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263. Drunken Fireworks

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Stephen King

Genre:  Fiction, Humor, Novella

Only on audio, published June 30, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Drunken Fireworks is a short novella by Stephen King that was only released as an Audio Book; there is no print version.  It tells the story of Alden McCausland and his mother who, as the result of an unexpected life-insurance policy payout and a winning lottery ticket, come into some money.  They spend their days drinking in their small house by Lake Abenaki in Maine.  Across the lake, is the Massimo family’s Twelve Pines Camp which consists of a big white mansion, guest house and tennis court that Alden’s Ma says is paid for by the “ill-gotten gains” from Massimo Construction.  Fueled by envy, the McCauslands start a Fourth of July arms race with the Massimos which escalates until Alden ends up in jail.

 

Quotes 

 

 

My Take

I’m a big fan of Stephen King.  He always writes a compelling tale with real life, relatable characters.  While much briefer than his other works, Drunken Fireworks lives up to that standard.  It also succeeds as a cautionary tale against trying to keep up with the Joneses.

 

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262. Paris for One

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Jojo Moyes

Genre:  Fiction, Short Stories, Romance

106 pages, published February 5, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The main story in this collection by JoJo Moyes is an account of 26 year old, introverted Nell, who lives in the UK and has never been to Paris.  After planning a romantic weekend to Paree with her new boyfriend, she is bitterly disappointed when he fails to show and she is stuck in the City of Light by herself.  However, when Nell meets the mysterious Fabien, things begin to turn around.

 

Quotes 

“Nell looks at the label and comes to. “Oh, I’d never wear it. I like to buy things on a cost-per-wear basis. This dress would probably work out at like…thirty pounds a wear. No. I couldn’t.” “You don’t ever do something just because it makes you feel good?” The assistant shrugs. “Mademoiselle, you need to spend more time in Paris.”

 

“She is in Paris, in Parisian clothes, getting ready to go out with a Frenchman she picked up in an art gallery!  She pulls her hair back into a loose knot, puts on her lipstick, sits down on the bed and laughs.”

 

“Are you still with this man?

On no, She sniffed. I realized pretty quickly I couldn’t marry a man without a bookshelf.

No bookshelf?

In his house. Not even a little one in his loo for the Reader’s Digest.

Many people in this country don’t read books.

He didn’t have one book. Not even a true crime. Or a Jeffrey Archer. I mean, what does that tell you about someone’s character?”

 

“Because she knew already that this would be the thing that would end them. And that in the deepest part of her, she had known it from the beginning, like someone stubbornly ignoring a weed growing until it blocked out the light.”

 

My Take

Since starting my reading quest, I’ve read a lot of Jojo Moyes (After You, One Plus One, The Girl You Left Behind, Silver Bay) and have, for the most part, thoroughly enjoyed her books.  While Paris for One is more a trifle than her other books, it was still fun to spend time with it.  Perfect for a quick escape.

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261. Funny Girl

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Nick Hornby

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, Humor

452 pages, published February 3, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Funny Girl is the story of Sophie Straw, a blonde bombshell from a small English town who, in addition to her beauty, has a talent for making people laugh.  Sophie moves to London to pursue her dream of being the British version of Lucille Ball.  Set in 1960’s, we follow Sophie as her she lands a leading role on a BBC Comedy Playhouse series and makes her dream a reality.

 

Quotes 

“I’ve never been happy in the way that I’ve been happy in this room, and in the studios,” said Sophie. “I’ve never laughed so much, or learned so much, and everything I know about my job is because of the people here. Even you, Clive. And I’m worried that I’ll spend the rest of my working life looking for an experience like this one, where everything clicks and everyone pushes you to do the best you can, better than anything you think you’re capable of.”

 

“Love meant being brave, otherwise you had already lost your own argument: the man who couldn’t tell a woman he loved her was, by definition, not worthy of her.”

 

“What was he doing with her? How on earth could he love her? But he did. Or, at least, she made him feel sick, sad, and distracted. Perhaps there was another way of describing that unique and useless combination of feelings, but “love” would have to do for now.”

 

“She began to fear that she would always be greedy, all the time. Nothing ever seemed to fill her up. Nothing ever seemed to touch the sides.”

 

“She wasn’t the sort of catch one could take home and show off to people; she was the sort of catch that drags the angler off the end of the pier and pulls him out to sea before tearing him to pieces as he’s drowning. He shouldn’t have been fishing at all, not when he was so ill-equipped.”

 

“Years later, Tony would discover that writers never felt they belonged anywhere. That was one of the reasons they became writers. It was strange, however, failing to belong even at a party full of outsiders.”

 

“They already knew that they would be telling people about the morning for a long time to come, maybe for the rest of their lives, and the taxi ride was the first attempt at a first draft of a story that would have to satisfy parents, siblings, children, and grandchildren.”

 

“Clive was rapidly coming to the conclusion that being engaged to somebody meant that he spent an awful lot of time not doing things he wanted to do.”

 

“He was kind, he was single, he was vulnerable, he made her laugh (not always intentionally, true, but often enough). Every time she saw him, he seemed to have become a little more handsome.”

 

“The anger was clearly real, though. It was in there, sloshing around, looking for the nearest hole to escape through.”

 

“And also, what kind of job was comic magician? She didn’t think she could bear to be married to a comic magician, even if his breath were sweeter than Parma violets and his kisses were like atom bombs. Comic magicians belonged on seaside piers. Comic magicians were what she had come to London to escape, not to find, and certainly not to marry.”

 

“There aren’t any buts,” said Bill. “That’s the whole point of being a writer, isn’t it? If I wanted buts, I’d go and work in a fucking but factory.”

 

My Take

Listening to the audio book version of Funny Girl was a delight.  This was the second book that I have read by Nick Hornby (the first being A Long Way Down), but it won’t be the last.  I was charmed by the characters (especially Sophie), the stories and the writing.  I so enjoyed living in the 1960’s London world of Sophie Straw that I was disappointed when the book ended.

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259. Rose Under Fire

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Elizabeth Wein

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, World War II

368 pages, published September 10, 2013

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

While flying an Allied fighter plane from Paris to England, American ATA pilot and amateur poet, Rose Justice, is captured by the Nazis and sent to Ravensbrück, a notorious women’s concentration camp.  During her time there, Rose befriends the “Rabbits,” a group of women subjected to horrific Nazi experimentation. In the face of unspeakable crimes, Rose and her friends suffer horribly, but also find the strength to act with compassion, courage and cunning.

 

Quotes 

“Hope is the most treacherous thing in the world. It lifts you and lets you plummet. But as long as you’re being lifted you don’t worry about plummeting.”

 

“God knows what I thought! Your brain does amazing acrobatics when it doesn’t want to believe something.”

 

“There are four forces which work together if you want to put something into the sky and have it stay there. One of these is lift.

 

Lift is made when the air pressure under a wing is greater than the air pressure over the wing. Then the wing gets pushed upwards. That’s how birds fly. That’s how kites fly – a kite is basically just a solitary wing. That’s how airplanes fly.

 

But people need lift too. People don’t get moving, they don’t soar, they don’t achieve great heights, without something buoying them up.”

 

“Hope has no feathers

Hope takes flight

tethered with twine

like a tattered kite,

slave to the wind’s

capricious drift

eager to soar

but needing lift

 

Hope waits stubbornly

watching the sky

for turmoil, feeding on

things that fly:

crows, ashes, newspapers,

dry leaves in flight

all suggest wind

that could lift a kite

 

Hope sails and plunges

firmly caught

at the end of her string –

fallen slack, pulling taught,

ragged and featherless.

Hope never flies

but doggedly watches

for windy skies.”

 

“Incredible. It is just incredible that you can notice something like that when your face is so cold you can’t feel it anymore, and you know perfectly well you are surrounded by death, and the only way to stay alive is to endure the howling wind and hold your course. And still the sky is beautiful.”

 

‘When you cut down the hybrid rose,

its blackened stump below the graft

spreads furtive fingers in the dirt.

It claws at life, weaving a raft

of suckering roots to pierce the earth.

The first thin shoot is fierce and green,

a pliant whip of furious briar

splitting the soil, gulping the light.

You hack it down. It skulks between

the flagstones of the garden path

to nurse a hungry spur in shade

against the porch. With iron spade

you dig and drag it from the gravel

and toss it living on the fire.

 

‘It claws up towards the light again

hidden from view, avoiding battle

beyond the fence. Unnoticed, then,

unloved, unfed, it clings and grows

in the wild hedge. The subtle briar

armors itself with desperate thorns

and stubborn leaves – and struggling higher,

unquenchable, it now adorns

itself with blossom, till the stalk

is crowned with beauty, papery white

fine petals thin as chips of chalk

or shaven bone, drinking the light.

 

‘Izabela, Aniela, Alicia, Eugenia,

Stefania, Rozalia, Pelagia, Irena,

Alfreda, Apolonia, Janina, Leonarda,

Czeslava, Stanislava, Vladyslava, Barbara,

Veronika, Vaclava, Bogumila, Anna,

Genovefa, Helena, Jadviga, Joanna,

Kazimiera, Ursula, Vojcziecha, Maria,

Wanda, Leokadia, Krystyna, Zofia.

 

‘When you cut down the hybrid rose

to cull and plough its tender bed,

trust there is life beneath your blade:

the suckering briar below the graft,

the wildflower stock of strength and thorn

whose subtle roots are never dead.”

 

My Take

Rose Under Fire is the third book in a loose trilogy by Elizabeth Wein (the others are Code Name Verity and The Pearl Thief).  Even though Code Name Verity was by far my favorite, I did enjoy Rose Under Fire.  While it was hard to read another book dealing with the Holocaust, Wein manages to tell an inspirational story and, as a bonus, embellishes it with some very beautiful poems.

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258. Go Set a Watchman

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Harper Lee

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction

278 pages, published July 14, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Go Set a Watchman is the sequel to the American classic To Kill a Mockingbird and the only other book written by Harper Lee who died within two years of its publication.   The title comes from Isaiah 21:6: “For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth” and alludes to Jean Louise Finch’s (aka Scout) view of her father, Atticus Finch, as the moral compass or watchman of Maycomb.  In Go Set a Watchman, Jean Louise  is now 26 years old and has returned home to Alabama from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus.  Set during the Civil Rights struggles, Jean Louise’s world view comes crashing down when she discovers some disturbing truths about her family and longtime beau and must decide what values will define her.

 

Quotes 

“Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.”

 

“Every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his conscience. There is no such thing as a collective conscious.”

 

“[T]he time your friends need you is when they’re wrong, Jean Louise. They don’t need you when they’re right”

 

“A man can condemn his enemies, but it’s wiser to know them.”

 

“She was almost in love with him. No, that’s impossible, she thought: either you are or you aren’t. Love’s the only thing in this world that is unequivocal. There are different kinds of love, certainly, but it’s a you-do or you-don’t proposition with them all.”

 

“If you did not want much, there was plenty.”

 

“The only thing I’m afraid of about this country is that its government will someday become so monstrous that the smallest person in it will be trampled underfoot, and then it wouldn’t be worth living in. The only thing in America that is still unique in this tired world is that a man can go as far as his brains will take him or he can go to hell if he wants to, but it won’t be that way much longer.”

 

“But a man who has lived by truth—and you have believed in what he has lived—he does not leave you merely wary when he fails you, he leaves you with nothing. I think that is why I’m nearly out of my mind.”

 

“She was a person who, when confronted with an easy way out, always took the hard way. The easy way out of this would be to marry Hank and let him labor for her. After a few years, when the children were waist-high, the man would come along whom she should have married in the first place. There would be searchings of hearts, fevers and frets, long looks at each other on the post office steps, and misery for everybody. The hollering and the high-mindedness over, all that would be left would be another shabby little affair à la the Birmingham country club set, and a self-constructed private Gehenna with the latest Westinghouse appliances. Hank didn’t deserve that.”

 

“[S]ome men who cheat their wives out of grocery money wouldn’t think of cheating the grocer. Men tend to carry their honesty in pigeonholes, Jean Louise. They can be perfectly honest in some ways and fool themselves in other ways.”

 

“I’m only trying to make you see beyond men’s acts to their motives. A man can appear to be a part of something not-so-good on its face, but don’t take it upon yourself to judge him unless you know his motives as well. A man can be boiling inside, but he knows a mild answer works better than showing his rage. A man can condemn his enemies, but it’s wiser to know them. … Have you ever considered that men, especially men, must conform to the demands of the community they live in simply so they can be of service to it?”

 

My Take

Having read, and loved, To Kill a Mockingbird, I was very interested to check out Go Set a Watchman, Harper’s Lee update to her classic American novel.  I was also intrigued that these were the only two books ever written by Lee.  While Mockingbird is by far the superior novel, there is much of interest in Watchman.  The de-pedalsting (not really a word) of the moral giant Atticus Finch took me by surprise, but added a fascinating conflict for Jean Louise (aka Scout) to grapple with.  I was also intrigued by the characters’ differing views on the Civil Rights movement and what that meant to Southern states and towns of the time.  If you, like me, are a fan of To Kill a Mockingbird, then a I recommend giving Go Set a Watchman a read.  Also worth noting is the very good voice work by Reese Witherspoon.

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257. Olive Kitteridge

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Molly Kirk

Author:   Elizabeth Strout

Genre:  Fiction

270 pages, published March 25, 2008

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Olive Kitteridge is a fascinating book that gives the reader keen insights into the human condition.   While Olive Kitteridge, a strong willed, difficult, overbearing retired schoolteacher is the main character, author Elizabeth Strout also explores the lives of several people around Olive.  The brutally honest portrait of ordinary people, with all the happiness, sorrow, pain and conflict that they experience, painted by Strout is remarkable.

 

Quotes 

“You couldn’t make yourself stop feeling a certain way, no matter what the other person did. You had to just wait. Eventually the feeling went away because others came along. Or sometimes it didn’t go away but got squeezed into something tiny, and hung like a piece of tinsel in the back of your mind.”

 

“Traits don’t change, states of mind do.”

 

“Olive’s private view is that life depends on what she thinks of as “big bursts” and “little bursts.” Big bursts are things like marriage or children, intimacies that keep you afloat, but these big bursts hold dangerous, unseen currents. Which is why you need the little bursts as well: a friendly clerk at Bradlee’s, let’s say, or the waitress at Dunkin’ Donuts who knows how you like your coffee. Tricky business, really.”

 

“There were days – she could remember this – when Henry would hold her hand as they walked home, middle-aged people, in their prime. Had they known at these moments to be quietly joyful? Most likely not. People mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it. But she had that memory now, of something healthy and pure.”

 

“Sometimes, like now, Olive had a sense of just how desperately hard every person in the world was working to get what they needed. For most, it was a sense of safety, in the sea of terror that life increasingly became.”

 

“What young people didn’t know, she thought, lying down beside this man, his hand on her shoulder, her arm; oh, what young people did not know. They did not know that lumpy, aged, and wrinkled bodies were as needy as their own young, firm ones, that love was not to be tossed away carelessly . . . No, if love was available, one chose it, or didn’t chose it. And if her platter had been full with the goodness of Henry and she had found it burdensome, had flicked it off crumbs at a time, it was because she had not know what one should know: that day after day was unconsciously squandered. . . . But here they were, and Olive pictured two slices of Swiss cheese pressed together, such holes they brought to this union–what pieces life took out of you.”

 

“But after a certain point in a marriage, you stopped having a certain kind of fight, Olive thought, because when the years behind you were more than the years in front of you, things were different.”

 

“She didn’t like to be alone. Even more, she didn’t like being with people. ”

 

“And then as the little plane climbed higher and Olive saw spread out below them fields of bright and tender green in this morning sun, farther out the coastline, the ocean shiny and almost flat, tiny white wakes behind a few lobster boats–then Olive felt something she had not expected to feel again: a sudden surging greediness for life. She leaned forward, peering out the window: sweet pale clouds, the sky as blue as your hat, the new green of the fields, the broad expanse of water–seen from up here it all appeared wondrous, amazing. She remembered what hope was, and this was it. That inner churning that moves you forward, plows you through life the way the boats below plowed the shiny water, the way the plane was plowing forward to a place new, and where she was needed.”

 

“Each of his son’s had been his favorite child.”

 

“And yet, standing behind her son, waiting for the traffic light change, she remembered how in the midst of it all there had been a time when she’d felt a loneliness so deep that once, not so many years ago, having a cavity filled, the dentist’s gentle turning of her chin with his soft fingers had felt to her like a tender kindness of almost excruciating depth, and she had swallowed with a groan of longing, tears springing to her eyes.”

 

“He put the blinker on, pulled out onto the avenue. “Well, that was nice,” she said, sitting back. They had fun together these days, they really did. It was as if marriage had been a long, complicated meal, and now there was this lovely dessert.”

 

My Take

When I finished Olive Kitteridge, I was not surprised that it had won the Pulitzer Prize.  Strout writes with such a perceptive understanding of what makes humans tick and the consequential sufferings they endure, that I was deeply affected while reading this book.  Highly recommended.

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254. The Word is Murder

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Michael Koss

Author:   Anthony Horowitz

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime, Thriller, Suspense

400 pages, published June 5, 2018

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

The Word is Murder opens with Diana Cowper, a wealthy woman who is the mother of a famous British actor, planning her own funeral.  Six hours later she is strangled.  Daniel Hawthorne, a bigoted, gruff, yet brilliant investigator teams up with author Anthony Horowitz (who inserts himself into the story under the guise of documenting Hawthorne’s exploits) to solve the crime.

 

Quotes 

“Again, I found myself wondering what it must be like to work there, sitting in a room with those miniature urns, a constant reminder that everything you were and everything you’d achieved would one day fit inside.”

 

“When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.”

 

“But the thing is, you see -and to be honest, I don’t like to mention this- I’m a bit short. There just aren’t enough people getting murdered.”

 

“I’ve often wondered how I would have managed if I’d been born with a stammer or chronic shyness. The modern writer has to be able to perform, often to a huge audience. It’s almost like being a stand-up comedian except that the questions never change and you always end up telling the same jokes.”

 

“When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.”

 

My Take

Having recently read several of Anthony Horowitz’s books (especially the terrific Magpie Murders), I really looked forward to diving into The Word is Murder.  While not as good as Magpie, it was still a thoroughly entertaining mystery with enough twists and turns to keep you guessing. I especially enjoyed how Horowitz uses himself as a foil to the grumpy, eccentric Investigator Daniel Hawthorne.

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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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251. Artemis

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Andy Weir

Genre:  Fiction, Science Fiction

305 pages, published November 14, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Jazz Bashara is a petty criminal trying to make ends meet who lives on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon.  Everything changes when Jazz is given the offer to commit the perfect crime for a lucrative reward.  However, she soon discovers that she’s in the middle of a conspiracy for control of Artemis.

 

Quotes 

“On a scale from one to ‘invade Russia in winter,’ how stupid is this plan?”

 

“How dare you call me lazy? I’d come up with a scathing retort but, meh, I’m just not motivated.”

 

“A clumsy, awkward success is still a success.”

 

“By the way, we also hate it when people . . . call Artemis “the city in space.” We’re not in space; we’re on the moon. I’m mean, technically, we’re in space, but so is London.”

 

“I live in Conrad Down 15, a grungy area fifteen floors underground in Conrad Bubble. If my neighborhood were wine, connoisseurs would describe it as “shitty, with overtones of failure and poor life decisions.”

 

“And like all good plans, it required a crazy Ukrainian guy.”

 

“Quality is quality,” Jin said. “Age is irrelevant. No one bitches about Shakespeare fans.”

 

“My cart is a pain in the ass to control, but it’s good at carrying heavy things. So I decided it was male. I named him Trigger.”

 

“Very few people get a chance to quantify how much their father loves them. But I did. The job should have taken forty-five minutes, but Dad spent three and a half hours on it. My father loves me 366 percent more than he loves anything else. Good to know.”

 

“There was something weird about being on the moon and fighting for your life with a stick and some fire.”

 

“But no idiot-proofing can overcome a determined idiot.”

 

“The moon’s a mean old bitch. She doesn’t care why your suit fails. She just kills you when it does.”

 

“It’s all part of the life-cycle of an economy. First it’s lawless capitalism until that starts to impede growth. Next comes regulation, law enforcement, and taxes. After that: public benefits and entitlements. Then, finally, overexpenditure and collapse.”

 

“I didn’t want to spend any more time inside the mind of an economist. It was dark and disturbing.”

 

My Take

I picked up the Artemis audio book because I had really enjoyed Andy Weir’s The Martian.  Unfortunately, Artemis didn’t match the inventiveness, creativity and fun of The Martian.  I found it hard to care for Jazz, the protagonist, and was bored by much of the technical aspects.  My recommendation is to skip.

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