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268. Before You Know Kindness

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Lisa Stock

Author:   Chris Bohjalian

Genre:  Fiction

429 pages, published August, 2005

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Before You Know Kindness is a multi-generational saga focused on the McCullough and Seton families.  Every summer Matriarch Nan Seton, an avid sportswoman, hosts her two granddaughters at the family compound in New Hampshire.  Twelve year old Charlotte is an only child striving to fit with the teenagers in her midst and whose father, Spencer McCullough, is a true believer spokesman for FERAL, an animal rights organization.  Her mother Catherine, daughter of Nan, is a lifelong flirt who is tiring of her marriage to Spencer of not eating meat (not necessarily in that order).   John and Sara Seton (a public defender and therapist) are parents to 10 year old Willow Seton and a Patrick, a young toddler.  While family dynamics are at play and everyone is distracted, a violent event occurs that turns the relationships of everyone upside down and strains the fabric of every family.

 

Quotes 

“As Jeremy Bentham had asked about animals well over two hundred years ago, the question was not whether they could reason or talk, but could they suffer? And yet, somehow, it seemed to take more imagination for humans to identify with animal suffering than it did to conceive of space flight or cloning or nuclear fusion. Yes, she was a fanatic in the eyes of most of the country. . .Mostly, however, she just lacked patience for people who wouldn’t accept her belief that humans inflicted needless agony on the animals around them, and they did so in numbers that were absolutely staggering.”

 

“Sara knew that behind its locked front door no home was routine. Not the house of her childhood, not the apartment of her husband’s. not the world they were building together with Willow and Patrick. All households had their mysteries, their particular forms of dysfunction.”

 

My Take

Even though some readers have characterized Before You Know Kindness as slow, I found it to be a page turner.  I was particularly interested the character of Spencer McCullogh is fiercely dogmatic in his support of animal rights, sometimes to the exclusion of human beings, especially his wife and daughter.  When tragedy befalls Spencer, he is forced to reconsider his life and his relationships.  I believe the title of the book comes from the following poem Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye, which really sums up the central theme of this well-written, engrossing book.

 

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

 

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

 

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

 

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and

purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

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267. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Gabrielle Zevin

Genre:  Fiction

260 pages, published April 1, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

At the beginning of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, we meet A.J. Fikry, a 39 year old bookstore owner on Alice Island whose wife has just died and whose one very valuable asset, a first edition of the Edgar Allan Poe book of poems, Tamerlane, has been stolen after A.J. went on a bender and left his shop unlocked.  At this low point, A.J.’s life is about to take a major turn.  A young woman at the end of her rope leaves her two year old baby, Maya, in A.J.’s store with a note asking him to care for her.  What follows this event makes up the storied life of A.J. Fikry.

 

Quotes 

“You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book?”

                 

The words you can’t find, you borrow.

We read to know we’re not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone.

My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart.

We are not quite novels.

The analogy he is looking for is almost there.

We are not quite short stories. At this point, his life is seeming closest to that.

In the end, we are collected works.”

 

“We aren’t the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved. And these, I think these really do live on.”

 

“It is the secret fear that we are unlovable that isolates us,” the passage goes, “but it is only because we are isolated that we think we are unlovable. Someday, you do not know when, you will be driving down a road. And someday, you do not know when, he, or indeed she, will be there. You will be loved because for the first time in your life, you will truly not be alone. You will have chosen to not be alone.”

 

“Someday, you may think of marrying. Pick someone who thinks you’re the only person in the room.”

 

“They had only ever discussed books but what, in this life, is more personal than books?”

 

“I can promise you books and conversation and all my heart.”                 

 

“No Man Is An Island; Every Book Is A World.”

 

“Every word the right one and exactly where it should be. That’s basically the highest compliment I can give.”

 

“Why is any one book different from any other book? They are different, A.J. decides, because they are. We have to look inside many. We have to believe. We agree to be disappointed sometimes so that we can be exhilarated every now and again.”

 

“The words you can’t find, you borrow.  We read to know we’re not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone.”

 

“A question I’ve thought about a great deal is why it is so much easier to write about the things we dislike/hate/acknowledge to be flawed than the things we love.”

 

“You tell a kid he doesn’t like to read, and he’ll believe you.”

 

“I don’t want to die,” A.J. says after a bit. “I just find it difficult to be here all the time.”

 

“What is the point of bad dates if not to have amusing anecdotes for your friends?”

 

“I worry for you. If you love everyone, you’ll end up having hurt feelings most of the time. I suppose, relative to the length of your life, you feel as if you’ve known me a rather long time. Your perspective of time is really very warped, Maya. But I am old and soon, you’ll forget you even knew me.”

 

“Teachers assign it, and parents are happy because their kids are reading something of ‘quality.’ But it’s forcing kids to read books like that that make them think they hate reading.”

 

My Take

As with Young Jane Young, the other book that I read this year by Gabrielle Zevin,  The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry is primarily a character study.  But it is the kind of character study that really works.  You enjoy getting to know these characters, like living in their world and are moved by their choices and stories.  For me there was also an added bonus that this book is a love letter to books and to reading, things that are (obviously) dear to my heart.  Highly recommended.

 

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257. Olive Kitteridge

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Molly Kirk

Author:   Elizabeth Strout

Genre:  Fiction

270 pages, published March 25, 2008

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

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

 

Quotes 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

My Take

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

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256. Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Karen Reader

Author:   Bob Goff

Genre:  Non Fiction, Theology, Christian, Self Improvement

224 pages, published May 12, 2012

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Love Does is a memoir by the somewhat eccentric, but very Jesus oriented, Bob Goff.  Bob is  a true original.  While in college, Bob spent 16 days in the Pacific Ocean with five guys and a crate of canned meat.  He pursued his wife for three years before she agreed to date him.  His grades weren’t good enough to get into law school, so he sat on a bench outside the Dean’s office for seven days until they finally let him enroll.  Bob challenged his children to write to all of the world’s heads of state and then visited the ones who responded.  Bob was even named consul for the country of Uganda based on some friendships he had made.  The theme running through all of Bob Goff’s various activities and adventures is love.  However, not content to feel love, Bob’s default position is to take action because he believes Love Does.

 

Quotes 

“That’s because love is never stationary. In the end, love doesn’t just keep thinking about it or keep planning for it. Simply put: love does.”

 

“he said we’d know the extent of out love for God by how well we loved people.”

 

“I used to be afraid of failing at something that really mattered to me, but now I’m more afraid of succeeding at things that don’t matter.”

 

“Things that go wrong can shape us or scar us.”

 

“I used to want to fix people, but now I just want to be with them.”

 

“Most people need love and acceptance a lot more than they need advice.”      

 

“The cool thing about taking Jesus up on His offer is that whatever controls you doesn’t anymore. People who used to be obsessed about becoming famous no longer care whether anybody knows their name. People who used to want power are willing to serve. People who used to chase money freely give it away. People who used to beg others for acceptance are now strong enough to give love. When we get our security from Christ, we no longer have to look for it in the world, and that’s a pretty good trade.”

 

“Whimsy…needs to be fully experienced to be fully known. Whimsy doesn’t care if you are the driver or the passenger; all that matters is that you are on your way.”

 

“I used to think God wouldn’t talk to me, but now I know I’m just selective with what I choose to hear.”

 

“We all want to have a place where we can dream and escape anything that wraps steel bands around our imagination and creativity.”

 

“I learned that faith isn’t about knowing all of the right stuff or obeying a list of rules. It’s something more, something more costly because it being present and making a sacrifice. Perhaps that’s why Jesus is sometimes called Immanuel – “God with us.” I think that’s what God had in mind, for Jesus to be present, to just be with us. It’s also what He has in mind for us when it comes to other people.”

 

“Being engaged is a way of doing life, a way of living and loving. It’s about going to extremes and expressing the bright hope that life offers us, a hope that makes us brave and expels darkness with light. That’s what I want my life to be all about – full of abandon, whimsy, and in love.”

 

“I used to think you had to be special for God to use you, but now I know you simply need to say yes.”

 

“I don’t think Bible verses were meant to be thrown like grenades at each other. They were meant for us to use to point each other toward love and grace and invite us into something much bigger.”

 

“Actually, the real game of Bigger and Better that Jesus is playing with us usually isn’t about money or possessions or even our hopes. It’s about our pride. He asks if we’ll give up that thing we’re so proud of, that thing we believe causes us to matter in the eyes of the world, and give it up to follow Him. He’s asking us, “Will you take what you think defines you, leave it behind, and let Me define who you are instead?”

 

“Failure is just part of the process, and it’s not just okay; it’s better than okay. God doesn’t want failure to shut us down. God didn’t make it a three-strikes-and-you’re-out sort of thing. It’s more about how God helps us dust ourselves off so we can swing for the fences again. And all of this without keeping a meticulous record of our screw-ups.”

 

“Living a life fully engaged and full of whimsy and the kind of things that love does is something most people plan to do, but along the way they just kind of forget. Their dreams become one of those “we’ll go there next time” deferrals. The sad thing is, for many there is no “next time” because passing on the chance to cross over is an overall attitude toward life rather than a single decision.”

 

“It has always seemed to me that broken things, just like broken people, get used more; it’s probably because God has more pieces to work with.”

 

“I don’t think anyone aims to be typical, really. Most people even vow to themselves some time in high school or college not to be typical. But still, they just kind of loop back to it somehow. Like the circular rails of a train at an amusement park, the scripts we know offer a brand of security, of predictability, of safety for us. But the problem is, they only take us where we’ve already been. They loop us back to places where everyone can easily go, not necessarily where we were made to go. Living a different kind of life takes some guts and grit and a new way of seeing things.”

 

“Turning down this invitation comes in lots of flavors. It looks like numbing yourself or distracting yourself or seeing something really beautiful as just normal. It can also look like refusing to forgive or not being grateful or getting wrapped around the axle with fear or envy. I think every day God sends us an invitation to live and sometimes we forget to show up or get head-fakes into thinking we haven’t really been invited. But you see, we have been invited – every day, all over again.”

 

My Take

Not only is Love Does a really inspirational book, but it is also a lot of fun to read.  Bob Goff is a character who is living life on his own (and God’s) terms.  In his recounting of many hilarious and impossible stories of his life, his love for people and God shines through.  Through his example, you see that most of your limitations come from your own mind.  Goff shows us that we all have a potentially amazing life to live if we trust God and step forward and live it.

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255. Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Gretchen Rubin

Author:   Gary Taubes

Genre:  Non Fiction, Health, Nutrition, Science, Self Improvement, Food

272 pages, published December 28, 2010

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

The title tells it all.  This a non-fiction book in which science writer Gary Taubes investigates and reports why we get fat.  Taubes argues, and empirically supports, that our diet’s overemphasis on certain kinds of carbohydrates (mostly sugars and starches), not fats and not excess calories, has led directly to our country’s obesity epidemic.  Taubes reveals the bad nutritional science of the last century, none more damaging or misguided than the “calories-in, calories-out” model of why we get fat, and the good science that has been ignored, especially regarding insulin’s regulation of our fat tissue. He also answers the most persistent questions: Why are some people thin and others fat? What roles do exercise and genetics play in our weight? What foods should we eat, and what foods should we avoid?

 

Quotes 

“We don’t get fat because we overeat; we overeat because we’re getting fat.”

 

“The simple answer as to why we get fat is that carbohydrates make us so; protein and fat do not.”

 

“In other words, the science itself makes clear that hormones, enzymes, and growth factors regulate our fat tissue, just as they do everything else in the human body, and that we do not get fat because we overeat; we get fat because the carbohydrates in our diet make us fat. The science tells us that obesity is ultimately the result of a hormonal imbalance, not a caloric one—specifically, the stimulation of insulin secretion caused by eating easily digestible, carbohydrate-rich foods: refined carbohydrates, including flour and cereal grains, starchy vegetables such as potatoes, and sugars, like sucrose (table sugar) and high-fructose corn syrup. These carbohydrates literally make us fat, and by driving us to accumulate fat, they make us hungrier and they make us sedentary.  This is the fundamental reality of why we fatten, and if we’re to get lean and stay lean we’ll have to understand and accept it, and, perhaps more important, our doctors are going to have to understand and acknowledge it, too.”

 

“Of all the dangerous ideas that health officials could have embraced while trying to understand why we get fat, they would have been hard-pressed to find one ultimately more damaging than calories-in/calories-out. That it reinforces what appears to be so obvious – obesity as the penalty for gluttony and sloth – is what makes it so alluring. But it’s misleading and misconceived on so many levels that it’s hard to imagine how it survived unscathed and virtually unchallenged for the last fifty years. It has done incalculable harm. Not only is this thinking at least partly responsible for the ever-growing numbers of obese and overweight in the world – while directing attention away from the real reasons we get fat – but it has served to reinforce the perception that those who get fat have no one to blame but themselves. That eating less invariably fails as a cure for obesity is rarely perceived as the single most important reason to make us question our assumptions, as Hilde Bruch suggested half a century ago. Rather, it is taken as still more evidence that the overweight and obese are incapable of following a diet and eating in moderation. And it put the blame for their physical condition squarely on their behavior, which couldn’t be further from the truth.”

 

“It may be easier to believe that we remain lean because we’re virtuous and we get fat because we’re not, but the evidence simply says otherwise. Virtue has little more to with our weight than our height. When we grow taller, it’s hormones and enzymes that are promoting growth, and we consume more calories than we expend as a result. Growth is the cause – increased appetite and decreased energy expenditure (gluttony and sloth) are the effects. When we grow fatter, the same is true as well.”

 

“Researchers have reported that the brain and central nervous system actually run more efficiently on ketones than they do on glucose.”

 

“Any diet can be made healthy or at least healthier—from vegan to meat-heavy—if the high-glycemic-index carbohydrates and sugars are removed, or reduced significantly.”

 

“The obvious question is, what are the “conditions to which presumably we are genetically adapted”? As it turns out, what Donaldson assumed in 1919 is still the conventional wisdom today: our genes were effectively shaped by the two and a half million years during which our ancestors lived as hunters and gatherers prior to the introduction of agriculture twelve thousand years ago. This is a period of time known as the Paleolithic era or, less technically, as the Stone Age, because it begins with the development of the first stone tools. It constitutes more than 99.5 percent of human history—more than a hundred thousand generations of humanity living as hunter-gatherers, compared with the six hundred succeeding generations of farmers or the ten generations that have lived in the industrial age.

It’s not controversial to say that the agricultural period—the last .5 percent of the history of our species—has had little significant effect on our genetic makeup. What is significant is what we ate during the two and a half million years that preceded agriculture—the Paleolithic era. The question can never be answered definitively, because this era, after all, preceded human record-keeping. The best we can do is what nutritional anthropologists began doing in the mid-1980s—use modern-day hunter-gatherer societies as surrogates for our Stone Age ancestors.”

 

My Take

When Gretchen Rubin (author of The Happiness Project and my personal guru) mentioned that after reading this book she was hit with a lightning bolt moment and changed her eating habits dramatically to extremely low carb, I was very interested to see what Taubes had to say.  Following his recommendations, I have been on a ketogenic (high fat and protein, very low carb) diet for several weeks.  After a few months, I’ll report back if it works.

 

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247. La Belle Sauvage (The Book of Dust #1)

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Philip Pullman

Genre:  Fiction, Fantasy, Young Adult

464 pages, published October 19, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

When Malcolm Polstead, a young teenage boy who works in his father’s inn on the banks of the river Thames, finds a secret message inquiring about a dangerous substance called Dust, his world changes in dramatic ways.  A suspicious cast of characters are all interested in a baby girl named Lyra in the care of the nuns at the nearby Abbey.  When a flood of biblical proportions is unleashed, it is up to Malcolm and his friend Alice to save Lyra and perhaps a lot more.

 

Quotes 

“This is a deep and uncomfortable paradox, which will not have escaped you; we can only defend democracy by being undemocratic. Every secret service knows this paradox.”

 

“Once we use the word spiritual, we don’t have to explain anymore, because it belongs to the Church then, and no one can question it.”

 

“the pleasure of knowing secrets was doubled by telling them”

 

“War asks many people to do unreasonable things.”

 

My Take

This is the first book that I have read by Philip Pullman (author of The Golden Compass), but it won’t be the last.  He knows how spin a compelling and captivating yarn and I was happy to be along for the ride with Malcom, Alice and Baby Lyra as they journeyed through flooded landscapes, obstacles and hazards  in Malcom’s trusty canoe named La Belle Sauvage.  An entertaining tale for readers of all ages.

 

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244. The Child Finder

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Rene Denfeld

Genre:  Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, Crime, Suspense

256 pages, published September 5, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Three years after five year old Madison Culver disappeared without a trace in a snow filled Oregon forest while her family was choosing a Christmas tree, the authorities believe she is dead.  Holding on to hope that their daughter is still alive, her parents turn to Naomi, a private investigator with a track record of finding lost and missing children who is known as The Child Finder.  Naomi understands children like Madison because she herself was once a lost girl.

 

Quotes 

“No matter how far you have run, no matter how long you have been lost, it is never too late to be found.”

 

“Fear never keeps anyone safe.”

 

“No one ever told you what to do when love went away. It was always about capturing love, and keeping love. Not about watching it walk out the door to die alone rather than in your arms.”

 

“In the years since, she had discovered the sacrament of life did not demand memory.”

 

“But he saw Naomi as the wind traveling over the field, always searching, never stopping, and never knowing that true peace is when you curl around one little piece of something. One little fern. One little frond. One person to love.”

 

“I’m afraid,” she confessed, her voice quiet.

“Of what?”

“That if the box is opened I might want and want and never be filled.” She took a breath. “That you will get tired of filling it.” She paused and spoke her deepest fear, turning to his ear. “That you will use me and throw me away.”

 

“A farm without stock, a home without children. The world here was dying.”

 

My Take

The Child Finder is a quick and compelling read that had me hooked from the get go.  The story hums along with well drawn and indelible characters.  While the subject is disturbing (kids kidnapped or disappeared), it is handled well, in a non-gratuitous manner.  Recommended.

 

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243. Bear Town

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Frederik Backman

Genre:  Fiction

432 pages, published September, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Beartown is the name of a small town in Sweden (although it could be anywhere with cold weather that is surrounded by forest) that has seen better days.  The one thing Beartown has going for it is hockey.  The sport is beloved by all, young and old, and the teenage hockey team, especially the very talented Kevin, are treated like Gods by the townspeople.  When Kevin is accused of rape by the manager’s daughter, the town rallies to his defense with a few notable exceptions.  As the case and hockey finals progress, no resident of Beartown is left unaffected.

 

Quotes 

“Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn’t through love, because love is hard, It makes demands. Hate is simple. So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that’s easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe – comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third is that we dehumanize our enemy.”

 

“Everyone has a thousand wishes before a tragedy, but just one afterward.”

 

“All adults have days when we feel completely drained. When we no longer know quite what we spend so much time fighting for, when reality and everyday worries overwhelm us and we wonder how much longer we’re going to be able to carry on. The wonderful thing is that we can all live through far more days like that without breaking than we think. The terrible thing is that we never know exactly how many.”

 

“You never have the sort of friends you have when you’re fifteen ever again. Even if you keep them for the rest of your life, it’s never the same as it was then.”

 

“If you are honest, people may deceive you. Be honest anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfishness. Be kind anyway. All the good you do today will be forgotten by others tomorrow. Do good anyway.”

 

“There are few words that are harder to explain than “loyalty.” It’s always regarded as a positive characteristic, because a lot of people would say that many of the best things people do for each other occur precisely because of loyalty. The only problem is that many of the very worst things we do to each other occur because of the same thing.”

 

“A simple truth, repeated as often as it is ignored, is that if you tell a child it can do absolutely anything, or that it can’t do anything at all, you will in all likelihood be proven right.”

 

“What an uncomfortable, terrible source of shame it is for the world that the victim is so often the one left with the most empathy for others.”

 

“She’s fifteen, above the age of consent, and he’s seventeen, but he’s still “the boy” in every conversation. She’s “the young woman”.

 

“The love a parent feels for a child is strange. There is a starting point to our love for everyone else, but not this person. This one we have always loved, we loved them before they even existed. No matter how well prepared they are, all moms and dads experience a moment of total shock, when the tidal wave of feelings first washed through them, knocking them off their feet. It’s incomprehensible because there’s nothing to compare it to. It’s like trying to describe sand between your toes or snowflakes on your tongue to someone who’s lived their whole life in a dark room. It sends the soul flying.”

 

“Bitterness can be corrosive. It can rewrite your memories as if it were scrubbing a crime scene clean, until in the end you only remember what suits you of its causes.”

 

“But sometimes that’s what it takes, a culture of silence to foster a culture of winning.”

 

“Some people say hockey is like religion, but that’s wrong. Hockey is like faith. Religion is something between you and other people; it’s full of interpretations and theories and opinions. But faith…that’s just between you and God. It’s what you feel in your chest when the referee glides out to the center circle between two players, when you hear the sticks strike each other and see the black disk fall between them. Then it’s just between you and hockey.”

 

“Humanity has many shortcomings, but none is stronger than pride.”

 

“Ignore everything else, just concentrate on the things you can change.”

 

“If you spend your whole life being someone else, who will be you?”

 

“Some of you were born with talent, some weren’t. Some of you are lucky and got everything for free, some of you got nothing. But remember, when you’re out on the ice you’re all equals. And there’s one thing you need to know: desire always beats luck.”

 

“You never stop being scared of falling from the top, because when you close your eyes you can still feel the pain from each and every step of the way up.” 

 

“Another morning comes. It always does. Time always moves at the same rate, only feelings have different speeds. Every day can mark a whole lifetime or a single heartbeat, depending on who you spend it with. ”

 

“The only thing the sport gives us are moments. But what the hell is life, Peter, apart from moments?”

 

“We love winners, even though they’re very rarely particularly likeable people. They’re almost always obsessive and selfish and inconsiderate. That doesn’t matter. We forgive them. We like them while they’re winning.”

 

“On the one hand, our entire species survived because we stuck together and cooperated, but on the other hand we developed because the strongest individuals always thrived at the expense of the weak. So we always end up arguing about where the boundaries should be drawn. How selfish are we allowed to be? How much are we obliged to care about each other?”

 

“What you create, others can destroy. Create anyway. Because in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and anyone else anyway.”

 

“One of the plainest truths about both towns and individuals is that they usually don’t turn into what we tell them to be, but what they are told they are.”

 

“There are two things that are particularly good at reminding us how old we are: children and sports.”

 

“There’s a label she used to love but which she loathes when it’s pronounced in a Beartown accent: “career woman.” Peter’s friends call her that, some in admiration and some with distaste, but no one calls Peter a “career man.” It strikes a nerve because Kira recognizes that insinuation: you have a “job” so you can provide for your family, whereas a “career” is selfish. You have one of those for your own sake.”

 

“The very worst events in life have that effect on a family: we always remember, more sharply than anything else, the last happy moments before everything fell apart.”

 

“David drives back to Björnstad. Sits in the car and cries in anger. He is ashamed. He is disgusted. With himself. For an entire hockey life he has trained a boy, loved him like a son, been loved back as a father. There is no player as loyal as Benji. No bigger heart than his. How many times has David hugged number sixteen after a game and told him that? “You are the bravest bastard I know, Benji.” The bravest bastard I know. ” And after all those hours in locker rooms, all those nights in the bus, all the conversations and blood, sweat and tears, the boy didn’t dare tell his coach his greatest secret. It’s a betrayal, David knows it’s a terrible betrayal. There is no other way to explain how much a grown man must have failed for such a warrior of a boy to make him think his coach would be less proud of him if he was gay. David hates himself for not being better than his father. For that is a son’s job.”

 

“Not a second has passed since she had children without her feeling like a bad mother. For everything. For not understanding, for being impatient, for not knowing everything, not making better packed lunches, for still wanting more out of life than just being a mother.”

 

My Take

Having previously read (and really enjoyed) A Man Called Ove, I was looking forward to another book by Swedish author Frederik Backman.  I was not disappointed by Beartown.  Backman captures the determination, angst, sense of inferiority and pathos of growing up in a small town that isn’t quite making it.  He also shows how the sport of hockey is an all consuming religion for many players.  I’ve seen a bit of this from friends whose kids are hockey players.  A compelling, easy reading book with well drawn characters and an engaging plot that I wholeheartedly recommend.

 

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241. The Blue Zones of Happiness: A Blueprint for a Better Life

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Dan Buettner

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Happiness, Self Improvement, Public Policy, Health

253 pages, published October 3, 2017

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary 

Having previously explored the Blue Zones of the world (those places around the world where people live the longest lives), author and researcher Dan Buettner turns his focus to the world’s happiest places (with in-depth analysis of particular types of happiness in three different locations, Costa Rica (joy and lightheartedness), Denmark (community and purpose) and Singapore (satisfaction and accomplishment) and provides a blue print for applying lessons from these countries to improve our own communities and our lives.

 

Quotes 

“I wake up in the morning and I see that flower, with the dew on its petals, and at the way it’s folding out, and it makes me happy, she said. It’s important to focus on the things in the here and now, I think. In a month, the flower will be shriveled and you will miss its beauty if you don’t make the effort to do it now. Your life, eventually, is the same way.”

 

“knowing your sense of purpose is worth up to seven years of extra life expectancy.”

 

“Eat your vegetables, have a positive outlook, be kind to people, and smile – Kamada Nakasato, 102-y/o-female fr. Okinawa”

 

“Wine @ 5. People in all Blue Zones (even some Adventists) drink alcohol moderately and regularly. Moderate drinkers outlive nondrinkers. The trick is to drink one to two glasses per day with friends and/or with food. And no, you can’t save up all week and have 14 drinks on Saturday.”

 

“Drink without getting drunk

Love without suffering jealousy

Eat without overindulging

Never argue

And once in a while, with great discretion, misbehave”

 

“Gratitude always comes into play; research shows that people are happier if they are grateful for the positive things in their lives, rather than worrying about what might be missing.”

 

“In places where women have achieved gender equality, for instance, men tend to be happier than women. And in places where women are still not treated equally, women are often happier than men. Other studies have shown that, despite the popular belief that nobody wants to get older, most people actually get happier after a certain age.”

 

“WHAT CAN ADD ON MORE GOOD YEARS? Robert Kane: Rather than exercising for the sake of exercising, try to make changes to your lifestyle. Ride a bicycle instead of driving. Walk to the store instead of driving. Use the stairs instead of the elevator. Build that into your lifestyle. The chances are that you will sustain that behavior for a much longer time. And the name of the game here is sustaining. These things that we try—usually after some cataclysmic event has occurred, and we now want to ward off what seems to be the more perceptible threat of dying—don’t hold up over the long haul. We find all sorts of reasons not to do it. The second thing I’d tell you is don’t take up smoking. The biggest threat to improving our lifestyles has been cigarette smoking. That trumps everything else. Once you’re a nonsmoker, I would try to get you to learn to develop a moderate lifestyle in regard to your weight to build into your daily routine enough exercise to keep you going.”

 

“And as we shall see in forthcoming chapters, purpose and love are essential ingredients in all Blue Zone recipes for longevity.”

 

My Take

As a long time student of happiness, I was interested in reading this book.  It’s approach was to focus on three geographic locations known for high happiness levels:  Costa Rica, Denmark and Singapore.  The author discusses how joy, purpose, accomplishment and community are essential aspects of happiness and then shows how these qualities are present in those countries.  Interestingly, there is a chapter that explores the happiest place in the United States:  Boulder, Colorado.  I live in Boulder and agree that it is indeed a very happy place.  There is a tremendous sense of community here and lots of natural beauty and opportunities for outdoor activities.  A quick and engrossing read.

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239. The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt’s Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Michael Koss

Author:  Anne-Marie O’Connor

Genre:  Non Fiction, Foreign, History, Art, Biography

370 pages, published February 7, 2012

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

The Lady in Gold tells the true story behind Austrian artist Gustav Klimt’s portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, known as the Austrian Mona Lisa.  The first part of the book delves into the history of Klimt, a wholly original, headstrong and intriguing figure, and of Adele Bloch-Bauer, a beautiful, free thinking, seductive Viennese woman from a prominent Jewish family who may have been the mistress of Klimt.  After Adele’s death, the Nazi’s marched into Austria and began a wholesale looting of artwork belonging to the country’s Jewish citizens.  One of the paintings they seized was “The Woman in Gold,” Klimt’s portrait of Adele.  Fifty years later, Adele’s niece Maria engaged Randol Schoenberg, a young lawyer related to a friend of hers to engage in an against all odds battle to recover the painting from the Austrian government.  The second part of the book recounts the legal battle which led to justice finally being served.

 

Quotes 

“Happy he who forgets what cannot be changed.”

 

“Any nonsense can attain importance by virtue of being believed by millions of people,” Einstein.

 

“to every age its art; to art its freedom.”

 

“Austrians were allowed to paper over their pasts and portray themselves as unwilling participants. They felt sorry for themselves, and for the proud family names sullied with the taint of Nazi collaboration. The Cold War began in earnest, and the West was eager to hang on to Austria. A 1948 amnesty brought a premature end to Austrian de-Nazification. Austrians began to deny their jubilant welcome of Hitler and to claim that Austria had been “occupied” by Germany.”

 

My Take

A few years ago, I watched the film version of The Lady in Gold (renamed The Woman in Gold) starring Helen Mirren as Maria and Ryan Reynolds as Randy Schoenberg.  It was a very well done, informative and entertaining movie that changed a few of the historical facts, but was otherwise true to the spirit of this fascinating story.  The book version goes several layers deeper and delivers an intriguing read.  As a side note, when I got to the part in the book when Randy Schoenberg (the lawyer played by Ryan Reynolds in the movie), I learned that he was at USC Law School a year before I was.  Sure enough, I googled an image of him and discovered that I remembered him from several classes that we both took.  Later in the book, it is revealed that Randy ended up with close to $100 million in connection with the recovery of The Lady in Gold painting.  Good for him!  Undoubtedly, the most successful of my USC Law School classmates.

 

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