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112. The Rosie Effect

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Lisa Stock

Author:   Graeme Simsion

Genre:  Fiction, Humor

368 pages, published July 21, 2015

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

The Rosie Effect, which is the sequel to The Rosie Project, follows Don Tillman and Rosie Jarman after they marry and move to New York to study and work at Columbia.  The happy couple faces a new challenge when Rosie discovers she is pregnant.  Don, whose Asperger’s Syndrome makes him a unique and unforgettable character, decides to learn all that he can about becoming a father.  However, it doesn’t take long for his unusual research style to get him into trouble.

 

Quotes

“I thought you were happy about having a baby.’ I was happy in the way that I would be happy if the captain of an aircraft in which I was travelling announced that he had succeeded in restarting one engine after both had failed. Pleased that I would now probably survive, but shocked that the situation had arisen in the first place, and expecting a thorough investigation into the circumstances.”

 

“To the world’s most perfect woman.’ It was lucky my father was not present. Perfect is an absolute that cannot be modified, like unique or pregnant. My love for Rosie was so powerful that it had caused my brain to make a grammatical error.”

 

“It is generally accepted that people enjoy surprises: hence the traditions associated with Christmas, birthdays, and anniversaries. In my experience, most of the pleasure accrues to the giver. The victim is frequently under pressure to feign, at short notice, a positive response to an unwanted object or unscheduled event.”

 

“Watch some kids, watch them play. You’ll see they’re just little adults, only they don’t know all the rules and tricks yet.”

 

“before sharing interesting information that has not been solicited, think carefully about whether it has the potential to cause distress.”

 

“After the most basic physical requirements are satisfied, human happiness is almost independent of wealth. A meaningful job is far more important.”

 

“In marriage reason frequently had to take second place to Harmony”

 

“I watched as she took a second sip, imagining alcohol crossing the placental wall, damaging brain cells, reducing our unborn child from a future Einstein to a physicist who would fall just short of taking science to a new level. A child who would never have the experience described by Richard Feynman of knowing something about the universe that no one had before”

 

“One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich laying bricks in Siberia probably generated a higher level of happiness than one day in the life of a retired rock star in a Manhattan penthouse with all the beer he could drink. Work was crucial to sanity. Which was probably why George continued to perform on the cruise ship.”

 

“It was odd, paradoxical-crazy-that what Rosie seemed to value most about me, a highly organized person who avoided uncertainty and liked to plan in detail, was that my behavior generated unpredictable consequences. But if that was what she loved, I was not going to argue. What I was going to argue was that she should not abandon something she valued.”

 

“Rain Man! I had seen the film. I did not identify in any way with Rain Man, who was inarticulate, dependent, and unemployable. A society of Rain Men would be dysfunctional. A society of Don Tillmans would be efficient, safe, and pleasant for all of us.”

My Take

During the first year of my thousand book quest, I read The Rosie Project and really enjoyed it.  It was clever, light and fun and had a great character in the person of Don Tillman whose Asperger’s Syndrome made for some hilarious situations and dialogue.  In The Rosie Project, Don is looking for a wife and approaches the endeavor with his characteristic logical mind only to end up with the unlikely choice of Rosie Jarmon.  In The Rosie Effect, author Graeme Simsion relies upon a similar formula, but this time applies it to Don’s impending fatherhood.  It’s not quite as clever and fun as the first book, but it was still a treat to read it and there are truly some very funny moments that had me laughing.

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95. Ordinary People

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Marianne Boeke

Author:   Judith Guest

Genre:  Fiction

263 pages, published October 28, 1982

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Ordinary People is set in upper class town of Lake Forest, Illinois during the 1970s and tells the story of the Jarrett family, parents Calvin and Beth and their son Conrad.  Before the action of the book begins, there was a second Jarrett son, Buck, who was killed in a boating accident while his brother Conrad survived.  The book focuses on Conrad’s coming to grips with his brother’s death.  While Conrad is shunned by his beautiful and perfect, but ultimately cold-hearted mother, his therapist and father are there to help him survive.  

 

Quotes

“Feeling is not selective, I keep telling you that. You can’t feel pain, you aren’t gonna feel anything else, either.”

 

“People have a right to be the way they are.”

 

“Riding the train gives him too much time to think, he has decided. Too much thinking can ruin you.”

 

“Depending on the reality one must face, one may prefer to opt for illusion.”

 

“The small seed of despair cracks open and sends experimental tendrils upward to the fragile skin of calm holding him together.”

 

“Life is not a series of pathetic, meaningless actions. Some of them are so far from pathetic, so far from meaningless as to be beyond reason, maybe beyond forgiveness.”

My Take

I saw the movie version of Ordinary People (a pretty good movie, but undeserving of the Best Picture Oscar) back when it was released in 1980 and was constantly comparing the novel to the movie while reading it.  While the novel is not as good as the movie, it is still readable (while seeming a little dated) and managed to hold my attention.  I found the character study of the ice queen mother Beth to be particularly interesting.  Too bad there wasn’t more of her story in the book.

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90. Ego is the Enemy

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  

Author:   Ryan Holiday

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Philosophy, Psychology, Self-Improvement

226 pages, published June 14, 2016

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

In his book Ego is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday demonstrates how the primary obstruction to a full, successful life is not the outside world, but rather our ego.   In addition to being an author, Holiday is a media strategist, the former Director of Marketing for American Apparel and a media columnist and editor-at-large for the New York Observer.  In Ego is the Enemy, he provides a selection of stories and examples, from literature to philosophy to history to highlight the role that ego plays in our success.  His profiles include historical figures such as Howard Hughes, Katharine Graham, Bill Belichick, and Eleanor Roosevelt and shows how they reached the highest levels of power and success by conquering their own egos.

 

Quotes

“ego is the enemy of what you want and of what you have: Of mastering a craft. Of real creative insight. Of working well with others. Of building loyalty and support. Of longevity. Of repeating and retaining your success. It repulses advantages and opportunities. It’s a magnet for enemies and errors. It is Scylla and Charybdis.”

 

“Your potential, the absolute best you’re capable of—that’s the metric to measure yourself against. Your standards are. Winning is not enough. People can get lucky and win. People can be assholes and win. Anyone can win. But not everyone is the best possible version of themselves.”

 

“Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive.”

 

“Most successful people are people you’ve never heard of. They want it that way. It keeps them sober. It helps them do their jobs.”

 

“And that’s what is so insidious about talk. Anyone can talk about himself or herself. Even a child knows how to gossip and chatter. Most people are decent at hype and sales. So what is scarce and rare? Silence. The ability to deliberately keep yourself out of the conversation and subsist without its validation. Silence is the respite of the confident and the strong.”

 

“It’s a temptation that exists for everyone—for talk and hype to replace action.”

 

“Almost universally, the kind of performance we give on social media is positive. It’s more “Let me tell you how well things are going. Look how great I am.” It’s rarely the truth: “I’m scared. I’m struggling. I don’t know.”

 

“When success begins to slip from your fingers—for whatever reason—the response isn’t to grip and claw so hard that you shatter it to pieces. It’s to understand that you must work yourself back to the aspirational phase. You must get back to first principles and best practices.”

 

“Attempting to destroy something out of hate or ego often ensures that it will be preserved and disseminated forever.”

 

“It’s not that he was wrong to have great ambitions. Alexander just never grasped Aristotle’s “golden mean”—that is, the middle ground. Repeatedly, Aristotle speaks of virtue and excellence as points along a spectrum. Courage, for instance, lies between cowardice on one end and recklessness on the other. Generosity, which we all admire, must stop short of either profligacy and parsimony in order to be of any use. Where the line—this golden mean—is can be difficult to tell, but without finding it, we risk dangerous extremes. This is why it is so hard to be excellent, Aristotle wrote. “In each case, it is hard work to find the intermediate; for instance, not everyone, but only one who knows, finds the midpoint in a circle.”

 

“People learn from their failures. Seldom do they learn anything from success.”

 

“One might say that the ability to evaluate one’s own ability is the most important skill of all. Without it, improvement is impossible. And certainly ego makes it difficult every step of the way. It is certainly more pleasurable to focus on our talents and strengths, but where does that get us? Arrogance and self-absorption inhibit growth. So does fantasy and “vision.”

 

“The only real failure is abandoning your principles. Killing what you love because you can’t bear to part from it is selfish and stupid. If your reputation can’t absorb a few blows, it wasn’t worth anything in the first place.”

 

“Take inventory for a second. What do you dislike? Whose name fills you with revulsion and rage? Now ask: Have these strong feelings really helped you accomplish anything? Take an even wider inventory. Where has hatred and rage ever really gotten anyone? Especially because almost universally, the traits or behaviors that have pissed us off in other people—their dishonesty, their selfishness, their laziness—are hardly going to work out well for them in the end. Their ego and shortsightedness contains its own punishment. The question we must ask for ourselves is: Are we going to be miserable just because other people are?”

 

“In failure or adversity, it’s so easy to hate. Hate defers blame. It makes someone else responsible. It’s a distraction too; we don’t do much else when we’re busy getting revenge or investigating the wrongs that have supposedly been done to us.”

 

“Pride blunts the very instrument we need to own in order to succeed: our mind. Our ability to learn, to adapt, to be flexible, to build relationships, all of this is dulled by pride.”

 

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. —RICHARD FEYNMAN”

 

“And why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice! —EURIPIDES”

 

“The world can show you the truth, but no one can force you to accept it.”

 

“Why do you think that great leaders and thinkers throughout history have “gone out into the wilderness” and come back with inspiration, with a plan, with an experience that puts them on a course that changes the world? It’s because in doing so they found perspective, they understood the larger picture in a way that wasn’t possible in the bustle of everyday life. Silencing the noise around them, they could finally hear the quiet voice they needed to listen to. Creativity”

 

“Imagine if for every person you met, you thought of some way to help them, something you could do for them? And you looked at it in a way that entirely benefited them and not you. The cumulative effect this would have over time would be profound: You’d learn a great deal by solving diverse problems. You’d develop a reputation for being indispensable. You’d have countless new relationships. You’d have an enormous bank of favors to call upon down the road. That’s what the canvas strategy is about—helping yourself by helping others.”

My Take

There are many pearls of wisdom in the slim volume Ego is the Enemy, which is what I like to call a “thinker book.”  Holiday made me think about the role that complacency and pride play in my life and also consider the pointlessness of anger.  It’s worth checking out.

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87. The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self Control

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  

Author:   Walter Mischel

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Psychology, Self-Improvement

336 pages, published September 23, 2014

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

A child is presented with a marshmallow and given a choice:  eat this one now, or wait and enjoy two later.  What will she do?  And what are the implications for her behavior later in life?  Walter Mischel, the world’s leading expert on self-control, has proven that the ability to delay gratification is critical for a successful life, predicting higher SAT scores, better social and cognitive functioning, a healthier lifestyle and a greater sense of self-worth. But is willpower prewired, or can it be taught?  Mischel explains how self-control can be mastered and applied to challenges in everyday life—from weight control to quitting smoking, overcoming heartbreak, making major decisions, and planning for retirement.  

 

Quotes

“What we do, and how well we control our attention in the service of our goals, becomes part of the environment that we help create and that in turn influences us. This mutual influence shapes who and what we become, from our physical and mental health to the quality and length of our life.”

 

“Self-control is crucial for the successful pursuit of long-term goals. It is equally essential for developing the self-restraint and empathy needed to build caring and mutually supportive relationships.”

 

“This is encouraging evidence of the power of the environment to influence characteristics like intelligence. Even if traits like intelligence have large genetic determinants, they are still substantially malleable.”

 

“Frances Champagne, a leader in research on how environments influence gene expression, is convinced that it is time to drop the nature versus nurture debate about which is more important and ask instead, What do genes actually do? What is the environment doing that changes what the genes do?”

 

“most predispositions are prewired to some degree, but they are also flexible, with plasticity and potential for change. Identifying the conditions and mechanisms that enable the change is the challenge.”

 

“the ability to delay immediate gratification for the sake of future consequences is an acquirable cognitive skill.”

 

“James Watson summarizes the conclusion: “A predisposition does not a predetermination make.”

 

“The idiosyncrasies of human preferences seem to reflect a competition between the impetuous limbic grasshopper and the provident prefrontal ant within each of us.”

“In the human body, each of approximately a trillion cells holds within its nucleus a complete and identical sequence of DNA. That is about 1.5 gigabytes of genetic information, and it would fill two CD-ROMs, yet the DNA sequence itself would fit on the point of a well-sharpened pencil.”

 

“The depressives, far from seeing themselves through dark lenses as we had presumed, were cursed by twenty-twenty vision: compared with other groups, their self-ratings of positive qualities most closely matched how the observers rated them. In contrast, both the nondepressed psychiatric patients and the control group had inflated self-ratings, seeing themselves more positively than the observers saw them. The depressive patients simply did not see themselves through the rose-colored glasses that the others used when evaluating themselves.”

My Take

While I had previously heard about the marshmallow test and was familiar with the connection between the ability to delay gratification and life success, it was interesting to go more in depth. The Marshmallow Test is an encouraging read in that researcher Mischel demonstrates that our genes are not our destiny and we can develop an ability to delay gratification.  This book is a good companion piece to Better than Before which focuses on habit formation and why positive habits are so important to our well-being.

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85. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  

Author:   Brené Brown

Genre:  Non-Fiction. Self-Help, Psychology

287 pages, published September 11, 2012

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Brené Brown begins Daring Greatly with the following quote from Theodore Roosevelt:  “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”   This famous quote captures the theme of Brown’s self-improvement tome. She encourages the reader to dare greatly by being vulnerable, having courage and engaging with our whole hearts.

 

Quotes

“Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.”

 

“Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”

 

“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.”

 

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.”

 

“If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.”

 

“Connection is why we’re here; it is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. The power that connection holds in our lives was confirmed when the main concern about connection emerged as the fear of disconnection; the fear that something we have done or failed to do, something about who we are or where we come from, has made us unlovable and unworthy of connection.”

 

“When I look at narcissism through the vulnerability lens, I see the shame-based fear of being ordinary. I see the fear of never feeling extraordinary enough to be noticed, to be lovable, to belong, or to cultivate a sense of purpose.”

 

“The real questions for parents should be: “Are you engaged? Are you paying attention?” If so, plan to make lots of mistakes and bad decisions. Imperfect parenting moments turn into gifts as our children watch us try to figure out what went wrong and how we can do better next time. The mandate is not to be perfect and raise happy children. Perfection doesn’t exist, and I’ve found what makes children happy doesn’t always prepare them to be courageous, engaged adults.”

 

“Wholeheartedness. There are many tenets of Wholeheartedness, but at its very core is vulnerability and worthiness; facing uncertainty, exposure, and emotional risks, and knowing that I am enough.”

 

“Spirituality emerged as a fundamental guidepost in Wholeheartedness. Not religiosity but the deeply held belief that we are inextricably connected to one another by a force greater than ourselves–a force grounded in love and compassion. For some of us that’s God, for others it’s nature, art, or even human soulfulness. I believe that owning our worthiness is the act of acknowledging that we are sacred. Perhaps embracing vulnerability and overcoming numbing is ultimately about the care and feeding of our spirits.”

 

“Those who feel lovable, who love, and who experience belonging simply believe they are worthy of love and belonging. I often say that Wholeheartedness is like the North Star: We never really arrive, but we certainly know if we’re headed in the right direction.”

 

“Vulnerability is not knowing victory or defeat, it’s understanding the necessity of both; it’s engaging. It’s being all in.”

 

“For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is “I didn’t get enough sleep.” The next one is “I don’t have enough time.” Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of. …Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds are racing with a litany of what we didn’t get, or didn’t get done, that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to that reverie of lack. …This internal condition of scarcity, this mind-set of scarcity, lives at the very heart of our jealousies, our greed, our prejudice, and our arguments with life.”

My Take

While there are some ideas expressed in Daring Greatly that I agreed with and was inspired by, as a whole the book didn’t have a huge impact on me.  However, I did appreciate Brown’s focus on the importance of vulnerability and wholeheartedness and concur that they are both important parts of having a meaningful and courageous life.

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84. The Time Keeper

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  

Author:   Mitch Albom

Genre:  Fiction

224 pages, published September 4, 2012

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The inventor of the world’s first clock is punished for trying to measure God’s greatest gift.  He is banished to a cave for centuries and forced to listen to the voices of all who come after him seeking more days, more years.  Eventually, with his soul nearly broken, Father Time is granted his freedom, along with a magical hourglass and a mission: a chance to redeem himself by teaching two earthly people the true meaning of time.  He returns to our world which is now dominated by the hour-counting he so innocently began.  He follows the journeys on two people, a teenage girl who is about to give up on life and a wealthy old businessman who wants to live forever.  To save himself, the Timekeeper must save them both.

 

Quotes

“Try to imagine a life without timekeeping.  You probably can’t.  You know the month, the year, the day of the week.  There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie. Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored.  Birds are not late.  A dog does not check its watch.  Deer do not fret over passing birthdays.  Man alone measures time.  Man alone chimes the hour.  And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures.  A fear of time running out.”

 

“We all yearn for what we have lost. But sometimes, we forget what we have.”

 

“There is a reason God limits our days.’  ‘Why?’  To make each one precious.”

 

“Everything man does today to be efficient, to fill the hour? It does not satisfy. It only makes him hungry to do more. Man wants to own his existence. But no one owns time. When you are measuring life, you are not living it.”

 

“As mankind grew obsessed with its hours, the sorrow of lost time became a permanent hole in the human heart. People fretted over missed chances, over inefficient days; they worried constantly about how long they would live, because counting life’s moments had led, inevitably, to counting them down. Soon, in every nation and in every language, time became the most precious commodity.”

 

“There was always a quest for more minutes, more hours, faster progress to accomplish more in each day. The simple joy of living between summers was gone.”

 

“When we are most alone is when we embrace another’s loneliness.”

 

“With no loss or sacrifice, we can’t appreciate what we have.”

 

“We do not realize the sound the world makes — unless, of course, it comes to a stop. Then, when it starts, it sounds like an orchestra.”

 

“She had been so consumed with escaping her own misery, she hadn’t considered the misery she might inflict.”

 

“This time was different. The tools of this era–phones, computers–enabled people to move at a blurring pace. Yet despite all they accomplished, they were never at peace.”

My Take

There are some interesting ideas in Mitch Albom’s The Time Keeper that made me think about my approach to time.  While I am usually concerned about being productive, I’m always happier when I make time to appreciate all of the many blessings in my life and in this world.  I’m even happier when I concretely express appreciation for these blessings.  While the story in The Time Keeper is not particularly compelling, the ideas it contains, especially the idea that we should take a step back from our fast paced world to smell the roses, makes the book a decent read.

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79. Wildflower

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  

Author:   Drew Barrymore

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Memoir

288 pages, published October 27, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

In Wildflower, Drew Barrymore examines her life through a series of vignettes which begin with her early years as a child actor through the birth of her two daughters.  It soon becomes apparent that Drew marches to the beat of her own drummer which is especially evident during her wild period that led to her stripping on The David Letterman Show.  It is interesting is to see how a rebellious non-conformist changed her ways and embraced a more grounded, chaste lifestyle once she had children.

 

Quotes

“I love my life and it takes every step to get to where you are, and if you are happy, then God bless the hard times it took you to get there. No life is without them, so what are yours, and what did you do with the lessons? That is the only way to live.”

 

“It’s ironic that we rush through being “single” as if it’s some disease or malady to get rid of or overcome. The truth is, most likely, one day you will meet someone and it will be gone. And once it’s gone, it’s really gone! Why does no one tell us how important it is to enjoy being single and being by yourself? That time is defining and amazing and nothing to “sure”. It is being alone that will actually set you up the best for being with someone else.”

 

“A stable, loving family is something that should absolutely, fundamentally never be taken for granted! I am lucky that I got dealt some cards that showed me what it’s like to not have family, and I am much luckier to now have the chance to create my own deck!”

 

“I was in a very free state in my life. This is something I struggle with as a mom because now that I have grown up, I couldn’t feel more passionate about being appropriate. Everything in my world is about being “appropriate.” People ask me, what are you going to tell your daughters about some parts of your life? I don’t want to have to lie, but I am much more invested in telling them how I found my values.”

My Take

If you like Drew Barrymore and her movies, and I generally do, then you will probably like Wildflower.  While Barrymore sometimes takes herself too seriously, she has led an interesting life and after many years of trying to find herself she has arrived in a place of stability, creativity, love and family.  Not the best memoir I’ve read, but still a light, enjoyable read.

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77. Sister Mother Husband Dog

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Delia Ephron

Genre:  Non Fiction, Memoir, Humor

240 pages, published September 17, 2013

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Sister Mother Husband Dog is a series of autobiographical essays about life, love, sisterhood, movies, and family written by Delia Ephron, best-selling author and writer of movies You’ve Got Mail, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Hanging Up, and Michael.  Ephron deftly captures the rivalry, mutual respect, and intimacy that made up her relationship with her older sister and frequent writing companion.

 

Quotes

“Wanting to be liked can get in the way of truth.”

 

“Being in your twenties has changed a lot since I was in my twenties, but it is still a time everything awful that happens is awful in a romantic way, even if you don’t admit it (and you can’t admit it because then you would be less important in the tragedy you’re starring in, your own life)…because in your twenties you know, even if you don’t admit this either, even if this is buried deep in your subconscious, that you can waste an entire decade and still have a life.”

 

“Irony, according to the dictionary, is the use of comedy to distance oneself from emotion. I developed it as a child lickety-split. Irony was armor, a way to stick it to Mom. You think you can get me? Come on, shoot me, aim that arrow straight at my heart. It can’t make a dent because I’m wearing irony.”

 

“To the night version of her (mother) I owe free-floating anxiety. I am no longer a child in an unsafe home, but anxiety became habit. My brain is conditioned. I worry. I recheck everything obsessively. Is the seat belt fastened, are the reservations correct, is my passport in my purse? Have I done something wrong? Have I said something wrong? I’m sorry – whatever happened must be my fault. Is everyone all right, and if they aren’t, how can I step in? That brilliant serenity prayer: God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. To all the children of alcoholics I want to say, Good luck with that. If I don’t do it myself, it won’t get done (this belief is often rewarded in this increasingly incompetent world). Also, I panic easily. I am not the person you want sitting in the exit row of an airplane.

 

“I was always decoding. I was hyperalert.  Being hyperalert is a lasting thing. Being a watcher. Noticing emotional shirts, infinitesimally small tremors that flit over another person’s face, the jab in a seemingly innocuous word, the quickening in a walk, an abrupt gesture – the way, say, a jacket is tossed over a chair.”

 

My Take

All in all, I enjoyed listening to Sister Mother Husband Dog, Delia Ephron’s autobiographical series of essays.  Meg Ryan read the audiobook version and her voice captures perfectly the essence of Ephron who is often insightful and humorous in a wry way.  While Ephron is a talented writer who has had an interesting life, this book does not rise to the level of a must-read or even come to mind when a friend asks for a book recommendation.  Hence, the award of three stars.

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67. The Social Animal

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   David Brooks

Genre:  Non Fiction, Sociology

424 pages, published March 8, 2011

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary 

The Social Animal is the story of how people succeed in our society.  It is told through the lives of Harold and Erica, a composite American couple, and follows how they grow, push forward, are pulled back, fail, and succeed.  Brooks infuses their lives with a vast amount of social science research to illustrate an understanding of human nature.  In the last thirty years, we have learned more about the human brain than we had in the previous three thousand. The unconscious mind which contains our emotions, intuitions, biases, longings, genetic predispositions, personality traits, and social norms is creative center where character is formed and where our most important life decisions are made.

Quotes

“It is an emotional and an enchanted place. If the study of the conscious mind highlights the importance of reason and analysis, study of the unconscious mind highlights the importance of passions and perception.”

 

“In his book Human Universals, Donald E. Brown lists traits that people in all places share. The list goes on and on. All children fear strangers and prefer sugar solutions to plain water from birth. All humans enjoy stories, myths, and proverbs. In all societies men engage in more group violence and travel farther from home than women. In all societies, husbands are on average older than their wives. People everywhere rank one another according to prestige. People everywhere divide the world between those inside their group and those outside their group. These tendencies are all stored deep below awareness.”

 

“Children are coached on how to jump through a thousand scholastic hoops. Yet by far the most important decisions they will make are about whom to marry and whom to befriend, what to love and what to despise, and how to control impulses.  On these matters, they are almost entirely on their own.  We are good at talking about material incentives, but bad about talking about emotions and intuitions.  We are good at teaching technical skills, but when it comes to the most important things, like character, we have almost nothing to say.”

 

“Most adults have a vocabulary of about sixty thousand words. To build that vocabulary, children must learn ten to twenty words a day between the ages of eighteen months and eighteen years.  And yet the most frequent one hundred words account for 60 percent of all conversations.  The most common four thousand words account for 98 percent of conversations. Why do humans bother knowing.”

 

“Plato believed the soul was divided into three parts: reason, spirit, and appetite. Reason seeks truth and wants the best for the whole person. Spirit seeks recognition and glory. Appetite seeks base pleasures.”

 

“Reason and emotion are not separate and opposed.  Reason is nestled upon emotion and dependent upon it.  Emotion assigns value to things, and reason can only make choices on the basis of those valuations. The human mind can be pragmatic because deep down it is romantic.”

 

“There must be some supreme creative energy, he thought, that can take love and turn it into synapses and then take a population of synapses and turn it into love. The hand of God must be there”

 

“People who succeed tend to find one goal in the distant future and then chase it through thick and thin.  People who flit from one interest to another are much, much less likely to excel at any of them.  School asks students to be good at a range of subjects, but life asks people to find one passion that they will follow forever.”

 

“If there is one thing developmental psychologists have learned over the years, it is that parents don’t have to be brilliant psychologists to succeed. They don’t have to be supremely gifted teachers. Most of the stuff parents do with flashcards and special drills and tutorials to hone their kids into perfect achievement machines don’t have any effect at all. Instead, parents just have to be good enough. They have to provide their kids with stable and predictable rhythms. They need to be able to fall in tune with their kids’ needs, combining warmth and discipline. They need to establish the secure emotional bonds that kids can fall back upon in the face of stress. They need to be there to provide living examples of how to cope with the problems of the world so that their children can develop unconscious models in their heads.”

 

“Much of life is about failure, whether we acknowledge it or not, and your destiny is profoundly shaped by how effectively you learn from and adapt to failure.”

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66. About Alice

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Calvin Trillin

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Memoir

96 pages, published December 26, 2006

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary 

In this very short memoir about his late wife, Calvin Trillin paints a moving portrait of Alice.  She was the wife who had “a weird predilection for limiting our family to three meals a day” and the mother who thought that if you didn’t go to every performance of your child’s school play, “the county would come and take the child.” Trillin tells stories of Alice as an educator who was equally at home teaching at a university or a drug treatment center, a gifted writer, a stunningly beautiful and thoroughly engaged woman who, in the words of a friend, “managed to navigate the tricky waters between living a life you could be proud of and still delighting in the many things there are to take pleasure in.”  Trillin deeply loved his wife and never quit trying to impress her.  The dedication of the first book he published after her death read, “I wrote this for Alice.  Actually, I wrote everything for Alice.”

Quotes

“Your children are either the center of your life or they’re not, and the rest is commentary.”

 

“School plays were invented partly to give parents and easy opportunity to demonstrate their priorities.”

 

“Among married couples the person who actually makes out the mortgage check is likely to be more cautious about spending money than the person who doesn’t. There is something sobering about sending away that much money every month in the knowledge that, rain or shine, you’ll have to come up with the same amount of money the next month and the month after that.”

 

“For Alice, of course, the measure of how you held up in the face of a life-threatening illness was not how much you changed but how much you stayed the same, in control of your own identity.”

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