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543. Greenlights

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Heather Ringoen

Author:   Matthew McConaughey

Genre:  Non Fiction, Memoir

308 pages, published October 20, 2020

Reading Format:   e-book

Summary

In Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey tells his life story in an unconventional manner and includes poems, drawings, photos and other material from his 35 years of diaries.  His theme is that life gives you green lights, yellow lights and red lights and that you need to pay attention to the signal you are receiving and act on it or work to change it.

Quotes 

“We all step in shit from time to time. We hit roadblocks, we fuck up, we get fucked, we get sick, we don’t get what we want, we cross thousands of “could have done better”s and “wish that wouldn’t have happened”s in life. Stepping in shit is inevitable, so let’s either see it as good luck, or figure out how to do it less often.”

 

 “Don’t walk into a place like you wanna buy it, walk in like you own it.”

 

“We cannot fully appreciate the light without the shadows. We have to be thrown off balance to find our footing. It’s better to jump than fall. And here I am.”

 

“I believe the truth is only offensive when we’re lying.”

 

 

“When we mentally give a person, place, or point in time more credit than ourselves, we create a fictitious ceiling. A restriction over the expectations that we have over our own performance in that moment. We get tense. We focus on the outcome instead of the activity and we miss the doing of the deed. We either think the world depends on the result or it’s too good to be true. But it doesn’t and it isn’t. And it’s not our right to believe it does or is.

Don’t create imaginary constraints. A leading role, a blue ribbon, a winning score, a great idea, the love of our life, euphoric bliss… Who are we to think we don’t deserve these fortunes when they’re in our grasp? Who are we to think we haven’t earned them?

If we stay and process within ourselves, in the joy of the doing, we will never choke at the finish line. Why? Because we’re not thinking of the finish line. We’re not looking at the clock. We’re not watching ourselves on the Jumbotron performing. We are performing in real time where the approach is the destination.”

 

“The question we need to ask ourselves is: what is success to us? More money? That’s fine. A healthy family? A happy marriage? Helping others? To be famous? Spiritually sound? To express ourselves? To create art? To leave the world a better place than we found it?

What is success to me? Continue to ask yourself that question. How are you prosperous? What is your relevance?

Your answer may change over time and that’s fine but do yourself this favor – whatever your answer is, don’t choose anything that would jeopardize your soul. Prioritize who you are, who you want to be, and don’t spend time with anything that antagonizes your character. Don’t depend on drinking the Kool-Aid – it’s popular, tastes sweet today, but it will give you cavities tomorrow.

 

Life is not a popularity contest. Be brave, take the hill. But first answer the question.”

 

“I’m not perfect; no, I step in shit all the time and recognize it when I do. I’ve just learned how to scrape it off my boots and carry on.”

 

“We all have scars, we gonna have more. Rather than struggle against time and waste it, let’s dance with time and redeem it. Cause we don’t live longer when we try not to die. We live longer when we are too busy living.”

 

“Me? I haven’t made all A’s in the art of living. But I give a damn. And I’ll take an experienced C over an ignorant A any day.”

 

“I’d rather lose money havin fun than make money being bored,”

 

“A denied expectation hurts more than a denied hope, while a fulfilled hope makes us happier than a fulfilled expectation.”

 

“All destruction eventually leads to construction, all death eventually leads to birth, all pain eventually leads to pleasure. In this life or the next, what goes down will come up. It’s a matter of how we see the challenge in front of us and how we engage with it. Persist, pivot, or concede. It’s up to us, our choice every time.”

 

“I have a lot of proof that the world is conspiring to make me happy.”

 

“Sometimes which choice you make is not as important as making a choice and commiting to it.”

 

“No longer chasing butterflies, Camila and I planted our garden so they could come to us.”

 

“Life is our resume. It is our story to tell, and the choices we make write the chapters. Can we live in a way where we look forward to looking back?”

 

 “Guilt and regret kill many a man before their time.”

 

“Make my life my favorite movie. Live my favorite character. Write my own script. Direct my own story. Be my biography. Make my own documentary on me. Non-fiction, live, not recorded. Time to catch that hero I’ve been chasing. See if the sun will melt the wax that holds my wings or if the heat is just a mirage. Live my legacy now. Quit acting like me. Be me.”

 

“Catching greenlights is about skill: intent, context, consideration, endurance, anticipation, resilience, speed, and discipline. We can catch more greenlights by simply identifying where the red lights are in our life, and then change course to hit fewer of them.”

 

 “To lose the power of confrontation is to lose the power of unity.”

 

 “Great leaders are not always in front, they also know who to follow.”

 

“The inevitability of a situation is not relative; when we accept the outcome of a given situation as inevitable, then how we choose to deal with it is relative.”

 

“because we quit early or we didn’t take the necessary risk to get it. The more boots we put in the back side of our if onlys, the more we will get what we want. Don’t walk the it’s too late it’s too soon tightrope until you die.”

 

“Now you can shut that door on me or we can walk through it together.”

 

“We want lovers, friends, recruits, soldiers, and affiliations that support who we are. People, individuals, believe in themselves, want to survive, and on a Darwinistic level at least, want to have more, of ourselves. Initially, this is a visual choice. The where, what, when, and who…to our why. Upon closer inspection, which is the upfall of the politically correct culture of today, we learn to measure people on the competence of their values that we most value. When we do this, the politics of gender, race, and slanderous slang take a back seat to the importance of the values we share. The more we travel, the more we realize how similar our human needs are. We want to be loved, have a family, community, have something to look forward to. These basic needs are present in all socioeconomic and cultural civilizations. I have seen many tribes in the deserts of Northern Africa who, with nine children and no electricity, had more joy, love, honor, and laughter than the majority of the most materially rich people I’ve ever met. We have the choice to love, befriend, recruit, call to arms, associate, and support who we believe in, and more importantly, who, we believe, believes in us.”

 

My Take

“All right, all right, all right.”  Greenlights was a really fun and thought provoking read.  Matthew McConaughey has led a fascinating life and has some wonderful and often hilarious stories to tell.  He has also done a lot of thinking about taking risks and provides some worthwhile advice on how to live your best life in this well written and easy to read memoir.

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516. Anxious People

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Stephanie Schroeder

Author:    Fredrik Backman

Genre:  Fiction

341 pages, published September 8, 2020

Reading Format:   E-book

Summary

In Anxious People, a bank robber walks into an apartment open house after failing to actually rob the bank and holds an unlikely mix of strangers hostage.  The captives include a recently retired couple who buy fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can’t fix their own marriage, a wealthy banker who has shut herself off from the world, a young, nervous couple pregnant with their first child, an 87 year old, feisty woman, and a mystery man who has locked himself in the apartment’s only bathroom.  As the police try to free the hostages, we learn surprising truths about each of them, including the ultimately sympathetic bank robber.

Quotes 

“Because the terrible thing about becoming an adult is being forced to realize that absolutely nobody cares about us, we have to deal with everything ourselves now, find out how the whole world works. Work and pay bills, use dental floss and get to meetings on time, stand in line and fill out forms, come to grips with cables and put furniture together, change tires on the car and charge the phone and switch the coffee machine off and not forget to sign the kids up for swimming lessons. We open our eyes in the morning and life is just waiting to tip a fresh avalanche of “Don’t Forget!”s and “Remember!”s over us. We don’t have time to think or breathe, we just wake up and start digging through the heap, because there will be another one dumped on us tomorrow. We look around occasionally, at our place of work or at parents’ meetings or out in the street, and realize with horror that everyone else seems to know exactly what they’re doing. We’re the only ones who have to pretend. Everyone else can afford stuff and has a handle on other stuff and enough energy to deal with even more stuff. And everyone else’s children can swim.”

“They say that a person’s personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn’t true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we’d never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.”

 

 “The truth of course is that if people really were as happy as they look on the Internet, they wouldn’t spend so much damn time on the Internet, because no one who’s having a really good day spends half of it taking pictures of themselves. Anyone can nurture a myth about their life if they have enough manure, so if the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, that’s probably because it’s full of shit.”

 

“That’s the power of literature, you know, it can act like little love letters between two people who can only explain their feelings by pointing at other people’s.”

 

 “Some people accept that they will never be free of their anxiety, they just learn to carry it. She tried to be one of them. She told herself that was why you should always be nice to other people, even idiots, because you never know how heavy their burden is.”

 

“This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots. So it needs saying from the outset that it’s always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is.”

 

“Nothing is easier for people who never do anything themselves than to criticize someone who actually makes an effort.”

 

“We don’t have a plan, we just do our best to get through the day, because there’ll be another one coming along tomorrow.”

 

“Expensive restaurants have bigger gaps between the tables. First class on airplanes has no middle seats. Exclusive hotels have separate entrances for guests staying in suites. The most expensive thing you can buy in the most densely populated places on the planet is distance.”

 

“God doesn’t protect people from knives, sweetheart. That’s why God gave us other people, so we can protect each other.”

 

“Have you ever held a three-year-old by the hand on the way home from preschool?”

“No.”

“You’re never more important that you are then.”

 

“Boats that stay in the harbor are safe, sweetheart, but that’s not what boats were built for.”

 

“Some of us never manage to get the chaos under control, so our lives simply carry on, the world spinning through space at two million miles an hour while we bounce about on its surface like so many lost socks.”

 

“that we don’t want our children to pursue their own dreams or walk in our footsteps. We want to walk in their footsteps while they pursue our dreams.”

 

“We’re trying to be grown-up and love each other and understand how the hell you’re supposed to insert USB leads. We’re looking for something to cling on to, something to fight for, something to look forward to. We’re doing all we can to teach our children how to swim. We have all of this in common, yet most of us remain strangers, we never know what we do to each other, how your life is affected by mine.  Perhaps we hurried past each other in a crowd today, and neither of us noticed, and the fibers of your coat brushed against mine for single moment and then we were gone. I don’t know who you are.  But when you get home this evening, when this day is over and the night takes us, allow yourself a deep breath. Because we made it through this day as well. There’ll be another one along tomorrow.”

 

“We give those we love nicknames, because love requires a word that belongs to us alone.”

 

“Something my dad says…He says you end up marrying the one you don’t understand. Then you spend the rest of your life trying.”

 

“Because that was a parent’s job: to provide shoulders. Shoulders for your children to sit on when they’re little so they can see the world, then stand on when they get older so they can reach the clouds, and sometimes lean against whenever they stumble and feel unsure.”

 

“Do you know what the worst thing about being a parent is? That you’re always judged by your worst moments. You can do a million things right, but if you do one single thing wrong you’re forever that parent who was checking his phone in the park when your child was hit in the head by a swing. We don’t take our eyes off them for days at a time, but then you read just one text message and it’s as if all your best moments never happened. No one goes to see a psychologist to talk about all the times they weren’t hit in the head by a swing as a child. Parents are defined by their mistakes.”

 

“We are asleep until we fall in love.”

 

“You don’t have to like all children. Just one. And children don’t need the world’s best parents, just their own parents. To be perfectly honest with you, what they need most of the time is a chauffeur.”

 

“You can’t live long with the ones who are only beautiful, Jules. But the funny ones, oh, they last a lifetime.”

 

“children used to be punished by being sent to their rooms, but these days you have to force children to come out of them. One generation got told off for not being able to sit still, the next gets told off for never moving.”

 

“This book is dedicated to the voices inside my head, the most remarkable of my friends.  And to my wife, who lives with us.”

 My Take

Anxious People is the sixth book that I have read by best-selling Swedisth author Fredrik Backman (previous reads were:  A Man Called Ove, Beartown, Us Against You, Britt-Marie Was Here  And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer) and I like his wry, insightful style that peels back the layers of human nature.  He always has something interesting to say about the way human beings function and interact with each other and Anxious People is one of his better efforts.

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488. Appropos of Nothing

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Woody Allen

Genre:    Non Fiction, Memoir, Humor

396 pages, published March 23, 2020

Reading Format:   e-Book

Summary

Appropos of Nothing is a memoir by Woody Allen which tells the story of his life, from his childhood in Brooklyn to his work as a writer for the Sid Caesar variety show in the early days of television, to his stand up comedy days to his impressive movie career to his troubles with Mia Farrow.

Quotes 

“Self-obsession, that treacherous time waster.”

 

“Rather than live on in the hearts and mind of the public, I prefer to live on in my apartment.”

 

“In the end this obsession for conformity leads to fascism.”

 

“In retrospect, the red flags existed every few feet, but nature provides us with a denial mechanism, else we couldn’t make it through the days, as Freud teaches us, as Nietzsche teaches us, as O’Neill teaches us, as T. S. Eliot teaches us. Unfortunately, I was never a good student.”

 

“I don’t know what the hell I was thinking; I hated nature, and more than nature I hated being a car owner.”

 

“I just didn’t grasp the finer points and once tipped a process server who knocked on my door and handed me a summons.”

 

“And I definitely do not want to be on one of those first rockets to outer space, to glimpse Earth from afar and experience weightlessness. The truth is, I hate weightlessness; I am a big fan of gravity and hope it lasts.”

 

“Christ, I’m afraid of dogs. And I’m talking about all dogs, including Yorkies. You’ll hate me, but I don’t like pets. Naturally, I don’t like being bitten and I hate being shed on, licked, or barked at. On the evolutionary scale, I always regarded all animals as failed humans. I also don’t like being sung to by a canary or when fish in a tank look back at me.”

 

“Her preference was to go by pistol shot, mine by placing my head in the dishwasher and pressing Full Cycle.”

 

“being a misanthropist has its saving grace—people can never disappoint you.”

 

“If 80 percent of life is showing up, the other 80 percent, as Yogi Berra might’ve said, is chance.”

 

“For better or worse, I sort of live in a bubble. I gave up reading about myself decades ago and have no interest in other people’s appraisal or analysis of my work. This sounds arrogant, but it’s not. I do not consider myself superior or aloof, nor do I have a particularly high opinion of my own product. I was taught by Danny Simon to rely on my own judgment, and I don’t like to waste precious time on what can easily become a distraction. Friends have often encouraged me to at least treat myself to the enjoyment of once in a while reading some respectable person’s high praise and maybe even in extreme cases consider responding when attacked, but I have no desire to do either.”

 

“To a human, the fall-colored leaves are gorgeous. To a red or yellow leaf, I can guarantee they find the green ones lovelier.”

 

“There are still loonies who think I married my daughter, who think Soon-Yi was my child, who think Mia was my wife, who think I adopted Soon-Yi, who think that Obama wasn’t American. But there was never any trial. I was never charged with anything, as it was clear to the investigators nothing had ever occurred.”

 

My Take

Since my early 20’s, I have been a fan of Woody Allen (both his books and his movies).  Appropos of Nothing, a memoir which covers his entire life, is an entertaining walk down memory lane with lots of behind the scenes stories on his movies and career.  Allen also spends a fair amount of time address the whole Soon-Yi scandal and it is refreshing to hear his perspective.  While he is a self-absorbed artist who often fails to contemplate how his actions will be viewed, he is nevertheless a comedic genius who has led an incredibly fascinating and productive life.  I highly recommend this book, especially if you are a fan.

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449. In Six Days: An Eco-Terrorism Fable

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Mike Mendelsohn

Author:   Mike Mendelsohn

Genre:   Fiction, Thriller

289 pages, published 2020

Reading Format:  e-Book

Summary

In Six Days:  An Eco-Terrorism Fable is a thriller that follows a two eco-terrorists who are destroying ecological harmful sites throughout the U.S. in an escalating fashion.  It also follows a washed up, widower with a free spirited daughter who has made a small fortune trading bitcoin and a cabal of Republican congressmen who have blood on their hands.

Quotes 

I read this book as part of a book group of which the author, a first time fiction writer, is a member.  I commend him actually writing a book, something that is very hard to do.  As a conservative, I am not the target audience for this book.  I found the portrayal of the “evil” Republican congressmen to be one-dimensional and clichéd.   I imagine that those with a more left-wing persuasion might enjoy this book more than I did.

 

My Take

I read this book as part of a book group of which the author, a first time fiction writer, is a member.  I commend him actually writing a book, something that is very hard to do.  As a conservative, I am not the target audience for this book.  I found the portrayal of the “evil” Republican congressmen to be one-dimensional and clichéd.   I imagine that those with a more left-wing persuasion might enjoy this book more than I did.

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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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253. The Orphan Master’s Son

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Aileen Schwab

Author:   Adam Johnson

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction

443 pages, published January 10, 2012

Reading Format:  e-Book

 

Summary

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, The Orphan Master’s Son is an epic novel set in North Korea.  The book follows the life of Pak Jun Do, whose mother, a beautiful singer, was “stolen” to Pyongyang to entertain the corrupt elites.  Pak is left to languish in Long Tomorrows, a work camp for orphans that is run by his influential father who does not acknowledge him.  Considering himself “a humble citizen of the greatest nation in the world,” Pak becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his Korean overlords in order to stay alive.  His service to North Korea takes him to the United States where his contact with a woman in the CIA changes the course of his life.  Surviving horrific torture by the pitiless state machine, Pak pretends to be a rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman he loves, Sun Moon, a legendary actress “so pure, she didn’t know what starving people looked like.”

 

Quotes 

“Where we are from… [s]tories are factual. If a farmer is declared a music virtuoso by the state, everyone had better start calling him maestro. And secretly, he’d be wise to start practicing the piano. For us, the story is more important than the person. If a man and his story are in conflict, it is the man who must change. …But in America, people’s stories change all the time. In America, it is the man who matters.”

 

“But people do things to survive, and then after they survive, they can’t live with what they’ve done.”

 

“Today, tomorrow,” she said. “A day is nothing. A day is just a match you strike after the ten thousand matches before it have gone out.”

 

“A name isn’t a person,’ Ga said. ‘Don’t ever remember someone by their name. To keep someone alive, you put them inside you, you put their face on your heart. Then, no matter where you are, they’re always with you because they’re a part of you.”

 

“They’re about a woman whose beauty is like a rare flower. There is a man who has a great love for her, a love he’s been saving up for his entire life, and it doesn’t matter that he must make a great journey to her, and it doesn’t matter if their time together is brief, that afterward he might lose her, for she is the flower of his heart and nothing will keep him from her.”

 

“In my experience, ghosts are made up only of the living, people you know are out there but are forever out of range”

 

“When the dogs returned, the Senator gave them treats from his pocket, and Jun Do understood that in communism, you’d threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.”

 

“I wonder of what you must daily endure in America, having no government to protect you, no one to tell you what to do. Is it true you’re given no ration card, that you must find food for yourself? Is it true that you labor for no higher purpose than paper money? What is California, this place you come from? I have never seen a picture. What plays over the American loudspeakers, when is your curfew, what is taught at your child-rearing collectives? Where does a woman go with her children on Sunday afternoons, and if a woman loses her husband, how does she know the government will assign her a good replacement? With whom would she curry favor to ensure her children got the best Youth Troop leader?”

 

“It’s called a gui-tar. It’s used to perform American rural music. It’s said to be especially popular in Texas,” he told her. “It’s also the instrument of choice for playing ‘the blues,’ which is a form of American music that chronicles the pain caused by poor decision making.”

 

“Real stories like this, human ones, could get you sent to prison, and it didn’t matter what they were about. It didn’t matter if the story was about an old woman or a squid attack—if it diverted emotion from the Dear Leader, it was dangerous.”

 

“It’s called a gui-tar. It’s used to perform American rural music. It’s said to be especially popular in Texas,” he told her. “It’s also the instrument of choice for playing ‘the blues,’ which is a form of American music that chronicles the pain caused by poor decision making.”

 

“Real stories like this, human ones, could get you sent to prison, and it didn’t matter what they were about. It didn’t matter if the story was about an old woman or a squid attack—if it diverted emotion from the Dear Leader, it was dangerous.”

 

My Take

The Orphan Master’s Son is a depressing, yet intriguing, book.  Depressing because author Adam Johnson takes you deep inside the violent, arbitrary and dehumanizing world of North Korea where even young children are fodder for the ruthless, totalitarian machine of the government.  In 2018, it is remarkable that a place like North Korea exists.  While the all encompassing suffering imposed on the people of North Korea is hard to read about, Johnson interlaces it with a captivating story of one man’s response to crushing dehumanization.  He even manages to interject a little romance into his grim tale.  Not hard to see why this book earned a Pulitizer Prize.

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252. Young Jane Young

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Gabrielle Zevin

Genre:  Fiction

294 pages, published August 22, 2017

Reading Format:  e-Book

Summary

Young Jane Young is the fictional story of Aviva Grossman, a young Congressional intern in Florida whose life is ruined after she has an affair with her married boss, a beloved Congressman and blogs about it. When the affair becomes front page news, Aviva is the recipient of public scorn and ridicule.  After a period of depression, she leaves Florida and reinvents herself in Maine as a wedding planner and raises a daughter on her own.  When she decides to run for public office herself, her long past mistake comes back to haunt her again.

 

Quotes 

“Maybe you survive cancer, maybe you survive the Holocaust, but life’ll get you every time.”

 

“It’s the special privilege of youth to make mistakes.”

 

“When someone tells you, ‘it’s not what it looks like,’ it’s almost always exactly what it looks like.”

 

“The key to happiness in life is knowing when to keep your mouth shut.”

 

“Anticipating the worst doesn’t provide insurance from the worst happening.”

 

“The only past you have a right to know about is your own.”

 

“Later, you yell at your mother, but you know it isn’t her fault. You yell at her because she’s there and because she’s your mother and she’ll take it.”

 

“When you have much, you must accept that you could someday have little.”

 

“Because the things we don’t have are sadder than the things we have. Because the things we don’t have exist in our imaginations, where they are perfect.”

 

“I am ‘neurotic.’ ‘Neurotic’ means ‘I think about things until I am sick.’“

 

My Take

Young Jane Young was a quick and fun read.  I was drawn in by Zevin’s wry and humorous writing style as well as her keen insights on the human condition.  I would definitely be interested in other books by this writer. If you are looking for a good beach or vacation read, this is it.

 

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198. The Child in Time

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Ian McEwan

Genre:  Fiction

263 pages, published November 2, 1999

Reading Format:  E-Book

 

Summary

Stephen Lewis, a successful writer of children’s books, must deal with the unthinkable when his only child, three-year-old Kate, is snatched from him in a supermarket. The tragedy breaks up his marriage to Julie and leaves Stephen bereft.  Stephen and Julie struggle to deal with their horrific loss and grasp at an opportunity to continue to live.

 

Quotes 

“For children, childhood is timeless. It is always the present. Everything is in the present tense. Of course, they have memories. Of course, time shifts a little for them and Christmas comes round in the end. But they don’t feel it. Today is what they feel, and when they say ‘When I grow up,’ there is always an edge of disbelief—how could they ever be other than what they are?”

 

“It was not always the case that a large minority comprising the weakest members of society wore special clothes, were freed from the routines of work and of many constraints on their behaviour and were able to devote much of their time to play. It should be remembered that childhood is not a natural occurrence. There was a time when children were treated like small adults. Childhood is an invention, a social construct, made possible by society as it increased in sophistication and resource.”

 

“Only when you are grown up, perhaps only when you have children yourself, do you fully understand that your own parents had a full and intricate existence before you were born.”

 

“…children are at heart selfish, and reasonably so, for they are programmed for survival.”

 

My Take

While I am a big fan of Ian McEwan (having enjoyed Atonement, The Children Act, Saturday, Amsterdam, Nutshell and Sweet Tooth), I am not a big fan of The Child in Time.  This book took me longer to finish than any other book that I have read during my quest.  I found it to be a slog and only finished it because I wanted the reading credit.  While there are many others who love this book, I suggest you try Atonement, Saturday or Nutshell for some great McEwan reading.

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117. I Live, No Longer I: Paul’s Spirituality of Suffering, Transformation, and Joy

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Laura Hogan

Author:   Laura Reece Hogan

Genre:  Christian, Self-Improvement, Memoir

172 pages, published January, 2017

Reading Format:  E-Book

 

Summary

I Live, No Longer I explores the question of human suffering and how it can connect us to God. Laura Hogan discusses how it is through the concepts of kenosis, enosis and theosis (i.e. moments of loss, moments of experience of creation and community, and moments of transformative unity with God) that we discover our deep connectedness to God and to one another.  Hogan effectively uses the biblical language of Paul the Apostle, as well as his experiences with suffering and transformation, to encourage us to express the pattern of Jesus Christ in our words, actions, and very lives, especially when we are challenged by suffering.  By doing so, we can transform our agony into true joy in God as we become aware of our relationship with the divine in every aspect of our lives, including experiences of great pain.   As Hogan both states and gracefully illustrates, “God is effective to accomplish fruitfulness and his divine purpose even in and through dark or dire circumstances.”

 

Quotes

“the way Paul sees it, the joy is the greater in any situation for a Christian if it involves all three moments which merge together into an emptying of self (kenosis) in favor of another (enosis) which reveals transformative union with Jesus (theosis).”

 

“Paul discovered and wanted to teach us that not only was the cross of Jesus Christ a paradox, but this very same paradox threads through the experience of all Christian life. Ironically what may seem to be death is paradoxically life, what may seem to be defeat is paradoxically victory, what may seem to be loss is paradoxically gain, and all Christian experience flows through this strange but powerful paradigm. Once we begin to perceive reality through this paradoxical lens of the cross, our ways of interpreting events and people in our lives change and expand—we begin to leave room for the perhaps hidden yet effective purposes of God in all things.”

 

“As many have noted, God does not promise to prevent the flood or fire, but he does promise to be with us in the flood or fire.”

 

“Paul interprets the fact of his imprisonment, and his suffering, as directly instrumental to furthering the spread of the gospel in a way both unexpected and effective. Moreover, he notes that the intention of these new preachers, whether springing from rivalry or love, is irrelevant, because either way Christ is proclaimed: “And in that I rejoice”

 

“Paul’s experience of God’s effectiveness even in situations which seemed radically lost and hopeless had its roots in the cross of Jesus Christ. Paul discovered that the cross of Jesus Christ had something to do with not just Jesus Christ, but Paul himself and all humanity. If “even death on a cross” (Phil 2: 8) had the supreme ability to restore and transform humanity, then that changed everything. Everything must be reinterpreted through this powerful and paradoxical lens of the cross. Even the experience of prison takes on new meaning. Even prison, in all its misery and suffering, contains the power to accomplish the transformative will of God—prison represents not defeat but victory on a divine scale. Yet prison is not just for those languishing behind bars. Prison is a universal human experience. Ultimately, don’t we all encounter a personal experience of prison, portable or otherwise?”

 

“Simultaneously, as we also examined in each of these chapters, we experience a rich continuum of transformative spiritual experience through all the moments of kenosis (moments of darkness, emptying or loss), enosis (moments in which we experience the divine in and through creation), and theosis (moments in which we experience a oneness or union with God) which play out in our lives, in all the minutes and days and intervals of life—in the infinitesimally small and the vast, in the hidden and the laughably obvious, the simple smile and the complicated drama, in the whisper and the thunderclap.”

 

“The moment of enosis, then, is the experience of Christ-with-us, in and through creation, which includes human beings and nature, and as found in the bonds of community. Here in this moment, in the very heartbeat of human existence, divine meets human in intimate sharing and loving presence in both individual and communal contexts. Paul’s writings witness abundantly to his experience of Christ-with-us, a concept most vividly illustrated in the recurring Pauline metaphor of Christian community as the body of Christ.”

 

“God is effective to accomplish fruitfulness and his divine purpose even in and through dark or dire circumstances.”

 

“If we are in the midst of a blade experience, we can trust that it will not be without divine effectiveness. The direction we are forced into may ultimately yield unexpected blessings. Perhaps the pain we experienced equips us for empathic help of others. Or, the blade could cut away something toxic. Not unlike a surgical procedure, the blade’s cut may be in the service of ultimately healing the patient. The blade may slice away parts of ourselves that we did not even know were cancerous, diseased, holding us back or keeping us from God. Or perhaps the divine effectiveness of the blade’s wounding remains shrouded in mystery and we simply try to trust that God will take the slicing crown of thorns and in some miraculous way turn it into a crown of victory.”

 

“Are you beginning to envision that magnetic chain of divinized followers of Christ? As we know from playing with magnets and paperclips as children, a magnetized metal filing is capable of drawing up another filing after it as well. Then in turn, that magnetized filing may draw another yet another filing, and so on. The Christ magnet is the singular source of attraction and power, and yet the attraction and power of Christ can be transmitted through other magnetized metal filings. That is precisely why we are attracted to Christ, yet we also are attracted to the same Christ in and through the lives of those creatively expressing the Christ pattern. So each person expressing the Christ pattern in her or his own way also contains the potential to transmit the pattern of Christ to others.”

 

“Thérèse had the insight that God may make saints of the smallest of us, even in our own ordinary circumstances and lives. In fact, it is precisely in our smallness and ordinariness that he calls us to be his own little birds. So, little birds, take heart. God tells you—you—that you are his little bird, and that you are capable of reflecting this lovely pattern of Christ in exactly the delightful and particular way which you have been called to express.”

 

“Our contemporary Stephen Colbert also expresses a paradoxical experience of the effectiveness of God even in terrible circumstances. He explained to an interviewer that, “Boy, did I have a bomb when I was 10. That was quite an explosion. And I learned to love it. So that’s why. Maybe, I don’t know. That might be why you don’t see me as someone angry and working out my demons onstage. It’s that I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.” Asked by his flabbergasted interviewer to help him understand this better, Colbert immediately cited a letter written by J.R.R. Tolkien in response to a priest who had written questioning him regarding the treatment of death in his novels not as punishment for original sin but as a gift. “Tolkien says, in a letter back, ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’” Colbert knocked his knuckles on the table. “‘ What punishments of God are not gifts?’” he said again. His eyes were filled with tears. “So it would be ungrateful not to take everything with gratitude. It doesn’t mean you want it. I can hold both of these ideas in my head.”  Colbert was thirty-five years old before he could “really feel the truth” of this paradox. Somehow he came to feel grateful for the gift even as he still felt the awfulness of the loss. Perhaps it is this very paradox of gain even in loss which gave rise to the attitude of gratitude and joy in his daily life. His interviewer, obviously deeply impacted by Colbert’s words, wrote: “The next thing he said I wrote on a slip of paper in his office and have carried it with me since. It’s our choice, whether to hate something in our lives, or to love every moment of them, even the parts that bring us pain.”

 

“When I was nine years old, I asked my mother, “Why am I me?” I probably would not even remember that I asked this, except for the fact that I got a lump in my throat when I said it, and that my mother and my father could not answer the question. The question I was really asking at that time was: why out of all the people in the world do I happen to be me? I have come to realize that this is part of the question we ought to be asking ourselves as we grow in our relationship with God. Each of us is a completely original creation, with our utterly unique gifts and hidden potentialities. Part of life is unwrapping this gift, and discovering not only who we are, and why we are, but ultimately who we are in Christ, and why we are—our purpose—in Christ. I live this rich and beautiful life given to me, yet no longer I—the greatest “I” I can be is the “we” of no longer me but Christ in me. And that I live, no longer I but Christ in me also tells me a lot about why I am, and why I am me, in my particular time, place, and person, just as you are also in your particular time, place, and person. We are all part of this living, moving, breathing Body of Christ, each with our own particular expression and confession of Christ, each with our own place and purpose, yet also in intimate connection and unity with the whole.”

 

“So my fellow little birds, imagine yourself once again on your beautiful and radiant spiral staircase—brilliant with shades of the bullet blue of your kenosis, the rosebud embrace of enosis, and the golden crown of theosis, all threading through you yourself and your staircase in imitation or mimesis of the One we love, Jesus Christ. The entirety of the staircase is held and supported lovingly by the central axis, which is a stunning bolt of pure light, beginning somewhere infinitely above, or perhaps having no beginning at all, being Infinity itself. This shaft of Light provides more than love and strength and light and the way, it provides life and the presence of our God with us—and therefore joy, abundant joy.”

My Take

Full disclosure, I have known Laura Hogan for almost 25 years when we met as young associates at a Century City, California law firm.  I have always been impressed with Laura’s kind and gentle spirit as well as her keen intellect.  After reading her new book, I find Laura to be more impressive than ever.  I Live, No Longer I is a beautifully written exploration of the transformative power of suffering.  It is a very thoughtful and biblically supported discussion of how we cannot not only find divine solace when we are in pain, but how the pain itself can bring us closer to the community of others and to union with God.   While Laura provides ample theological support for her ideas, including Paul’s paradoxical pattern of becoming like Christ, her book most resonates when she discusses her personal experiences and the experiences of other contemporaries (including Mother Theresa and Stephen Colbert) with kenosis, enosis and theosis. I also really enjoyed her analogy that we are like the “little bird” described by Saint Therese of Lisieux.  Even as an insignificant little bird, through our actions, we can make a difference and lead a joyful life in communion with other people and with God.  I highly recommend this beautiful book.

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11. Find Your Balance Point

Rating:  ☆☆

Recommended by:   

Author:  Brian Tracy

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Self-Improvement

Info:  128 pages, published August 25, 2015

Format:  E-Book (Zinio)

Summary 

Author Brian Tracy argues that each of us has a balance point where we feel in perfect harmony, grounded, happy, connected to others, and where our mind, body and spirit are in alignment, i.e, when “you feel at one with the universe.” He then posits that imbalance in our lives results not so much from doing too much but from doing too much of the wrong things. He then provides a process that enables you to sort out what is most important to you from among the many activities you could focus on. When you can efficiently identify and accomplish what really matters to you, you’ve found your balance point.

Quotes

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

“Fully 85 percent of your happiness will be determined by having the right people in your life.”

Read more

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