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105. Finders Keepers

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   

Author:   Stephen King

Genre:  Fiction, Crime, Suspense, Thriller

431 pages, published June 2, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Finders Keepers is the second book in Stephen King’s Bill Hodges Triology (the first is Mr. Mercedes and the third is End of Watch) and the name of Bill Hodges’ Private Detective Agency.  Hodges is a retired detective who, in Mr. Mercedes which was book one of the series, stopped serial killer Brady Hartzfield before he could blow up an auditorium full of concert-going pre-teens.  While Hodges plays a role in Finders Keepers, the action focuses primarily on Morris Bellamy, a killer who murders a J.D. Salinger type figure and steals his writing notebooks which contain the fourth book in the acclaimed Jimmy Gold series with which Bellamy is obsessed, and Pete Saubers, a smart high school kid who thinks he has found an answer to his family’ money problems when he finds the stolen money and notebooks in the back yard of a house that had been occupied by Bellamy decades earlier.  When Bellamy is released from prison after serving more than 35 years on a on a different charge, he goes looking for his long buried treasure.  When he finds it missing, a cat and mouse game ensues with Bill Hodges and crew pulled back into action.  

 

Quotes

“For readers, one of life’s most electrifying discoveries is that they are readers—not just capable of doing it (which Morris already knew), but in love with it. Hopelessly. Head over heels. The first book that does that is never forgotten, and each page seems to bring a fresh revelation, one that burns and exalts: Yes! That’s how it is! Yes! I saw that, too! And, of course, That’s what I think! That’s what I FEEL!”

 

“As the twig is bent the bough is shaped.”

 

“No. I was going to say his work changed my life, but that’s not right. I don’t think a teenager has much of a life to change. I just turned eighteen last month. I guess what I mean is his work changed my heart.”

 

“They say half a loaf is better than none, Jimmy, but in a world of want, even a single slice is better than none.”

 

“A good novelist does not lead his characters, he follows them. A good novelist does not create events, he watches them happen and then writes down what he sees.  A good novelist realizes he is a secretary, not God.”

 

“Books were escape. Books were freedom.”

 

“Mostly because nobody with his kind of talent has a right to hide it from the world.”

 

“Don’t let your good nature cloud your critical eye. The critical eye should always be cold and clear.”

 

“Coldness went marching up his arms like the feet of evil fairies.”

 

“Some of you will say, This is stupid. Will I break my promise not to argue the point, even though I consider Mr. Owen’s poems the greatest to come out of World War I? No! It’s just my opinion, you see, and opinions are like assholes: everybody has one.” They all roared at that, young ladies and gentlemen alike. Mr. Ricker drew himself up. “I may give some of you detentions if you disrupt my class, I have no problem with imposing discipline, but never will I disrespect your opinion. And yet! And yet!” Up went the finger. “Time will pass! Tempus will fugit! Owen’s poem may fall away from your mind, in which case your verdict of is-stupid will have turned out to be correct. For you, at least. But for some of you it will recur. And recur. And recur. Each time it does, the steady march of your maturity will deepen its resonance. Each time that poem steals back into your mind, it will seem a little less stupid and a little more vital. A little more important. Until it shines, young ladies and gentlemen. Until it shines.”

 

“when someone says they’re going to be honest with you, they are in most cases preparing to lie faster than a horse can trot.”

 

“He kept seeing the brains dribbling down the wallpaper. It wasn’t the killing that stayed on his mind, it was the spilled talent. A lifetime of honing and shaping torn apart in less than a second. All those stories, all those images, and what came out looked like so much oatmeal. What was the point?”

My Take

I have always found Stephen King to be a masterful storyteller and he continues to please with Finders Keepers, the second book in the Bill Hodges trilogy.  Like he does in Misery, King has created a novel that is intense, suspenseful and has some interesting thoughts on a reader’s unhealthy obsession with a reclusive writer.  I found Finders Keepers to be an engrossing book (with excellent narration by Will Patton) and highly recommend it.

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101. The Nest

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  

Author:   Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney

Genre:  Fiction

368 pages, published March 22, 2016

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

The Nest follows the four dysfunctional siblings in the Plumb family who are thrown a curve ball when “the nest,” the name given to their sizable expected inheritance, is substantially reduced to pay for brother Leo’s recklessness.  Leo’s siblings, Melody, Beatrice, and Jack Plumb gather in downtown New York City to confront the charismatic and irresponsible older brother Leo.  We soon learn that all of the Plumbs have been counting on money from “the nest” to solve their self-inflicted problems. Melody, a wife and mother in an upscale suburb, has an unwieldy mortgage and looming college tuition for her twin teenage daughters.  Jack, an antiques dealer, has secretly borrowed against the beach cottage he shares with his husband, Walker, to keep his store open.  Bea, a once-promising short-story writer is struggling to finish her overdue novel.  Brought together by Leo’s irresponsibility, the Plumbs must ultimately acknowledge the choices they have made in their own lives.

 

Quotes

“They’d fallen into their old ways, accusatory and evasive, which was reassuring in a perverted way. Leo understood the nasty pull of the regrettable familiar, how the old grooves could be so much more satisfying than the looming unknown. It’s addicts stayed addicts.”

 

“She supposed she could Google, but she preferred to wonder.”

 

“This was the part she hated, the part of a relationship that always nudged her to bail, the part where someone else’s misery or expectations or neediness crept into her carefully prescribed world. It was such a burden, other people’s lives.”

 

“Parents are temporary custodians, keeping watch and offering love and trying to leave the child better than they found him.”

 

“People might not change but their incentives could.”

 

“If you want to predict a person’s behavior, identify his or her incentives.”

 

“If you want people to judge you based on the inside, don’t distract them from the outside.”

 

“People abandoned one another constantly without performing the courtesy of of actually disappearing. They left, but didn’t, lurking about, a constant reminder of what could or should have been.”

 

“She was so much better at being alone; being alone came more naturally to her. She led a life of deliberate solitude, and if occasional loneliness crept in, she knew how to work her way out of that particular divot. Or even better, how to sink in and absorb its particular comforts.”

My Take

I have long had an interest in stories about how money affects families and The Nest is one of the better ones that I have encountered.  While I was worked at a large law firm in Los Angeles, I had several discussions with our estate planning attorneys about how debilitating and corrupting it is for adult children to depend on their parents for support.  The more money, the more of a problem.  The Nest reinforces this conclusion as we see adults in the 40’s sink into bitter recriminations when an expected inheritance fails to materialize.  Sweeney captures this condition and also offers the reader several compelling character studies.

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97. The Master Butchers Singing Club

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Boulder Public Library Librarian

Author:   Louise Erdrich

Genre:  Historical Fiction, Fiction

388 pages, published February 4, 2003

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

The Master Butchers Singing Club focuses on the intertwined lives of Fidelis Waldvogel, a World War I German Sniper and master butcher who emigrates to North Dakota after the war, and American Delphine Watzka, who is part of balancing performance act with her homosexual husband and is a reluctant caretaker of her severely alcoholic father.  The men are all in a singing club, but the action of the story centers on Delphine as she struggles to find her place in the world.

 

Quotes

“She had always been a reader… but now she was obsessed. Since her discovery of the book hoard downstairs from her job, she’d been caught up in one such collection of people and their doings after the next…The pleasure of this sort of life – bookish, she supposed it might be called, a reading life – had made her isolation into a rich and even subversive thing. She inhabited one consoling or horrifying persona after another…That she was childless and husbandless and poor meant less once she picked up a book. Her mistakes disappeared into it. She lived with an invented force.”

 

“Something in her was changing as she read the books. Life after life flashed before her eyes, yet she stayed safe from misery. And the urge to act things out onstage could be satisfied cheaply, and at home, and without the annoyance of other members of an acting company. Her ambition to leave faded and a kind of contentment set in. She hadn’t exactly feared the word contentment, but had always associated it with a vague sense of failure. To be discontented had always seemed much richer a thing. To be restless, striving. That view was romantic. In truth, she was finding out, life was better lived in a tranquil pattern. As long as she could read, she never tired of the design of her days.”

 

“Delphine began to read with a mad attention when she wanted to talk to Clarisse. She saw that in her life there was a woman-shaped hole, a cutout that led to a mysterious place. Through it, her mother, then Eva, and now Clarisse had walked. If only she could plunge her arms through and drag them back.”

 

“As Delphine watched, into her head there popped a strange notion: the idea that perhaps strongly experienced moments, as when Eva turned and the sun met her hair and for that one instant the symbol blazed out, those particular moments were eternal. Those moments actually went somewhere. Into a file of moments that existed out of time’s range and could not be pilfered by God.”

 

“When small towns find they cannot harm the strangest of their members, when eccentrics show resilience, they are eventually embraced and even cherished.”

 

“She slowly became convinced…that at the center of the universe not God but a tremendous deadness reigned. The stillness of a drunk God, passed out cold…She had learned of it in that house…where the drunks crashed…Things had happened to her there. She was neither raped nor robbed, nor did she experience God’s absence to any greater degree than other people did. She wasn’t threatened or made to harm anyone against her will. She wasn’t beaten, either, or deprived of speech or voice. It was, rather, the sad blubbering stories she heard in the house. Delphine witnessed awful things occurring to other humans. Worse than that, she was powerless to alter their fate. It would be that way all her life – disasters, falling like chairs all around her, falling so close they disarranged her hair, but not touching her.”

 

“Our songs travel the earth. We sing to one another. Not a single note is ever lost and no song is original. They all come from the same place and go back to a time when only the stones howled.”

My Take

It was a pleasure to read The Master Butchers Singing Club.  While Erlich’s characters are quirky and unconventional, she infuses them with such a strong core of humanity that it makes them both fascinating and relatable.  The story meanders at times and there are a few parts that could have been easily excised.  Still, it is worth reading The Master Butchers Singing Club and I recommend it.

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96. The Dinner

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Boulder Public Library Librarian

Author:   Herman Koch

Genre:  Fiction, Suspense

292 pages, published February 12, 2013

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Set in an exclusive, high priced Amsterdam restaurant, The Dinner starts off with the polite conversation of two couples.  However, the empty words hide a terrible conflict and, with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened. Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. Together, the boys have committed a horrifying act which has been caught on camera and their grainy images have been broadcast throughout the country.  Despite an ongoing investigation, the boys remain unidentified by everyone except their parents.  At the end of the dinner, the couples finally confront the crisis with their children and each of them must decide what they are prepared to accept and do.  

 

Quotes

“That was how I looked at life sometimes, as a warm meal that was growing cold. I knew I had to eat, or else I would die, but I had lost my appetite.”

 

“This particular restaurant is one where you have to call three months in advance—or six, or eight, don’t ask me. Personally, I’d never want to know three months in advance where I’m going to eat on any given evening, but apparently some people don’t mind. A few centuries from now, when historians want to know what kind of crazies people were at the start of the twenty-first century, all they’ll have to do is look at the computer files of the so-called “top” restaurants.”

 

“Sometimes things come out of your mouth that you regret later on. Or no, not regret. You say something so razor-sharp that the person you say it to carries it around with them for the rest of their life.”

 

“If I had to give a definition of happiness, it would be this: happiness needs nothing but itself; it doesn’t have to be validated.”

 

“When the conversation turns too quickly to films, I see it as a sign of weakness. I mean: films are more something for the end of the evening, when you really don’t have much else to talk about. I don’t know why, but when people start talking about films, I always get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, like when you wake up in the morning and find that it’s already getting dark outside.”

 

“The first thing that struck you about Claire’s plate was its vast emptiness. Of course I’m well aware that, in the better restaurants, quality takes precedence over quantity, but there are voids and then there are voids. The void here, that part of the plate on which no food at all was present, had clearly been raised to a matter of principle.

It was as though the empty plate was challenging you to say something about it, to go to the open kitchen and demand an explanation. ‘You wouldn’t even dare!’ the plate said, and laughed in your face.”

 

“I let them do some simple arithmetic. In a group of one hundred people, how many assholes are there? How many fathers who humiliate their children? How many morons whose breath stinks like rotten meat but who refuse to do anything about it? How many hopeless cases who go on complaining all their lives about the non-existent injustices they’ve had to suffer? Look around you, I said. How many of your classmates would you be pleased not to see return to their desks tomorrow morning? Think about that one family member of your own family, that irritating uncle with his pointless, horseshit stories at birthday parties, that ugly cousin who mistreats his cat. Think about how relieved you would be – and not only you, but virtually the entire family – if that uncle or cousin would step on a landmine or be hit by a five-hundred-pounder dropped from a high altitude. If that member of the family were to be wiped off the face of the earth. And now think about all those millions of victims of all the wars there have been in the past – I never specifically mentioned the Second World War, I used it as an example because it’s the one that most appeals to their imaginations – and think about the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of victims who we need to have around like we need a hole in the head. Even from a purely statistical standpoint, it’s impossible that all those victims were good people, whatever kind of people that may be. The injustice is found more in the fact that the assholes are also put on the list of innocent victims. That their names are also chiselled into the war memorials.”

My Take

I didn’t know what to expect when I started listening to The Dinner.  At first, it seemed like a clever, satirical commentary on our societal preening and pretensions.  However, as the story unfolds, The Dinner becomes a commentary on the callousness of society at large and it delivers a stinging indictment with rhetorical flare.  An interesting book by a talented writer.

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93. What Alice Forgot

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Heather Bohart

Author:   Lianne Moriarty

Genre:  Fiction, Romance

476 pages, published 2009

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

As the book opens, Alice Love is twenty-nine, head over heels in love with her husband and pregnant with her first child.  When Alice is admitted to the hospital after hitting her head at the gym, she is shocked to discover that she is actually 39 years old, has three kids, is in the middle of a nasty divorce and does not seem to be the person she thought she was.  As the book unfolds, Alice must discover what happened to her and the idyllic life she thought she had.  

 

Quotes

“Early love is exciting and exhilarating. It’s light and bubbly. Anyone can love like that. But after three children, after a separation and a near-divorce, after you’ve hurt each other and forgiven each other, bored each other and surprised each other, after you’ve seen the worst and the best– well, that sort of love is ineffable. It deserves its own word.”

 

“He got Alice, the way we did, or maybe even more so than us. He made her more confident, funnier, smarter. He brought out all the things that were there already and let her be fully herself, so she seemed to shine with this inner light.”

 

“They would think she was savoring the taste (blueberries, cinnamon, cream-excellent), but she was actually savoring the whole morning, trying to catch it, pin it down, keep it safe before all those precious moments became yet another memory.”

 

“How strange it all was. Wouldn’t it be a lot less messy if everyone just stayed with the people they married in the first place?”

 

“She was busy thinking about the concept of forgiveness. It was such a lovely, generous idea when it wasn’t linked to something awful that needed forgiving.”

 

“It was good to remember that for every horrible memory from her marriage, there was also a happy one. She wanted to see it clearly, to understand that it wasn’t all black, or all white. It was a million colors. And yes, ultimately it hadn’t worked out, but that was okay. Just because a marriage ended didn’t mean that it hadn’t been happy at times.”

 

“Each memory, good and bad, was another invisible thread that bound them together, even when they were foolishly thinking they could lead separate lives. It was as simple and complicated as that.”

 

“There just wasn’t enough time in 2008. It had become a limited resource. Back in 1998, the days were so much more spacious. When she woke up in the morning, the day rolled out in front of her like a long hallway for her to meander down, free to linger over the best parts. Days were so stingy now. Mean slivers of time. They flew by like speeding cars. Whoosh! When she was pulling back the blankets to hop into bed each night, it felt as if only seconds ago.”

 

“But maybe every life looked wonderful if all you saw was the photo albums.”

 

“I’d be at work where poeple respected my opinions, said Nick. And then, I’d come home and it was like I was the village idiot.”

 

“We’d traveled, we’d been to lots of parties, lots of movies and concerts, we’d slept in. We’d done all those things that people with children seem to miss so passionately. We didn’t want those things anymore. We wanted a baby.”

 

“I remember how it crept up so slowly on me, like that agonizingly slow old electric blanket which used to almost imperceptibly heat up my frosty sheets, second by second, until I’d think, “Hey, I haven’t shivered in a while. Actually, I’m warm. I’m blissfully warm.” That’s how it was with Ben. I moved on from “I really shouldn’t be leading this guy on when I have no interest” to “He’s not that bad-looking really” to “I sort of enjoy being with him” to “Actually, I’m crazy about him.”

 

My Take

What Alice Forgot is the third book by Liane Moriarity that I have read since starting my thousand book quest (the first two are Big Little Lies and The Husband’s Secret) and it does not disappoint.  Moriarity has a formula that typifies her books and it works well for her.  Her books are set in Australia with several female protagonists and one or, usually more than one, of them has a conflict to be resolved.  There is also typically some sort of twist.  By the end of the book, all has been settled and the characters are ready to move on with their newly improved lives. While What Alice Forgot hews closely to the Moriarity formula, it’s insights into long-term marriages and how we change in them does offer some novelty and interest.  Easy read.  Perfect vacation book.

 

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88. Yes, Please

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  

Author:   Amy Poehler

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Memoir, Humor

329 pages, published October 28, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Yes Please is a humorous memoir by Amy Poehler of Saturday Night Live and Parks and Rec fame.  In plainspoken and irreverent style, Amy recounts stories from her normal childhood all the way through her divorce from fellow comedian Will Arnett.  The title “Yes Please” refers to her formative experience with the Upright Citizens Brigade, an improv group in which she was taught to say “yes” to any improv idea thrown her way.  “Yes Please” is also  an apt description of her response to a wide range of opportunities throughout her life.  With chapters like “Treat Your Career Like a Bad Boyfriend,” “Plain Girl Versus the Demon” and “The Robots Will Kill Us All” “Yes Please” will make you both think and laugh.  

 

Quotes

“It’s called Yes Please because it is the constant struggle and often the right answer. Can we figure out what we want, ask for it, and stop talking? Yes please. Is being vulnerable a power position? Yes please. Am I allowed to take up space? Yes please. Would you like to be left alone? Yes please. I love saying “yes” and I love saying “please.” Saying “yes” doesn’t mean I don’t know how to say no, and saying “please” doesn’t mean I am waiting for permission. “Yes please” sounds powerful and concise. It’s a response and a request. It is not about being a good girl; it is about being a real woman. It’s also a title I can tell my kids. I like when they say “Yes please” because most people are rude and nice manners are the secret keys to the universe.”

 

“I want to be around people that do things. I don’t want to be around people anymore that judge or talk about what people do. I want to be around people that dream and support and do things.”

 

“You do it because the doing of it is the thing. The doing is the thing. The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing.”

 

“I think we should stop asking people in their twenties what they “want to do” and start asking them what they don’t want to do.”

 

“Anger and embarrassment are often neighbors.”

 

“Your ability to navigate and tolerate change and its painful uncomfortableness directly correlates to your happiness and general well-being. See what I just did there? I saved you thousands of dollars on self-help books. If you can surf your life rather than plant your feet, you will be happier.”

 

“Either way, we both agree that ambivalence is a key to success. I will say it again. Ambivalence is key. You have to care about your work but not the result. You have to care about how good you and how good you feel, but now about how good people think you are or how good people think you look I realize this is extremely difficult. I am not saying I am particularly good at it. I’m like you. Or maybe you’er better at this and I am. You will never climb Career Mountain and get to the top and shout, ‘I made it!’ You will rarely feel done or complete or even successful Most people I know struggle with that complicated soup of feeling slighted on one hand and like a total fraud on the other. Our ego is a monster that loves to sit at the head of the table, and I have learned that my ego is just as rude and loud and hungry as everyone else’s. It doesn’t matter how much you get; you are left wanting more. Success is filled with MSG.”

 

“However, if you do start crying in an argument and someone asks why, you can always say, “I’m just crying because of how wrong you are.”

 

“The only way we will survive is by being kind. The only way we can get by in this world is through the help we receive from others. No one can do it alone, no matter how great the machines are.”

 

“You have to care about your work but not about the result. You have to care about how good you are and how good you feel, but not about how good people think you are or how good people think you look.”

 

“Decide what your currency is early. Let go of what you will never have. People who do this are happier and sexier.”

 

“Watching great people do what you love is a good way to start learning how to do it yourself.”

 

“Great people do things before they’re ready. They do things before they know they can do it. Doing what you’re afraid of, getting out of your comfort zone, taking risks like that- that’s what life is. You might be really good. You might find out something about yourself that’s really special and if you’re not good, who cares? You tried something. Now you know something about yourself”

 

“Hopefully as you get older, you start to learn how to live with your demon. It’s hard at first. Some people give their demon so much room that there is no space in their head or bed for love. They feed their demon and it gets really strong and then it makes them stay in abusive relationships or starve their beautiful bodies. But sometimes, you get a little older and get a little bored of the demon. Through good therapy and friends and self-love you can practice treating the demon like a hacky, annoying cousin. Maybe a day even comes when you are getting dressed for a fancy event and it whispers, “You aren’t pretty,” and you go, “I know, I know, now let me find my earrings.” Sometimes you say, “Demon, I promise you I will let you remind me of my ugliness, but right now I am having hot sex so I will check in later.”

 

“Career is different. Career is the stringing together of opportunities and jobs. Mix in public opinion and past regrets. Add a dash of future panic and a whole lot of financial uncertainty. Career is something that fools you into thinking you are in control and then takes pleasure in reminding you that you aren’t. Career is the thing that will not fill you up and never make you truly whole. Depending on your career is like eating cake for breakfast and wondering why you start crying an hour later.”

“The truth is, writing is this: hard and boring and occasionally great but usually not.”

 

“I am introducing a new idea. Try to care less. Practice ambivalence. Learn to let go of wanting it.”

 

“Fighting aging is like the War on Drugs. It’s expensive, does more harm than good, and has been proven to never end.”

 

“Now, before I extend this metaphor, let me make a distinction between career and creativity. Creativity is connected to your passion, that light inside you that drives you. That joy that comes when you do something you love. That small voice that tells you, “I like this. Do this again. You are good at it. Keep going.” That is the juicy stuff that lubricates our lives and helps us feel less alone in the world. Your creativity is not a bad boyfriend. It is a really warm older Hispanic lady who has a beautiful laugh and loves to hug. If you are even a little bit nice to her she will make you feel great and maybe cook you delicious food.”

 

“I asked the indefatigable Betty White what she was going to do when she got home. She told me she was going to fix herself a “vodka on the rocks and eat a cold hot dog.” In one sentence, she proved my theory and made me excited for my future.”

 

“Annie taught me that orphanages were a blast and being rich is the only thing that matters. Grease taught me being in a gang is nonstop fun and you need to dress sexier to have any chance of keeping a guy interested.”

 

“Because remember, the talking about the thing isn’t the thing. The doing of the thing is the thing.”

 

“nice manners are the secret keys to the universe.”

 

“Ignore what other people think. Most people aren’t even paying attention to you.”

My Take

I listened to Amy Poehler’s Yes Please which was read by Poehler and, like Tina Fey’s Bossy Pants, I recommend the audio version of this book.  Like Fey, Poehler has led an interesting life with lots of twists and turns.  Reading both Yes Please and Bossy Pants, you will see that Poehler and Fey are in a mutual admiration society as each book has a significant discussion about the other. Poehler’s memoir is filled with sage advice for women working and raising a family and lots of humor to boot.  I unequivocally recommend it.

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83. Modern Romance

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  

Author:   Aziz Ansari

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Humor

288 pages, published June 16, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

With the advent of smart phones, texting, social media, and on-line dating, things have changed dramatically in the past few decades.  Single people today have more romantic options than at any point in human history, but are often more frustrated as they try to find Mr. or Mrs. Right.  In Modern Romance, comic Aziz Ansari takes a look at modern day courting and relationships.  Ansari teamed up with NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg and consulted with some of the world’s leading social scientists. They designed a massive research project, including hundreds of interviews and focus groups conducted everywhere from Tokyo to Buenos Aires to Wichita.  They analyzed behavioral data and surveys and created their own online research forum on Reddit, which drew thousands of messages.  The result is a unique book which combines social science and humor.

 

Quotes

“Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide: Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort, give me edge. Give me novelty, give me familiarity. Give me predictability, give me surprise. And we think it’s a given, and toys and lingerie are going to save us with that. Ideally, though, we’re lucky, and we find our soul mate and enjoy that life-changing mother lode of happiness. But a soul mate is a very hard thing to find.”

 

“Like most fedora wearers, he had a lot of inexplicable confidence.”

 

“When I’ve really been in love with someone, it’s not because they looked a certain way or liked a certain TV show or a certain cuisine. It’s more because when I watched a certain TV show or ate a certain cuisine with them, it was the most fun thing ever.”

 

“We want something that’s very passionate, or boiling, from the get-go. In the past, people weren’t looking for something boiling; they just needed some water. Once they found it and committed to a life together, they did their best to heat things up. Now, if things aren’t boiling, committing to marriage seems premature.”

 

“As a medium, it’s safe to say, texting facilitates flakiness and rudeness and many other personality traits that would not be expressed in a phone call or an in-person interaction.”

 

“No matter how many options we have, the real challenge is figuring out how to evaluate them.”

 

“That’s the thing about the Internet: It doesn’t simply help us find the best thing out there; it has helped to produce the idea that there is a best thing and, if we search hard enough, we can find it. And in turn there are a whole bunch of inferior things that we’d be foolish to choose.”

 

“This kind of rigor goes into a lot of my decision making. Whether it’s where I’m eating, where I’m traveling, or, god forbid, something I’m buying, I feel compelled to do a lot of research to make sure I’m getting the best.  At certain times, though, this “I need the best” mentality can be debilitating. I wish I could just eat somewhere that looks good and be happy with my choice. But I can’t. The problem is that I know somewhere there is a perfect meal for me and I have to do however much research I can to find it.”

 

“Finding someone today is probably more complicated and stressful than it was for previous generations—but you’re also more likely to end up with someone you are really excited about.”

 

“There is no official guidebook anywhere on texting yet, but a cultural consensus has slowly formed in regard to texts. Some basic rules:  Don’t text back right away. You come off like a loser who has nothing going on.  If you write to someone, don’t text them again until you hear from them.  The amount of text you write should be of a similar length to what the other person has written to you. Carrying this through, if your messages are in blue and the other person’s messages are green, if there is a shit ton more blue than green in your conversation, this person doesn’t give a shit about you.  The person who receives the last message in a convo WINS!”

 

“We repeatedly found that one text can change the whole dynamic of a budding relationship. … When I spoke with Sherry Turkle about this, she said that texting, unlike an in-person conversation, is not a forgiving medium for mistakes. In a face-to-face conversation, people can read each other’s body language, facial expressions, and tones of voice. If you say something wrong, you have the cues to sense it and you have a moment to recover or rephrase before it makes a lasting impact. Even on the phone you can hear a change in someone’s voice or a pause to let you know how they are interpreting what you’ve said. In text, your mistake just sits there marinating on the other person’s screen, leaving a lasting record of your ineptitude and bozoness.”

 

“Unlike phone calls, which bind two people in real-time conversations that require at least some shared interpretation of the situation, communication by text has no predetermined temporal sequencing and lots of room for ambiguity. Did I just use the phrase “predetermined temporal sequencing”? Fuck yeah, I did.”

 

“The most popular time to sext is Tuesday between 10:00 A.M. and noon. Yes, we looked this up twice. Strange!”

 

“Sheena Iyengar, a Columbia University professor who specializes in research on choice, put it to me another way: “People are not products,” she said bluntly. “But, essentially, when you say, ‘I want a guy that’s six foot tall and has blah, blah, blah characteristics,’ you’re treating a human being like one.”

 

“After the rings, the priest should just say, “Enjoy it, bing-bongs. Due to our brain’s tendency toward hedonic adaptation, you won’t feel quite this giddy in a few years. All right, where’s the pigs in a blanket? I’m outta here.”

 

“Want to know what’s filling up the phones of nearly every single woman? It’s this: “Hey,” “Hey!” Heyyy!!” “Hey what’s going?” “Wsup,” “Wsup!” “What’s going on?” “Whatcha up to?”

 

“True love? This guy has a job and a decent mustache. Lock it down, girl.”

 

“This change in communication may have some side effects, though. In her book Alone Together, MIT social psychologist Sherry Turkle convincingly makes the case that younger people are so used to text-based communications, where they have time to gather their thoughts and precisely plan what they are going to say, that they are losing their ability to have spontaneous conversation. She argues that the muscles in our brain that help us with spontaneous conversation are getting less exercise in the text-filled world, so our skills are declining. When we did the large focus group where we split the room by generation—kids on the left, parents on the right—a strange thing happened. Before the show started, we noticed that the parents’ side of the room was full of chatter. People were talking to one another and asking how they had ended up at the event and getting to know people. On the kids’ side, everyone was buried in their phones and not talking to anyone around them. It made me wonder whether our ability and desire to interact with strangers is another muscle that risks atrophy in the smartphone world.”

 

My Take

As an avid viewer of Parks and Rec and Master of None, I have enjoyed Aziz Ansari’s humor for many years and was curious about this book. As an older Gen X-er who met my husband in Law School and has been happily married since 1994, I have never engaged in the world described in Modern Romance and am very grateful to avoid it.  As described by Ansari, on-line dating, communicating with potential romantic interests by texting, and all of the dating and hook up apps that singles use today seem overwhelming and a huge time suck.  After reading this informative and often funny book, it is impressive that any young people actually meet a significant other and make the commitment to marriage.

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82. Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  

Author:   Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Finance, Happiness, Self-Improvement

224 pages, published May 14, 2013

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Professors Dunn and Norton delve into behavioral science research to explain how money can buy happiness—if you follow the five core principles of smart spending:

 

  1.  Buy Experiences:  Most Americans describe owning a home as an essential component of the American dream. But recent happiness research suggests that home ownership is far from dreamy.  Material things (from beautiful homes to fancy pens) turn out to provide less happiness than experiential purchases (like trips, concerts, and special meals).  Whether you’re spending $1 or $200,000, buying experiences rather than material goods can inoculate you against buyer’s remorse.

 

  1.  Make It a Treat:  Many residents of London have never visited Big Ben.  What stops them? When something wonderful is always available, people are less inclined to appreciate it. Limiting our access to the things we like best may help to “re-virginize” us, renewing our capacity for pleasure.  Rather than advocating wholesale self-denial (say, giving up coffee completely), we’ll demonstrate the value of turning our favorite things back into treats (making that afternoon latte a special indulgence rather than a daily necessity.

 

  1.  Buy Time:  By permitting us to outsource our most dreaded tasks, from scrubbing toilets to cleaning gutters, money can transform the way we spend our time, freeing us to pursue our passions.  Yet wealthier individuals do not spend their time in happier ways on a daily basis; thus they fail to use their money to buy themselves happier time.  When people focus on their time rather than their money, they act like scientists of happiness, choosing activities that promote their well-being.  For companies, this principle entails thinking about compensation in a broader way, rewarding employees not only with money but with time.

 

  1.  Pay Now, Consume Later:  In the age of the iPad, products are available instantly and our wallets are lined with plastic instead of paper.  Digital technology and credit cards have encouraged us to adopt a “consume not and pay later” shopping mind-set.  By putting this powerful principle into reverse—by paying up front and delaying consumption—you can buy more happiness, even as you spend less money.  Because delaying consumption allows spenders to reap the pleasure of anticipation without the buzzkill of reality, vacations provide the most happiness before they occur.

 

  1.  Invest in Others:  New research demonstrates that spending money on others provides a bigger happiness boost than spending money on yourself.  And this principle holds in an extraordinary range of circumstances, from a Canadian college student purchasing a scarf for her mother to a Ugandan woman buying lifesaving malaria medication for a friend. The benefits of giving emerge among children before the age of two, and are detectable even in samples of saliva.  Investing in others can make individuals feel healthier and wealthier—and can even help people win at dodge ball.

 

Quotes

“Looking back on their past decisions about whether to purchase experiences, 83 percent of people sided with Mark Twain, reporting that their biggest single regret was one of inaction, of passing up the chance to buy an experience when the opportunity came along.”

 

“The Big Ben Problem suggests that introducing a limited time window may encourage people to seize opportunities for treats. Imagine you’ve just gotten a gift certificate for a piece of delicious cake and a beverage at a high-end French pastry shop. Would you rather see the gift certificate stamped with an expiration date two months from today, or just three weeks from now? Faced with this choice, most people were happier with the two-month option, and 68 percent reported that they would use it before this expiration date.25 But when they received a gift certificate for a tasty pastry at a local shop, only 6 percent of people redeemed it when they were given a two-month expiration date, compared to 31 percent of people who were given the shorter three-week window. People given two months to redeem the certificate kept thinking they could do it later, creating another instance of the Big Ben Problem—and leading them to miss out on a delicious treat.  Several years ago, Best Buy reported gaining $43 million from gift certificates that went unredeemed, propelling some consumer advocates and policy makers to push for extended expiration dates. But this strategy will likely backfire. We may have more success at maximizing our happiness when treats are only available for a limited time.”

My Take

There a lot of practical advice in Happy Money that, if followed, is likely to make you happier.  In my life, I have long practiced “pay now, consume later,” especially with travel (which also involves spending on an experience, rather than a product).  For me, at least half the fun of a trip is the planning that goes into it.  I also really enjoy looking back on trips that I have taken in the past and have never regretted any money that I have spent on travel.  I am also a big fan of “make it a treat” and can personally attest to the happiness boost that results.  As a devoted student of happiness, I can unequivocally recommend Happy Money as a way to increase your happiness.

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74. Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Christopher Funk

Author:   Peter Diamandis

Genre:  Non Fiction, Science, Economics

400 pages, published February 21, 2012

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

In Abundance, tech entrepreneur turned philanthropist Peter Diamandis makes the case that the world is a lot better off than you think it is and that we are getting close to the time we will be able to meet and exceed the basic needs of every human being on earth.  Diamandis backs up this bold claim with extensive research and shows how four forces (exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion) are all helping to solve humanity’s biggest problems.  Abundance profiles many innovators doing amazing work including Larry Page, Steven Hawking, Dean Kamen, Daniel Kahneman, Elon Musk, Bill Joy, Stewart Brand, Jeff Skoll, Ray Kurzweil, Ratan Tata, and Craig Venter.   After discussing human needs by category—water, food, energy, healthcare, education, and freedom, Diamandis sets forth concrete targets for change and lays out a strategic roadmap for governments, industry and entrepreneurs to achieve these goals.

 

Quotes

“Quite simply, good news doesn’t catch our attention. Bad news sells because the amygdala is always looking for something to fear.”

 

“It’s incredible,” he says, “this moaning pessimism, this knee-jerk, things-are-going-downhill reaction from people living amid luxury and security that their ancestors would have died for. The tendency to see the emptiness of every glass is pervasive. It’s almost as if people cling to bad news like a comfort blanket.”

 

“Today Americans living below the poverty line are not just light-years ahead of most Africans; they’re light-years ahead of the wealthiest Americans from just a century ago. Today 99 percent of Americans living below the poverty line have electricity, water, flushing toilets, and a refrigerator; 95 percent have a television; 88 percent have a telephone; 71 percent have a car; and 70 percent even have air-conditioning. This may not seem like much, but one hundred years ago men like Henry Ford and Cornelius Vanderbilt were among the richest on the planet, but they enjoyed few of these luxuries.”

 

“I’ve got a hunk of gold and you have a watch. If we trade, then I have a watch and you have a hunk of gold. But if you have an idea and I have an idea, and we exchange them, then we both have two ideas. It’s nonzero.”

 

“Poverty was reduced more in the past fifty years than in the previous five hundred.”

“Teaching kids how to nourish their creativity and curiosity, while still providing a sound foundation in critical thinking, literacy and math, is the best way to prepare them for a future of increasingly rapid technological change.”

 

“The true measure of something’s worth is the hours it takes to acquire it.”

 

“Technology is a resource-liberating mechanism. It can make the once scarce the now abundant.”

 

“if everyone on Earth wants to live like a North American, then we’re going to need five planets’ worth of resources.”

 

“The negativity bias—the tendency to give more weight to negative information and experiences than positive ones—sure isn’t helping matters. Then there’s anchoring: the predilection for relying too heavily on one piece of information when making decisions. “When people believe the world’s falling apart,” says Kahneman, “it’s often an anchoring problem. At the end of the nineteenth century, London was becoming uninhabitable because of the accumulation of horse manure. People were absolutely panicked. Because of anchoring, they couldn’t imagine any other possible solutions. No one had any idea the car was coming and soon they’d be worrying about dirty skies, not dirty streets.”

 

“Today most poverty-stricken Americans have a television, telephone, electricity, running water, and indoor plumbing. Most Africans do not. If you transferred the goods and services enjoyed by those who live in California’s version of poverty to the average Somalian living on less than a $1.25 a day, that Somalian is suddenly fabulously rich.”

 

“Decentralized means learning cannot easily be curtailed by autocratic governments and is considerably more immune to socioeconomic upheaval.”

 

“A week’s worth of the New York Times contains more information than the average seventeenth-century citizen encountered in a lifetime.”

 

“If we were to forgo our television addiction for just one year, the world would have over a trillion hours of cognitive surplus to commit to share projects.”

 

“From the very beginning of time until the year 2003,” says Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, “humankind created five exabytes of digital information. An exabyte is one billion gigabytes—or a 1 with eighteen zeroes after it. Right now, in the year 2010, the human race is generating five exabytes of information every two days. By the year 2013, the number will be five exabytes produced every ten minutes … It’s no wonder we’re exhausted.”

 

“Abundance is not about providing everyone on this planet with a life of luxury—rather it’s about providing all with a life of possibility.”

 

“Nanotechnology has the potential to enhance human performance, to bring sustainable development for materials, water, energy, and food, to protect against unknown bacteria and viruses, and even to diminish the reasons for breaking the peace [by creating universal abundance].”

 

“Today mammography requires an expensive, large, stationary machine that takes a crude, two-dimensional picture. But imagine a ‘bra’ that has tiny X-ray pixel emitters on the top and X-ray sensors on the bottom. It’s self-contained, self-powered, has a 3G or Wi-Fi-enabled network, and can be shipped to a patient in a FedEx box. The patient puts on the bra, pushes a button, and the doctor comes online and starts talking: ‘Hi. All set to take your mammogram? Hold still.’ The X-ray pixels fire, the detectors assemble and transmit the image, and the doctor reads it on the spot. The patient ships back the package, and she’s done. With little time and little money.”

 

My Take

Abundance is my kind of book.  I have always been a “glass half full” person and it is encouraging to read an optimistic take on the future of the world.  So many people think that we live in terrible times and that things are getting worse.  Peter Diamandis repeatedly demonstrates that folly of that mindset and that things have never been better.  Not only is the world-wide poverty rate declining dramatically and rapidly, but there are a plethora of technological innovations coming our way that will make life better and more meaningful.  Abundance made me realize how good we have it now and excited for all of the future developments that are coming our way soon.

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73. The Husband’s Secret

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Heather Bohart

Author:   Liane Moriarty

Genre:  Fiction

396 pages, published July 30, 2013

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

The Husband’s Secret is a suspenseful novel that, as with many Liane Moriarity books, tells the intersecting stories of several Australian women.  The central character is Cecilia Fitzpatrick who, for all intents and purposes, seems to have it all.  She’s an incredibly successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, and a devoted wife and mother.  Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home.  However, when rummaging through the attic she discovers a letter that is only meant to be read upon her husband’s death.  She can’t help herself and reads it and discovers her husband’s secret.  Once she does, not only Cecelia and her family but many of others in her community, experience life changing repercussions.

 

Quotes

“This was how it could be done. This was how you lived with a terrible secret. You just did it. You pretended everything was fine. You ignored the deep, cramplike pain in your stomach. You somehow anesthetized yourself so that nothing felt that bad, but nothing felt that good either.”

 

“Her goodness had limits. She could have easily gone her whole life without knowing those limits, but now she knew exactly where they lay.”

 

“Falling in love was easy.  Anyone could fall.  It was holding on that was tricky.”

 

“All these years there had been a Tupperware container of bad language in her head, and now she opened it and all those crisp, crunchy words were fresh and lovely, ready to be used.”

 

“None of us ever know all the possible courses our lives could have, and maybe should have taken.”

 

“It’s all about our egos. She felt she was on the edge of understanding something important. They could fall in love with fresh, new people, or they could have the courage and humility to tear off some essential layer of themselves and reveal to each other a whole new level of otherness, a level far beyond what sort of music they liked. It seemed to her everyone had too much self-protective pride to truly strip down to their souls in front of their long-term partners. It was easier to pretend there was nothing more to know, to fall into an easygoing companionship. It was almost embarrassing to be truly intimate with your spouse; how could you watch someone floss one minute, and the next minute share your deepest passion or most ridiculous, trite little fears? It was almost easier to talk about that sort of thing before you’d shared a bathroom and a bank account and argued over the packing of the dishwasher.”

 

“Marriage was a form of insanity; love hovering permanently on the edge of aggravation.”

 

“Polly had arrived in the world outraged to discover that her sisters had gotten there before her.”

 

“The words “I´m sorry” felt like an insult. You said “I´m sorry” when you bumped against someone´s supermarket trolley. There need to be bigger words.”

 

“When you didn’t let a woman help, it was a way of keeping her at a distance, of letting her know that she wasn’t family, of saying I don’t like you enough to let you into my kitchen.”

 

“She was a far better mother when she had an audience.”

 

“Life would go back to being unendurable, except – and this was the worst part – she would in fact endure it, it wouldn’t kill her, she’d keep on living day after day after day, an endless loop of glorious sunrises and sunsets that Janie never got to see.”

 

My Take

The Husband’s Secret is the second book by Liane Moriarity that I read this year (the first was Big Little Lies).  Moriarity has a formula to her books.  She sets up several women with intersecting lives as her characters, spends the first part of the book alluding to an event while keeping some mystery about the details of the event, and then shows how the characters lives change in reaction to the event.  It’s a formula that works pretty well.  Moriarity creates interesting and well developed characters and locations and the element of mystery keeps you turning the pages.  I recommend The Husband’s Secret.  A great read while on vacation.

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