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573.    Long Walk to Freedom

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:    Nelson Mandela

Genre:   Non Fiction, Foreign, History, Memoir, Race

497 pages, published

Reading Format:   Audiobook

Summary

Long Walk to Freedom is Nelson Mandela’s memoir for the first part of his life, from childhood, his years as a freedom fighter, his long years of imprisonment to finally his realease and election as Prime Minister of South Africa.

Quotes 

“I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.”

 

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

 

“A leader. . .is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.”

 

“A Nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but it’s lowest ones”

 

“And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

 

“I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities and a thousand unremembered moments produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people. There was no particular day on which I said, Henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people; instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise.”

 

“Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.”

 

“Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs.”

 

 “I have never cared very much for personal prizes. A person does not become a freedom fighter in the hope of winning awards.”

 

“Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farmworkers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.”

 

“I could not imagine that the future I was walking toward could compare in any way to the past that I was leaving behind.”

 

“A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle,and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor.  At a point, one can only fight fire with fire”

 

 “I always knew that deep down in every human heart, there is mercy and generosity. No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. Even in the grimmest times in prison, when my comrades and I were pushed to our limits, I would see a glimmer of humanity in one of the guards, perhaps just for a second, but it was enough to reassure me and keep me

 

“I learned that to humiliate another person is to make him suffer an unnecessarily cruel fate. Even as a boy, I defeated my opponents without dishonoring them.”

 

“I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.”

 

“In another conversation I said, ‘Tell me the truth. When you were leaving prison after twenty-seven years and walking down that road to freedom, didn’t you hate them all over again?’ And he said, ‘Absolutely I did, because they’d imprisoned me for so long. I was abused. I didn’t get to see my children grow up. I lost my marriage and the best years of my life. I was angry. And I was afraid, because I had not been free in so long. But as I got closer to the car that would take me away, I realized that when I went through that gate, if I still hated them, they would still have me. I wanted to be free. And so I let it go.”

 

“As a leader, one must sometimes take actions that are unpopular, or whose results will not be known for years to come.”

 

“It was a useful reminder that all men, even the most seemingly cold-blooded, have a core of decency, and that if their heart is touched, they are capable of changing.”

 

“Like the gardener, a leader must take responsibility for what he cultivates; he must mind his work, try to repel enemies, preserve what can be preserved, and eliminate what cannot succeed.”

 

“life has a way of forcing decisions on those who vacillate.”

 

“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.”

 

“Losing a sense of time is an easy way to lose one’s grip and even one’s sanity.”

 

My Take

My husband Scot and I listened to Long Walk to Freedom before a trip to South Africa.  Nelson Mandela is truly an inspirational figure with a compelling story to tell and much wisdom to impart.  During our trip, we were saddened to see that for most black South Africans their material conditions had not improved since Arpatheid was struck down with millions living in impoverished townships.  Mandela helped bring equality and democracy to a country separated by race.  Whether prosperity will flow to the poor of South Africa is an open question that will not be easily solved.

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570.    Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by: 

Author:   Tiffany Dufu

Genre:   Non Fiction, Self Improvement, Memoir

304 pages, published February 14, 2017

Reading Format:   Book

 

Summary

In Drop the Ball, Tiffany Dufu the changes she made after realizing that trying to do it all as a working mother and wife wasn’t working for her and was causing her to feel major stress and resentment.  Her solution was to let things go, especially her preconceived ideas of what success in her professional and personal life looked like, and to enlist the help of her husband, friends and family. 

 

Quotes 

“[These] powerful women understood that success in imperfect. What would happen if we all started speaking honestly and openly about our priorities and the choices we make about how we spend our time? How inspiring would it be to the young women in our offices if they saw female executives who don’t pretend to do it all, but are open and honest about the balls they have dropped to get where they are today? Women need to support one another by being honest about the compromises we make and by speaking openly about the help we require from our partners and other support systems.”

“What you do is less important than the difference you make.”

 

“Just because you’re better at doing something doesn’t mean you doing it is the most productive use of your time.”

 

“Drop the Ball: to release unrealistic expectations of doing it all and engage others to achieve what matters most to us, deepening our relationships and enriching our lives”

 

“Trying to meet impossible expectations will only continue to harm our physical and psychological well-being.”

 

“Done is better than perfect.”

 

“The greatest privilege that men in the workplace have had isn’t a corporate or public policy. It’s a partner at home. A nonpaid working dad (a.k.a. Stay-at-home dad) might be some working moms’ idea of a superhero. But nonpaid working dads are not the ultimate solution. We do not need role reversal; rather, we need a new model of teamwork in which both parents are meaningfully engaged at work and at home, collaboratively making decisions that reflect what matters most to them.”

 

“In 2014, researchers at Penn State found that women who juggle work and home were proportionately much more likely to experience higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol than were men.”

 

“I used to be the queen of domesticity, a Good Housekeeping cover model in the making. I was also an ambitious professional. These two identities had always been on a collision course. But I was oblivious to that fact until after the crash.”

 

“Many women experience a sense of pressure that men rarely do—the pressure to succeed at work and to keep things running smoothly at home, especially when children arrive on the scene.”

 

My Take

As a recent retiree who just dropped her youngest child off at college, I am not the target audience for this book which focuses on strategies for working moms.  However, I found that for the most part the advice offered by Dufu would have been helpful during my busy working mom years.  I definitely recommend it for young women who are in that phase of their life.

 

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564. The $64 Tomato

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Frank and Lisanne

Author:    William Alexander

Genre:   Non Fiction, Humor, Memoir, Environment, Food, Nature

304 pages, published March 2, 2007

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

Bill Alexander writes about his struggles to create an ideal garden on the acreage that comes with a house he and his wife buy in the Hudson River Valley of New York.  What follows is an adventure rivaling the Perils of Pauline.

Quotes 

“Gardening is, by its very nature, an expression of the triumph of optimism over experience. No matter how bad this year was, there’s always next year. Experience doesn’t count.”

 

“The great, terrifying existentialist question: If you were doomed to live the same life over and over again for eternity, would you choose the life you are living now? The question is interesting enough, but I’ve always thought the point of asking it is really the unspoken, potentially devastating follow-up question. That is, if the answer is no, then why are you living the life you are living now? Stop making excuses , and do something about it.”

 

“Environmentalists blame the farmers for overdosing with pesticides, and the farmers blame the consumers for demanding blemish-free fruit.”

 

 “One event is an anomaly, two is a coincidence, and three a pattern.”

 

“but I had set the precedent of declaring my preference for the solitary pleasures of gardening over social events.”

 

“Well, ah don’t weed; ah cultivate. (As it turns out, ah will cultivate a lot.) Whereas weeding evokes images of backbreaking labor, kneeling under a broad-brimmed hat while hand-yanking weeds into a basket to be dumped in a remote corner of the yard, cultivating suggests nurturing, caring for tender shoots, feeding, and raising. All of which you accomplish, of course, by kneeling and hand-yanking weeds into a basket to be dumped in a remote corner of the yard.”

 

My Take

The $64 Tomato was a very fun read.  With acerbic and humorous anectdotes, author Bill Alexander brings to life his mighty struggles to create the perfect garden.  This book confirmed my life long aversion to the big garden and made me happy with the few potted herbs and plants that I maintain along with the volunteers who populate our outdoor mountain area.

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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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518. Then Again

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Diane Keaton

Genre:  Non Fiction, Memoir, Entertainment

338 pages, published November 15, 2011

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

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

Quotes 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Memories are simply moments that refuse to be ordinary”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

My Take

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

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512. Don’t Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Nick Reader

Author:   Dave Rubin

Genre:  Non Fiction, Memoir, Politics, Public Policy

256 pages, published April 28, 2020

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

In his first book, host of the political talk show The Rubin Report, Dave Rubin writes about his political oddessey from an unquestioning left winger to a free thinking defender of liberty, i.e. a “classical liberal.”  He describes how the woke mob works to censor and shut down speech and ideas with which it disagrees.  He advocates the importance of standing up for classical liberal values and emphasizes that the future of our country depends on it.

Quotes 

“Don’t Burn This Book may not usher in world peace, balance the national debt, or improve your sex life, but while those are worthy pursuits, that wasn’t my goal. Instead, I want to champion the values that keep people safe, sane, and free.”

“Exhibit A: I’m guessing you’re no fan of socialism, which was a founding principle of the Nazi movement. The name “Nazi” is an acronym for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, which most of today’s Democrat socialists conveniently forget. Actually, that’s an understatement. These people don’t just overlook this truth, they’ve totally rewritten history on the matter. These days, Nazism gets associated with conservatism at the drop of a hat, but historically it stems from the left. Adolf Hitler? An art-loving vegetarian who seized power by wooing voters away from Germany’s Social Democrat and communist parties. Italy’s Benito Mussolini? Raised on Karl Marx’s Das Kapital before starting his career as a left-wing journalist and, later, implementing a deadly fascist regime.”

 

“Harvard University has chosen to make it harder for Asian applicants to be accepted into the university because they outperform their peers. So yes, systemic racism is real . . . at America’s top university.”

 

“I’ve reluctantly reached after years of watching my old “team” transform into a baying mob of hysterical puritans—a feral gang that sows division through identity politics and encourages societal tribes to rank themselves in a pecking order of “oppression.”

 

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” In other words, today’s progressives have now become the sexists and racists they’ve claimed to hate.”

 

“If we’re going to confront reality honestly, then nothing can be off-limits. Our power structures, our political leaders, and our religious institutions all must be fair game in a free society. There’s a fine line when jokes and mockery become cruel and pointless, but this is the line comedians have toed since the beginning of time. We must relentlessly defend their ability not only to push our limits but also to occasionally trip over the line into sacrilege and controversy.”

 

“Researchers at the University of Missouri had found a “gender equality paradox” when they studied 475,000 teenagers across the globe. They noted that hyperegalitarian countries such as Finland, Norway, and Sweden had a smaller percentage of female STEM graduates than countries such as Albania and Algeria, which are considered less advanced”

 

“Worse still, they implement all of these things with brute force: violence, censorship, character assassination, smear campaigns, doxing, trolling, deplatforming, and online witch hunts. Tricks that are deliberately designed to leave people down and out. Ideally, jobless and without the resources to push back.”

 

“This is because outward virtue signaling is separate from being a considerate, moral person. Whereas the latter is central for common decency (and is something we should all strive for), the former is just a display of faux morality. One that’s designed to offer protection from the mob ever turning on them. It’s a protection racket—a form of insurance. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”

 

“The black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life.”

 

“Suddenly, out of nowhere, rationalizing Islamic terror had become a progressive position. According to progressives, it was another 2-D argument: brown people = good, white people = bad.”

 

“Free-thinking is the new counterculture, which makes it cutting-edge and subversive, like punk rock or hip-hop in the early 1980s.”

 

“It’s no coincidence that social justice warriors are frequently out of shape, poorly dressed, and have messy hair, along with their overall disheveled appearance. If some dress for success, they dress for failure.”

 

“I’m black—not African American. That’s a term I don’t like. I was born in America and I’ve never been to Africa. It’s an absurd term. A term that Jesse Jackson crammed down the throats of the media. It’s ridiculous.”

 

“Elder was right and he damn well knew it. “The biggest burden that black people have is being raised without fathers,” he declared. “A black kid raised without a dad is five times more likely to be poor and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and twenty times more likely to end up in jail. When I hear people tell me about systemic racism or unconscious racism I always say ‘give me an example.’ And almost nobody can do it. I give the facts . . . and [according to left-wingers] the facts are racist.”

 

“As he noted in The Daily Signal, children from fatherless homes are likelier to drop out of high school, die by suicide, have behavioral disorders, join gangs, commit crimes, and end up in prison. They are also more likely to live in poverty-stricken households. Conversely, nuclear families—whether black or white—are richer in all ways.”

 

 “Thomas Sowell nailed it when he said: “No government of the left has done as much for the poor as capitalism has. Even when it comes to the redistribution of income, the left talks the talk but the free market walks the walk.”

 

“But instead of contributing to the conversation like a grown-up, he basically shouted Harris and Maher down and called them racists, which has now become a standard debating tactic for most progressives.”

 

 “I’m a free-speech absolutist. Yes, even when it comes to opinions I find abhorrent. In fact, specifically when it comes to those opinions. The only exceptions to this rule have already been specified by the Supreme Court of the United States: calling for direct violence against a person or specific group, yelling “fire” in a crowded theater (with the intent to incite iminent lawless action), and defaming somebody through libel or slander. Everything else should get a free pass, every single time. No exceptions, ever.”

 

“The motto is no longer ‘I think therefore I am.’ It’s not even ‘I’m a victim therefore I am.’ It’s now, ‘I self-flagellate therefore I am,’” he says. “It’s almost a theater of the absurd. The currency is victimhood by proxy. Whoever can grovel the most is the currency of the radical left.” Don’t be like them. Be better.”

 

“For her, it’s profoundly absurd that people—specifically, fellow Americans . . . many of them educated, middle-class millennials who’ve never experienced anything like real hardship—can hate a country that frequently does so much good, both domestically and internationally.”

 

My Take

My son Nick gave me Don’t Burn This Book as a birthday gift.  I had vaguely heard of Dave Rubin before reading it, but really didn’t know anything about him.  After whipping through it in two days, I have to say that I am now a fan.  Rubin has an engaging, straightforward, humorous style that, along with spot-on content for our troubled times, made this book a pleasure to read.  I wholeheartedly agree with his robust defense of free speech and his analysis of other issues confronting our country.  I look forward to checking out The Rubin Report.

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

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Nick Reader

Author:   Alice Beth Stuckey

Genre:  Non Fiction, Memoir, Christian, Self Improvement

228 pages, published August 11, 2020

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

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

Quotes 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

My Take

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

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508. One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Ted Cruz

Genre:  Non Fiction, Law, Public Policy, Politics, Memoir

271 pages, published September 29, 2020

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

In One Vote Away, Senator (and former Supreme Court litigator as Texas Solicitor General) Ted Cruz writes about seminal Constitutional law cases before the Supreme Court and how the decision was often rendered by a single vote.  His detailed discussion includes cases impacting school choice, abortion rights, the right to bear arms, religious liberty, state and national sovereignty, freedom of speech, capital punishment, the rights of criminal defendants, and the criteria Republicans should use when selecting judges.

Quotes 

“The Supreme Court is supposed to protect our constitutional rights. It is also charged with securing our Constitution’s defining structural features, federalism and the separation of powers. Both doctrines protect Liberty by dividing power, by establishing checks and balances to prevent any branch of government from becoming too powerful…Over the past six decades, the Court has arrogated to itself far too much power– well beyond what it is entitled to under the Constitution. It has seized this power at the expense of Congress, the executive branch, the states, and We the People alike.

 

“An individual’s life prospects increase dramatically with each successfully completed phase of education.”

 

“Education is antecedent to most of our other public policy concerns. From poverty to crime to healthcare to substance abuse, if kids don’t get an education, we know that those other challenges are far more likely to follow; conversely, if children do get an excellent education, each of those problems is much more likely to be overcome. It is a damning stain on America’s conscience that a child’s chances of life success are so heavily influenced by– perhaps dictated by– the zip code in which he or she is raised. It is a profound civil rights crisis… the urgent need to secure access to a quality education– and access to educational choice, in particular– for every young American… In a just world, teachers unions would enthusiastically support school choice…But the union bosses who lead the teachers unions have decided that school choice is an existential threat to their power, and so they demand partisan fealty above all.

 

“There is no moral and just government that does not respect the religious liberty protections of its people. True political liberty, free speech, social stability,and human flourishing all depend upon a robust and durable protection, under the rule of law, of our fundamental right to choose our faith. And, on the flip side, efforts to undermine religious liberty and to persecute religious minorities are a telltale sign of tyrannical government.”

 

“In the Citizens United fight for free speech rights, “ While Senate Democrats sought to empower Congress to restrict individual citizens’ political speech rights, they did not want to apply that same treatment to giant media corporations like CNN and the New York Times…Citizens United was a conservative nonprofit corporation that made a movie critical of Hillary Clinton. And Senate Democrats now wanted to give the federal government the constitutional authority to punish anyone for criticizing Hillary Clinton or any other political candidate.”

 

“I believe in capital punishment. I believe in carrying out justice for those who commit unspeakable crimes, retribution for those who have been horribly victimized, and strong deterrence for the community to prevent horrific crime from happening again.”

 

“The way the First Step Act passed, through policy, legal, and constitutional arguments about what is right, appropriate, and just, through a consideration of facts and data and evidence about what is most effective in deterring crime and preventing recidivism– all of it was done through the legislative process That is how our system is supposed to work. Elected legislatures exist to consider and to weigh policy arguments and to reflect the wishes and values of the voters who elected them. When unelected judges seize issues of the criminal law and mandate that violent criminals receive lesser punishments, they are going against both the constitutional structure and their responsibility as judges.”

 

“If history teaches anything, it is that when people tell you they want to kill you, believe them. Or, at a minimum, don’t give them hundreds of billions of dollars to help them accomplish their objective. But, for whatever reason, Obama desperately wanted a deal with Iran.”

“Republicans have, historically speaking, been absolutely terrible at judicial nominations–…Republicans at best bat .500. Once confirmed as justices, at most, half of Republicans’ Supreme Court nominations actually behave as we hoped they might behave in terms of remaining faithful to their oath of office and the Constitution…The most important criteria that I believe should be applied is whether that individual (1) has a demonstrated proven record of being faithful to the Constitution and (2) has endured pounding criticism– has paid a price for holding that line.

 

My Take

One Vote Away was a quick and fascinating read.  I especially enjoyed all of the behind the scenes details that Cruz provides.  Rising from poverty, he has had quite the life.   However, I am an attorney and a Republican so I am the choir that Ted Cruz is preaching to.  Liberals may not like this book too much.

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507. The Best of Me

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Art Drake

Author:    David Sedaris

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

387 pages, published November 3, 2020

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

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

Quotes 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

My Take

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

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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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