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54. A Man Called Ove

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Christy DeMeyer

Author:   Frederik Backman

Genre:  Fiction

337 pages, published July 15, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary 

A Man Called Ove takes place in a small town in Sweden and tells the story of Ove, a 59 year old widower who is a cranky curmudgeon who spends his days patrolling the neighborhood for minor violations.  Ove is a man of rigid values and has little patience for those who don’t measure up to his standards. When a lively immigrant family from Iran moves in next door, Ove’s impervious exterior begins to crack open and we learn his back story which has brought him to such a place of sadness.  We also learn about the fundamental decency and integrity of the man and the extent of the impact he has had.

 

Quotes

“Men are what they are because of what they do.  Not what they say.”

 

“Men like Ove and Rune were from a generation in which one was what one did, not what one talked about.”

 

“This was a world where one became outdated before one’s time was up.  An entire country standing up and applauding the fact that no one was capable of doing anything properly anymore. The unreserved celebration of mediocrity.  No one could change tires. Install a dimmer switch.  Lay some tiles. Plaster a wall.  File their own taxes. These were all forms of knowledge that had lost their relevance.”

 

“Now you listen to me,” says Ove calmly while he carefully closes the door.  “You’ve given birth to two children and quite soon will be squeezing out a third.  You’ve come here from a land far away and most likely you fled war and persecution and all sorts of other nonsense.  You’ve learned a new language and got yourself an education and you’re holding together a family of obvious incompetents.  And I’ll be damned if I’ve seen you afraid of a single bloody thing in this world before now….I’m not asking for brain surgery. I’m asking you to drive a car. It’s got an accelerator, a brake and a clutch. Some of the greatest twits in world history have sorted out how it works. And you will as well.”  And then he utters seven words, which Parvaneh will always remember as the loveliest compliment he’ll ever give her.  “Because you are not a complete twit.”

 

“We always think there’s enough time to do things with other people.  Time to say things to them.  And then something happens and then we stand there holding on to words like ‘if’.”

 

“Ove had never been asked how he lived before he met her. But if anyone had asked him, he would have answered that he didn’t.”

 

“And time is a curious thing. Most of us only live for the time that lies right ahead of us.  A few days, weeks, years.  One of the most painful moments in a person’s life probably comes with the insight that an age has been reached when there is more to look back on than ahead. And when time no longer lies ahead of one, other things have to be lived for.  Memories, perhaps.”

 

“Death is a strange thing. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it’s often one of the great motivations for the living.  Some of us, in time, become so conscious of it that we live harder, more obstinately, with more fury.  Some need its constant presence to even be aware of its antithesis.  Others become so preoccupied with it that they go into the waiting room long before it has announced its arrival.  We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves.  For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by.  And leave us there alone.”

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53. Boomsday

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:   JL Collins

Author:   Christopher Buckley

Genre:  Fiction, Satire

336 pages, published April 2, 2007

Reading Format:  Book

Summary 

Outraged over the mounting Social Security debt, Cassandra Devine, a charismatic 29-year-old blogger and member of Generation Whatever, incites massive cultural warfare when she politely suggests that Baby Boomers be given government incentives to kill themselves by age 75.  Her modest proposal catches fire with millions of citizens, chief among them an ambitious senator seeking the presidency.  With the help of Washington’s greatest spin doctor, the blogger and the politician try to ride the issue of euthanasia for Boomers (called “transitioning”) all the way to the White House, over the objections of the Religious Right, and of course, the Baby Boomers, who are deeply offended by demonstrations on the golf courses of their retirement resorts.

 

Quotes

“My, my, my, how very different are the workings of government from what we all read about in books as children.  I wonder, do the Founders weep in heaven?”

 

“Had he merely dreamed a beautiful dream, or had a United States senator just gone on television to advocate mass suicide as a means of dealing with the deficit?”

 

“a blue blood in a red meat business”

 

“like the milk ads, only they’re drinking poison”

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50. The Tsar of Love and Techno

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Katy Fassett

Author:   Anthony Marra

Genre:  Fiction, Anthology, Foreign

332 pages, published October 6, 2015

Reading Format:  Book

Summary 

This fascinating and very well written collection of stories set in the USSR and modern day Russia contains a cast of remarkable characters whose lives intersect in ways both life-affirming and heartbreaking.   A 1930s Soviet censor painstakingly corrects offending photographs, deep underneath Leningrad, bewitched by the image of a disgraced prima ballerina.  Several women recount their stories and those of their grandmothers, former gulag prisoners, who settled their Siberian mining town. Two pairs of brothers share a fierce, protective love.  Young men across the former USSR face violence at home and in the military. Great sacrifices are made in the name of an oil landscape unremarkable except for the almost incomprehensibly peaceful past it depicts.  With its rich character portraits and a reverberating sense of history, The Tsar of Love and Techno is a captivating book.

 

Quotes

“You remain the hero of your own story even when you become the villain of someone else’s.”

 

“The future is the lie with which we justify the brutality of the present.”

 

“A single whisper can be quite a disturbance when the rest of the audience is silent.”

 

“There are so many paths to contentment if you’re open to self-delusion.”

 

“Endurance, I reminded myself, is the true measure of existence.”

 

“Never forget the first three letters of confidence.”

 

“If there is an operation, and if that operation is successful, she says she will move to Sweden. I fear for her future in a country whose citizenry is forced to assemble its own furniture.”

 

“You remember how Mom had that embroidered pillow?  When she got upset, she’d shout into it and no one would hear her.  That’s Facebook.”

 

“Turning I would to I did is the grammar of growing up.”

 

“The calcium in collarbones I have kissed. The iron in the blood flushing those cheeks. We imprint our intimacies upon atoms born from an explosion so great it still marks the emptiness of space. A shimmer of photons bears the memory across the long dark amnesia. We will be carried too, mysterious particles that we are.”

 

“I guess our lives are all dreams – as real to us as they are meaningless to everyone else.”

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48. A God in Ruins

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Kate Atkinson

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction

468 pages, published May 1, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary 

A God in Ruins is a companion book to Life After Life, Kate Atkinson’s absorbing family drama which used the artifice of creating multiple lives for protagonist Ursula Todd set against the back drop of England during the first and second World Wars.  A God in Ruins dispenses with the multiple lives convention and shifts the focus to Teddy Todd, Ursula’s beloved younger brother.  At a very young age, Teddy becomes an RAF bomber pilot in World War II, is reported missing, presumed dead, but reappears at the end of the war having spent two years as a POW in Germany.  This is the story of Teddy’s war and his life after coming home, from his time as a young husband and father to his days as an elderly grandfather.  Teddy is particularly challenged by his unappreciative and angry daughter Viola who supplies much of the humor in the book.

 

Quotes

“Was I really such a terrible mother?’ she asked Bertie. ‘Why the past tense?’ Bertie said.”

 

“She had never been without a book for as long as she could remember.  An only child never is.”

 

“The whole edifice of civilization turned out to be constructed from an unstable mix of quicksand and imagination.”

 

“Moments left, Teddy thought.  A handful of heartbeats. That was what life was.  A heartbeat followed by a heartbeat.  A breath followed by a breath.  One moment followed by another moment and then there was a last moment.”

 

“The purpose of Art,” his mother, Sylvie, said—instructed even—“is to convey the truth of a thing, not to be the truth itself.”

 

“As you got older and time went on, you realized that the distinction between truth and fiction didn’t really matter because eventually everything disappeared into the soupy, amnesiac mess of history. Personal or political, it made no difference.”

 

“He was a baby once, she thought. New and perfect, cradled in his mother’s arms.  The mysterious Sylvie.  Now he was a feathery husk, ready to blow away.  His eyes were half open, milky, like an old dog, and his mouth had grown beaky with the extremity of age, opening and closing, a fish out of water.  Bertie could feel a continual tremor running through him, an electrical current, the faint buzz of life.  Or death, perhaps. Energy was gathering around him, the air was static with it.”

 

“What a good husband you are”, Nancy said afterward, “always taking your wife’s side rather than your mother’s.” “It’s the side of reason I am on”, Teddy said, “It just so happens that that’s where you’re always to be found and my mother rarely.”

“He didn’t make plans himself any more. There was now and it was followed by another now. If you were lucky.”

 

“Secrets had the power to kill a marriage, she said.  Nonsense, Sylvie said, it was secrets that could save a marriage.”

 

“Best always to praise rather than criticize.”

 

“If he hadn’t been the father of her children, Viola might have admired Dominic for the way he was so easily able to absolve himself of all obligation simply by asserting his right to self-fulfillment.”

 

“The “eat” part was easy.  The praying and loving were harder.”

 

“The more Viola forgot her mother, the more she missed her.”

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46. The Taming of the Queen

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Phillipa Gregory

Genre:  Historical Fiction

425 pages, published February 1, 2008

Reading Format:  Book

Summary 

The Taming of the Queen is the story of Henry VIII’s sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr, a thirty-year-old widow who is compelled to give up the love of her life when she is ordered to marry an old, obese, mercurial Henry.  Catherine appreciates the danger she faces.  The previous queen lasted sixteen months and the one before barely half a year.  But Henry adores his new bride and Catherine’s trust in him grows as she unites the royal family, creates a radical study circle at the heart of the court, and rules the kingdom as Regent.  An educated scholar with a mind of her own, Catherine becomes a leader of religious reform and the first woman to publish in English.  Catholic churchmen and rivals for power accuse Catherine of heresy and the king has signed a warrant for her arrest.

 

Quotes

 

“I have learned that the most precious thing is a place where you can be as you are, where someone can see you as your true self.”

 

“But this world is changing. Perhaps by the time you are old enough to marry the world will hear a woman’s voice. Perhaps she will not have to swear to obey in her wedding vows. Perhaps one day a woman will be allowed to both love and think.”

 

“I think my heart has broken, but I have offered the fragments to God.”

 

“If you are a reader, you are already halfway to being a writer,” she says. “For you have a love of words and pleasure from seeing them on a page. And if you are a writer, then you will find that you are driven to write. It is a gift that demands to be shared. You cannot be a silent singer.”

 

“I feel as if I can think only when I see the words flowing from the nib of my quill, that my thoughts make sense only when they are black ink on cream paper. I love the sensation of a thought in my head and the vision of the word on the page.”

 

“To assure someone that if enough nuns sing enough Masses then her dead child will go to heaven is trickery as low as passing a false coin as good. To buy a pardon from the pope, to force the pope to annul a marriage, to make him set aside kinship laws, to watch as he fleeces his cardinals, who charge the bishops, who rent to the priests, who seek their tithes from the poor – all these abuses would have to fall away if we agreed that a soul can come to God without any intervention. The crucifixion is the work of God. The church is the work of man.”

 

“Getting a woman into power is not the point—it’s getting a good woman into power who thinks and cares about what she does.”

 

“I listen with the air of an eager disciple as he propounds things that I have thought ever since I began my studies. Now he is glancing into books that I have read and hidden for my own safety, and he tells me the things that strike him as if they are a great novelty and I should learn them from him. Little Lady Jane Grey knows these opinions, Princess Elizabeth has read them; I taught them both myself. But now I sit beside the king and exclaim when he describes the blindingly obvious, I admire his discovery of the widely known, and I remark on his perception.”

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45. Silver Bay

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Jojo Moyes

Genre:  Fiction, Romance

392 pages, published February 1, 2008

Reading Format:  Book

Summary 

Silver Bay tells the story of a romance between Liza McCullen, a pleasure boat operator in the fictional town of Silver Bay, Australia, and Mike Dormer, a hot shot developer.  Mike arrives as a guest at Liza’s Aunt’s dilapidated inn to secretly assess the development potential of Silver Bay for his London based Real Estate Development Company and before long he has fallen for Liza.   Conflict ensues when Mike’s plans are revealed.

 

Quotes

“Perhaps we all harbor a perverse need to get close to things that might destroy us.”

 

“There is nothing redemptive about the loss of a child, no lessons of value it can teach you. It is too big, too overwhelming, too black to articulate. It is a bleak, overwhelming physical pain, shocking in its intensity, and every time you think you might have moved forward an inch it swells back, like a tidal wave, to drown you again.”

 

“Hannah ran past, beaming. I remember that feeling–when you’re a kid and it’s your birthday and for one day everyone makes you feel like the most special person in the world.”

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44. The End of the Affair

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Graham Greene

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, World War II, Romance

192 pages, published 1951

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary 

Set in London during and just after the Second World War, The End of the Affair examines the obsessions and jealousies within the relationships between three central characters:  writer Maurice Bendrix,  Sarah Miles,  and Sarah’s husband, civil servant Henry Miles.  The narrator of the book is Maurice, a rising writer during World War II in London based on Graham Greene, and focuses on his relationship with Sarah based on Greene’s lover at the time, Catherine Walston, to whom the book is dedicated.   While Maurice and Sarah fall in love rapidly, he soon realizes that the affair will end as quickly as it began as he cannot contain his all consuming jealousy and frustration that Sarah will not divorce Henry, her kind but boring husband. When a bomb blasts Maurice’s flat as he is with Sarah, he is nearly killed.  After this, Sarah breaks off the affair with no apparent explanation.  Maurice is still consumed with jealousy and hires a private detective to discover Sarah’s new lover.  Through her diary, Maurice learns that when Sarah thought Maurice was dead after the bombing, she made a promise to God not to see Maurice again if God allowed him to live again. After her sudden death from a lung infection, several miraculous events occur, bringing meaningfulness to Sarah’s faith.  By the last page of the book, Maurice may have come to believe in a God as well, though not to love Him.

 

Quotes

“It’s a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.”

 

“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”

 

“I want men to admire me, but that’s a trick you learn at school–a movement of the eyes, a tone of voice, a touch of the hand on the shoulder or the head. If they think you admire them, they will admire you because of your good taste, and when they admire you, you have an illusion for a moment that there’s something to admire.”

 

“My passion for Sarah had killed simple lust forever. Never again would I be able to enjoy a woman without love.”

 

“I measured love by the extent of my jealousy.”

 

“I became aware that our love was doomed; love had turned into a love affair with a beginning and an end. I could name the very moment when it had begun, and one day I knew I should be able to name the final hour. When she left the house I couldn’t settle to work. I would reconstruct what we had said to each other; I would fan myself into anger or remorse. And all the time I knew I was forcing the pace. I was pushing, pushing the only thing I loved out of my life. As long as I could make believe that love lasted I was happy; I think I was even good to live with, and so love did last. But if love had to die, I wanted it to die quickly. It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death; I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck.”

 

“I hate you, God. I hate you as though you actually exist.”

My Take

The End of the Affair is the first book that I have read by iconic British writer Graham Greene and it did not disappoint.  I especially enjoyed listening to the Audio Book version narrated by Colin Firth (an actor I like quite a bit) who does a great job with the material.  Greene brings to life the misery, insecurity and jealousy that is the ugly underbelly of Maurice’s all consuming, obsessive love for Sarah.  A fascinating, albeit depressing, book that I can unreservedly recommend.

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43. The Girl You Left Behind

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   

Author:   Jojo Moyes

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, Romance

369 pages, published August 20, 2013

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The Girl You Left Behind tells the stories of modern day Liv Halston and early twentieth century Sophie Lefevre and how their lives intersect through a portrait of Sophie.  In 1916, French artist Edouard Lefevre leaves his wife Sophie to fight for France in World War I.  When her town falls into German hands, his portrait of Sophie stirs the heart of the local Kommandant and causes Sophie to risk everything – her family, reputation and life—in the hope of seeing Edouard, her true love, one last time.  Nearly a century later and Sophie’s portrait is given to Liv by her young husband shortly before his sudden death.  Its beauty speaks of their short life together, but when the painting’s dark and passion-torn history is revealed, Liv must make a momentous decision about the thing she loves most.

 

Quotes

“the ability to earn a living by doing the thing one loves must be one of life’s greatest gifts.”

 

“I wanted to live as Edouard did, joyfully, sucking the marrow out of every moment and singing because it tasted so good.”

 

“Do you know how it feels to resign yourself to your fate? It is almost welcome. There was to be no more pain, no more fear, no more longing. It is the death of hope that comes as the greatest relief.”

 

“I know it’s been tough. But we’re terribly proud of you, you know.” “For what?” She says blowing her nose. “I failed, Dad. Most people think I shouldn’t have even tried.” “Just for carrying on, really. Sometimes, my darling girl, that’s heroic in itself.”

 

“I thought the world had actually ended. I thought nothing good could ever happen again. I thought anything might happen if I wasn’t vigilant. I didn’t eat. I didn’t go out. I didn’t want to see anyone. But I survived, Paul. Much to my own surprise, I got through it. And life…well, gradually became livable again.”

My Take

The Girl You Left Behind is the third book by Jojo Moyes that I read this year (the first two were After You and One Plus One) and it was my least favorite of the three.  However, I still liked it and recommend it (even though the voice work on the Audio Book version that I listened to sometimes detracted from the story).  While The Girl You Left Behind has a lot in common with The Nightingale in that both books involve the struggle of two sisters in war torn France, The Nightingale is the superior book.  Nevertheless, Moyes knows how to tell a gripping story and I found myself very interested in the characters and plot of The Girl You Left Behind.

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40. The Queens Fool

Rating: ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by: 

Author: Phillipa Gregory

Genre: Historical  Fiction

Info: 490 pages, published February 4, 2004

Format:  Book

Summary 

The Queen’s Fool starts in 1553 and follows the story of Hannah Green, a fourteen-year-old Jewish girl who is forced to flee the Spanish Inquisition to London with her father.  With her gift of “Sight,” the ability to foresee the future, Hannah is befriended by the charismatic Robert Dudley, son of King Edward’s protector.

Dudley brings Hannah to court as a “holy fool,” first for Queen Mary (daughter of Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon), and then for Mary’s half sister Queen Elizabeth.  Hannah is recruited as a spy and endangered by the political upheaval rocking England as Mary, Elizabeth and others vie for power in a country divided between Protestants and Catholics.

 

Quotes

“Because all books are forbidden when a country turns to terror. The scaffolds on the corners, the list of things you may not read. These things always go together.”

“Ideas are more dangerous than an unsheathed sword in this world, half of them are forbidden, the other half would lead a man to question the very place of the earth itself, safe at the center of the universe.”

“One should never offend more men than one can persuade,”

“Daniel, I did not know what I wanted when I was a girl. And then I was a fool in every sense of the word. And now that I am a woman grown, I know that I love you and I want this son of yours, and our children who will come. I have seen a woman break her heart for love: my Queen Mary. I have seen another break her soul to avoid it: my Princess Elizabeth. I don’t want to be Mary or Elizabeth, I want to be me: Hannah Verde Carpenter.”

“might be that marriage was not the death of a woman and the end of her true self, but the unfolding of her.  It might be that a woman could be a wife without having to cut the pride and the spirit out of herself. A woman might blossom into being a wife, not be trimmed down to fit.”

“And we shall live somewhere that we can follow our beliefs without danger,” he insisted.  “Yes,” I said, “in the England that Elizabeth will make.”

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37. An Officer and a Spy

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Lisa Goldberg

Author: Robert Harris

Genre: Historical Fiction, Spy/Espionage

Info: 429 pages, published January 28, 2014

Format:  Audio Book

Summary 

An Officer and a Spy is the story of the Dreyfus Affair.  In 1895 Paris, Alfred Dreyfus, a young Jewish officer was convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment at Devil’s Island.  Among the witnesses to Dreyfus’ humiliation is Georges Picquart, who had recently been promoted to the head of the counterespionage agency that “proved” Dreyfus had passed secrets to the Germans.  While Picquart initially believes that Dreyfus is guilty, he comes across information that leads him to suspect that there is still a spy at large in the French military.  As evidence mounts that implicates the uppermost levels of government, Picquart begins to question not only the case against Dreyfus but also his most deeply held beliefs about his country and himself.

Quotes

“There is something to be said for senility . With her mind gone, she does not lack for company.”

“My four golden principles are more important now than ever: take it one step at a time; approach the matter dispassionately; avoid a rush to judgment; confide in nobody until there is hard evidence.”

“There is no such thing as a secret—not really, not in the modern world, not with photography and telegraphy and railways and newspaper presses.”

“The old days of an inner circle of like-minded souls communicating with parchment and quill pens are gone. Sooner or later most things will be revealed.”

“I feel as if I have walked into a mirrored room and glimpsed myself from an unfamiliar angle for the first time. Is that really what I look like? Is that who I am?”

“There are occasions when losing is a victory, so long as there is a fight.”

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