was in elementary school.  It was a pleasure then and at least an equal pleasure to listen to the audio version of the books during my reading quest.  Narrator Jim Dale is masterful, creating unique and fitting voices for all of the characters.  Author J.K. Rowling finishes the series strong with rising tension, compelling character arcs and a perfect ending.  Even if you have previously read the series, I highly recommend trying out the audio version (especially if you can do so with young kids).  You will not be disappointed.

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493. Atomic Habits

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   James Clear

Genre:    Nonfiction, Self-Improvement, Psychology

319 pages, published  October 17, 2018

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

In Atomic Habits, author James Clear provides readers with solid, well researched advice on how to better adopt healthy habits and rid yourself of bad ones.  He advocates adopting systems rather than relying on willpower.

Quotes 

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”

 

“The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. It’s one thing to say I’m the type of person who wants this. It’s something very different to say I’m the type of person who is this.”

 

“The more pride you have in a particular aspect of your identity, the more motivated you will be to maintain the habits associated with it. If you’re proud of how your hair looks, you’ll develop all sorts of habits to care for and maintain it. If you’re proud of the size of your biceps, you’ll make sure you never skip an upper-body workout. If you’re proud of the scarves you knit, you’ll be more likely to spend hours knitting each week. Once your pride gets involved, you’ll fight tooth and nail to maintain your habits.”

 

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

 

“You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.”

 

“When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy. You can be satisfied anytime your system is running.”

 

“Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.”

 

“When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it—but all that had gone before.”

 

“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.”

 

“All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision. But as that decision is repeated, a habit sprouts and grows stronger. Roots entrench themselves and branches grow. The task of breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak within us. And the task of building a good habit is like cultivating a delicate flower one day at a time.”

 

“Problem #1: Winners and losers have the same goals.”

 

“Be the designer of your world and not merely the consumer of it.”

 

 “The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It’s not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.”

 

 “Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.”

 

“When you can’t win by being better, you can win by being different.”

 

“Some people spend their entire lives waiting for the time to be right to make an improvement.”

 

“Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.”

 

“We imitate the habits of three groups in particular: The close. The many. The powerful.”

 

“If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.”

 

 “You don’t have to be the victim of your environment. You can also be the architect of it.”

 

 “The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. The outcome becomes expected. And as our habits become ordinary, we start derailing our progress to seek novelty.”

 

“It is easy to get bogged down trying to find the optimal plan for change: the fastest way to lose weight, the best program to build muscle, the perfect idea for a side hustle. We are so focused on figuring out the best approach that we never get around to taking action. As Voltaire once wrote, “The best is the enemy of the good.”

 

“When scientists analyze people who appear to have tremendous self-control, it turns out those individuals aren’t all that different from those who are struggling. Instead, “disciplined” people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control. In other words, they spend less time in tempting situations.”

 

“In fact, the tendency for one purchase to lead to another one has a name: the Diderot Effect. The Diderot Effect states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption”

 

“True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It’s not about any single accomplishment. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress.”

 

“With outcome-based habits, the focus is on what you want to achieve. With identity-based habits, the focus is on who you wish to become.”

 

 “Good habits can make rational sense, but if they conflict with your identity, you will fail to put them into action.”

 

“Over the long run, however, the real reason you fail to stick with habits is that your self-image gets in the way. This is why you can’t get too attached to one version of your identity. Progress requires unlearning. Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.”

 

“Your actions reveal how badly you want something. If you keep saying something is a priority but you never act on it, then you don’t really want it. It’s time to have an honest conversation with yourself. Your actions reveal your true motivations.”

 

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity. This is one reason why meaningful change does not require radical change. Small habits can make a meaningful difference by providing evidence of a new identity. And if a change is meaningful, it is actually big. That’s the paradox of making small improvements.”

 

“Meanwhile, improving by 1 percent isn’t particularly notable—sometimes it isn’t even noticeable—but it can be far more meaningful, especially in the long run. The difference a tiny improvement can make over time is astounding. Here’s how the math works out: if you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. Conversely, if you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero. What starts as a small win or a minor setback accumulates into something much more.”

 

“Breakthrough moments are often the result of many previous actions, which build up the potential required to unleash a major change. This pattern shows up everywhere. Cancer spends 80 percent of its life undetectable, then takes over the body in months. Bamboo can barely be seen for the first five years as it builds extensive root systems underground before exploding ninety feet into the air within six weeks. Similarly, habits often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold and unlock a new level of performance. In the early and middle stages of any quest, there is often a Valley of Disappointment. You expect to make progress in a linear fashion and it’s frustrating how ineffective changes can seem during the first days, weeks, and even months. It doesn’t feel like you are going anywhere. It’s a hallmark of any compounding process: the most powerful outcomes”

 

“This is why remaining part of a group after achieving a goal is crucial to maintaining your habits. It’s friendship and community that embed a new identity and help behaviors last over the long run.”

 

“The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom.”

 

“Habits reduce cognitive load and free up mental capacity, so you can allocate your attention to other tasks.”

 

“Emotions drive behavior. Every decision is an emotional decision at some level. Whatever your logical reasons are for taking action, you only feel compelled to act on them because of emotion. In fact, people with damage to emotional centers of the brain can list many reasons for taking action but still will not act because they do not have emotions to drive them. This is why craving comes before response. The feeling comes first, and then the behavior.”

 

“Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits. Your clutter is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits. You get what you repeat.”

 

“Happiness is simply the absence of desire.- When you observe a cue, but do not desire to change your state, you are content with the current situation. Happiness is not about the achievement of pleasure, but about the lack of desire. It arrives when you have no urge to feel differently. Happiness is the state you enter when you no longer want to change your state.

As Caed Budris says, “Happiness is the space between on desire being fulfilled and a new desire forming.”

 

“Becoming the type of person you want to become — someone who lives by a stronger standard, someone who believes in themselves, someone who can be counted on by the people that matter to them — is about the daily process you follow and not the ultimate product you achieve.”

 

“Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit. This is a distinguishing feature between winners and losers. Anyone can have a bad performance, a bad workout, or a bad day at work. But when successful people fail, they rebound quickly. The breaking of a habit doesn’t matter if the reclaiming of it is fast. I think this principle is so important that I’ll stick to it even if I can’t do a habit as well or as completely as I would like. Too often, we fall into an all-or-nothing cycle with our habits. The problem is not slipping up; the problem is thinking that if you can’t do something perfectly, then you shouldn’t do it at all.”

 

“You do it because it’s who you are and it feels good to be you. The more a habit becomes part of your life, the less you need outside encouragement to follow through. Incentives can start a habit. Identity sustains a habit.”

 

“Getting 1 percent better every day counts for a lot in the long-run.”

 

“We all deal with setbacks but in the long run, the quality of our lives often depends on the quality of our habits.”

 

My Take

Like The Happiness Project, Atomic Habits is a transformative book, full of extremely useful, actionable advice.  Author James Clear makes a compelling case that adopting positive systems and habits can transform our lives.  I especially appreciated his exploration of the role that identity plays in whether or not we succeed in positive habit formation.  For example, if you are trying to quit smoking instead of saying “No thanks, I’m trying to quit” when offered a cigarette, you should say “No thanks, I’m not a smoker.” The more you say, “I’m the type of person who _________,” the more you identify as that type of person and the more likely that you will be that type of person.  Well worth a read.

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471. The Glass Hotel

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Emily St. John Mandel

Genre:   Fiction, Mystery

302 pages, published March  24, 2020

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

The Glass Hotel is a fictional novel about money, beauty, white-collar crime, ghosts, and moral compromise.  It follows the story of Vincent, a beautiful young woman who works as a bartender at the five-star glass and cedar Hotel Caiette on an island in British Columbia, who becomes involved with Jonathan Alkaitis who works in finance and owns the hotel.   The day they meet, Vincent’s half-brother, Paul, writes on the windowed wall of the hotel: “Why don’t you swallow broken glass.”  From there, the story unfolds.

Quotes 

“Memories are always bent retrospectively to fit individual narratives.”

 

“There is exquisite lightness in waking each morning with the knowledge that the worst has already happened.”

 

“What kept her in the kingdom was the previously unimaginable condition of not having to think about money, because that’s what money gives you: the freedom to stop thinking about money. If you’ve never been without, then you won’t understand the profundity of this, how absolutely this changes your life.”

 

“One of our signature flaws as a species: we will risk almost anything to avoid looking stupid.”

 

“I’m no expert, but I remember reading somewhere, every time you retrieve a memory, that act of retrieval, it corrupts the memory a little bit. Maybe changes it a little.”

 

“It is possible to leave so much out of any given story.”

 

“A revelation earned only in hindsight: beauty can have a corrosive effect on character. It is possible to coast for some years on no more than a few polished lines and a dazzling smile, and those years are formative.”

 

“Did I say I liked working with her? I loved working with her. I considered her a friend. You know how rare it is to work with someone who loves their life?”

 

“It’s possible to both know and not know something.’ ”

 

“She’d never believed in love at first sight but she did believe in recognition at first sight, she believed in understanding upon meeting someone for the first time that they were going to be important in her life, a sensation like recognizing a familiar face in an old photograph: in a sea of faces that mean nothing, one comes into focus.”

 

“It’s just one future slipping away and being replaced by another.”

 

“Leon would not have predicted that he and his wife would turn out to be the kind of people who’d abandon a house. He would’ve imagined that such an act would bury a person under fathoms of shame, but here on the expressway in the early morning light, abandoning the house felt unexpectedly like triumph.”

 

“You know what I’ve learned about money? I was trying to figure out why my life felt more or less the same in Singapore as it did in London, and that’s when I realized that money is its own country.”

 

“In their late thirties they’d decided not to have children, which at the time seemed like a sensible way to avoid unnecessary complications and heartbreak, and this decision had lent their lives a certain ease that he’d always appreciated, a sense of blissful unencumberance. But an encumbrance might also be thought of as an anchor, and what he’d found himself thinking lately was that he wouldn’t mind being more anchored to this earth.”

 

“Maybe this could be enough. Maybe not everyone needs to have a specific ambition. I could be the sort of person who just goes to beautiful places and owns beautiful things.”

 

“But they were citizens of a shadow country that in his previous life he’d only dimly perceived, a country located at the edge of an abyss. He’d been aware of the shadowland forever, of course. He’d seen its more obvious outposts: shelters fashioned from cardboard under overpasses, tents glimpsed in the bushes alongside expressways, houses with boarded-up doors but a light shining in an upstairs window. He’d always been vaguely aware of its citizens, people who’d slipped beneath the surface of society, into a territory without comfort or room for error;”

 

“None of these scenarios seemed less real than the life she’d landed in, so much so that she was struck sometimes by a truly unsettling sense that there were other versions of her life being lived without her,”

 

My Take

I really loved The Glass Hotel and could not put it down.  Emily St. John Mandel is a very talented writer who has created compelling characters, a fascinating plot and intriguing themes.  I’ve been personally recommending this book for the past month and will continue to do so.

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464. Pretty Things

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Lisa Stock

Author:  Janelle Brown

Genre:   Fiction, Romance, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense

496 pages, published April 21, 2020

Reading Format:  e-Book on Overdrive

Summary

Pretty Things tells the story of two very different women.  Nina is a grifter who grew up bouncing from town to town with her less than honorable single mother.  Vanessa is an heiress who has made a name for herself as a lifestyle Instagram celebrity.  Their worlds collide in Lake Tahoe where the two engage in a cat and mouse, table turning game of deceit and duplicity.

Quotes 

“Nothing is ever as pure as it seems at first glance; there is always something more complicated to be found when you peel back the unmarred surface of pretty things.”

 

“Perspective is, by nature, subjective. It’s impossible to climb inside someone else’s head, despite your best-or worst-intentions.”

 

“It’s easiest to judge from distance. That’s why the Internet has turned us all into armchair critics, experts at the cold dissection of gesture and syllable, sneering self-righteously from the safety of our screens. There, we can feel good about ourselves, validated that our flaws weren’t as bad as theirs, unchallenged in our superiority. Moral high ground is a pleasant place to preach, even if the view turns out to be rather limited in scope.”

 

“But I suppose that’s the point of it all, for Vanessa: To throw herself into the world she wants to inhibit in the hopes of forgetting the one in which she really lives. Who am I to say she’s wrong to try? We all build our own delusions and then live inside them, constructing walls to conveniently hide the things we don’t want to see. Maybe it means that we’re crazy, or maybe it means that we’re monsters, or maybe it’s just the world we live in now makes it so hard to separate truth from image from dream.”

 

“Anything you do in fury’s service feels justifiable; no matter how petty, how small, how nasty or cruel.”

 

“Caption-and-comment culture in all its brevity leaves out the middle ground, where most of life is found.”

 

“Social media feeds the narcissistic monster that lives within us all, I would think to myself. It feeds it and grows it until the beast takes over and you are left outside the frame, just looking at images of this creature, like everyone else in your feed, wondering what it is that you birthed and why it’s living the life you wish you had.”

 

“Maybe our greatest strength as human beings is also our greatest weakness, the need to love and be loved.”

 

“and that, in fact, for most people not born into privilege, the playing field is a steep incline and you are at the bottom with boulders tied to your ankles.”

 

“They say DNA is destiny. And probably this is true for those with gift coded in their genes: say, a rare beauty or intelligence, the ability to run a four minute mile or dunk a basketball, or perhaps just innate cunning or insatiable drive. But for the rest of the world, those born without some obvious greatness, it’s not your DNA that will get you ahead; it’s the life you were born into. The opportunities you were (or weren’t) handed on a silver platter. It’s your circumstances.”

 

“Smarts mean a lot in the world, but good looks even more.”

 

“I watch and I wait. I study what people have, and where they have it. It’s easy because they show me. Their social media accounts are like windows into their worlds that they’ve flung open, begging me to peer inside and take inventory.”

 

“In the end, we are all our mothers’ children, no matter how saintly or evil they might be; and the loss of their love is the earthquake that cracks your foundation forever. It’s permanent damage.”

 

“This is the great horror of life: that mistakes are forever, and cannot be undone. You can never truly go back, even if you want to retrace your steps and take another route. The path has already disappeared behind you.”

 

“There is no one path in life that is set before you, I’m starting to realize; no one is making your decisions for you.”

 

“When you’re documenting everything you do, you stop living life for yourself and start living it as a performance for others. You’re never in the actual moment, just the response to the moment.”

 

“Sex—it can be about love, yes. And it’s wonderful when it’s that, and God, baby, I hope that’s what you’ve found. But it’s also a tool. Men use it to prove a point to themselves, about their power to take what they want. You’re just the first rung on the ladder of their world domination. And when that’s the kind of sex you’re having—which is most of the time—you got to make sure that you’re using it as a tool, too. Don’t let yourself be used up by them, all the time believing it’s some kind of equal relationship. Make sure you’re getting just as much out of it as they are.”

 

“Was it any wonder that people on the wrong side of the glass would eventually decide to take a hammer and break it, reach through and take some of it for themselves?”

 

My Take

Pretty Things was a roller coaster thrill ride that I whipped through.  In the same vein as Gone Girl, Janelle Brown knows how to write a cliff hanging page turner.  I love getting caught up in a non-stop, well written thriller and thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent reading Pretty Things.

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