, , , ,

430. The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Jancy Campbell

Author:    Hyeonseo Lee

Genre:   Nonfiction, Memoir, Foreign

304 pages, published July 2, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book on Overdrive

Summary

The Girl with Seven Names is written by Hyeonseo Lee and tells the incredibly story of her escape from North Korea and her efforts to get her mother and brother out twelve years later.

Quotes 

“I hope you remember that if you encounter an obstacle on the road, don’t think of it as an obstacle at all… think of it as a challenge to find a new path on the road less traveled.”

 

“This is when I understood that we can do without almost anything – our home, even our country. But we will never do without other people, and we will never do without family.”

 

“After years in the Chinese workforce, I had developed an emotional attachment to money. My earnings were my hard work and long hours; my savings were comforts deferred.”

 

“Kindness toward strangers is rare in North Korea. There is risk in helping others. The irony was that by forcing us to be good citizens, the state made accusers and informers of us all.”

 

“Kind people who put others before themselves would be the first to die. It was the ruthless and the selfish who would survive.”

 

“I had to learn Mandarin. And I had the best teacher – necessity. You can study a language for years at school, but nothing helps you succeed like need, and mine was clear, and urgent.”

 

“Dictatorships may seem strong and unified, but they are always weaker than they appear.”

 

“Among the 27,000 North Koreans in the South, two kinds of life have been left behind: the wretched life of persecution and hunger, and the manageable life that was not so bad. People in the first group adjust rapidly. Their new life, however challenging, could only be better. For the people in the second group, life in the South is far more daunting. It often makes them yearn for the simpler, more ordered existence they left behind, where big decisions are taken for them by the state, and where life is not a fierce competition.”

 

“One of the main reasons that distinctions between oppressor and victim are blurred in North Korea is that no one there has any concept of rights. To know that your rights are being abused, or that you are abusing someone else’s, you first have to know that you have them, and what they are.”

 

“One of the tragedies of North Korea is that everyone wears a mask, which they let slip at their peril.”

 

“North Koreans who have never left don’t think critically because they have no point of comparison – with previous governments, different policies, or with other societies in the outside world.”

 

“Not only did I believe that humans were selfish and base, I also knew that plenty of them were actually bad – content to destroy lives for their own gain. I’d seen Korean-Chinese expose North Korean escapees to the police in return for money. I’d known people who’d been trafficked by other humans as if they were livestock. That world was familiar to me. All my life, random acts of kindness had been so rare that they’d stick in my memory, and I’d think: how strange.”

 

“As many discover, freedom – real freedom, in which your life is what you make of it and the choices are your own – can be terrifying.”

 

“North Korea is an atheist state. Anyone caught in possession of a Bible faces execution or a life in the gulag. Kim worship is the only permitted outlet for spiritual fervour. Shamans and fortune-tellers, too, are outlawed, but high cadres of the regime consult them. We’d heard that even Kim Jong-il himself sought their advice.”

 

My Take

The Girl with Seven Names is an informative and inspirational story by Hyeonseo Lee who escaped from North Korea and then got her mother and brother out.  Lee suffered many setbacks and overcame some impossible obstacles, but her perseverance and grit ultimately paid off.  In addition to a compelling personal story, I also learned a lot about the horrific country of North Korea.

/by
, , , , ,

429 . Under the Banner of Heaven

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Jon Krakauer

Genre:   Nonfiction, Theology, Crime, History

399 pages, published July 10, 2003

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

In Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer explores the story behind two horrific murders of a young woman and her baby daughter by brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty.  The Lafferty’s were caught up in an offshoot Mormon fundamentalist sect and claimed that they were instructed by God to carry out their gruesome crime.  Additionally, Krakauer examines the Mormon religion in detail, from its origins in the early 1800’s with Joseph Smith, to its settlement in Utah led by Brigham Young to its embrace of polygamy to its modern day incarnation as a mainstream American religion.

Quotes 

“There is a dark side to religious devotion that is too often ignored or denied. As a means of motivating people to be cruel or inhumane, there may be no more potent force than religion. When the subject of religiously inspired bloodshed comes up, many Americans immediately think of Islamic fundamentalism, which is to be expected in the wake of 911. But men have been committing heinous acts in the name of God ever since mankind began believing in deities, and extremists exist within all religions. Muhammad is not the only prophet whose words have been used to sanction barbarism; history has not lacked for Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, and even Buddhists who have been motivated by scripture to butcher innocents. Plenty of these religious extremist have been homegrown, corn-fed Americans.”

 

“Common sense is no match for the voice of God.”

 

“But some things are more important than being happy. Like being free to think for yourself.”

 

“Although the far territory of the extreme can exert an intoxicating pull on susceptible individuals of all bents, extremism seems to be especially prevalent among those inclined by temperament or upbringing toward religious pursuits. Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a crucial component of spiritual devotion. And when religious fanaticism supplants ratiocination, all bets are suddenly off.”

 

“Neither Emma’s tears nor her rage were enough to make Joseph monogamous, however; nor were the prevailing mores of the day. He kept falling rapturously in love with women not his wife. And because that rapture was so wholly consuming, and felt so good, it struck him as impossible that God might possibly frown on such a thing.”

 

“But perhaps the greatest attraction of Mormonism was the promise that each follower would be granted an extraordinarily intimate relationship with God. Joseph taught and encouraged his adherents to receive personal communiqués straight from the Lord. Divine revelation formed the bedrock of the religion.”

 

“Balanced atop the highest spire of the Salt Lake Temple, gleaming in the Utah sun, a statue of the angel Moroni stands watch over downtown Salt Lake City with his golden trumpet raised. This massive granite edifice is the spiritual and temporal nexus of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), which presents itself as the world’s only true religion. Temple Square is to Mormons what the Vatican is to Catholics, or the Kaaba in Mecca is to Muslims. At last count there were more than eleven million Saints the world over, and Mormonism is the fastest-growing faith in the Western Hemisphere. At present in the United States there are more Mormons than Presbyterians or Episcopalians. On the planet as a whole, there are now more Mormons than Jews. Mormonism is considered in some sober academic circles to be well on its way to becoming a major world religion–the first such faith to emerge since Islam.”

 

My Take

I had previously read Into Thin Air and Into the Wild, two terrific page turners also written by the writer Jon Krakauer.  I therefore had high hopes for Under the Banner of Heaven.  While not of the same caliber as Into Thin Air, it was still quite compelling and informative.  I learned a lot about Mormonism (a very weird religion with some very good people who follow it) and how dangerous any type of religious fundamentalism can be.  It certainly got me thinking.

/by
, , , ,

428. Lab Girl

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Marianne Boeke

Author:  Hope Jahren

Genre:   Nonfiction, Science, Memoir

290 pages, published March 1, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book on Overdrive

Summary

Lab Girl is written by acclaimed scientist and geobiologist Hope Jahren who has built three laboratories in which she’s studied trees, flowers, seeds, and soil.  Jahren writes about both her long, difficult journey to become a world renowned scientist and insights from her botanical experiments.

Quotes 

“Science has taught me that everything is more complicated than we first assume, and that being able to derive happiness from discovery is a recipe for a beautiful life.”

 

“Working in the hospital teaches you that there are only two kinds of people in the world: the sick and the not sick. If you are not sick, shut up and help.”

 

“Each beginning is the end of a waiting. We are each given exactly one chance to

  1. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable. Every replete tree was first a seed that

waited.”

 

“A CACTUS DOESN’T LIVE in the desert because it likes the desert; it lives there because the desert hasn’t killed it yet.”

 

“Love and learning are similar in that they can never be wasted.”

 

“We love each other because we can’t help it. We don’t work at it and we don’t sacrifice for it. It is easy and all the sweeter to me because it is so undeserved. I discover within a second context that when something just won’t work, moving heaven and earth often won’t make it work — and similarly, there are some things that you just can’t screw up. I know that I could live without him: I have my own work, my own mission, and my own money. But I don’t want to. I really don’t want to. We make plans: he will share his strength with me and I will share my imagination with him…”

 

“I have learned that raising a child is essentially one long, slow agony of letting go.”

 

“No risk is more terrifying than that taken by the first root. A lucky root will eventually find water, but its first job is to anchor — to anchor an embryo and forever end its mobile phase, however passive that mobility was. Once the first root is extended, the plant will never again enjoy any hope (however feeble) of relocating to a place less cold, less dry, less dangerous. Indeed, it will face frost, drought, and greedy jaws without any possibility of flight. The tiny rootlet has only once chance to guess what the future years, decades — even centuries — will bring to the patch of soil where it sits. It assesses the light and humidity of the moment, refers to its programming, and quite literally takes the plunge.”

 

“My true potential had more to do with my willingness to struggle than with my past and present circumstances.”

 

“Being paid to wonder seems like a heavy responsibility at times.”       

 

“The leaves of the world comprise countless billion elaborations of a single, simple machine designed for one job only – a job upon which hinges humankind. Leaves make sugar. Plants are the only things in the universe that can make sugar out of nonliving inorganic matter. All the sugar that you have ever eaten was first made within a leaf. Without a constant supply of glucose to your brain, you will die. Period. Under duress, your liver can make glucose out of protein or fat – but that protein or fat was originally constructed from a plant sugar within some other animal. It’s inescapable: at this very moment, within the synapses of your brain, leaves are fueling thoughts of leaves.”

 

 

“After scientists broke open the coat of a lotus seed (Nelumbo nucifera) and coddled the embryo into growth, they kept the empty husk. When they radiocarbon-dated this discarded outer shell, they discovered that their seedling had been waiting for them within a peat bog in China for no less than two thousand years. This tiny seed had stubbornly kept up the hope of its own future while entire human civilizations rose and fell. And then one day this little plant’s yearning finally burst forth within a laboratory. I wonder where it is right now.”

 

“Science has taught me that everything is more complicated than we first assume, and that being able to derive happiness from discovery is a recipe for a beautiful life. It has also convinced me that carefully writing everything down is the only real defense we have against forgetting something important that once was and is no more, including the spruce tree that should have outlived me but did not.”

 

“I’m good at science because I’m not good at listening. I have been told that I am intelligent, and I have been told that I am simple-minded. I have been told that I am trying to do too much, and I have been told that what I have done amounts to very little. I have been told that I can’t do what I want to do because I am a woman, and I have been told that I have only been allowed to do what I have done because I am a woman. I have been told that I can have eternal life, and I have been told that I will burn myself out into an early death. I have been admonished for being too feminine and I have been distrusted for being too masculine. I have been warned that I am far too sensitive and I have been accused of being heartlessly callous. But I was told all of these things by people who can’t understand the present or see the future any better than I can. Such recurrent pronouncements have forced me to accept that because I am a female scientist, nobody knows what the hell I am, and it has given me the delicious freedom to make it up as I go along. I don’t take advice from my colleagues, and I try not to give it. When I am pressed, I resort to these two sentences: You shouldn’t take this job too seriously. Except for when you should.”

 

“A seed is alive while it waits. Every acorn on the ground is just as alive as the three-hundred-year-old oak tree that towers over it. Neither the seed nor the old oak is growing; they are both just waiting. Their waiting differs, however, in that the seed is waiting to flourish while the tree is only waiting to die.”

 

“America says it loves science, but it sure as hell doesn’t want to pay for it.”

 

“Plants are not like us. They are different in critical and fundamental ways. As I catalog the differences between plants and animals, the horizon stretches out before me faster than I can travel and forces me to acknowledge that perhaps I was destined to study plants for decades only in order to more fully appreciate that they are beings we can never truly understand. Only when we begin to grasp this deep otherness can we be sure we are no longer projecting ourselves onto plants. Finally we can begin to recognize what is actually happening.  Our world is falling apart quietly. Human civilization has reduced the plant, a four-million-year-old life form, into three things: food, medicine, and wood…”

 

My Take

Lab Girl is an informative, interesting and inspirational memoir by the talented scientist/writer Hope Jahren.  Jahren had to overcome a lot of obstacles and endure some tough times before receiving recognition for her work as a geobiologist, but she would not have chosen any other path.  I especially enjoyed reading about her relationship with the idiosyncratic Bill Hagopian, a true American original, Jahren’s career long scientist sidekick.

/by
, , , ,

424. Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Katy Fassett

Author:    Amaryllis Fox

Genre:   Nonfiction, Memoir, Foreign

240 pages, published October 15, 2019

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA is the memoir of Amaryllis Fox who writes about her life  as a young woman in the CIA.   Fox was an undergraduate at Oxford studying theology and international law when her writing mentor Daniel Pearl was captured and beheaded.  Roused by this horrific event, Fox applied to a master’s program in conflict and terrorism at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, where she created an algorithm that predicted the likelihood of a terrorist cell arising in any village around the world.  At the tender age of 21, Fox was recruited by the CIA where she went from analyzing hundreds of classified cables a day to help prepare the daily briefing for the president. She then worked on the Iraq desk in the Counterterrorism center. At twenty-two, she was fast-tracked into advanced operations training and then deployed as a spy under non-official cover as an art dealer specializing in tribal and indigenous art and sent to infiltrate terrorist networks in remote areas of the Middle East and Asia.

Quotes 

 

My Take

Life Undercover is a quick read.  I learned a lot about the CIA training and covert operations.  Fox is a good writer and has some interesting tales to tell about her live undercover and how she got there.

/by
, , , , ,

423. The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-45

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Ben Emerson

Author:    Stephen E. Ambrose

Genre:   Nonfiction, World War II, History, Biography

299 pages, published August 14, 2001

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Written by World War II military historian Stephen Ambrose, The Wild Blue tells the story of the courageous young men who flew the massive B-24 bombers over Germany during the last two years of World War II.  These missions were incredibly dangerous as the planes almost always encountered anti-aircraft fire before they dropped their bombs and the casualty rate of the pilots and crew were stratospherically high.  In addition to sections devoted to pilot training and the aircraft, the focus of the book is on George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate, who served as a brave B-24 pilot stationed in Italy at the age of 22.  McGovern ultimately flew 35 missions and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Quotes 

 

My Take

I have a great interest in World War II and The Wild Blue filled in a gap in my knowledge of that subject, namely the American pilots stationed in Italy who flew missions into Germany to bomb factories and other strategic targets necessary to winning the war.  Reading about the heroism and courage of these very young men (truly the best of America) gave me an increased appreciation for the silent sacrifice of the World War II generation.  It was also very interesting to read about the back stories of the B-24 bomber, airmen training, life in Italy, the missions and the wartime home front.  An excellent book.

/by
, , , , ,

419. Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Scott Adams

Genre:   Nonfiction, Psychology, Self Improvement, Politics

256 pages, published November 5, 2019

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Loserthink is famed Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams take on why people make bad decisions, like letting your ego have too much control, thinking with words instead of reasons, failing to imagine alternative explanations, and making too much of coincidences.

Quotes 

“If bad memories are keeping you from being happy, try crowding out the destructive memories with new and interesting thoughts. Stay busy, in mind and body, and time is on your side.”

 

“There are three important things to know about human beings in order to understand why we do the things we do. Humans use pattern recognition to understand their world. Humans are very bad at pattern recognition. And they don’t know it.”

 

“The best solution to a problem is often unrelated to who is at fault. It is loserthink to believe otherwise.”

 

“If you can’t imagine any other explanation for a set of facts, it might be because you are bad at imagining things.”

 

“If all you know is how many times someone hit a target, it is loserthink to judge how accurate they are. You also need to know how many times they missed.”

 

“Never be yourself if you can make yourself into something better through your conscious actions. You are what you do.”

 

“It is helpful to think of your mind as having limited shelf space. If you fill that space with negative thoughts, it will set your mental filters to negativity and poor health, and there will be no space left for healthy, productive, and uplifting thoughts. You can control your mental shelf space—to a degree—by manipulating your physical surroundings. In the case of pharmaceutical commercials, it means changing the channel so you are not bombarded with unhealthy thoughts that can wreck your mind and body over time. I will pause here to note that science is solidly on my side.  So is nearly every self-help guru.”

  

My Take

During my reading quest, I had previously read Scott Adams’ How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big:  Kind of the Story of My Life and Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter.  I preferred both of these books to Loserthink.  It’s not a bad book and has some interesting ideas.  It’s just not nearly as good as Adams’ previous efforts.

/by
, , , , ,

416. Do You Mind If I Cancel? (Things That Still Annoy Me)

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:    Gary Janetti

Genre:   Nonfiction, Humor, Memoir, Essays

159 pages, published October 22, 2019

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Do You Mind If I Cancel?  is a humorous memoir of essays by Gary Janetti, a television writer and producer for some of the most popular television comedies of all time.

Quotes 

“Let’s see, what else? Don’t go into debt over clothes. Hug your dogs while you have them. Know that you can skip most anything. You will fall in love eventually. Remember that. Also, the things you like aren’t weird. Don’t worry about being normal. It’s an awful thing to aspire to.”

“You will derive much satisfaction in later life simply by shooting looks at people.”

 

“This is also very important. Never take the first table they offer you in a restaurant. Don’t even start walking with the host until you know where you’re going. “What table were you thinking of giving us?” always lets them know you mean business right off the bat. Never sit by the door, near a waiter station, or across from the bathroom. Always take the seat facing out to the room. If there is a booth available you definitely want that.”

 

“I’d go through the swinging doors into the kitchen, hunch over the trash can and begin shoveling the uneaten food into my mouth as fast as I could. When the door would once again swing open I’d look up, frozen in fear, with half a baked potato sticking out of my mouth and when I’d see it was just another waiter I’d resume my pose over the trash can and continue frantically shoveling it down my throat. Raccoons had more dignity than I did.”

 

My Take

I gave this book a rare 4 ½ stars because there were parts of it that were so funny that I couldn’t stop laughing.  In fact, I laughed so hard that my sides actually hurt.  That is a rare thing and should be rewarded.

/by
, , , ,

415. Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   John Ortberg

Genre:   Nonfiction, Christian, Theology

208 pages, published April 22, 2014

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Soul Keeping is an in depth exploration of the state of your soul and has prescriptions for how to improve it.  By trying to buy your way to happiness and focus on the material concerns of the world, your soul will pay the price.  In this practical and spiritual book, author John Ortberg helps you to discover your soul, which is the most important connection to God.

Quotes 

“You must arrange your days so that you are experiencing deep contentment, joy, and confidence in your everyday life with God.”

“Many Christians expend so much energy and worry trying not to sin. The goal is not to try to sin less.  In all your efforts to keep from sinning, what are you focusing on? Sin. God wants you to focus on him.  To be with him. “Abide in me.” Just relax and learn to enjoy his presence.  Every day is a collection of moments, 86,400 seconds in a day.  How many of them can you live with God? Start where you are and grow from there. God wants to be with you every moment.”

 

“Being right is actually a very hard burden to be able to carry gracefully and humbly. That’s why nobody likes to sit next to the kid in class who’s right all the time. One of the hardest things in the world is to be right and not hurt other people with it.”

 

“If your soul is healthy, no external circumstance can destroy your life. If your soul is unhealthy, no external circumstance can redeem your life.”

 

“Your soul is what integrates your will (your intentions), your mind (your thoughts and feelings, your values and conscience), and your body (your face, body language, and actions) into a single life. A soul is healthy — well-ordered — when there is harmony between these three entities and God’s intent for all creation. When you are connected with God and other people in life, you have a healthy soul.”

 

“Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”

 

“If you ask people who don’t believe in God why they don’t, the number one reason will be suffering. If you ask people who believe in God when they grew most spiritually, the number one answer will be suffering.”

 

“In the Bible, God never gives anyone an easy job. God never comes to Abraham, or Moses, or Esther and says, “I’d like you to do me a favor, but it really shouldn’t take much time. I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.” God does not recruit like someone from the PTA. He is always intrusive, demanding, exhausting. He says we should expect that the world will be hard, and that our assignments will be hard.”

 

“The soul integrates the will and mind and body. Sin disintegrates them. In sin, my appetite for lust or anger or superiority dominates my will. My will, which was made to rule my body, becomes enslaved to what my body wants. When I flatter other people, I learn to use my mouth and my face to conceal my true thoughts and intentions. This always requires energy: I am disintegrating my body from my mind. I hate, but I can’t admit it even to myself, so I must distort my perception of reality to rationalize my hatred: I disintegrate my thoughts from the reality. Sin ultimately makes long-term gratitude or friendship or meaning impossible. Sin eventually destroys my capacity even for enjoyment, let alone meaning. It distorts my perceptions, alienates my relationships, inflames my desires, and enslaves my will. This is what it means to lose your soul.”

 

“For the soul to be well, it needs to be with God.”

 

“A very simple way to guard your soul is to ask yourself, “Will this situation block my soul’s connection to God?” As I begin living this question I find how little power the world has over my soul. What if I don’t get a promotion, or my boss doesn’t like me, or I have financial problems, or I have a bad hair day? Yes, these may cause disappointment, but do they have any power over my soul? Can they nudge my soul from its center, which is the very heart of God? When you think about it that way, you realize that external circumstances cannot keep you from being with God. If anything, they draw you closer to him.”

 

“A paradox of the soul is that it is incapable of satisfying itself, but it is also incapable of living without satisfaction. You were made for soul-satisfaction, but you will only ever find it in God. The soul craves to be secure. The soul craves to be loved. The soul craves to be significant, and we find these only in God in a form that can satisfy us. That’s why the psalmist says to God, “Because your love is better than life . . . my soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods.” Soul and appetite and satisfaction are dominant themes in the Bible — the soul craves because it is meant for God. “My soul, find rest in God.”

 

“I was operating on the unspoken assumption that my inner world would be filled with life, peace, and joy once my external world was perfect.”

 

“A soul without a center feels constantly vulnerable to people or circumstances.”

 

“The best place to start doing life with God is in small moments.”

 

“The soul seeks God with its whole being. Because it is desperate to be whole, the soul is God-smitten and God-crazy and God-obsessed. My mind may be obsessed with idols; my will may be enslaved to habits; my body may be consumed with appetites. But my soul will never find rest until it rests in God.”

 

“We will always take the most care of that which we value most deeply.”

 

“The soul was not made to run on empty. But the soul doesn’t come with a gauge. The indicators of soul-fatigue are more subtle: • Things seem to bother you more than they should. Your spouse’s gum-chewing suddenly reveals to you a massive character flaw. • It’s hard to make up your mind about even a simple decision. • Impulses to eat or drink or spend or crave are harder to resist than they otherwise would be. • You are more likely to favor short-term gains in ways that leave you with high long-term costs. Israel ended up worshiping a golden calf simply because they grew tired of having to wait on Moses and God. • Your judgment is suffering. • You have less courage. “Fatigue makes cowards of us all” is a quote so ubiquitious that it has been attributed to General Patton and Vince Lombardi and Shakespeare. The same disciples who fled in fear when Jesus was crucified eventually sacrificed their lives for him. What changed was not their bodies, but their souls.”

 

“Here’s the deal: The more you think you’re entitled to, the less you will be grateful for. The bigger the sense of entitlement, the smaller the sense of gratitude. We wonder why in our world we keep getting more and more and more and keep being less and less and less grateful.”

 

“The “with God” life is not a life of more religious activities or devotions or trying to be good. It is a life of inner peace and contentment for your soul with the maker and manager of the universe. The “without God” life is the opposite. It is death. It will kill your soul.”

 

“Our problem is that this world does not teach us to pay attention to what matters. We circulate résumés that chronicle what we have accomplished, not who we have become. The advertisements we watch, the conversations we hold, the criteria by which we are judged, and the entertainment we consume all inflame our desire to change our situation, while God waits to redeem our souls.”

 

“Despite the rise of the mental health profession, people are becoming increasingly vulnerable to depression. Why? Martin Seligman, a brilliant psychologist with no religious ax to grind, has a theory that it’s because we have replaced church, faith, and community with a tiny little unit that cannot bear the weight of meaning. That’s the self. We’re all about the self. We revolve our lives around ourselves.”

 

“We’re generally quite good at doing something, but we’re really bad at doing nothing.”

 

“Good habits are enormously freeing — we accomplish good things almost on autopilot. One study from Duke University found that more than 40 percent of the actions people take every day aren’t decisions, but habits. Good habits free us, but when sin becomes a habit, our souls lose their freedom.”

 

“The alternative to soul-acceptance is soul-fatigue. There is a kind of fatigue that attacks the body. When we stay up too late and rise too early; when we try to fuel ourselves for the day with coffee and a donut in the morning and Red Bull in the afternoon; when we refuse to take the time to exercise and we eat foods that clog our brains and arteries; when we constantly try to guess which line at the grocery store will move faster and which car in which lane at the stoplight will move faster and which parking space is closest to the mall, our bodies grow weary. There is a kind of fatigue that attacks the mind. When we are bombarded by information all day at work . . . When multiple screens are always clamoring for our attention . . . When we carry around mental lists of errands not yet done and bills not yet paid and emails not yet replied to . . . When we try to push unpleasant emotions under the surface like holding beach balls under the water at a swimming pool . . . our minds grow weary. There is a kind of fatigue that attacks the will. We have so many decisions to make. When we are trying to decide what clothes will create the best possible impression, which foods will bring us the most pleasure, which tasks at work will bring us the most success, which entertainment options will make us the most happy, which people we dare to disappoint, which events we must attend, even what vacation destination will be most enjoyable, the need to make decisions overwhelms us. The sheer length of the menu at Cheesecake Factory oppresses us. Sometimes college students choose double majors, not because they want to study two fields, but simply because they cannot make the decision to say “no” to either one. Our wills grow weary with so many choices.”

 

“I am so wrapped up in the hurt I have received that I do not notice the hurt I inflict.”

 

“When evangelist Billy Graham’s wife, Ruth, died in 2007, she chose to have engraved on her gravestone words that had nothing to do with her remarkable achievements. It had to do with the fact that as long as we are alive, God will be working on us, and then we will be free. She had been driving one day along a highway through a construction site, and there were miles of detours and cautionary signs and machinery and equipment. She finally came to the last one, and this final sign read, “End of construction. Thank you for your patience.” That’s what is written over Ruth Graham’s grave: “End of construction. Thank you for your patience.” Construction today. Freedom tomorrow.”

 

My Take

I read Soul Keeping as part of my women’s bible study and found it to be one of the best bible study books that I have read in the past 10 years.  Ortberg is a gifted writer and makes a lot of good, thought provoking points.  I also appreciated that he shared a number of personal details, vulnerably opening himself up to the reader.  I came away from reading this book with some valuable takeaways.

/by
, , , , , ,

412. The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Marina Keegan

Genre:   Nonfiction, Fiction, Short Stories, Essays, Memoir

208 pages, published April 8, 2014

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

The Opposite of Loneliness is a collection of essays written by Marina Keegan , a talented young writer whose title essay captured the world’s attention in 2012.   Tragically, five days after her graduation from Yale, Keegan died in a car crash.  The 22 year old had a play that was to be produced at the New York International Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at the New Yorker.  The essays and stories included in The Opposite of Loneliness give voice to the struggles young people confront as they try to figure out their place in the world.

Quotes 

“We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life.”

 

“What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over.”

 

“We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lie alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it’s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.”

 

“We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not loose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.”

 

“I want enough time to be in love with everything . . .”

 

“I worry sometimes that humans are afraid of helping humans. There’s less risk associated with animals, less fear of failure, fear of getting to involved.”

 

“And I cry because everything is so beautiful and so short.”

 

“something about the stillness or my state of mind reminded me of the world’s remarkable capacity to carry on in every place at once.”

 

“We have these impossibly high standards and we’ll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves.”

 

“What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious. We’re graduating from college. We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.”

 

“I will live for love, and the rest will take care of itself.”

 

“I blame the Internet. Its inconsiderate inclusion of everything.Success is transparent and accessible, hanging down where it can tease but not touch us. We talk into these scratchy microphones and take extra photographs but I still feel like there are just SO MANY PEOPLE. Every day, 1,035.6 books are published; sixty-six million people update their status each morning.  At night, aimlessly scrolling, I remind myself of elementary school murals. One person can make a difference! But the people asking me what I want to be when I grow up don’t want me to make a poster anymore. They want me to fill out forms and hand them rectangular cards that say HELLO THIS IS WHAT I DO.”

 

“The middle of the universe is tonight, is here, And everything behind is a sunk cost.”

 

My Take

While I enjoyed reading some of the essays in The Opposite of Loneliness, it is really written for a younger generation than me.  Keegan is also a bit uneven.  Some of her work is quite good, but other essays not so much.

/by
, , , , ,

408. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   David Foster Wallace

Genre:   Nonfiction, Essays, Humor, Memoir

353 pages, published February 2, 1998

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

This book by the much praised David Foster Wallace is a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling on a Caribbean cruise.

Quotes 

“Lonely people tend, rather, to be lonely because they decline to bear the psychic costs of being around other humans. They are allergic to people. People affect them too strongly.”

 

“I have filled 3 Mead notebooks trying to figure out whether it was Them or Just Me.”

 

“Quentin Tarantino is interested in watching somebody’s ear getting cut off; David Lynch is interested in the ear.”

 

“I have now seen sucrose beaches and water a very bright blue. I have seen an all-red leisure suit with flared lapels. I have smelled suntan lotion spread over 2,100 pounds of hot flesh. I have been addressed as “Mon” in three different nations. I have seen 500 upscale Americans dance the Electric Slide. I have seen sunsets that looked computer-enhanced. I have (very briefly) joined a conga line.”

 

“I am now 33 years old, and it feels like much time has passed and is passing faster and faster every day. Day to day I have to make all sorts of choices about what is good and important and fun, and then I have to live with the forfeiture of all the other options those choices foreclose. And I’m starting to see how as time gains momentum my choices will narrow and their foreclosures multiply exponentially until I arrive at some point on some branch of all life’s sumptuous branching complexity at which I am finally locked in and stuck on one path and time speeds me through stages of stasis and atrophy and decay until I go down for the third time, all struggle for naught, drowned by time. It is dreadful. But since it’s my own choices that’ll lock me in, it seems unavoidable–if I want to be any kind of grownup, I have to make choices and regret foreclosures and try to live with them.”

 

“One of the few things I still miss from my Midwest childhood was this weird, deluded but unshakable conviction that everything around me existed all and only For Me. Am I the only one who had this queer deep sense as a kid? — that everything exterior to me existed only insofar as it affected me somehow? — that all things were somehow, via some occult adult activity, specially arranged for my benefit?”

 

“Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval.”

 

“I think the world divides neatly into those who are excited by the managed induction of terror and those who are not. I do not find terror exciting. I find it terrifying. One of my basic goals is to subject my nervous system to as little total terror as possible. The cruel paradox of course is that this kind of makeup usually goes hand in hand with a delicate nervous system that’s extremely easy to terrify.”

 

“Because of the way human beings relate to narrative, we tend to identify with those characters we find appealing. We try to see ourselves in them. The same I.D.-relation, however, also means that we try to see them in ourselves. When everybody we seek to identify with for six hours a day is pretty, it naturally becomes more important to us to be pretty, to be viewed as pretty. Because prettiness becomes a priority for us, the pretty people on TV become all the more attractive, a cycle which is obviously great for TV. But it’s less great for us civilians, who tend to own mirrors, and who also tend not to be anywhere near as pretty as the TV-images we want to identify with. Not only does this cause some angst personally, but the angst increases because, nationally, everybody else is absorbing six-hour doses and identifying with pretty people and valuing prettiness more, too. This very personal anxiety about our prettiness has become a national phenomenon with national consequences.”

 

“How can even the idea of rebellion against corporate culture stay meaningful when Chrysler Inc. advertises trucks by invoking “The Dodge Rebellion”? How is one to be bona fide iconoclast when Burger King sells onion rings with “Sometimes You Gotta Break the Rules”? How can an Image-Fiction writer hope to make people more critical of televisual culture by parodying television as a self-serving commercial enterprise when Pepsi and Subaru and FedEx parodies of self-serving commercials are already doing big business? It’s almost a history lesson: I’m starting to see just why turn-of-the-century Americans’ biggest fear was of anarchist and anarchy. For if anarchy actually wins, if rulelessness become the rule, then protest and change become not just impossible but incoherent. It’d be like casting a ballot for Stalin: you are voting for an end to all voting.”

 

“….basically the sort of guy who looks entirely at home in sockless white loafers and a mint-green knit shirt from Lacoste.”

 

“Can you “choose” something when you are forcefully and enthusiastically immersed in it at an age when the resources and information necessary for choosing are not yet yours?”

 

My Take

While I had heard of David Foster Wallace of Infinite Jest fame, I had never read his writing.  Thus, when I saw A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again recommended as part of best of the nonfiction books of the past 30 years, I decided to give it a try.   Wallace is a unique and talented voice and made me think about certain things in a new way.  His essay on the cruise vacation also had some very funny moments.  However, other parts of the book were a bit too dense for me and more of an acquired taste.

/by