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292. The Door

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Meris Delli-Bovi

Author:   Magda Szabó

Genre:  Fiction

272 pages, published 1987

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

The Door is a semi-autographical novel by Hungarian writer Magda Szabó who won many national literary awards but was also labeled an “enemy of the people” by the Communist government, was fired from the Ministry of Education, and had her books banned from publication from 1949 to 1956.  The book, which is set in Hungary, focuses on a 20 year relationship between a writer named Magda who hires an housekeeper named Emerence.  Emerence is a singular person, relentlessly efficient, incredibly headstrong and obstinate, extremely private and tied to the old ways.  And yet Emerence is respected by the neighborhood as much as she is feared.   Magda and Emerence develop a deep and connected relationship which is ultimately threatened by Magda’s attempt at kindness which Emerence views as a betrayal.

Quotes 

“Creativity requires a state of grace. So many things are required for it to succeed—stimulus and composure, inner peace and a kind of bitter-sweet excitement.”

 

“God usually ignored us when asked for something, but he invariably granted what we feared.”

 

“I know now, what I didn’t then, that affection can’t always be expressed in calm, orderly, articulate ways; and that one cannot prescribe the form it should take for anyone else.”

 

“She was lonely. Who isn’t lonely, I’d like to know? And that includes people who do have someone but just haven’t noticed.”

 

“If there’s no-one to show pleasure when you come home, then it’s better not to live.”

 

“In my student days, I detested Schopenhauer. Only later did I come to acknowledge the force of his idea that every relationship involving personal feeling laid one open to attack, and the more people I allowed to become close to me, the greater the number of ways in which I was vulnerable.”

 

“Everything has to be done properly, even death.” 

My Take

The Door is a unique book that I enjoyed for the most part.  Set on a single street in mid 20th Century Budapest, the relationship between the two main characters is symbolic of humanity’s struggle to love fully and unconditionally.  Magda and Emerence don’t quite achieve this lofty goal, but the glimpses of its possibility make the struggle worthwhile.

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285. Why The Jews?

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Dennis Prager, Joseph Telushkin

Genre:  Non Fiction, History, Theology, Sociology

272 pages, published August 12, 2003

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Why have Jews been the object of the most enduring and universal hatred in history? Why did Hitler consider murdering Jews more important than winning World War II? Why has the United Nations devoted more time to tiny Israel than to any other nation on earth?  In Why The Jews, authors Dennis Prager and  Joseph Telushkin answer the question of why the Jews have been persecuted throughout history, from the ancient world to the Holocaust to the current crisis in the Middle East.  The authors also look at the replicating of Nazi antisemitism in the Arab world, the pervasive anti-Zionism/antisemitism on university campuses, the rise of antisemitism in Europe and why the United States and Israel are linked in the minds of anti-Semites.

 

My Take

I am a big fan of Dennis Prager, having listened to him for years and consider him to be one of the wisest people in public life.  In addition to being a nationally syndicated Talk Radio Show Host, a prolific author, the force behind the tremendous website Prager University, he is a serious religious scholar specializing in Judaism.  On his radio show, he often mentions his book Why The Jews.  Having heard a lot about this book, I was very interested in reading it.  I was not disappointed, but I was very saddened at the horrendous treatment of the Jewish people throughout history.  Prager and  Joseph Telushkin offer the following explanations for our world’s history of anti-Semitism:

– 1600 years of Christian hatred of Jews culminated in the Holocaust … Christianity did not create the Holocaust … but without Christian antisemitism, the Holocaust would have been inconceivable.

– Jews, merely by continuing to be Jews, threatened the very legitimacy of Christianity … if Judaism remained valid, then Christianity was invalid … therein, from the days of the founding of Christianity, lie the origins of Christian hatred of Jews … Christianity had no choice but to deny the validity of Judaism.

– the mere existence of Jews is a threat to the prevailing order of the societies in which Jews live … Judaism is an existential threat to the core values and beliefs of others … living with this threat often aroused deep and lasting hatred.

– Jews allegiance to the biblical commandments of God, Torah and Israel have made Jews outsiders who challenge the validity of the non-Jew’s gods, laws, and national allegiance.

– economic factors, the need for scapegoats, resentment of Jewish affluence, ethnic hatred … these have all exacerbated antisemitism but do not explain its genesis.

– any group acting so differently from the majority culture is bound to elicit hostility … by observing Kashrut, a Jew can eat little at a non-Jew’s house … observing the Jewish Sabbath increases the otherness and isolation of Jews.

– Nazi Jew-hatred was an end, not a means to an end … Nazism was a vehicle for antisemitism, not the reverse … Hitler used war as a means of killing Jews on a larger scale than he could do in peacetime.

*** Nazi antisemitism was based on hatred of the Jewish character, not hatred of Jews’ non-Aryan blood … the Nazis hated the challenges to their view of the German world posed by Jews and Jewish values.

 

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281. Circling the Sun

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Boulder Librarian

Author:   Paula McLain

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, Foreign

366 pages, published July 28, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

Circling the Sun tells the compelling story of Beryl Markham, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.  While this feat is remarkable in itself, there is a lot more to Beryl’s life.  Raised in Kenya, she was abandoned by her mother at a young age.  Her father raised her to be an expert horsewoman and she made a living training champion thoroughbreds.  She also had an ill-fated affair with Denys Finch Hatton (who introduced her to flying) and was friends with Karen Blixen (who was seriously involved with Denys), author of Out of Africa.

Quotes 

“We’re all of us afraid of many things, but if you make yourself smaller or let your fear confine you, then you really aren’t your own person at all—are you? The real question is whether or not you will risk what it takes to be happy.”

 

“Denys understood how nothing ever holds still for us, or should. The trick is learning to take things as they come and fully, too, with no resistance or fear, not trying to grip them too tightly or make them bend.”

 

“Sometimes when you’re hurting, it helps to throw yourself at something that will take your weight.”

 

“I’ve sometimes thought that being loved a little less than others can actually make a person, rather than ruin them.”

 

“I’ve never travelled,” I told her. “Oh, you absolutely should,” she insisted, “if only so that you can come home and really see it for what it is. That’s my favourite part.”

 

“Things come that we never would have predicted for ourselves or even guessed at. And yet they change us forever.”

 

“Proper learning isn’t just useful in society, Beryl. It can be wonderfully yours, a thing to have and keep just for you.”

 

“People interest me so much. They’re such wonderful puzzles. Think of it. Half the time we’ve no idea what we’re doing, but we live anyway.”

 

“We can only go to the limits of ourselves. Anything more and we give too much away. Then we’re not good for anyone.”

 

“For most of a day we walked through alkali flats, the white crust like a frosted layer of salt that rose in a powder when your boots punched through. We wore the chalk on us everywhere—up to our knees, in the creases of our fingers clenching the rifle strap, down in the cavity between my breasts, and in my mouth, too. I couldn’t keep it out and stopped trying. I couldn’t keep anything out, I realized, and that was something I loved about Africa. The way it got at you from the outside in and never let up, and never let you go.”

 

“what I’d really like to know is how it feels to be on my own. Not someone’s daughter or wife, I mean…but my own person.” “Oh.” It seemed I’d surprised him. “There isn’t a lot of that kind of thinking around here.” “Of course there is,” I told him, trying to draw a smile. “It’s just usually a man who’s doing it.” —”

 

“Searching out something important and going astray look exactly the same for a while, in fact.”

 

“Miwanzo is the word in Swahili for “beginnings.” But sometimes everything has to end first and the bottom drop out and every light fizzle and die before a proper beginning can come along.”

 

“Have you ever seen stars like this? You can’t have. They don’t make them like this anywhere in the world.” Above our heads, the sky was a brimming treasure box. Some of the stars seemed to want to pull free and leap down onto my shoulders—and though these were the only ones I had ever known, I believed Denys when he said they were the finest. I thought I might believe anything he said, in fact, even though we had just met. He had that in him.” 

My Take

Paula McLain, the talented author of Circling the Sun also wrote The Paris Wife, a book about Ernest Hemingway’s first wife that I read a few years ago.  Both books are historical fiction biographies based on strong women protagonists.  I preferred Circling the Sun because of the unique character of Beryl Markham, a woman before her time and an aviation pioneer.  Although she was a bit prone to self absorption and often made foolish, impulsive decisions, she was an amazing woman.

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279. The Groovy Guide to Financial Independence: How to Escape the Tyranny of Mandatory Toil in Fourteen Years or Less

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Mr. Groovy

Genre:  Non Fiction, Personal Finance, Economics, Self Improvement, Politics, Public Policy

448 pages, published January 23, 2018

Reading Format:  e-Book on Kindle

Summary

Summary:   The Groovy Guide to Financial Independence is part memoir, part instruction manual, part freedomnista manifesto on how to retire early, indeed on how to retire in 14 years or less.  It is written by “Mr. Groovy,” a libertarian early retiree who blogs at freedomisgroovy.com.   Mr. Groovy is not a fan of the government (and explains their failings in detail) and is not a fan of having a job (and explains in straightforward terms how to retire early).  He also includes advice on how to improve parts of your life outside of finances, including your health and fitness.  The topics in his book include the following:

 

  • Financial moronity is very likely the only thing separating you from building wealth.
  • Good financial habits or GFHs are the key to curing financial moronity.
  • Honor begets tremendous financial dividends.
  • Why you don’t want to be a “teat-sucking layabout.”
  • How to become a personal responsibility warrior or PRW.
  • Why it’s damn near impossible to out-exercise an undisciplined mouth.
  • Why it’s damn near impossible to out-earn an undisciplined wallet.
  • Why Hannibal Lecter is the most unappreciated financial guru of our time.
  • How mastering the art of strategic ignorance, strategic aloofness, and strategic participation is the key to subduing your materialistic impulses.
  • Why you should get married if you aren’t already.
  • Why college is one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated against the American public.
  • How to become an opportunity monger.
  • How to track your spending with Google Sheets.
  • How anyone armed with a tracking spreadsheet and a functioning brain can reduce his or her spending.
  • Why you should strive to be half normal in the consumer arena.
  • What is a Financial HAL and why it’s indispensable to financial independence.
  • What is asset allocation and how you tweak it for bigger returns or less volatility.
  • Why a $5,000 emergency fund is sufficient for most people.
  • What is false wealth and why it should keep you up at night.
  • How medical tourism can save you from the ravenous maw of the healthcare-industrial complex.
  • How the four-percent rule begat the twenty-five times rule.
  • How the twenty-five times rule became the default understanding of financial independence.
  • How to hack your way to a 50 percent savings rate or better with geoarbitrage, spatial arbitrage, or egotrage.
  • Why creating, building, fixing, or cleaning something is key to finding happiness after your money woes have been addressed.
  • What Big Freedoms and Little Freedoms have to do with personal finance.
  • Finally, why curing your financial moronity and achieving financial independence in a country with half-assed freedom are hollow victories.

Mr. Groovy, the Author, didn’t achieve financial independence because of any special circumstances.  He was a C student in high school, a C student in college, and the most he ever made in a year was $76,000 (way back in 2005). His journey was the result of dropping bad financial habits and embracing good financial habits.  A strategy anyone can master.

Summary

After enjoying the freedomisgroovy blog for several years, I was interested in reading Mr. Groovy’s take on financial independence and other topics.  He has a light, fun writing style which allowed me to breeze through his book.  As a fellow libertarian, I found myself agreeing with him on most of the topics he addresses, especially the importance of not relying on the government to rescue you.  His financial advice is also spot on and a great guide (along with JL Collins’ The Simple Path to Wealth) for young people just starting out.  I will be recommending it to my kids.

 

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278. The Story of God, the Story of Us: Getting Lost and Found in the Bible

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Sean Gladding

Genre:  Non Fiction, Christian, Theology

237 pages, published August 27, 2010

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

In The Story of God, the Story of Us, author Sean Gladding tells the story of the entire Bible.  Gladding’s convention is to follow the conversations of a group of people (sitting around a campfire in Babylon, reclining at table in Asia Minor, or huddled together by candlelight in Rome) wrestling with the Story of God for the first time.  While the book can be read alone, it is designed to be shared with a group.

Quotes 

“The ever present ache of exile rises above the comforting sounds of the river, as the image of the house of the LORD in ruins breaks the peace. . . . Despite the warmth of the fire, he feels a chill. He wraps his cloak around him and looks into the eager faces of his people, then closes his eyes. ‘Picture this scene . . .'”

 

“Did you hear it? Can you picture the symmetry? Our God is a God of hospitality, creating a place for a people, a place where all life can flourish. God provides for all creation, as our Story shows. Our God is a God of order; we can trust God to provide for us now as in the beginning. “I know that it may not seem that way today, for here we are, exiles in a foreign land. Life is hard. We know that. And that is why we must tell each other the Story, and keep telling it, to do exactly what God has continually told us to do: remember . . . remember . . . remember.”

 

“Sin is not just something I do. Sin is social; it always impacts the whole community.” 

My Take

I read The Story of God, the Story of Us in a small group from First Presbyterian Church in Boulder, of which I am a member.  This book is a fresh take on the Bible and provides a succinct and compelling overview.  I especially enjoyed the discussions of the book with my small group and recommend reading it in a group if you can.  There is a companion study guide which we found very useful.

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276. People of the Book

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Boulder Librarian

Author:   Geraldine Brooks

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery

372 pages, published October 1, 2008

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

People of the Book tells the story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the earliest Jewish volumes ever to be illuminated with images.  It begins in 1996 when Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, is offered the exclusive job of analyzing and conserving of the Haggadah which has been rescued from Serb shelling during the Bosnian war.  Intermixed with Hannah’s analysis is the history of the Haggadah at different points in time which trace the book’s journey from its salvation back to its creation which also shines a spotlight on the history of the Jewish people in Europe throughout the centuries.

Quotes 

“Book burnings. Always the forerunners.  Heralds of the stake, the ovens, the mass graves.”

 

“We were too intelligent, too cynical for war. Of course, you don’t have to be stupid and primitive to die a stupid, primitive death.”

 

“…The hagaddah came to Sarajevo for a reason. It was here to test us, to see if there were people who could see that what united us was more than what divided us. That to be a human being matters more than to be a Jew or a Muslim, Catholic or Orthodox.”

 

“I asked once, and the library assistant told me there were more than a hundred thousand books there, and more than sixty million pages of documents. It’s a good number, I think: ten pages for every person who died. A kind of monument in paper for people who have no gravestones.”

 

“I had to remind myself that Islam had once swept north as far as the gates of Vienna; that when the haggadah had been made, the Muslims’ vast empire was the bright light of the Dark Ages, the one place where science and poetry still flourished, where Jews, tortured and killed by Christians, could find a measure of peace.”

 

“…the book has survived the same human disaster over and over again. Think about it. You’ve got a society where people tolerate difference, like Spain in the Convivencia, and everything’s humming along: creative, prosperous. Then somehow this fear, this hate, this need to demonize ‘the other’–it just sort of rears up and smashes the whole society. Inquisition, Nazis, extremist Serb nationalists…same old, same old.”

 

“It did not even occur to David to consult Ruti herself about this, or any other matter. Had he done so, he would have been most surprised by the result. He did not realize it, but his love for his daughter marched hand in hand with a kind of contempt for her. He saw his daughter as a kind-hearteed, dutiful, but vaguely pitiable soul. David, like many people, had made the mistake of confusing “meek” with “weak.” 

My Take

I enjoyed People of the Book and learned a lot about Jewish history (which translates to how badly the Jews have been treated throughout history).  Author Geraldine Brooks weaves an engrossing tale that brings history to life.

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275. Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Jackie Funk

Author:   Michael Pollan

Genre:  Non Fiction, Food, Health, Science, Nutrition

152 pages, published December 29, 2010

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

The title of Food Rules describes its content perfectly.  In this short book Michael Pollan, the author of many best-selling books on food (including The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food; both of which I read and enjoyed) offers the reader practical advice on what to eat and what not to eat.  His main advice is to “eat food, mostly plants, not too much.”  The book elaborates on each part of this guidance with enough explanation to understand the reason behind the recommendation.

Quotes 

“Populations eating a remarkably wide range of traditional diets generally don’t suffer from these chronic diseases. These diets run the gamut from ones very high in fat (the Inuit in Greenland subsist largely on seal blubber) to ones high in carbohydrate (Central American Indians subsist largely on maize and beans) to ones very high in protein (Masai tribesmen in Africa subsist chiefly on cattle blood, meat and milk), to cite three rather extreme examples. But much the same holds true for more mixed traditional diets. What this suggests is that there is no single ideal human diet but that the human omnivore is exquisitely adapted to a wide range of different foods and a variety of different diets. Except, that is, for one: the relatively new (in evolutionary terms) Western diet that that most of us now are eating. What an extraordinary achievement for a civilization: to have developed the one diet that reliably makes its people sick!”

 

“Not everyone can afford to eat well in America, which is a literal shame, but most of us can: Americans spend less than 10 percent of their income on food, less than the citizens of any other nation.”

 

“Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”

 

“As grandmothers used to say, ‘Better to pay the grocer than the doctor”

 

“The whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead.”

 

“Use the apple test. If you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, you’re not hungry.”

 

“If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t. .”

 

“…There’s a lot of money in the Western diet. The more you process any food, the more profitable it becomes. The healthcare industry makes more money treating chronic diseases (which account for three quarters of the $2 trillion plus we spend each year on health care in this country) than preventing them. ”

 

“For a product to carry a health claim on its package, it must first have a package, so right off the bat it’s more likely to be processed rather than a whole food.”

 

“The healthiest food in the supermarket – the fresh produce- doesn’t boast about its healthfulness, because the growers don’t have budget or packaging. Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign they have nothing valuable to say about your health.”

 

“Be the kind of person who takes supplements — then skip the supplements.”

 

“Eating what stands on one leg [mushrooms and plant foods] is better than eating what stands on two legs [fowl], which is better than eating what stands on four legs [cows, pigs, and other mammals].”

 

“Leave something on your plate… ‘Better to go to waste than to waist”

 

“Human beings ate well and kept themselves healthy for millennia before nutritional science came along to tell us how to do it; it is entirely possible to eat healthily without knowing what an anti-oxidant is.”

 

“So don’t drink your sweets, and remember: There is no such thing as a healthy soda.”

 

“The banquet is in the first bite.”

 

“For as you go on, you’ll be getting more calories, but not necessarily more pleasure.”

 

“So: Ask yourself not, Am I full? but, Is my hunger gone? That moment will arrive several bites sooner.” 

My Take

Having read and enjoyed two previous books by Michael Pollan, I was looking forward to this mini-book which distilled his eating philosophy into small, bite-sized, easily remembered chunks.  I was not disappointed.  Food Rules offers a lot of pithy, common-sense advice in response to the age old question:  What should I eat?  While I’m still following the low-carb recommendation of Gary Taubes (author of Why We Get Fat), I am intentionally eating more vegetables and some fruit after being reminded of their healthful properties.

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274. Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Allie Brosh

Genre:  Humor, Memoir, Cartoon, Graphic Novel

371 pages, published October 29, 2013

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Hyperbole and a Half is a graphic novel by Allie Brosh who has a blog by the same name.  In it she provides insightful takes on her nontraditional childhood and challenting adulthood.  She also spends a lot of time analyzing the behavior of her dogs.

Quotes 

“Most people can motivate themselves to do things simply by knowing that those things need to be done. But not me. For me, motivation is this horrible, scary game where I try to make myself do something while I actively avoid doing it. If I win, I have to do something I don’t want to do. And if I lose, I’m one step closer to ruining my entire life. And I never know whether I’m going to win or lose until the last second.”

 

“The absurdity of working so hard to continue doing something you don’t like can be overwhelming.”

 

“Dear 25 year old [note: not “Dear 25-year-old me” or “Dear 25-year-old self,” just “Dear 25 year old”],”

 

“The shelter worker said, “This one hates everything and she doesn’t know anything, and I hope you aren’t planning on taking her outside ever because she’s more like a bear than a dog, really, and unfortunately, she can scale a seven-foot-tall fence like the fucking Spider-Man.” And we were like, “Sure, why not.”

 

“We’re going to play a different game now. It’s called “who can yell ‘help’ the loudest and the most.”

 

“Procrastination has become its own solution – a tool I can use to push myself so close to disaster that I become terrified and flee toward success. A more troubling matter is the day-to-day activities that don’t have massive consequences when I neglect to do them.”

 

“Fortunately, it turns out that being scared of yourself is a somewhat effective motivational technique.”

 

“Being a good person is a very important part of my identity, but being a genuinely good person is time-consuming and complicated.”

 

“You don’t have to be a good person to feel like a good person, though. There’s a loophole I found where I don’t do good, helpful things, but I keep myself in a perpetual state of thinking I might.”

 

“I don’t just want to do the right thing. I want to WANT to do the right thing.”

 

“And that’s the most frustrating thing about depression. It isn’t always something you can fight back against with hope. It isn’t even something – it’s nothing. And you can’t combat nothing.”

 

“At first, I’d try to explain that it’s not really negativity or sadness anymore, it’s more just this detached, meaningless fog where you can’t feel anything about anything—even the things you love, even fun things—and you’re horribly bored and lonely, but since you’ve lost your ability to connect with any of the things that would normally make you feel less bored and lonely, you’re stuck in the boring, lonely, meaningless void without anything to distract you from how boring, lonely, and meaningless it is.”

 

“Nobody can guarantee that it’s going to be okay, but – and I don’t know if this will be comforting to anyone else – the possibility exists that there’s a piece of corn on a floor somewhere that will make you just as confused about why you were laughing as you have ever been about why you are depressed.”

 

“The longer I procrastinate on returning phone calls and emails, the more guilty I feel about it. The guilt I feel causes me to avoid the issue further, which only leads to more guilt and more procrastination. It gets to the point where I don’t email someone for fear of reminding them that they emailed me and thus giving them a reason to be disappointed in me.”

 

“Reality should follow through on what I think it is going to do.”

 

“I cope with it the best way I know – by being completely unreasonable and trying to force everything else in the world to obey me and do all the nonsensical things I want.”

 

“Fear and shame are the backbone of my self-control. They are my source of inspiration, my insurance against becoming entirely unacceptable. They help me do the right thing. And I am terrified of what I would be without them. Because I suspect that, left to my own devices, I would completely lose control of my life. I’m still hoping that perhaps someday I’ll learn how to use willpower like a real person, but until that very unlikely day, I will confidently battle toward adequacy, wielding my crude skill set of fear and shame.”

 

“I had tasted cake and there was no going back. My tiny body had morphed into a writhing mass of pure tenacity encased in a layer of desperation. I would eat all of the cake or I would evaporate from the sheer power of my desire to eat it.” 

My Take

I picked up Hyperbole and a Half from the “Librarian Recommendations” shelf at the wonderful Boulder Library.  While I haven’t read many graphic novels, I thoroughly enjoyed this one.  Allie Brosh has a unique and insightful sense of humor that had me laughing out loud at times (to get an idea of it you can check out her blog at http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/.  I especially enjoyed her story about burying a time capsule letter as a child which she addressed to “Dear 25 year old” rather than “Dear 25 year old self” or “Dear 25 year old me,” asked numerous questions about which kinds of dogs she liked and then implored the recipient to “Please write back.”  Her recounting of getting lost in the woods with her mother and her advice to her untrainable dogs also makes for interesting and entertaining reading.

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273. Before the Fall

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Noah Hawley

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller

401 pages, published May 31, 2016

Reading Format:  e-Book on Overdrive

Summary

On a foggy summer night, 11 people – 10 privileged, one down-on-his-luck painter – depart Martha’s Vineyard on a private jet headed for New York.  Sixteen minutes later plane has crashed into the ocean.  The only survivors are Scott Burroughs, the painter, and a four-year-old boy who is now the last remaining member of an immensely wealthy and powerful media mogul’s family.   Before the Fall weaves between the aftermath of the crash and the backstories of the passengers and crew members including a Media Mogul and his family, a captain of Wall Street and his wife, a party boy just in from London, a young woman questioning her path in life, and a career pilot.

Quotes 

“In the absence of facts…. we tell ourselves stories.”

 

“It’s hard to be sad when you’re being useful. And he liked that idea. That service to others brought happiness. It was self-involvement that led to depression, to spiraling questions about the meaning of things.”

 

“Life is a series of decisions and reactions. It is the things you do and the things that are done to you.  And then it’s over.”

 

“Everyone is from someplace. We all have stories, our lives unfolding along crooked lines, colliding in unexpected ways.”

 

“You have kids and you think I made you, so we’re the same, but it’s not true. You just get to live with them for a while and maybe help them figure things out.”

 

“It is the job of the human brain to assemble all the input of our world—sights, sounds, smells—into a coherent narrative. This is what memory is, a carefully calibrated story that we make up about our past.”

 

“Anything is possible. Everything is gettable. You just have to want it badly enough.”

 

“Because what if instead of a story told in consecutive order, life is a cacophony of moments we never leave? What if the most traumatic or the most beautiful experiences we have trap us in a kind of feedback loop, where at least some part of our minds remains obsessed, even as our bodies move on?”

 

“What’s a handshake, after all, except a socially acceptable way to make sure the other guy doesn’t have a knife behind his back.”

 

“Someone had told her once that mothers existed to blunt the existential loneliness of being a person. If that was true then her biggest maternal responsibility was simply companionship. You bring a child into this fractious, chaotic world out of the heat of your womb, and then spend the next ten years walking beside them while they figure out how to be a person.”

 

“Where the average person appreciates the beauty of surf and waves, Gus, an engineer, sees only practical design. Gravity, plus ocean current, plus wind. Poetry to the common man is a unicorn viewed from the corner of an eye—an unexpected glimpse of the intangible. To an engineer, only the ingenuity of pragmatic solutions is poetic. Function over form. It’s not a question of optimism or pessimism, a glass half full or half empty. To an engineer, the glass is simply too big.”

 

“Never fight tomorrow’s fight today,”

 

“But money, like gravity, is a force that clumps, drawing in more and more of itself, eventually creating the black hole that we know as wealth. This is not simply the fault of humans. Ask any dollar bill and it will tell you it prefers the company of hundreds to the company of ones. Better to be a sawbuck in a billionaire’s account than a dirty single in the torn pocket of an addict.” 

My Take

Having read and enjoyed The Good Father by Noah Hawley (in addition to the Fargo television series which he created), I looked forward to Before the Fall.  I was not disappointed.  In addition to penning a suspenseful mystery, Hawley provides the reader with an examination of human nature and an exploration of existential issues.  All in an entertaining, suspenseful format.

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271. Slam

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Nick Hornby

Genre:  Fiction, Humor

309 pages, published October 16, 2007

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Slam is narrated by Sam, a 16-year-old living in the UK whose life is getting very complicated.  His parents are divorced, he is struggling in school, his best advice comes from a Tony Hawk poster and he has just found out that his ex-girlfriend Alicia is pregnant.

Quotes 

“I hate time. It never does what you want it to.”

 

“When I went back into the kitchen, I wanted to sit on my mum’s lap. I know that sounds stupid and babyish , but I couldn’t help it. On my sixteenth birthday, I didn’t want to be sixteen, or fifteen or anyteen. I wanted to be three or four, and too young to make any kind of mess.”

 

“I’d never really had arguments like this before, arguments I couldn’t understand properly, arguments where both sides were right and wrong all at the same time.”

 

“There are many differences between a baby and an I-Pod. And one of the biggest is, no one going to mug you for your baby.”

 

“Definitely avoid going out with ugly girls who say they want to be models. Not because they’re ugly, but because they’re mad.”

 

“It seems to make a difference to some girls. If you say something that isn’t sexist to the right sort ofgirl, she likes you more. Say one of your mates is going on about how all girls are stupid, and you say ‘not all girls are stupid,’ then it can make you look good. There have to be girls listening, though, obviously. Otherwise it’s a waste of time.”

 

“Seeing as he wasn’t very bright, I was pretty sure that he was going to be good at fighting.”

 

“There was a lot of work to do, and arguments to have, and kids to take care of, and money to find from somewhere, and sleep to lose.

I could do it, though. I could see that.

I wouldn’t be sitting here now if I couldn’t do it, would I?

I think that’s what Tony Hawk was trying to tell me all along.” 

My Take

Having recently read Funny Girl (also by Nick Hornby), I was looking forward to another delightful and fun book.  I was not disappointed.  Hornby is a witty and poignant writer who creates great dialogue and has a keen understanding of human nature and relationships.   I look forward to reading more good books by this very talented writer.

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