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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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41. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Rachel Joyce

Genre:  Fiction, Happiness

320 pages, published July 24, 2012

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Recently retired and at loose ends, Harold Fry receives a letter from Queenie Hennessy, an old friend and former work colleague who he hasn’t heard from in twenty years who has written to say she is dying and to tell Harold goodbye.  Harold writes Queenie a letter in reply and walks to his neighborhood mailbox to post it, but something unexpected happens.  Harold  becomes convinced that he must deliver his message in person to Queenie, who is 600 miles away in a hospice, because as long as he keeps walking, Harold believes that Queenie will not die.   So begins the unexpected pilgrimage of Harold Fry.  Harold meets meets various characters along the way who cause Harold to look back on his life and examine his failed relationships with his wife and son.

 

Quotes

“Upstairs, Maureen shut the door of David’s room quietly and stood a moment breathing him in.  She pulled open his blue curtains that she closed every night and checked that there was no dust where the hem of the net drapes met the windowsill.  She polished the silver frame of his Cambridge portrait and the black and white baby photograph beside it.  She kept the room clean because she was waiting for David to come back and she never knew when that might be.  A part of her was always waiting.  Men had no idea what it was like to be a mother.  The ache of loving a child, even when he had moved on.”

 

“Harold asked himself if years ago he shouldn’t have pressed Maureen to have another baby.  “David is enough,” she had said.  “He is all we need.”  But sometimes he was afraid that having one son was too much to bear.  He wondered if the pain of loving became diluted the more you had.  A child’s growing was a constant pushing away.”

 

“People were buying milk, or filling their cars with petrol, or even posting letters. And what no one else knew was the appalling weight of the thing they were carrying inside. The superhuman effort it took sometimes to be normal, and a part of things that appeared both easy and everyday. The loneliness of that.”

 

“If I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, it stands to reason that I’m going to get there. I’ve begun to think we sit far more than we’re supposed to.” He smiled. “Why else would we have feet?”

 

“you could be ordinary and attempt something extraordinary, without being able to explain it in a logical way.”

 

“He must have driven this way countless times, and yet he had no memory of the scenery. He must have been so caught up in the day’s agenda, and arriving punctually at their destination, that the land beyond the car had been no more than a wash of one green, and a backdrop of one hill. Life was very different when you walked through it.”

 

“There was no escaping what he had realized as he fought for warmth in the night. With or without him,the moon and the wind would go on, rising and falling. The land would keep stretching ahead until it hit the sea. People would keep dying. It made no difference if Harold walked, or trembled, or stayed at home.”

 

“I miss her all the time.  I know in my head that she has gone. The only difference is that I am getting used to the pain.  It’s like discovering a great hole in the ground. To begin with, you forget it’s there and keep falling in.  After a while, it’s still there, but you learn to walk round it.”

 

“… He went under the stars, and the tender light of the moon, when it hung like an eyelash and the tree trunks shone like bones. He walked through wind and weather, and beneath sun-bleached skies. It seemed to Harold that he had been waiting all his life to walk. He no longer knew how far he had come, but only that he was going forward. The pale Cotswold stone became the red brick of Warwickshire, and the land flattened into middle England. Harold reached his hand to his mouth to brush away a fly, and felt a beard growing in thick tufts. Queenie would live. He knew it.”

 

My Take

I really loved listening to The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.  This is a beautifully written book about the human spirit, the meaning of life, and coming to terms with not only what you did in life, but more importantly what you failed to do.  As a side note, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, reminded me a lot of A Man Called Ove, another book I read this year and really enjoyed.

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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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100. The Invention of Wings

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Boulder Public Library Librarian

Author:   Sue Monk Kidd

Genre:  Historical Fiction, Fiction, History

384 pages, published January 7, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The Invention of Wings, which is based on real people, tells the story of two girls in early nineteenth century Charleston.  Hetty “Handful” Grimke is a slave who works in the wealthy Grimke household with dreams of freedom.  Sarah Grimke idolizes her father who is a judge and wants to follow in his footsteps but is subject to the restrictions and expectations of that era placed on women. On her eleventh birthday, Sarah is given ownership of Handful and she tries in vain to free her, but promises Handful’s slave mother that she will someday accomplish this mission.  Over the next 35 years, both Handful and Sarah endure disappointment, loss, sorrow, and betrayal, but continue courageously on and discover their destiny in the process. Sarah, along with her younger sister, Angelina, becomes an abolitionist and feminist.  

 

Quotes

“My body might be a slave, but not my mind. For you, it’s the other way round.”

 

“We ‘re all yearning for a wedge of sky, aren ‘t we? I suspect God plants these yearnings in us so we’ll at least try and change the course of things. We must try, that’s all.”

 

“I saw then what I hadn’t seen before, that I was very good at despising slavery in the abstract, in the removed and anonymous masses, but in the concrete, intimate flesh of the girl beside me, I’d lost the ability to be repulsed by it. I’d grown comfortable with the particulars of evil. There’s a frightful muteness that dwells at the center of all unspeakable things, and I had found my way into it.”

 

“I’d been wandering about in the enchantments of romance, afflicted with the worst female curse on earth, the need to mold myself to expectations.”

 

“The sorry truth is you can walk your feet to blisters, walk till kingdom-com, and you never will outpace your grief.”

 

“It has come as a great revelation to me,” I wrote her, “that abolition is different from the desire for racial equality. Color prejudice is at the bottom of everything. If it’s not fixed, the plight of the Negro will continue long after abolition.”

 

“A slave was supposed to be like the Holy Ghost—don’t see it, don’t hear it, but it’s always hovering round on ready.”

 

“To remain silent in the face of evil is itself a form of evil.”

 

“If you must err, do so on the side of audacity.”

 

“I’d chosen the regret I could live with best, that’s all.”

 

“I longed for it in that excruciating way one has of romanticizing the life she didn’t choose.”

 

“How could I choose someone who would force me to give up my own small reach for meaning? I chose myself, and without consolation.”

 

“I said, “Where’s all that delivering God’s supposed to do?”

He snorted. “You’re right, the only deliverance is the one we get for ourselves. The Lord doesn’t have any hands and feet but ours.”

“That doesn’t say much for the Lord.”

“It doesn’t say much for us, either.”

 

“Her name was Mary, and there ends any resemblance to the mother of our Lord.”

 

“He that finds his life shall lose it, and he that loses his life shall find it.” Do not fear to lose what needs to be lost.”

My Take

I had previously read The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd and enjoyed it, but liked The Invention of Wings even more.  With layers of detail on the place, time and characters, Kidd creates a world that feels immediate and real.  She also tells a compelling story that is interwoven with historical details about the Antebellum South and the movement for Abolition and Women’s rights.  I highly recommend The Invention of Wings, especially the audio version.

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94. Nutshell

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Ian McEwan

Genre:  Fiction, Suspense

197 pages, published September 13, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Trudy and Claude are having an affair and plotting to murder Trudy’s husband who also happens to be Claude’s brother. However, there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month old resident of Trudy’s womb from whose vantage point the story is told.

 

Quotes

“It’s not the theme parks of Paradiso and Inferno that I dread most – the heavenly rides, the hellish crowds – and I could live with the insult of eternal oblivion. I don’t even mind not knowing which it will be. What I fear is missing out. Health desire or mere greed, I want my life first, my due, my infinitesimal slice of endless time and one reliable chance of a consciousness. I’m owed a handful of decades to try my luck on a freewheeling planet. That’s the ride for me – the Wall of Life. I want my go. I want to become. Put another way, there’s a book I want to read, not yet published, not yet written, though a start’s been made. I want to read to the end of My History of the Twenty-First Century. I want to be there, on the last page, in my early eighties, frail but sprightly, dancing a jig on the evening of December 31, 2099.”

 

“It’s already clear to me how much of life is forgotten even as it happens. Most of it. The unregarded present spooling away from us, the soft tumble of unremarkable thoughts, the long-neglected miracle of existence.”

 

“You may never have experienced, or you will have forgotten, a good burgundy (her favourite) or a good Sancerre (also her favourite) decanted through a healthy placenta.”

 

“However close you get to others, you can never get inside them, even when you’re inside them.”

 

“Lovers arrive at their first kisses with scars as well as longings. They’re not always looking for advantage. Some need shelter, others press only for the hyperreality of ecstasy, for which they’ll tell outrageous lies or make irrational sacrifice. But they rarely ask themselves what they need or want.”

 

“Not everyone knows what it is to have your father’s rival’s penis inches from your nose.”

 

“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves, Confucius said. Revenge unstitches civilisation.”

 

“When love dies and marriage lies in ruins, the first casualty is honest memory, decent, impartial recall of the past. Too inconvenient, too damning of the present. It’s the spectre of old happiness at the feast of failure and desolation. So, against that headwind of forgetfulness I want to place my little candle of truth and see how far it throws its light.”

 

“In science too, one dedicates his life to an Albanian snail, another to a virus. Darwin gave eight years to barnacles. And in wise later life, to earthworms. The Higgs boson, a tiny thing, perhaps not even a thing, was the lifetime’s pursuit of thousands. To be bound in a nutshell, see the world in two inches of ivory, in a grain of sand. Why not, when all of literature, all of art, of human endeavor, is just a speck in the universe of possible things. And even this universe may be a speck in a multitude of actual and possible universes.

So why not be an owl poet?”

 

“No child, still less a fetus, has ever mastered the art of small talk, or would ever want to. It’s an adult device, a covenant with boredom and deceit.”

 

“There are not many options for the evening that follows an afternoon of drinking. Only two in fact; remorse, or more drinking and then remorse.”

 

“A strange mood has seized the almost-educated young. They’re on the march, angry at times, but mostly needful, longing for authority’s blessing, its validation of their chosen identities. The decline of the West in new guise perhaps. Or the exaltation and liberation of the self. A social-media site famously proposes seventy-one gender options – neutrois, two spirit, bigender…any colour you like, Mr Ford. Biology is not destiny after all, and there’s cause for celebration. A shrimp is neither limiting nor stable. I declare my undeniable feeling for who I am. If I turn out to be white, I may identify as black. And vice versa. I may announce myself as disabled, or disabled in context. If my identity is that of a believer, I’m easily wounded, my flesh torn to bleeding by any questioning of my faith. Offended, I enter a state of grace. Should inconvenient opinions hover near me like fallen angels or evil djinn (a mile being too near), I’ll be in need of the special campus safe room equipped with Play-Doh and looped footage of gambolling puppies. Ah, the intellectual life! I may need advance warning if upsetting books or ideas threaten my very being by coming too close, breathing on my face, my brain, like unwholesome drugs.”

 

“In the middle of a long, quiet night I might give my mother a sharp kick. She’ll wake, become insomniac, reach for the radio. Cruel sport, I know, but we are both better informed by the morning.”

 

“I’ve heard it argued that long ago pain begat consciousness…Adversity forced awareness on us, and it works, it bites us when we go too near the fire, when we love too hard. Those felt sensations are the beginning of the invention of the self…God said, Let there be pain. And there was poetry. Eventually.”

 

“I don’t know much yet about murder. Still, his scheme is more baker than butcher. Half-baked.”

 

“My immediate neighbourhood will not be palmy Norway – my first choice on account of its gigantic sovereign fund and generous social provision; nor my second, Italy, on grounds of regional cuisine and sun-blessed decay; and not even my third, France, for its Pinot Noir and jaunty self-regard. Instead I’ll inherit a less than united kingdom ruled by an esteemed elderly queen, where a businessman-prince, famed for his good works, his elixirs (cauliflower essence to purify the blood) and unconstitutional meddling, waits restively for his crown. This will be my home, and it will do.”

My Take

Listening to Ian McEwan’s latest book Nutshell was a real treat (including the excellent voicework on the audio version by Rory Kinnear).  McEwan has always been one of my favorite writers (I especially enjoyed Atonement, The Children Act and Saturday), and Nutshell is a worthy addition to his canon. I particularly enjoyed the creative and original use of the fetal perspective to tell the story.  At first, you don’t think this is going to work or its going to get tiresome, but McEwan manages to pull it off and the device makes Nutshell a clever and memorable read.

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92. Her

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Boulder Librarian

Author:   Harriet Lane

Genre:  Fiction, Thriller, Suspense, Mystery

272 pages, published January 6, 2015

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Emma and Nina, the two main characters in Her, appear to have very little in common.  As a relatively new mother, Emma is isolated and exhausted.  She has mixed emotions about leaving her job, her marriage is strained and her self-confidence is on the decline.  Nina, who is sophisticated, generous, and effortlessly in control stands in stark contrast.  When the two women strike up an unexpected relationship, something seems a bit off.   We soon learn that there is more to Nina then meets the eye and a dangerous game of cat and mouse develops.  

 

Quotes

“Emma is the engine of this home, the person who propels it forward, keeps everyone fed and clothed and healthy and happy—and yet she’s entirely alone within it, and getting lonelier with every item ticked off her checklist. This is what it comes down to: the flat-out invisible drudgery of family maintenance, the vanishing of personality as everyone else’s accrues.”

 

“Over time, I’ve come to see that so much of a personality boils down to confidence: whether you have it, or not.”

 

“I once heard someone on the radio saying that a bee is never more than forty minutes away from starving to death, and this fact has stayed with me because it seems to have a certain personal resonance. My children are in a perpetual proximity to catastrophe: concussion, dehydration, drowning or sunstroke. Keeping them safe requires constant vigilance.”

 

“I turn my back and look out to sea, the sun so low and molten that my eyes fill with tears, and yet I can feel it: a cooler wind is coming in, the edge of evening approaching. Dusk is gathering along the coast, in the coves and quaysides and marinas, where in an hour or so the long strings of coloured bulbs will twinkle and sway; and then it will pass over us-like a visitation: a plague or a blessing….”  

 

“I found the final plot twist unsatisfying, as plot twists often are: nothing like life, which – it seems to me – turns less on shocks or theatrics than on the small quiet moments, misunderstandings, or disappointments, the things that it’s easy to overlook.”

 

“I’m already someone else, but the person I turn into at these low points is someone I never imagined I could be a few years ago: someone with a hot knot of fury where her heart used to be.”

My Take

There are several things that I really liked about Her.  First of all, it’s a page turner.  Lane infuses the story with a something is not quite right creepiness that makes you want to learn more.  Secondly, I really liked Lane’s writing style.  She is a pleasure to read.  Finally, the set pieces of London and the French countryside are two places that I love and Lane does a great job capturing these locales.  Highly recommended and an especially good vacation book.

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89. The Light Between Oceans

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  

Author:   M.L. Stedman

Genre:  Historical Fiction, Fiction, Romance

343 pages, published July 31, 2012

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

After four years on the Western Front during World War I, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on the very isolated Janus Rock where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year.  Before settling in, Tom meets the young, beautiful and bold Isabel.  They strike a correspondence that eventually leads to marriage.  Their idyllic and loving relationship begins to deteriorate after Isabel suffers two miscarriages and one stillbirth.  When a boat has washes up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby, Isabel thinks her prayers have been answered and views the baby girl as a gift from God.  Tom, who is torn by his sense of propriety and his wife’s overwhelming grief, reluctantly agrees to pretend that Isabel gave birth to this baby.  This decision sets forth a series of events which tests Tom and Isabel’s marriage, consciences and sanity.

 

Quotes

“…or I can forgive and forget…Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things…we always have a choice.”

 

“You’ve had so much strife but you’re always happy. How do you do it?” “I choose to,”

 

“Izz, I’ve learned the hard way that to have any kind of a future you’ve got to give up hope of ever changing your past.”

 

“Sometimes life turns out hard, Isabel. Sometimes it just bites right through you. And sometimes, just when you think it’s done its worst, it comes back and takes another chunk.”

 

“When it comes to their kids, parents are all just instinct and hope. And fear.”

 

“It astounds him that the tiny life of the girl means more to him than all the millennia before it. He struggles to make sense of his emotions – how he can feel both tenderness and unease when she kisses him goodnight, or presents a grazed knee for him to kiss better with the magic power that only a parent has. For Isabel, too, he is torn between the desire he feels for her, the love, and the sense that he cannot breathe. The two sensations grate at one another, unresolved.”

 

“Coming back last time to the house she grew up in, Isabel had been reminded of the darkness that had descended with her brothers’ deaths, how loss had leaked all over her mother’s life like a stain. As a fourteen-year-old, Isabel had searched the dictionary. She knew that if a wife lost a husband, there was a whole new word to describe who she was: she was now a widow. A husband became a widower. But if a parent loss a child, there was no special label for their grief. They were still just a mother or a father, even if they no longer had a son or daughter. That seemed odd. As to her own status, she wondered whether she was still technically a sister, now that her adored brothers had died.”

 

“Putting down the burden of the lie has meant giving up the freedom of the dream.”

 

“Humans withdraw to their homes, and surrender the night to the creatures that own it: the crickets, the owls, the snakes. A world that hasn’t changed for hundreds of thousands of years wakes up, and carries on as if the daylight and the humans and the changes to the landscape have all been an illusion.”

 

“There are still more days to travel in this life. And he knows that the man who makes the journey has been shaped by every day and every person along the way. Scars are just another kind of memory….Soon enough the days will close over their lives, the grass will grow over their graves, until their story is just an unvisited headstone.”

 

“It is a luxury to do something that serves no practical purpose: the luxury of civilization.”

 

“History is that which is agreed upon by mutual consent.”

 

“Right and wrong can be like bloody snakes: so tangled up that you can’t tell which is which until you’ve shot’em both, and then it’s too late.”

 

“The town draws a veil over certain events. This is a small community where everyone knows that sometimes the contract to forget is as important as any promise to remember. Children can grow up having no knowledge of the indiscretion of their father in his youth or the illegitimate sibling who lives fifty miles away and bears another man’s name. History is that which is agreed upon by mutual consent. That’s how life goes on; protected by the silence that anaesthetises shame.”

 

“No one ever has or ever will travel quite the same path on earth…”

 

“We live with the decisions we make, Bill. That’s what bravery is. Standing by the consequences of your mistakes.”

 

My Take

The Light Between Oceans is a beautifully written book that examines the impact of a questionable, but understandable, decision made by the main characters Tom and Isabel.  When the couple, who lives in and operate a remote lighthouse, discovers a baby girl who washed up to shore in a rowboat with a dead man, it seems like an answer to their prayers, especially for Isabel who has suffered several miscarriages and a still birth.  Tom is not so sure they should keep the child, but puts aside his concerns to keep his wife from slipping into madness.  When, several years later, Tom discovers the child has a living mother who is grief-stricken at the loss of her husband and child, he is racked by guilt.  The examination of this situation and its impact on the essentially good and decent Tom and Isabel makes The Light Between Oceans a compelling read.

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81. As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  

Author:   Cary Elwes

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Memoir, Humor

259 pages, published October 14, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

As You Wish is the story of the making of the classic film “The Princess Bride” as told by actor Cary Elwes who played the iconic role of Westley.  Elwes takes you behind-the-scenes with delightful stories and interviews with costars Robin Wright, Wallace Shawn, Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest, and Mandy Patinkin, as well as author and screenwriter William Goldman, producer Norman Lear, and director Rob Reiner.  The Princess Bride, a family favorite for 30 years has been designated by the American Film Institute as one of the top 100 Greatest Love Stories and by the Writers Guild of America as one of the top 100 screenplays of all time.   

 

Quotes

“Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautiful ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Pain. Death. Brave men. Cowardly men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles.”

 

“Is it fair to call The Princess Bride a classic? The storybook story about pirates and princesses, giants and wizards, Cliffs of Insanity and Rodents of Unusual Size? It’s certainly one of the most often quoted films in cinema history, with lines like:

“Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

“Inconceivable?”

“Anybody want a peanut?”

“Have fun storming the castle.”

“Never get involved in a land war in Asia.”

“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

“Rest well, and dream of large women.”

“I hate for people to die embarrassed.”

“Please consider me as an alternative to suicide.”

“This is true love. You think this happens every day?”

“Get used to disappointment.”

“I’m not a witch. I’m your wife.”

“Mawidege. That bwessed awangement.”

“You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you.”… You seem a decent fellow. I hate to die.”

“Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.”

“Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!”

“There’s a shortage of perfect breasts in this world. It would be a pity to damage yours.”

And of course…

“As you wish.”

 

“Mandy swears that barely a day goes by that he isn’t asked by someone, somewhere, to recite Inigo Montoya’s most famous words, in which he vows vengeance on behalf of his father. “And I never let them down,” he says.”

 

“We got to the moment when I wake up from being “mostly dead” and say: “I’ll beat you both apart! I’ll take you both together!”, Fezzik cups my mouth with his hand, and answers his own question to Inigo as to how long it might be before Miracle Max’s pill begins to take effect by stating: “I guess not very long.” As soon as he delivered that line, there issued forth from Andre’ one of the most monumental farts any of us had ever heard. Now I suppose you wouldn’t expect a man of Andre’s proportions to pass gas quietly or unobtrusively, but this particular one was truly epic, a veritable symphony of gastric distress that roared for more than several seconds and shook the very foundations of the wood and plaster set were now grabbing on to out of sheer fear. It was long enough and loud enough that every member of the crew had time to stop what they were doing and take notice. All I can say is that it was a wind that could have held up in comparison to the one Slim Pickens emitted int eh campfire scene in Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles, widely acknowledged as the champion of all cinematic farts.

Except of course, this one wasn’t in the script.”

 

Vizzini:  HE DIDN’T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE.

Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

My Take

If you like The Princess Bride (I love it), then you will really enjoy As You Wish which brings back wonderful memories from the classic film and includes great stories from its making.  Not only was Cary Elwes dashing as the perfect Westley, but he is also a talented writer who knows how to spin an engrossing tale.  After listening to this book (which was wonderfully narrated by Elwes along with others involved in making The Princess Bride), I recommend a re-watching of The Princess Bride.  With the added insight provided by As You Wish, you should enjoy the movie even more.

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80. The Richest Man in Babylon

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  

Author:   George S. Clason

Genre:  Fiction, Finance, Self-Help

144 pages, published 1926

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

First published in 1926, The Richest Man in Babylon is a classic book in the world of personal finance and reveals the secret to personal wealth.  The book uses the format of an ancient tale to impart the following precepts:

The 7 simple rules of money: 1) Start thy purse to fattening (save money); 2) Control thy expenditures (don’t spend more than you need); 3) Make thy gold multiply (invest wisely); 4) Guard thy treasures from loss (avoid investments that sound too good to be true); 5) Make of thy dwelling a profitable investment (own your home); 6) Ensure a future income (protect yourself with life insurance); and 7) Improve thy ability to earn (strive to become wiser and more knowledgeable).

To bring your dreams and desires to fulfillment, you must be successful with money.

The laws of money are like the laws of gravity: assured and unchanging

Money is plentiful for those who understand the simple laws of making money.

Babylon was the wealthiest city in the world at the time of its height because its people appreciated the value of money.

You must constantly have an income that keeps your purse full.

“It costs nothing to ask wise advice from a good friend.”

It’s simple to say, but many people never achieve a serious measure of wealth because they never seek it.  They never truly seek it, focus on it, and commit to it.

Youth often assumes, incorrectly, that the old and wise only have wisdom about days gone by.

You will only begin building wealth when you start to realize that a part of all the money you earn is yours to keep.  That is, pay yourself first.  You always pay others for goods and services. Pay yourself as much as you can. Save money.

You should save at least 1/10th of what you earn. More if you can afford to do so.

Do not take advice on finance from a brick layer. Go to people who are experts in a particular subject if you want expert advice. It’s too easy for amateurs to give out advice.

Build for yourself a mountain of gold first, then you can enjoy as many banquets as you wish without worry. Don’t spend your money as soon as you earn it.

Surround yourself with people who are familiar with money, who work with it each day, and who make lots of it.

Enjoy life while you are here.  Do not overstrain to save.

Do not put your money in investments which do not pay a dividend, but also do not invest in risky places that seem too good to be true.

What each person calls their “necessary expenses” will always grow to match your income unless you resist that urge. Do not confuse your necessary expenses with your desires.

“A man’s wealth is not in the coins in his purse. It is in his income.”

Ensure a future income. Every person gets old. Make sure your income will continue without work.

By life insurance.  Provide in advance for the protection of your family.

Increase your ability to earn.  Improve your skills.  As you perfect your craft, your ability to earn more increases.

The more we know, the more we may earn.  The person who seeks to know more of their craft is capable of earning more.

You cannot arrive at the fullest measure of success until you crush the spirit of procrastination within you.

The 5 Laws of Gold: 1) Gold comes easily and in increasing quantity to the person who saves at least 1/10th of their earnings; 2) Gold labors diligently and multiplies for the person who finds it profitable employment; 3) Gold clings to the protection of the person who invests their gold with wise people; 4) Gold slips away from the person who invests gold into purposes through which they are not familiar; 5) Gold flees the person who tries to force it into impossible earnings.

If you desire to help you friend do not do so in a way that brings their burdens onto you. There are many ways to help people. You don’t have to choose the ways that restrict your time, money, energy, or ability to care for yourself.

The wise lender always has a guarantee of repayment should the investment go poorly.

Above all you should desire safety for your money.  Better a little caution than a great regret.

Protect yourself with insurance. You cannot afford to be unprotected.

Do not live beyond your means.

No man respects himself if he does not repay his debts.

The soul of a free man looks at the world as a series of problems to be solved. Meanwhile, the soul of a slave whines, “What can I do?”

“Where the determination is, a way can be found.”

If you are in debt, live on 70% of what you make. Save 10% for yourself. Use the remaining 20% to repay your debts.

Stick with the plan. Money accrues surprisingly quickly and debts are gone fast with discipline and consistency.

Work attracts friends who admire your industriousness. Work attracts money and opportunity. “Hard work is the best friend I’ve ever had.”

 

Quotes

“Advice is one thing that is freely given away, but watch that you only take what is worth having.”

 

“If you desire to help thy friend, do so in a way that will not bring thy friend’s burdens upon thyself.”

 

“The hungrier one becomes, the clearer one’s mind works— also the more sensitive one becomes to the odors of food.”

 

“As for time, all men have it in abundance.”

 

“When no buyers were near, he talked to me earnestly to impress upon me how valuable work would be to me in the future: ‘Some men hate it. They make it their enemy. Better to treat it like a friend, make thyself like it. Don’t mind because it is hard. If thou thinkest about what a good house thou build, then who cares if the beams are heavy and it is far from the well to carry the water for the plaster. Promise me, boy, if thou get a master, work for him as hard as thou canst. If he does not appreciate all thou do, never mind. Remember, work, well-done, does good to the man who does it. It makes him a better man.”

 

“Wealth, like a tree, grows from a tiny seed. The first copper you save is the seed from which your tree of wealth shall grow. The sooner you plant that seed the sooner shall the tree grow. And the more faithfully you nourish and water that tree with consistent savings, the sooner may you bask in contentment beneath its shade.”

 

“One may not condemn a man for succeeding because he knows how. Neither may one with justice take away from a man what he has fairly earned, to give to men of less ability.”

 

“Opportunity is a haughty goddess who wastes no time with those who are unprepared.”

 

“The reason why we have never found measure of wealth. We never sought it.”

My Take

While the language and stories in The Richest Man in Babylon can be a little corny at times, its message is rock solid and inspiring.  When I was 21 and newly graduated from college, my dad sat me down with a HP Financial calculator and showed me the magic of compound interest.  I got the message that it I started a regular practice of saving and investing then I would have a vast sum of money later in my life.  A few years later, my mom and stepdad preached the value of investing in real estate to me and helped me with a loan to buy my first house at age 26.  25 years and several houses later, my husband and I have made a huge amount on our real estate investments.  The Richest Man in Babylon articulates these principles (and more) in an easy reading, parable style.  I highly recommend this book for young people just starting out or for anyone else trying to figure out how to make money work for them.

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75. Bossypants

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Tina Fey

Genre:  Non Fiction, Memoir, Humor

283 pages, published April 5, 2011

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Before she was Liz Lemon on 30 Rock, before she anchored Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live and before she nailed an impersonation of Sarah Palin to become part of the cultural zeitgeist, Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher.  She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV.  As Fey recounts in Bossypants she has seen both of these dreams come true.  She also gives a very funny recounting of her childhood, college years, struggling to make it in Chicago, writing and acting on Saturday Night Live, creating 30 Rock, being a star, marriage and motherhood.

 

Quotes

“So, my unsolicited advice to women in the workplace is this. When faced with sexism, or ageism, or lookism, or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: “Is this person in between me and what I want to do?” If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you’re in charge, don’t hire the people who were jerky to you.”

 

“Read! When your baby is finally down for the night, pick up a juicy book like Eat, Pray, Love or Pride and Prejudice or my personal favorite, Understanding Sleep Disorders: Narcolepsy and Apnea; A Clinical Study. Taking some time to read each night really taught me how to feign narcolepsy when my husband asked me what my “plan” was for taking down the Christmas tree.”

 

“Lesson learned? When people say, “You really, really must” do something, it means you don’t really have to. No one ever says, “You really, really must deliver the baby during labor.” When it’s true, it doesn’t need to be said.”

 

“MAKE STATEMENTS also applies to us women: Speak in statements instead of apologetic questions. No one wants to go to a doctor who says, “I’m going to be your surgeon? I’m here to talk to you about your procedure? I was first in my class at Johns Hopkins, so?” Make statements, with your actions and your voice.”

 

“You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute.”

 

“Confidence is 10% hard work and 90% delusion.”

 

“This worked out perfectly for me in college, because what nineteen-year-old Virginia boy doesn’t want a wide-hipped, sarcastic Greek girl with short hair that’s permed on top? What’s that you say? None of them want that? You are correct.”

 

“Instead of trying to fit an impossible ideal, I took a personal inventory of all my healthy body parts for which I am grateful: Straight Greek eyebrows. They start at the hairline at my temple and, left unchecked, will grow straight across my face and onto yours.”

 

“Once or twice a week I would set my alarm for six A.M. so I could get up and plug in Hot Stix…I would study the curls in the mirror, impressed with both the appliance and my newfound ability to use it.   Then, without fail, at the last second before leaving for school, I would ask myself, “Am I supposed to brush it out or leave it?” Why could I never remember” That feeling of “I’m pretty sure this next step is wrong, but I’m just gonna do it anyway” is part of the same set of instincts that makes me such a great cook.”

 

“It can’t be said enough. Don’t concern yourself with fashion; stick to simple pieces that flatter your body type. By nineteen, I had found my look. Oversize T-shirts, bike shorts, and wrestling shoes. To prevent the silhouette from being too baggy, I would cinch it at the waist with my fanny pack. I was pretty sure I would wear this look forever. The shirts allowed me to express myself with cool sayings like “There’s No Crying in Baseball” and “Universität Heidelberg,” the bike shorts showed off my muscular legs, and the fanny pack held all my trolley tokens. I was nailing it on a daily basis. Find something like this for yourself as soon as possible.”

 

“Brendan suddenly ‘came out’ to me. In my experience, the hardest thing about having someone ‘come out’ to you is the ‘pretending to be surprised’ part. You want him to feel like what he’s telling you is Big. It’s like, if somebody tells you they’re pregnant, you don’t say, ‘I did notice you’ve been eating like a hog lately.’ Your gay friend has obviously made a big decision to say the words out loud. You don’t want him to realize that everybody’s known this since he was ten and he wanted to be Bert Lahr for Halloween. Not the Cowardly Lion, but Bert Lahr. ‘Oh, my gosh, no waaaay?’ You stall, trying to think of something more substantial to say. ‘Is everyone, like, freaking out? What a… wow.”

 

“What Turning Forty Means to Me.  I need to take my pants off as soon as I get home. I didn’t used to have to do that. But now I do.”

 

“This is what I tell young women who ask me for career advice. People are going to try to trick you. To make you feel that you are in competition with one another. “You’re up for a promotion. If they go for a woman, it’ll be between you and Barbara.” Don’t be fooled. You’re not in competition with other women. You’re in competition with everyone.”

 

“Politics and prostitution have to be the only jobs where inexperience is considered a virtue. In what other profession would you brag about not knowing stuff? “I’m not one of those fancy Harvard heart surgeons. I’m just an unlicensed plumber with a dream and I’d like to cut your chest open.” The crowd cheers.”

 

“If you retain nothing else, always remember the most important rule of beauty, which is: who cares?”

 

“My ability to turn good news into anxiety is rivaled only by my ability to turn anxiety into chin acne.”

 

“I only hope that one day I can frighten my daughter this much. Right now, she’s not scared of my husband or me at all. I think it’s a problem. I was a freshman home from college the first time my dad said, “You’re going out at ten p.m.? I don’t think so,” and I just laughed and said, “It’s fine.” I feel like my daughter will be doing that to me by age six.  How can I give her what Don Fey gave me? The gift of anxiety. The fear of getting in trouble. The knowledge that while you are loved, you are not above the law. The Worldwide Parental Anxiety System is failing if this many of us have made sex tapes.”

“First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches.

May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty.

When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half And stick with Beer.

Guide her, protect her

When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age.

Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels.

What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking You, because if I knew, I’d be doing it, Youdammit.

May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers.

Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen. Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long, For childhood is short – a Tiger Flower blooming Magenta for one day – And adulthood is long and dry-humping in cars will wait.

O Lord, break the Internet forever, That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed.

And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it.

And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, that I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back.

“My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget. But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes.”

 

“But I think the first real change in women’s body image came when JLo turned it butt-style. That was the first time that having a large-scale situation in the back was part of mainstream American beauty. Girls wanted butts now. Men were free to admit that they had always enjoyed them. And then, what felt like moments later, boom—Beyoncé brought the leg meat. A back porch and thick muscular legs were now widely admired. And from that day forward, women embraced their diversity and realized that all shapes and sizes are beautiful. Ah ha ha. No. I’m totally messing with you. All Beyonce and JLo have done is add to the laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful. Now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits. The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes.”

My Take

Not only was Bossypants hilarious, but it also offered a lot of practical career and life advice for women in the vein of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In.  Fey is also very sweet and tender when telling stories about her father Don Fey.  If you were ever the person who didn’t fit in despite a big effort, then you will relate to this book, especially Fey’s retelling of her time in high school and college.  At the end, you will also be more grateful for your lack of fitting in as it usually makes for a more interesting life.  That is certainly the case with Tina Fey.

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