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544. The Midnight Library

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Matt Haig

Genre:  Fiction

288 pages, published September 29, 2020

Reading Format:   Audiobook

Summary

After contemplating ending her life, protagonist Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library with her former school librarian Mrs. Elm.  In this supernatural place where the bookshelves go on forever, Nora can pick a book which represents a different version of a life that she did not lead and is then inserted into that life.  A chance to undo her regrets.  Nora tries out mulitiple different possible lives and arrives at a surprising realization.

Quotes 

“It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.  It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do the people we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have.  It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.  But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy.  We can’t tell if any of those other versions would of been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.”

 

“If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don’t give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it. Most gossip is envy in disguise.”

 

“The only way to learn is to live.”

 

“A person was like a city. You couldn’t let a few less desirable parts put you off the whole. There may be bits you don’t like, a few dodgy side streets and suburbs, but the good stuff makes it worthwhile.”

 

 “We only need to be one person.  We only need to feel one existence.  We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility.”

 

“As Thoreau wrote, ‘It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

 

“Never underestimate the big importance of small things.”

 

 “Sometimes just to say your own truth out loud is enough to find others like you.”

 

“You’re overthinking it.’ ‘I have anxiety. I have no other type of thinking available.”

 

“Of course, we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available. We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don’t have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don’t have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum.”

 

“The paradox of volcanoes was that they were symbols of destruction but also life. Once the lava slows and cools, it solidifies and then breaks down over time to become soil – rich, fertile soil.  She wasn’t a black hole, she decided. She was a volcano. And like a volcano she couldn’t run away from herself. She’d have to stay there and tend to that wasteland.

She could plant a forest inside herself.”

 

“Want,’ she told her, in a measured tone, ‘is an interesting word. It means lack. Sometimes if we fill that lack with something else the original want disappears entirely.”

 

“And even if you were a pawn – maybe we all are – then you should remember that a pawn is the most magical piece of all. It might look small and ordinary but it isn’t. because a pawn is never just a pawn. A pawn is a queen-in-waiting. All you need to do is find a way to keep moving forward. One square after another. And you can get to the other side and unlock all kinds of power.”

 

“The thing that looks the most ordinary might end up being the thing that leads you to victory.”

 

“You see, doing one thing differently is very often the same as doing everything differently.”

 

“Maybe that’s what all lives were, though. Maybe even the most seemingly perfectly intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same. Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of wonder and beauty. Maybe that was the only meaning that mattered. To be the world, witnessing itself.”

 

“Regrets don’t leave. They weren’t mosquitoe bites. They itch forever.”

 

“Look at that chessboard we put back in place,’ said Mrs. Elm softly. ‘Look at how ordered and safe and peaceful it looks now, before a game starts. It’s a beautiful thing. But it is boring. It is dead. And yet the moment you make a move on that board, things change. Things begin to get more chaotic. And that chaos builds with every single move you make.’

 

‘It’s an easy game to play,’ she told Nora. ‘But a hard one to master. Every move you make opens a whole new world of possibilities…In chess, as in life, possibility is the basis of everything. Every hope, every dream, every regret, every moment of living…never underestimate the big importance of small things.”

 

“That was how she had felt most of her life.

Caught in the middle. Struggling, flailing, just trying to survive while not knowing which way to go. Which path to commit to without regret.”

 

“It was interesting, she mused to herself, how life sometimes simply gave you a whole new perspective by waiting around long enough for you to see it.”

 

“The lonely mind in the busy city yearns for connection because it thinks human-to-human connection is the point of everything. But amid pure nature…solitude took on a different character. It became in itself a kind of connection. A connection between herself and the world. And between her and herself.”

 

“Every second of every day we are entering a new universe. And we spend so much time wishing our lives were different, comparing ourselves to other people and to other versions of ourselves, when really most lives contain degrees of good and degrees of bad.

[…]

There are patterns of life… Rhythms. It is so easy, while trapped in just the one life, to imagine that times of sadness or tragedy or failure or fear are a result of the particular existence. That it is a by-product of living a certain way, rather than simply living. I mean, it would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunise you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can’t have one without the other. Of course, they come in different degrees and quantities. But there is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness for ever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you’re in.”

 

“It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn’t the place, but the perspective.”

 

“Sometimes regrets aren’t based on fact at all.”

 

“She realised that you could be as honest as possible in life, but people only see the truth if it is close enough to their reality.”

 

“Happy moments can turn into pain, given time.”

 

“When you stay too long in a place, you forget just how big an expanse the world is. You get no sense of the length of those longitudes and latitudes. Just as, she supposed, it is hard to have a sense of the vastness inside any one person. But once you sense that vastness, once something reveals it, hope emerges, whether you want it to or not, and it clings to you as stubbornly as lichen clings to rock.”

 

My Take

The Midnight Library was a true pleasure to read (or rather listen to, in my case, with superb narration by Carey Mulligan). Author Matt Haig weaves a compelling tale of what could have been when Nora Seed is given the opportunity to explore many of the lives she could have lived, much in the same vein as George Bailey seeing how the lives around him would have been impacted if he had never been born in my favorite movie It’s a Wonderful Life.  This book will really get you thinking, appreciating your own life and may even spur you on to take some risks.  Highly recommended.

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542. Making Sense

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Sam Harris

Genre:  Non Fiction, Science, Psychology, Religion, Politics, Race

444 pages, published 2013

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

Sam Harris (neuroscientist, philosopher, and best-selling author) is a very smart guy who has been studying some of the most important questions confronting humanity.  In Making Sense, we hear his interviews with a dozen of the best known world experts and deep thinkers (including Daniel Kahneman, Timothy Snyder, Nick Bostrom, and Glen Loury) on a variety of fascinating issues.

Quotes 

 

My Take

While there were plenty of fascinating things in this book, there were also some parts that really lagged.  It really depends on who is being interviewed by Sam Harris.  My favorites were Daniel Kahneman and Glen Loury.

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541. Dear Edward

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Ann Napolitano

Genre:  Fiction

340 pages, published January 6, 2020

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

When a flight from Newark to Los Angeles crashes in Colorado, twelve year old Edward Adler survives while all of the other 183 passengers and crew perish.  Instead of relocating to LA with his parents and brother, Edward must start a new life with an aunt and uncle who he doesn’t know well and deal with the rapt attention of a nation that considers his survival a miracle.

Quotes 

“The air between us is not empty space.”

 

“Humans need community, for our emotional health. We need connection, a sense of belonging. We are not built to thrive in isolation.”

 

“So much could be solved, she thinks, if we simply held hands with each other more often.”

 

“What happened is baked into your bones, Edward. It lives under your skin. It’s not going away. It’s part of you and will be part of you every moment until you die. What you’ve been working on, since the first time I met you, is learning to live with that.”

 

“There was no reason for what happened to you, Eddie. You could have died; you just didn’t. It was dumb luck. Nobody chose you for anything. Which means, truly, that you can do anything.”

 

“Everything ends,” she says. “That’s nothing to be sad about. What matters is what starts in that moment.”

 

 “This was not a tragedy. Dying on your couch watching TV by yourself is a tragedy. Dying while doing something you love with every part of your body is magic. I wish you magic, Edward.”

 

“My wife is pregnant, and her physician told her that physiologically and medically speaking, there are three different kinds of humans: men, women, and pregnant women. I think the same idea applies to you, Edward. There are grown-ups, children, and then you. You don’t feel like a kid anymore, right?” Edward nods. “But you won’t be an adult for years. You’re something else, and we need to figure out what you are, so we can figure out how to help you.”

 

“When in doubt, read books. Educate yourself. Education has always saved me Edward.  Learn about the mysteries.”

 

“Eddie was leaning against his father’s chest, and the sensation of that weight — the complete trust and lack of inhibition with which the boy relaxed every ounce of his body into his father’s — was one of the things that made parenthood unmissable.”

 

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?” —GEORGE ELIOT”

 

“It feels unkind that they are shoving their emotions at him when his own sadness and fear are so vast that he has to hide from them.”

 

 “All motivators are valid if they produce good work, son. And frustration can be a powerful

 

“that the smallest, truest reason he will never fly again is that the last airplane seat he ever sits in has to be the one beside his brother.”

 

“When frazzled, people tend to revert to the familiar and the well rehearsed.”

 

“if you think about one memory for most of a day, is that not your present? Some people live in the now; some people prefer to reside in the past—either choice is valid.”

 

“Edward wasn’t supposed to leave Jordan, though. They were meant to age together. That loss continues to be spiked with pain; it will never be soothed. And he can see, objectively, that Shay’s life without him would have been woven with different moments, friends or lack of friends, different fights with Besa, different books and different struggles.”

 

My Take

First off, I made the mistake of starting this book while on a flight without knowing its subject matter.  I recommend you avoid that since it deals with a plane that crashed, killing almost everyone on board.  I finished it in the comfort of my home and, since I didn’t have to worry about crashing, really enjoyed the rest of it.  Author Ann Napolitano has some interesting insights into the human condition and weaves a believeable and compelling tale of what it would be like to be the sole survivor of a plane crash.

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518. Then Again

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Diane Keaton

Genre:  Non Fiction, Memoir, Entertainment

338 pages, published November 15, 2011

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

In her memoir Then Again, actress Diane Keaton alternates between her life and the life of her mother Dorothy Hall, much of which comes from her mother’s lifelong journals.   The two share a strong bond and both have fascinating stories to tell.

Quotes 

“…I also have an extended family. The people who stayed. The people who became more than friends; the people who open the door when I knock. That’s what it all boils down to. The people who have to open the door, not because they always want to but because they do.”

 

“This living stuff is a lot. Too much, and not enough. Half empty, and half full.”

 

“That’s what I learned. I learned I couldn’t shed light on love other than to feel its comings and goings and be grateful.”

 

“Memories are simply moments that refuse to be ordinary”

 

“We can’t save the past or solve the riddle of love. But to me, it’s worth trying.”

 

“The exhausting effort to control time by altering the effects of age doesn’t bring happiness”

 

“Choosing the freedom to be uninteresting never quite worked for me.”

 

“At times she’s so basic, at others so wise it frightens me that I got so far in this world without the benefit of such knowledge.”

 

“Before I opened my computer in the parking lot today, I relived one of my favorite memories. It’s the one with Woody and me sitting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum after it’s closed. We’re watching people parade out of the museum in summer shorts and sandals. The trees to the south are planted in parallel lines. The water in the fountain shoots up with a mist that almost reaches the steps we sit on. We look at silver-haired ladies in red-and-white-print dresses. We separate the mice from the men, the tourists from the New Yorkers, the Upper East Siders from the West Siders. The hot-pretzel vendor sells us a wad of dough in knots with clumps of salt stuck on top. We make our usual remarks about the crazies and wonder what it would be like to live in a penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue overlooking the Met. We laugh and say the same things we always say. We hold hands and keep sitting, just sitting, as the sun beings to set. It’s a perfect afternoon.”

 

 “I want to hold my life up alongside hers in order to, as she wrote, reach a point where i begin to see me-and her-in a more understandable light.”

 

“If beauty is in the eye of the beholder are mirrors a waste of time?”

 

“I kept thinking if I’m so miserably maladjusted to this life, my absence would only be felt for a short time. And anyway, my responsibilities with the family are over. They no longer look to me for guidance. It’s more like I’m the one they’re stuck being responsible for. My company isn’t sought after. Whatever I have allowed to happen has also brought on this horrible lack of confidence. I’m intimidated. I have no one to tell my concerns to, NO ONE. I’ve let myself come to a very sad state, not only sad, but stagnant.”

 

My Take

I have always liked Diane Keaton and enjoyed learning more about her varied and interesting film career and the life of her mother Dorothy.  It was also fascinating to read about her relationships with some of the biggest names of her generation (Woody Allen, Al Pacino and Warren Beatty).  Keaton is a talented writer and I whipped through this memoir in just a few days.

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511. You’re Not Enough (and That’s Ok): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Nick Reader

Author:   Alice Beth Stuckey

Genre:  Non Fiction, Memoir, Christian, Self Improvement

228 pages, published August 11, 2020

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

In You’re Not Enough, mother, Christian, and conservative thought leader Alice Beth Stuckey questions the narrative that to be happy, fulfilled and successful all you need to do is love yourself.  She believes that down this path of self love lies disappointment and disillusionment.  Instead, she advocates taking the focus off of yourself and putting it on others and Jesus Christ.

Quotes 

“If the self is the source of our depression or despair or insecurity or fear, it can’t also be the source of our ultimate fulfillment.”

 

 “This is an argument I made in a podcast episode titled “Three Myths Christian Women Believe”. The first myth was that you are enough. My counter was this: you’re not enough, you’ll never be enough, and that’s okay, because God is.”

 

“But if we were really enough as is, we wouldn’t have to try so hard to convince ourselves it’s true.”

 

 “When we follow Christ, we are never at risk of “losing ourselves,” because our identity is eternally found in him.”

 “The yoke of the god of self is difficult and its burden heavy, but God’s yoke is easy and his burden light. What a relief to know we don’t have to expend our precious energy serving ourselves. We make terrible, unworthy gods.”

 

“Without the Bible as our basis for justice, we get a system based on the only tool we have without a supreme moral Lawgiver: the self.”

 

“Because the self can’t be both the problem and the solution.”

 

“The self isn’t enough—period. The answer to the purposelessness and hollowness we feel is found not in us but outside of us. The solutions to our problems and pain aren’t found in self-love, but in God’s love.”

 

“While self-love depletes, God’s love for us doesn’t. He showed us His love by sending Jesus to die for our sins so that we could be forgiven and live forever with Him. Self-love is superficial and temporary. God’s love is profound and eternal.”

 

My Take

I was given You’re Not Enough by my son Nick as a birthday gift.  It was my first encounter with the conservative, Christian personality Alice Beth Stuckey.  I found her book to be a quick read with an important idea at its core.  It reconfirmed to me how foolish it is to base your self worth on how you look, what you weigh, how much you achieve, or any other temporal basis.  Worth a read.

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507. The Best of Me

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Art Drake

Author:    David Sedaris

Genre:  Non Fiction, Humor, Memoir, Essays, Short Stories

387 pages, published November 3, 2020

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

The Best of Me is retrospective compilation of Humorist David Sedaris’ stories and essays from the past twenty-five years.

Quotes 

“A Dutch parent has a decidedly hairier story to relate, telling his children, “Listen, you might want to pack a few of your things together before going to bed. The former bishop of Turkey will be coming tonight along with six to eight black men. They might put some candy in your shoes, they might stuff you into a sack and take you to Spain, or they might just pretend to kick you. We don’t know for sure, but we want you to be prepared.”

 

“If you read an essay in Esquire and don’t like it, there could be something wrong with the essay. If it’s in The New Yorker, on the other hand, and you don’t like it, there’s something wrong with you.”

 

“It’s pathetic how much significance I attach to the Times puzzle, which is easy on Monday and gets progressively harder as the week advances. I’ll spend fourteen hours finishing the Friday, and then I’ll wave it in someone’s face and demand that he acknowledge my superior intelligence. I think it means that I’m smarter than the next guy, but all it really means is that I don’t have a life.”

 

“Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you’re offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone’s feelings”

 

“If you read someone else’s diary, you get what you deserve.”

 

“On Undecided Voter​s: “To put them in perspective, I think​ of being​ on an airplane.​ The flight attendant comes​ down the aisle​ with her food cart and, eventually,​ parks​ it beside my seat.​ “Can I inter​est you in the chick​en?​” she asks.​ “Or would​ you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broke​n glass​ in it?”  To be undecided in this elect​ion is to pause​ for a moment and then ask how the chick​en is cooked.”

 

“I said that Santa no longer traffics in coal. Instead, if you’re bad he comes to your house and steals things.”

 

“Asking for candy on Halloween was called trick-or-treating, but asking for candy on November first was called begging, and it made people uncomfortable.”

 

“I often see people on the streets dressed as objects and handing out leaflets. I tend to avoid leaflets but it breaks my heart to see a grown man dressed as a taco. So, if there is a costume involved, I tend not only to accept the leaflet, but to accept it graciously, saying, “Thank you so much,” and thinking, You poor, pathetic son of a bitch. I don’t know what you have but I hope I never catch it.”

 

“On my fifth trip to France I limited myself to the words and phrases that people actually use. From the dog owners I learned “Lie down,” “Shut up,” and “Who shit on this carpet?” The couple across the road taught me to ask questions correctly, and the grocer taught me to count. Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. “Is thems the thoughts of cows?” I’d ask the butcher, pointing to the calves’ brains displayed in the front window. “I want me some lamb chop with handles on ’em.”

 

“When a hurricane damaged my father’s house, my brother rushed over with a gas grill, three coolers of beer, and an enormous Fuck-It Bucket – a plastic pail filled with jawbreakers and bite-size candy bars. (“When shit brings you down, just say ‘fuck it,’ and eat yourself some motherfucking candy.”

 

“Boys who spent their weekends making banana nut muffins did not, as a rule, excel in the art of hand-to-hand combat.”

 

 “Hugh consoled me, saying, “Don’t let it get to you. There are plenty of things you’re good at.”

 

When asked for some examples, he listed vacuuming and naming stuffed animals. He says he can probably come up with a few more, but he’ll need some time to think.”

 

“At the end of a miserable day, instead of grieving my virtual nothing, I can always look at my loaded wastepaper basket and tell myself that if I failed, at least I took a few trees down with me.”

“I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself. Why refer to lady crack pipe or good sir dishrag when these things could never live up to all that their sex implied?”

 

My Take

I have long been a fan of writer and humorist David Sedaris.  I was introduced to him back in the mid-90s when my husband Scot and I saw him read his essay The Santaland Diaries where he recounts with side splitting humor his time working as an elf at a major department store in New York.  If you haven’t read it, do so immediately.  The Best of Me, a collection of his best essays and stories, doesn’t include this classic gem which is a real shame.  I’ve read most of Sedaris’ books, including several reviewed on this website (Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls  and Calypso) and found them highly entertaining.  While there are many good choices included in The Best of Me, there are unfortunately some great essays and stories that were omitted.

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506. The Kindness of Strangers: How a Selfish Ape Invented a New Moral Code

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:    Michael McCullough

Genre:  Non Fiction, Psychology, Sociology, Public Policy

368 pages, published May 12, 2020

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

In The Kindness of Strangers, psychologist Michael McCullough explores the issue of why human beings are altruistic.  He first looks at this question through an evolutionary lens and then traces the development of increasing altruism and help to our fellow man throughout human history.

Quotes 

“Natural selection is a penny pincher.  People tend to actively avoid feeling empathy for strangers.”

 

“Reason is the slave of the passions.” David Hume

 

 “Modern humans’ concern for the welfare of perfect strangers has no analog in the rest of the animal kingdom or even in our own history as a species. It’s a true one-off.”

 

“Our stone-age ancestors didn’t care very much at all about the well-being of true strangers.”

 

“The 21st-century explosion of social media revolutionized philanthropy, allowing instant appeals and massive responses from “bathrobe humanitarians” sitting at their computers.”

 

My Take

The Kindness of Strangers and its exploration of the reasons why human beings are altruistic and seek to help their fellow man is a fascinating read.  I was especially interested in the section discussing how altruism is the result of natural selection. Cooperation and tamping down selfish instincts often led to greater survivability.  Worth a look.

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504. The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:    Ainissa Ramirez

Genre:   Non Fiction, Science, History

328 pages, published April 7, 2020

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

In The Alchemy of Us, scientist Ainissa Ramirez explores a variety of different materials (e.g. steel, carbon, silicon, glass, copper) and the impact that inventions using those materials have had on human beings.  Each chapter contains a story about a particular invention, including the creation of steel, Edison’s invention of the light bulb and the phonograph, the invention of the telegraph and telephone, and the development of the hard drive.  Rameriz then describes how these inventions have shaped our world.  For example, the invention of the railroad (after steel was created) helped commercialize Christmas.  The necessary brevity of the telegram influenced Hemingway’s writing style.

Quotes 

“Scientists fail all the time. We just brand it differently. We call it data.”

 

“Standardized testing teaches skills that are counter to skills needed for the future, such as curiosity, problem solving, and having a healthy relationship with failure.”

 

“Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.”

 

My Take

The Alchemy of Us meets one of my tests of a non fiction book in that I learned something new.  Actually, I learned a lot new and was given a lot of food for thought in this easily readable and engaging book.

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503. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Darla Schueth and Sue Deans

Author:   Isabel Wilkerson

Genre:   Nonfiction, History, Cultural

622 pages, published September 7, 2010

Reading Format:   Audiobook

Summary

The Warmth of Other Suns tells the story of the decades-long migration of six million black Americans who fled Jim Crow South in search of a better life and landed in the north and western parts of the United States.  In researching the book, Wilkerson interviewed more than a thousand people, but focuses on three individuals:  Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success; George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where fought for civil rights; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 for Los Angeles to pursue a medical career and became the personal physician to Ray Charles.  All faced discrimination and hardship but still felt that leaving the South was the right thing to do.

Quotes 

“They did what human beings looking for freedom, throughout history, have often done. They left.”

 

“It occurred to me that no matter where I lived, geography could not save me.”

 

“Our Negro problem, therefore, is not of the Negro’s making. No group in our population is less responsible for its existence. But every group is responsible for its continuance…. Both races need to understand that their rights and duties are mutual and equal and their interests in the common good are idential…. There is no help or healing in apparaising past responsibilities or in present apportioning of praise or blame. The past is of value only as it aids in understanding the present; and an understanding of the facts of the problem–a magnanimous understanding by both races–is the first step toward its solution.”

 

 “The measure of a man’s estimate of your strength,” he finally told them, “is the kind of weapons he feels that he must use in order to hold you fast in a prescribed place.”

 

“They traveled deep into far-flung regions of their own country and in some cases clear across the continent. Thus the Great Migration had more in common with the vast movements of refugees from famine, war, and genocide in other parts of the world, where oppressed people, whether fleeing twenty-first-century Darfur or nineteenth-century Ireland, go great distances, journey across rivers, desserts, and oceans or as far as it takes to reach safety with the hope that life will be better wherever they land.”

 

 “Over the decades, perhaps the wrong questions have been asked about the Great Migration. Perhaps it is not a question of whether the migrants brought good or ill to the cities they fled to or were pushed or pulled to their destinations, but a question of how they summoned the courage to leave in the first place or how they found the will to press beyond the forces against them and the faith in a country that had rejected them for so long. By their actions, they did not cream the American Dream, they willed it into being by a definition of their own choosing. They did not ask to be accepted but declared themselves the Americans that perhaps few others recognized but that they had always been deep within their hearts.”

 

 “Jim Crow had a way of turning everyone against one another, not just white against black or landed against lowly, but poor against poorer and black against black for an extra scrap of privilege.”

 

“The revolution had come too late for him. He was in his midforties when the Civil Rights Act was signed and close to fifty when its effects were truly felt. He did not begrudge the younger generation their opportunities. He only wished that more of them, his own children, in particular, recognized their good fortune, the price that had been paid for it, and made the most of it. He was proud to have lived to see the change take place.  He wasn’t judging anyone and accepted the fact that history had come too late for him to make much use of all the things that were now opening up. But he couldn’t understand why some of the young people couldn’t see it. Maybe you had to live through the worst of times to recognize the best of times when they came to you. Maybe that was just the way it was with people.”

 

 “Many of the people who left the South never exactly sat their children down to tell them these things, tell them what happened and why they left and how they and all this blood kin came to be in this northern city or western suburb or why they speak like melted butter and their children speak like footsteps on pavement, prim and proper or clipped and fast, like the New World itself. Some spoke of specific and certain evils. Some lived in tight-lipped and cheerful denial. Others simply had no desire to relive what they had already left. The facts of their lives unfurled over the generations like an over-wrapped present, a secret told in syllables. Sometimes the migrants dropped puzzle pieces from the past while folding the laundry or stirring the corn bread, and the children would listen between cereal commercials and not truly understand until they grew up and had children and troubles of their own. And the ones who had half-listened would scold and kick themselves that they had not paid better attention when they had the chance.”

 

 “That’s why I preach today, Do not do spite,” he said. “Spite does not pay. It goes around and misses the object that you aim and comes back and zaps you. And you’re the one who pays for it.”

 

My Take

In The Warmth of Other Suns,  Pulitizer prize winning author Isabel Wilkerson thoroughly researched her seminal book on the black migration out of the Jim Crow south and is very informative about an often overlooked part of American history.  Her focus on three migrants of different socio-economic classes and their experiences helps bring the story to life and makes the experience much more relatable to the reader.

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499. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Dan Ariely

Genre:   Non Fiction, Psychology,  Self Improvement

400  pages, published  February 19, 2008

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

In Predictably Irrational, MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely looks at situations where people act irrationally.  Among other interesting questions, he asks:  Why do our headaches persist after taking a one-cent aspirin but disappear when we take a 50-cent aspirin?  Why does recalling the Ten Commandments reduce our tendency to lie, even when we couldn’t possibly be caught?  Why do we splurge on a lavish meal but cut coupons to save twenty-five cents on a can of soup?  In answering these other questions about irrational behavior, Ariely highlights a series of surprising experiments and dispels the assumption that we usually act ina mostly rational manner.

Quotes 

“Ownership is not limited to material things. It can also apply to points of view. Once we take ownership of an idea — whether it’s about politics or sports — what do we do? We love it perhaps more than we should. We prize it more than it is worth. And most frequently, we have trouble letting go of it because we can’t stand the idea of its loss. What are we left with then? An ideology — rigid and unyielding.”

 

“Standard economics assumes that we are rational… But, as the results presented in this book (and others) show, we are far less rational in our decision making… Our irrational behaviors are neither random nor senseless- they are systematic and predictable. We all make the same types of mistakes over and over, because of he basic wiring of our brains.”

 

“individuals are honest only to the extent that suits them (including their desire to please others)”

 

 “Giving up on our long-term goals for immediate gratification, my friends, is procrastination.”

 

“we usually think of ourselves as sitting the driver’s seat, with ultimate control over the decisions we made and the direction our life takes; but, alas, this perception has more to do with our desires-with how we want to view ourselves-than with reality”

 

 “People are willing to work for free, and they are willing to work for a reasonable wage; but offer them just a small payment and they will walk away.”

 

“That’s a lesson we can all learn: the more we have, the more we want. And the only cure is to break the cycle of relativity.”

 

“MONEY, AS IT turns out, is very often the most expensive way to motivate people. Social norms are not only cheaper, but often more effective as well.”

 

“A few years ago, for instance, the AARP asked some lawyers if they would offer less expensive services to needy retirees, at something like $30 an hour. The lawyers said no. Then the program manager from AARP had a brilliant idea: he asked the lawyers if they would offer free services to needy retirees. Overwhelmingly, the lawyers said yes. What was going on here? How could zero dollars be more attractive than $30? When money was mentioned, the lawyers used market norms and found the offer lacking, relative to their market salary. When no money was mentioned they used social norms and were willing to volunteer their time. Why didn’t they just accept the $30, thinking of themselves as volunteers who received $30? Because once market norms enter our considerations, the social norms depart.”

 

“human beings are inherently social and trusting animals.”

 

“most people don’t know what they want unless they see it in context.”

 

“There are many examples to show that people will work more for a cause than for cash.”

 

“one that we are just beginning to understand- is that trust, once eroded, is very hard to restore.”

 

 

“Thoreau wrote, “Simplify! Simplify!” And, indeed, simplification is one mark of real genius.”

 

“Resisting temptation and instilling self-control are general human goals, and repeatedly failing to achieve them is a source of much of our misery.”

 

“feeling so far is that standardized testing and performance-based salaries are likely to push education from social norms to market norms. The United States already spends more money per student than any other Western society. Would it be wise to add more money? The same consideration applies to testing: we are already testing very frequently, and more testing is unlikely to improve the quality of education. I suspect that one answer lies in the realm of social norms. As we learned in our experiments, cash will take you only so far—social norms are the forces that can make a difference in the long run. Instead of focusing the attention of the teachers, parents, and kids on test scores, salaries, and competition, it might be better to instill in all of us a sense of purpose, mission, and pride in education. To do this we certainly can’t take the path of market norms. The Beatles proclaimed some time ago that you “Can’t Buy Me Love” and this also applies to the love of learning—you can’t buy it; and if you try, you might chase it away.”

 

“Without constant suspicion, we can get more out of our exchanges with others while spending less time making sure that others will fulfill their promise to us.”

 

“When people think about a placebo such as the royal touch, they usually dismiss it as “just psychology.” But, there is nothing “just” about the power of a placebo, and in reality it represents the amazing way our mind controls our body.”

 

“Tom had discovered a great law of human action, namely, that in order to make a man covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.”

 

“people are sometimes willing to sacrifice the pleasure they get from a particular consumption experience in order to project a certain image to others.”

 

“humans rarely choose things in absolute terms. We don’t have an internal value meter that tells us how much things are worth. Rather, we focus on the relative advantage of one thing over another, and estimate value accordingly.”

 

 “If you’re a company, my advice is to remember that you can’t have it both ways. You can’t treat your customers like family one moment and then treat them impersonally—or, even worse, as a nuisance or a competitor—a moment later when this becomes more convenient or profitable.”

 

My Take

I found Predictably Irrational to be a very interesting read that included a lot of fascinating experiments in its attempt to explain why humans often act irrationally.  Additionally, there is some useful advice on how to forego irrational actions, improve your life and accomplish your goals.

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