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136. A Life in Parts

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Bryan Cranston

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Memoir

271 pages, published October 11, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

A Life in Parts is the memoir of Bryan Cranston, star of Malcolm in the Middle and Breaking Bad.  Cranston landed his first role at seven, when his father cast him in a United Way commercial.  While he loved acting from a young age, after his father left the family, it took a back seat to survival.  A Life in Parts follows Cranston’s journey from an abandoned son to a successful television and movie star by recalling the many odd parts he’s played in real life—paperboy, farmhand, security guard, dating consultant, murder suspect, dock loader, lover, husband, father.  While Cranston starred in a soap opera, played the unforgettable Dentist Tim Whatley on Seinfeld, created the indelible dad Hal Wilkerson on Malcolm in the Middle, he will always be best remembered for his portrayal of Walter White, chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin, on Breaking Bad.  Cranston relates the grittiest details of his greatest role, explaining how he searched inward for the personal darkness that would help him create one of the most memorable performances ever captured on screen.  Finally, Cranston gives an in depth account of how he prepared, physically and mentally, for the challenging role of President Lyndon Johnson, a tour de force that won him a Tony to go along with his four Emmys.

Quotes

 “I will pursue something that I love — and hopefully become good at it, instead of pursuing something that I’m good at — but don’t love.”

 

“The greatest thing about youth is that you’re not yet battle-weary, so you’ll try anything.”

 

“Console the failure, but nurture the hunger.”

 

“The best teacher is experience. Find the educational in every situation.”

 

My Take

I found A Life in Parts to be a fascinating read.  Breaking Bad is my husband’s favorite show of all time and it is in my top five, so I was already a fan of Cranston’s when I started his memoir.  He takes the reader on a journey through his hardscrabble, chaotic life in which his clear sense that he wanted to be an actor and his devotion to always improving his craft carried him through many hard times and setbacks to the success that he enjoys today.  Even before he was famous, Cranston’s life provided lots of great content for a memoir.  It also doesn’t hurt that he is a very fine writer.  Even if you are not interested in being an actor, there are many lessons to be learned from Cranston’s work ethic.

 

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133. Blood, Sweat and Tiaras

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Adrienne Rosel Bulinski

Author:   Adrienne Rosel Bulinski

Genre:  Memoir, Non-Fiction, Motivational

344 pages, published September 21, 2016

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Blood, Sweat and Tiaras is the memoir of Adrienne Rosel Bulinski, a friend of mind, and a former Miss Kansas who suffered a life changing injury when she was thrown from a horse and almost lost her foot.  The book details Adrienne’s life before the accident, from her childhood to competing in beauty pageants to trying to make it on Broadway to her long, slow, climb back after the accident that almost left her without a foot.   

 

My Take

I was a bit surprised at how readable I found Blood, Sweat and Tiaras.  My friend Adrienne who wrote it is a motivational speaker and marketing maven.  For a new writer, she did a great job relating the story of her life and it definitely held my interest.  I also appreciated her “never give up” message and how she connected it to all of the hurdles in her own life.

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124. Find the Good: Unexpected Life Lessons from a Small-Town Obituary Writer

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   

Author:   Heather Lende

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Memoir, Advice, Happiness

176 pages, published April 28, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Find the Good is written by Heather Lend, an obituary writer from a small town in Alaska, and conveys her thoughts on how to live a meaningful, well-lived life.  Her theme is to find the good.  Lende remarks that we can choose to see any event–starting a new job or being laid off from an old one, getting married or getting divorced–as an opportunity to find the good.  As she says, “We are all writing our own obituary every day by how we live. The best news is that there’s still time for additions and revisions before it goes to press.”

 

Quotes

“The world is full of happiness, and plenty to go round, if you are only willing to take the kind that comes your way.”

“I have a friend who says we spend the first half of our life building it and the second half preventing it from falling apart. I’d rather be under construction when I die.”

 

“You don’t have to sing in a choir to see that a group of committed people who care about something that makes life a little brighter, and work hard at it, can accomplish more together than alone, but it helps.”

 

“When our mothers die, we are on our own; there is no one to call for help, no one to blame, and no one left who has a copy of your grandmother’s recipe for the traditional Christmas coffee cake, which you can’t find anywhere.”

My Take

I picked up Find the Good from the audio book shelf of my beloved Boulder Library.  It is a quick read written by someone with a unique perspective (an Alaska obituary writer) with some nuggets of wisdom.  I enjoyed listening to it, but after finishing, it faded quickly.  Hence, the ☆☆1/2 rating.

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120. Hillbilly Elegy : A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Katy Fassett

Author:   J.D. Vance

Genre:  Memoir, Sociology, Public Policy

272 pages, published June 28, 2016

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Hillbilly Elegy is a memoir by J.D. Vance, a former Marine and Yale Law School Graduate, about his childhood growing up in a poor Appalachian town.  While for the most part a personal account of his unique challenges, his book also includes a broader, questioning look at the struggles of America’s white working class.   Drawing on his own story and a variety of  sociological studies, Vance burrows deep into working class life of Appalachia which has been on a downward trajectory for the past forty years.  In an effective style, Vance helps the reader to  understand when and how “hillbillies” lost faith in any hope of upward mobility and their shot at the American Dream.

 

Quotes

“Whenever people ask me what I’d most like to change about the white working class, I say, “The feeling that our choices don’t matter.”

 

“I remember watching an episode of The West Wing about education in America, which the majority of people rightfully believe is the key to opportunity. In it, the fictional president debates whether he should push school vouchers (giving public money to schoolchildren so that they escape failing public schools) or instead focus exclusively on fixing those same failing schools. That debate is important, of course—for a long time, much of my failing school district qualified for vouchers—but it was striking that in an entire discussion about why poor kids struggled in school, the emphasis rested entirely on public institutions. As a teacher at my old high school told me recently, “They want us to be shepherds to these kids. But no one wants to talk about the fact that many of them are raised by wolves.”

 

“What separates the successful from the unsuccessful are the expectations that they had for their own lives. Yet the message of the right is increasingly: It’s not your fault that you’re a loser; it’s the government’s fault.”

 

“Psychologists call it “learned helplessness” when a person believes, as I did during my youth, that the choices I made had no effect on the outcomes in my life.”

 

“If you believe that hard work pays off, then you work hard; if you think it’s hard to get ahead even when you try, then why try at all? Similarly, when people do fail, this mind-set allows them to look outward. I once ran into an old acquaintance at a Middletown bar who told me that he had recently quit his job because he was sick of waking up early. I later saw him complaining on Facebook about the “Obama economy” and how it had affected his life. I don’t doubt that the Obama economy has affected many, but this man is assuredly not among them. His status in life is directly attributable to the choices he’s made, and his life will improve only through better decisions. But for him to make better choices, he needs to live in an environment that forces him to ask tough questions about himself. There is a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government, and that movement gains adherents by the day.

 

“Barack Obama strikes at the heart of our deepest insecurities. He is a good father while many of us aren’t. He wears suits to his job while we wear overalls, if we’re lucky enough to have a job at all. His wife tells us that we shouldn’t be feeding our children certain foods, and we hate her for it—not because we think she’s wrong but because we know she’s right.”

 

“I don’t know what the answer is, precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better.”

 

“We don’t study as children, and we don’t make our kids study when we’re parents. Our kids perform poorly in school. We might get angry with them, but we never give them the tools—like peace and quiet at home—to succeed.”

 

“There is no group of Americans more pessimistic than working-class whites. Well over half of blacks, Latinos, and college-educated whites expect that their children will fare better economically than they have. Among working-class whites, only 44 percent share that expectation.”

 

“Religious folks are much happier. Regular church attendees commit fewer crimes, are in better health, live longer, make more money, drop out of high school less frequently, and finish college more frequently than those who don’t attend church at all.”

 

“Mamaw always had two gods: Jesus Christ and the United States of America. I was no different, and neither was anyone else I knew.”

 

“Efforts to reinvent downtown Middletown always struck me as futile. People didn’t leave because our downtown lacked trendy cultural amenities. The trendy cultural amenities left because there weren’t enough consumers in Middletown to support them.”

 

“Not all of the white working class struggles. I knew even as a child that there were two separate sets of mores and social pressures. My grandparents embodied one type: old-fashioned, quietly faithful, self-reliant, hardworking. My mother and, increasingly, the entire neighborhood embodied another: consumerist, isolated, angry, distrustful.”

 

“People talk about hard work all the time in places like Middletown. You can walk through a town where 30 percent of the young men work fewer than twenty hours a week and find not a single person aware of his own laziness.”

 

“And a young man with every reason to work—a wife-to-be to support and a baby on the way—carelessly tossing aside a good job with excellent health insurance. More troublingly, when it was all over, he thought something had been done to him. There is a lack of agency here—a feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself.”

 

“Despite its reputation, Appalachia—especially northern Alabama and Georgia to southern Ohio—has far lower church attendance than the Midwest, parts of the Mountain West, and much of the space between Michigan and Montana. Oddly enough, we think we attend church more than we actually do. In a recent Gallup poll, Southerners and Midwesterners reported the highest rates of church attendance in the country. Yet actual church attendance is much lower in the South.”

 

“Pajamas? Poor people don’t wear pajamas. We fall asleep in our underwear or blue jeans. To this day, I find the very notion of pajamas an unnecessary elite indulgence, like caviar or electric ice cube makers.”

 

“To this day, being able to “take advantage” of someone is the measure in my mind of having a parent. For me and Lindsay, the fear of imposing stalked our minds, infecting even the food we ate. We recognized instinctively that many of the people we depended on weren’t supposed to play that role in our lives, so much so that it was one of the first things Lindsay thought of when she learned of Papaw’s death. We were conditioned to feel that we couldn’t really depend on people—that, even as children, asking someone for a meal or for help with a broken-down automobile was a luxury that we shouldn’t indulge in too much lest we fully tap the reservoir of goodwill serving as a safety valve in our lives.”

 

“I don’t believe in epiphanies. I don’t believe in transformative moments, as transformation is harder than a moment. I’ve seen far too many people awash in a genuine desire to change only to lose their mettle when they realized just how difficult change actually is.”

My Take

Hillbilly Elegy has become part of the zeitgeist after the election of Donald Trump as liberal America was desperate to understand what motivated all of the Trump voters.  This book is a fascinating look into a world that I knew little about, the struggling white working class of the Appalachia which includes parts of the Midwest and South.  While it is the personal story of J.D. Vance and how he went from a chaotic, unstable, poor childhood to Yale Law School, it is also a primer on how to choose a good life.  He rightly gives credit to his maternal grandparents, whom he called Mamaw and Papaw, and the island of steadiness and support that they provided during his childhood.  Vance makes a convincing argument that it doesn’t matter how many government programs you enact or how much you reform the schools if kids don’t have a certain level of stability and encouragement at home.  I agree with Vance’s message that is delivered in a highly readable and engrossing book and look forward to seeing what he produces in the future.

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

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Laura Hogan

Author:   Laura Reece Hogan

Genre:  Christian, Self-Improvement, Memoir

172 pages, published January, 2017

Reading Format:  E-Book

 

Summary

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

 

Quotes

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

My Take

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

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116. Everything That Remains: A Memoir by the Minimalists

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  

Authors:   Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus

Genre:  Memoir, Self-Improvement

234 pages, published December 23, 2013

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Well known for their website on minimalism, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus ask the reader to consider the question of what if everything you ever wanted isn’t what you actually want?  On the corporate fast track in his late twenties, Millburn thought he had it all.  A wife, an executive position with the promise of upward mobility, a large house filled with designer furniture and objects, and a late model car.  After losing both his mother and his marriage in the same month, Millburn started questioning every aspect of the life he had built for himself, ditched almost all of his belongings and discovered a lifestyle known as minimalism.  Everything That Remains tells the story of Millburn’s journey with commentary provided by his best friend and fellow minimalist Nicodemus.  

 

Quotes

“The things you own end up owning you.”

 

“You can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you.”

 

“For me, minimalism has never been about deprivation. Rather, minimalism is about getting rid of life’s excess in favor of the essential.”

 

“We’re taught to work foolishly hard for a non-living entity, donating our most precious commodity—our time—for a paycheck.”

 

“A ROLEX WON’T GIVE YOU MORE TIME”

 

“Unless you contribute beyond yourself, your life will feel perpetually self-serving. It’s okay to operate in your own self-interest, but doing so exclusively creates an empty existence. A life without contribution is a life without meaning. The truth is that giving is living. We only feel truly alive when we are growing as individuals and contributing beyond ourselves. That’s what a real life is all about.”

 

“Now, before I spend money I ask myself one question: Is this worth my freedom? Like: Is this coffee worth two dollars of my freedom? Is this shirt worth thirty dollars of my freedom? Is this car worth thirty thousand dollars of my freedom? In other words, am I going to get more value from the thing I’m about to purchase, or am I going to get more value from my freedom?”

 

“The most important reason to live in the moment is nothing lasts forever. Enjoy the moment while it’s in front of you. Be present. Accept life for what it is: a finite span of time with infinite possibilities.”

 

“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”

 

“Truthfully, though, most organizing is nothing more than well-planned hoarding.”

 

“In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never feel you have enough. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, you will end up feeling like a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.”  —David Foster Wallace, This Is Water”

 

“Success = Happiness + Constant Improvement”

 

“a career is one of the most dangerous things you can have if you want to find fulfillment.”

 

“Happiness, as far as we are concerned, is achieved through living a meaningful life, a life that is filled with passion and freedom, a life in which we can grow as individuals and contribute to other people in meaningful ways. Growth and contribution: those are the bedrocks of happiness. Not stuff. This may not sound sexy or marketable or sellable, but it’s the cold truth. Humans are happy if we are growing as individuals and if we are contributing beyond ourselves. Without growth, and without a deliberate effort to help others, we are just slaves to cultural expectations, ensnared by the trappings of money and power and status and perceived success.”

 

“When purchasing gifts becomes the focal point of the season, we lose focus on what’s truly important.”

 

“Go without. This option is almost taboo in our culture. It seems radical to many people. Why would I go without when I could just buy a new one? Often this option is the best option, though. When we go without, it forces us to question our stuff, it forces us to discover whether or not we need it—and sometimes we discover life without it is actually better than before.”

 

“People often avoid the truth for fear of destroying the illusions they’ve built.”

 

“When I had the opportunity to meet Leo Babauta four months ago during a trip to San Francisco, he said there were three things that significantly changed his life: establishing habits he enjoyed, simplifying his life, and living with no goals.”

 

“Ultimately most of us come to believe there’s more value in a paycheck—and all the stuff that paycheck can buy us—than there is in life itself.”

 

“After a series of promotions—store manager at twenty-two, regional manager at twenty-four, director at twenty-seven—I was a fast-track career man, a personage of sorts. If I worked really hard, and if everything happened exactly like it was supposed to, then I could be a vice president by thirty-two, a senior vice president by thirty-five or forty, and a C-level executive—CFO, COO, CEO—by forty-five or fifty, followed of course by the golden parachute. I’d have it made then! I’d just have to be miserable for a few more years, to drudge through the corporate politics and bureaucracy I knew so well. Just keep climbing and don’t look down. Misery, of course, encourages others to pull up a chair and stay a while. And so, five years ago, I convinced my best friend Ryan to join me on the ladder, even showed him the first rung. The ascent is exhilarating to rookies. They see limitless potential and endless possibilities, allured by the promise of bigger paychecks and sophisticated titles. What’s not to like? He too climbed the ladder, maneuvering each step with lapidary precision, becoming one of the top salespeople—and later, top sales managers—in the entire company.10 And now here we are, submerged in fluorescent light, young and ostensibly successful. A few years ago, a mentor of mine, a successful businessman named Karl, said to me, “You shouldn’t ask a man who earns twenty thousand dollars a year how to make a hundred thousand.” Perhaps this apothegm holds true for discontented men and happiness, as well. All these guys I emulate—the men I most want to be like, the VPs and executives—aren’t happy. In fact, they’re miserable.  Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t bad people, but their careers have changed them, altered them physically and emotionally: they explode with anger over insignificant inconveniences; they are overweight and out of shape; they scowl with furrowed brows and complain constantly as if the world is conspiring against them, or they feign sham optimism which fools no one; they are on their second or third or fourth(!) marriages; and they almost all seem lonely. Utterly alone in a sea of yes-men and women. Don’t even get me started on their health issues.  I’m talking serious health issues: obesity, gout, cancer, heart attacks, high blood pressure, you name it. These guys are plagued with every ailment associated with stress and anxiety. Some even wear it as a morbid badge of honor, as if it’s noble or courageous or something. A coworker, a good friend of mine on a similar trajectory, recently had his first heart attack—at age thirty.  But I’m the exception, right?”

My Take

After taking and keeping a “no-buy” pledge last year (something everyone should try), I was interested in learning more about the concept and culture of minimalism.  Everything that Remains fulfilled that desire.  Millburn recounts his inspiring journey from an unhealthy, overweight, dissatisfied workaholic with a lot of stuff to a relaxed, content, fit person who enjoys and is fulfilled by the present.  This book made me think about the wisdom of always acquiring more and better things and challenged me to be happy with what I have or, even better, with a lot less than what I have.

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113. Escape to Cabo

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Pam Dupont

Author:   S. A. Lapoint

Genre:  Memoir, Crime

221 pages, published October 14, 2014

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Scott Frieze (aka S. A. Lapoint) had a comfortable life in Tuscon until he decided to act on his lifelong fantasy of robbing a bank.  He got away the first time, but during his second bank job, he was apprehended and thrown into the maw of our criminal justice system.  Escape to Cabo documents how he got there and his pre and post incarceration experience.

  
My Take

Escape to Cabo was assigned by my fellow book group member Pam Dupont in anticipation of a trip with our book group to her condo in San Jose del Cabo.  Pam had met the author while in Cabo and thought it would be fun to read this book before our journey.  She was right.  It was a fun read.

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107. Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Melissa Byers

Author:   David Sedaris

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Essays, Memoir, Humor

275 pages, published April 23, 2013

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

An eclectic collection of essays from David Sedaris, an eminent humorist, which cover different eras in his life, from his time as a child in swim competitions fruitlessly trying to impress his dad to his daily routine of picking up trash around the English countryside to his surprisingly pleasant colonoscopy. The essays range from hilariously funny to serious, moving or even depressing.  

 

Quotes

“All these young mothers chauffeuring their volcanic three-year-olds through the grocery store. The child’s name always sounds vaguely presidental, and he or she tends to act accordingly. “Mommy hears what you’re saying about treats,” the woman will say, “But right now she needs you to let go of her hair and put the chocolate-covered Life Savers back where they came from.”  “No!” screams McKinley or Madison, Kennedy or Lincoln or beet-faced baby Reagan. Looking on, I always want to intervene. “Listen,” I’d like to say, “I’m not a parent myself, but I think the best solution at this point is to slap that child across the face. It won’t stop its crying, but at least now it’ll be doing it for a good reason.”

 

“I don’t know how these couples do it, spend hours each night tucking their kids in, reading them books about misguided kittens or seals who wear uniforms, and then reread them if the child so orders. In my house, our parents put us to bed with two simple words: “Shut up.” That was always the last thing we heard before our lights were turned off. Our artwork did not hang on the refrigerator or anywhere near it, because our parents recognized it for what it was: crap. They did not live in a child’s house, we lived in theirs.”

 

“Their house had real hard-cover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.”

 

“As a child I assumed that when I reached adulthood, I would have grown-up thoughts.”

 

“Neighbors would pass, and when they honked I’d remember that I was in my Speedo. Then I’d wrap my towel like a skirt around my waist and remind my sisters that this was not girlish but Egyptian, thank you very much.”

 

“There’s a short circuit between my brain and my tongue, thus “Leave me the fuck alone” comes out as “Well, maybe. Sure. I guess I can see your point.”

 

“Of course, the diary helps me as well. ‘That wasn’t your position on July 7, 1991,’ I’ll remind Hugh an hour after we’ve had a fight. I’d have loved to rebut him sooner, but it takes awhile to look these things up.”

 

“It was one of those situations I often find myself in while traveling. Something’s said by a stranger I’ve been randomly thrown into contact with, and I want to say, “Listen. I’m with you on most of this, but before we continue, I need to know who you voted for in the last election.”

 

“I asked her, dreamily, if we had met, and when she told me that we had not, I gave her a little finger wave, the type a leprechaun might offer a pixie who was floating by on a maple leaf. “Well, hi there,” I whispered.”

 

“Then there are vegans, macrobiotics, and a new group, flexitarians, who eat meat if not too many people are watching.”

 

“My first boyfriend was black as well, but that doesn’t prove I’m color-blind, just that I like big butts.”

 

“Drawing attention to Gretchen’s weight was the sort of behavior my mother referred to as ‘stirring the turd,’ and I did it a lot that summer.”

 

“In Japanese and Italian, the response to [“How are you?”] is “I’m fine, and you?” In German it’s answered with a sigh and a slight pause, followed by “Not so good.”

 

“On a recent flight from Tokyo to Beijing, at around the time that my lunch tray was taken away, I remembered that I needed to learn Mandarin. “Goddamnit,” I whispered. “I knew I forgot something.”

 

“It’s not lost on me that I’m so busy recording life, I don’t have time to really live it. I’ve become like one of those people I hate, the sort who go to the museum and, instead of looking at the magnificent Brueghel, take a picture of it, reducing it from art to proof. It’s not “Look what Brueghel did, painted this masterpiece” but “Look what I did, went to Rotterdam and stood in front of a Brueghel painting!”

My Take

I have always enjoyed the humor of David Sedaris, especially his autobiographical essays, and this book was no exception.  His essay on modern parenting compared to his childhood had me trying to read parts of it to my husband Scot, but being unable to do so because I was laughing too hard.  The book was worth reading for that experience alone.

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104. H is for Hawk

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Lisa Goldberg

Author:   Helen MacDonald

Genre:  Non Fiction, Memoir, Animals

300 pages, published March 3, 2015

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Written by Helen MacDonald after her father’s sudden, devastating death, H is for Hawk is two books in one.  An account of MacDonald’s training of a vicious predator goshawk whom she names Mabel and a touching, insightful meditation on grief.  Through the demanding and difficult goshawk training process and her research into the life of The Once and Future King author and fellow falconer T.H. White, MacDonald gains new insight into the meaning of life and death.

 

Quotes

“There is a time in life when you expect the world to be always full of new things. And then comes a day when you realise that is not how it will be at all. You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realise, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps, though you can put your hand out to where things were and feel that tense, shining dullness of the space where the memories are.”

 

“Everything about the hawk is tuned and turned to hunt and kill. Yesterday I discovered that when I suck air through my teeth and make a squeaking noise like an injured rabbit, all the tendons in her toes instantaneously contract, driving her talons into the glove with terrible, crushing force. This killing grip is an old, deep pattern in her brain, an innate response that hasn’t yet found the stimulus meant to release it. Because other sounds provoke it: door hinges, squealing breaks, bicycles with unoiled wheels – and on the second afternoon, Joan Sutherland singing an aria on the radio. Ow. I laughed out loud at that. Stimulus: opera. Response: kill.”

 

“In England Have My Bones White wrote one of the saddest sentences I have ever read: ‘Falling in love is a desolating experience, but not when it is with a countryside.’ He could not imagine a human love returned. He had to displace his desires onto the landscape, that great, blank green field that cannot love you back, but cannot hurt you either.”

 

“I once asked my friends if they’d ever held things that gave them a spooky sense of history. Ancient pots with three-thousand-year-old thumbprints in the clay, said one. Antique keys, another. Clay pipes. Dancing shoes from WWII. Roman coins I found in a field. Old bus tickets in second-hand books. Everyone agreed that what these small things did was strangely intimate; they gave them the sense, as they picked them up and turned them in their fingers, of another person, an unknown person a long time ago, who had held that object in their hands. You don’t know anything about them, but you feel the other person’s there, one friend told me. It’s like all the years between you and them disappear. Like you become them, somehow.”

 

“When you are learning how to do something, you do not have to worry about whether or not you are good at it. But when you have done something, have learned how to do it, you are not safe anymore. Being an expert opens you up to judgment.”

 

“It took me a long time to realise how many of our classic books on animals were by gay writers who wrote of their relationships with animals in lieu of human loves of which they could not speak.”

 

“We carry the lives we’ve imagined as we carry the lives we have, and sometimes a reckoning comes of all the lives we have lost.”

 

“Hands are for other human hands to hold.”

 

“Nature in her green, tranquil woods heals and soothes all affliction,’ wrote John Muir. ‘Earth hath no sorrows that earth cannot heal.’ Now I knew this for what it was: a beguiling but dangerous lie. I was furious with myself and my own conscious certainty that t his was the cure I needed. Hands are for other humans to hold. They should not be reserved exclusively as perches for hawks. And the wild is not a panacea for the human soul; too much in the air can corrode it to nothing.”

 

“the world is full of signs and wonders that come, and go, and if you are lucky you might see them. Once, twice. Perhaps never again.”

 

“Here’s a word. Bereavement. Or, Bereaved. Bereft. It’s from the Old English bereafian, meaning ‘to deprive of, take away, seize, rob’. Robbed. Seized. It happens to everyone. But you feel it alone. Shocking loss isn’t to be shared, no matter how hard you try.”

 

“The archaeology of grief is not ordered. It is more like earth under a spade, turning up things you had forgotten. Surprising things come to light: not simply memories, but states of mind, emotions, older ways of seeing the world.”

 

“Of all the lessons I’ve learned in my months with Mabel this is the greatest of all: that there is a world of things out there – rocks and trees and stones and grass and all the things that crawl and run and fly. They are all things in themselves, but we make them sensible to us by giving them meanings that shore up our own views of the world. In my time with Mabel I’ve learned how you feel more human once you have known, even in your imagination, what it is like to be not. And I have learned, too, the danger that comes in mistaking the wildness we give a thing for the wildness that animates it. Goshawks are things of death and blood and gore, but they are not excuses for atrocities. Their inhumanity is to be treasured because what they do has nothing to do with us at all.”

 

“Old England is an imaginary place, a landscape built from words, woodcuts, films, paintings, picturesque engravings. It is a place imagined by people, and people do not live very long or look very hard. We are very bad at scale. The things that live in the soil are too small to care about; climate change too large to imagine. We are bad at time too. We cannot remember what lived here before we did; we cannot love what is not. Nor can we imagine what will be different when we are dead. We live out our three score and ten, and tie our knots and lines only to ourselves. We take solace in pictures, and we wipe the hills of history.”

 

“Watching, not doing. Seeking safety in not being seen. It’s a habit you can fall into, willing yourself into invisibility. And it doesn’t serve you well in life. Believe me it doesn’t. Not with people and loves and hearts and homes and work. But for the first few days with a new hawk, making yourself disappear is the greatest skill in the world.”

 

My Take

Helen MacDonald has won numerous awards for her reflective and moving memoir including the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Costa Book of the Year and the acclaim is well-deserved.  Reading H is for Hawk, I not only learned about the intricacies and challenges of training a hawk, which is an entirely new and fascinating subject for me, but I also gained keen insight into what it means to be a human and the nature of grief.  I also give the book bonus points for the best cover artwork of books I have so far read in my quest.  MacDonald is a fine writer and it was a pleasure to read her book.

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88. Yes, Please

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  

Author:   Amy Poehler

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Memoir, Humor

329 pages, published October 28, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Yes Please is a humorous memoir by Amy Poehler of Saturday Night Live and Parks and Rec fame.  In plainspoken and irreverent style, Amy recounts stories from her normal childhood all the way through her divorce from fellow comedian Will Arnett.  The title “Yes Please” refers to her formative experience with the Upright Citizens Brigade, an improv group in which she was taught to say “yes” to any improv idea thrown her way.  “Yes Please” is also  an apt description of her response to a wide range of opportunities throughout her life.  With chapters like “Treat Your Career Like a Bad Boyfriend,” “Plain Girl Versus the Demon” and “The Robots Will Kill Us All” “Yes Please” will make you both think and laugh.  

 

Quotes

“It’s called Yes Please because it is the constant struggle and often the right answer. Can we figure out what we want, ask for it, and stop talking? Yes please. Is being vulnerable a power position? Yes please. Am I allowed to take up space? Yes please. Would you like to be left alone? Yes please. I love saying “yes” and I love saying “please.” Saying “yes” doesn’t mean I don’t know how to say no, and saying “please” doesn’t mean I am waiting for permission. “Yes please” sounds powerful and concise. It’s a response and a request. It is not about being a good girl; it is about being a real woman. It’s also a title I can tell my kids. I like when they say “Yes please” because most people are rude and nice manners are the secret keys to the universe.”

 

“I want to be around people that do things. I don’t want to be around people anymore that judge or talk about what people do. I want to be around people that dream and support and do things.”

 

“You do it because the doing of it is the thing. The doing is the thing. The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing.”

 

“I think we should stop asking people in their twenties what they “want to do” and start asking them what they don’t want to do.”

 

“Anger and embarrassment are often neighbors.”

 

“Your ability to navigate and tolerate change and its painful uncomfortableness directly correlates to your happiness and general well-being. See what I just did there? I saved you thousands of dollars on self-help books. If you can surf your life rather than plant your feet, you will be happier.”

 

“Either way, we both agree that ambivalence is a key to success. I will say it again. Ambivalence is key. You have to care about your work but not the result. You have to care about how good you and how good you feel, but now about how good people think you are or how good people think you look I realize this is extremely difficult. I am not saying I am particularly good at it. I’m like you. Or maybe you’er better at this and I am. You will never climb Career Mountain and get to the top and shout, ‘I made it!’ You will rarely feel done or complete or even successful Most people I know struggle with that complicated soup of feeling slighted on one hand and like a total fraud on the other. Our ego is a monster that loves to sit at the head of the table, and I have learned that my ego is just as rude and loud and hungry as everyone else’s. It doesn’t matter how much you get; you are left wanting more. Success is filled with MSG.”

 

“However, if you do start crying in an argument and someone asks why, you can always say, “I’m just crying because of how wrong you are.”

 

“The only way we will survive is by being kind. The only way we can get by in this world is through the help we receive from others. No one can do it alone, no matter how great the machines are.”

 

“You have to care about your work but not about the result. You have to care about how good you are and how good you feel, but not about how good people think you are or how good people think you look.”

 

“Decide what your currency is early. Let go of what you will never have. People who do this are happier and sexier.”

 

“Watching great people do what you love is a good way to start learning how to do it yourself.”

 

“Great people do things before they’re ready. They do things before they know they can do it. Doing what you’re afraid of, getting out of your comfort zone, taking risks like that- that’s what life is. You might be really good. You might find out something about yourself that’s really special and if you’re not good, who cares? You tried something. Now you know something about yourself”

 

“Hopefully as you get older, you start to learn how to live with your demon. It’s hard at first. Some people give their demon so much room that there is no space in their head or bed for love. They feed their demon and it gets really strong and then it makes them stay in abusive relationships or starve their beautiful bodies. But sometimes, you get a little older and get a little bored of the demon. Through good therapy and friends and self-love you can practice treating the demon like a hacky, annoying cousin. Maybe a day even comes when you are getting dressed for a fancy event and it whispers, “You aren’t pretty,” and you go, “I know, I know, now let me find my earrings.” Sometimes you say, “Demon, I promise you I will let you remind me of my ugliness, but right now I am having hot sex so I will check in later.”

 

“Career is different. Career is the stringing together of opportunities and jobs. Mix in public opinion and past regrets. Add a dash of future panic and a whole lot of financial uncertainty. Career is something that fools you into thinking you are in control and then takes pleasure in reminding you that you aren’t. Career is the thing that will not fill you up and never make you truly whole. Depending on your career is like eating cake for breakfast and wondering why you start crying an hour later.”

“The truth is, writing is this: hard and boring and occasionally great but usually not.”

 

“I am introducing a new idea. Try to care less. Practice ambivalence. Learn to let go of wanting it.”

 

“Fighting aging is like the War on Drugs. It’s expensive, does more harm than good, and has been proven to never end.”

 

“Now, before I extend this metaphor, let me make a distinction between career and creativity. Creativity is connected to your passion, that light inside you that drives you. That joy that comes when you do something you love. That small voice that tells you, “I like this. Do this again. You are good at it. Keep going.” That is the juicy stuff that lubricates our lives and helps us feel less alone in the world. Your creativity is not a bad boyfriend. It is a really warm older Hispanic lady who has a beautiful laugh and loves to hug. If you are even a little bit nice to her she will make you feel great and maybe cook you delicious food.”

 

“I asked the indefatigable Betty White what she was going to do when she got home. She told me she was going to fix herself a “vodka on the rocks and eat a cold hot dog.” In one sentence, she proved my theory and made me excited for my future.”

 

“Annie taught me that orphanages were a blast and being rich is the only thing that matters. Grease taught me being in a gang is nonstop fun and you need to dress sexier to have any chance of keeping a guy interested.”

 

“Because remember, the talking about the thing isn’t the thing. The doing of the thing is the thing.”

 

“nice manners are the secret keys to the universe.”

 

“Ignore what other people think. Most people aren’t even paying attention to you.”

My Take

I listened to Amy Poehler’s Yes Please which was read by Poehler and, like Tina Fey’s Bossy Pants, I recommend the audio version of this book.  Like Fey, Poehler has led an interesting life with lots of twists and turns.  Reading both Yes Please and Bossy Pants, you will see that Poehler and Fey are in a mutual admiration society as each book has a significant discussion about the other. Poehler’s memoir is filled with sage advice for women working and raising a family and lots of humor to boot.  I unequivocally recommend it.

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