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578.    The Reckoning

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:    John Grisham

Genre:   Fiction, Historical Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, Suspense, Crime

420 pages, published October 23, 2018

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Overdrive

Summary

The Reckoning tells the story of Pete Banning, a decorated World War II hero who survived the Bataan death march.  Shortly after returning home to his hometown of Clanton, Mississippi he coldbloodedly walked into his church and calmly shot and killed the Reverend Dexter Bell, his pastor and friend.  In response to all questions, even when facing execution, Pete’s only answer is “I have nothing to say.”  Not until the end of the story do we find out the reason for Pete’s actions.

Quotes 

“Meanness does not inspire loyalty.”

 

“Hearing the truth is like grabbing smoke in our family,”

 

 “Between 1818 and 1940, the state hanged eight hundred people, 80 percent of whom were black. Those, of course, were the judicial hangings for rapists and murderers who had been processed through the courts. During that same period of time, approximately six hundred black men were lynched by mobs operating outside the legal system and thoroughly immune from any of its repercussions”

 

 “Although he performed no acts of combat valor, as required by law, and left his troops behind, MacArthur was awarded the Medal of Honor for his gallant defense of the Philippines. The emaciated men he left on Bataan were in no condition to fight. They suffered from swelling joints, bleeding gums, numbness in feet and hands, low blood pressure, loss of body heat, shivers, shakes, and anemia so severe many could not walk.”

 

 “Pete became the trusty. As such, he served the much improved meals to the other four white prisoners, and to the six or seven black ones on the back side of the jail. Since all prisoners soon knew where the food was originating, Pete was a popular trusty. He organized work details to clean up the jail, and he paid for a plumber to modernize the equipment in both restrooms. For a few bucks, he devised a venting system to clear the smoke-clogged air, and everyone, even the smokers, breathed easier. He and a black prisoner overhauled the furnace and the cells were almost toasty at night. He slept hard, napped frequently, exercised on the hour, and encouraged his new pals to do likewise.”

 

“The Bannings were farmers and landowners, but they were workers, not gentrified planters with decadent lives made possible by the sweat of others.”

 

“Pete offered his reading materials to the others, but there was little interest. He suspected they were either fully or partially illiterate. To pass the time, he played poker with Leon Colliver, the moonshiner across the hall. Leon was not particularly bright, but he was sharp as hell at cards and Pete, who had mastered all card games in the army, had his hands full. Cribbage was his favorite, and Florry brought his cribbage board. Leon had never heard of the game, but absorbed it with no effort and within an hour was up a nickel.”

 

 “Her husband, a devout servant and follower of Christ, was reading his Bible and preparing his sermon, at church, when he was murdered. Why couldn’t God protect him, of all people? Upon deeper reflection, this often led to the more troubling question, one she never asked aloud: Is there really a God? The mere consideration of this as a passing thought frightened her, but she could not deny its existence.”

 

“In August of 1941, the United States supplied Japan with 80 percent of its oil. When President Roosevelt announced a complete oil embargo, Japan’s economic and military strength was imperiled.”

 

“She entered her home and stood in the kitchen, stopped cold by an aroma that was so thick and familiar it overwhelmed her: a mix of cigarette smoke and coffee, bacon grease, fruity pies and cakes, thick beef and venison stews that Nineva simmered on the stove for days, steam from the canning of stewed tomatoes and a dozen vegetables, wet leather from Pete’s boots in a corner, the sweet soapy smell of Nineva herself. Liza was staggered by the dense fragrances and leaned on a counter. In the darkness, she could hear the voices of her children as they giggled over breakfast and got themselves shooed away from the stove by Nineva. She could see Pete sitting there at the kitchen table with his coffee and cigarettes reading the Tupelo daily. A cloud moved somewhere and a ray of moonlight entered through a window. She focused and her kitchen came into view. She breathed as slowly as possible, sucking in the sweet smells of her former life.”

 

My Take

Another enjoyable read from the eminently readable John Grisham.  In addition to the compelling story, I learned a lot about the horrific conditions in the Pacific theater during World War II.  Grisham also makes a strong case against the death penalty with his detailed account of how the electric chair was administered.

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577.   You

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Caroline Kepnes

Genre:   Fiction, Thriller, Suspense, Mystery

422 pages, published August 28, 2018

Reading Format:   Audiobook

Summary

When the beautiful young writer Guinevere Beck meets Joe Goldberg at the East Village bookstore where he works, she has no idea what she has gotten into.  The two develop a relationship and she is still in the dark.  Goldberg is an obsessive stalker who wants to control every aspect of Beck’s life.  Through a smartphone and social media, he comes disturbingly close to achieving his objective.

Quotes 

“The only thing crueler than a cage so small that a bird can’t fly is a cage so

large that a bird thinks it can fly.”

 

“If we were teenagers, I could kiss you. But I’m on a platform behind a counter wearing a name tag and we’re too old to be young.”

 

“The problem with books is that they end. They seduce you. They spread their legs to you and pull you inside. And you go deep and leave your possessions and your ties to the world at the door and you like it inside and you don’t want for your possessions or your ties and then, the book evaporates.”

 

“Work in a bookstore and learn that most people in this world feel guilty about being who they are.”

 

“I don’t say anything. I know the power of silence. I remember my dad saying nothing and I remember his silences more vividly than I remember the things he said.”

 

“Happiness is believing that you’re gonna be happy. It’s hope.”

 “And then it happens, the most dreaded response in the world, more terse than any word, more withholding than a “no,” and strictly verboten for someone as in love with language and me as you claim to be.  You: “K”

 

“Some people, it’s like they care more about their status updates than their actual lives.”

― Caroline Kepnes, You

 

“Some people on this earth receive love, get married, and honeymoon in Cabo. Others do not. Some people read alone on the sofa and some people read together, in bed. That’s life.”

 

“My middle school health teacher told us that you can hold eye contact for ten seconds before scaring or seducing someone.”

 

 “Your lips were made for mine, Beck. You are the reason I have a mouth, a heart.”

 

 “But the most important thing I know is that I want the possibility of you more than the reality of [her].”

 

“If you don’t start with crazy, crazy love, the kind of love that Van Morrison sings about, then you don’t have a shot to go the distance. Love’s a marathon, Danny, not a sprint.”

 

 “And I will never again underestimate the power of anticipation. There is no better boost in the present than an invitation into the future.”

 

“I love Stephen King as much as any red rum drinking American, but I resent the fact that I, the bookseller, am his bitch.”

 

“Eye contact is what keeps us civilized.”

 

“Louisa May Alcott is right. An extraordinary girl can’t have an ordinary life. Don’t judge yourself. Love yourself.”

 

“Don’t make a baby if you’re not capable of unconditional love.”

 

“A poet is different. A poet transforms the world with Such small hands.”

 

“When I’m nervous, I get nasty. It’s a problem.”

 

“And when a girl likes talking about you more than talking to you, well, in my experience, that’s the end.”

 

My Take

You is an intriguing, but very disturbing, read.  It is told from the point of view of psychologically deranged stalker who presents as normal to his subject.  The author does a great job with tone, character and pacing.

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576.    Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:    Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein

Genre:   Non Fiction, Science, Business, Sociology, Economics, Psychology

454 pages, published May 18, 2021

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

In Noise, Economist, Social Scientist and Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman, along with Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein, explore the concept of noise, i.e. why most people make bad judgments, and how to correct for it.​  Noise is the variation in outcomes due to human decision making.  For example, when two different claims adjusters at the same insurance company come to radically different conclusions on the value of the same claim.  While noise contributes to significant errors in a diverse spectrum of fields, the individuals and organizations making decisions are usually unaware of the role played by chance in their judgments and in their actions.

Quotes 

“To understand error in judgment, we must understand both bias and noise.”

 

“wherever there is judgment, there is noise—and more of it than you think.”

 

“Bias and noise—systematic deviation and random scatter—are different components of error.”

 

“Judgment can therefore be described as measurement in which the instrument is a human mind.”

 

“There is at least one source of occasion noise that we have all noticed: mood.”

 

“When physicians are under time pressure, they are apparently more inclined to choose a quick-fix solution, despite its serious downsides.”

 

“Averaging two guesses by the same person does not improve judgments as much as does seeking out an independent second opinion. As Vul and Pashler put it, “You can gain about 1/10th as much from asking yourself the same question twice as you can from getting a second opinion from someone else.” This is not a large improvement. But you can make the effect much larger by waiting to make a second guess.”

 

“When Vul and Pashler let three weeks pass before asking their subjects the same question again, the benefit rose to one-third the value of a second opinion.”

 

 “Herzog and Hertwig then averaged the two estimates thus produced. Their technique, which they named dialectical bootstrapping, produced larger improvements in accuracy than did a simple request for a second estimate immediately following the first. Because the participants forced themselves to consider the question in a new light, they sampled another, more different version of themselves—two “members” of the “crowd within” who were further apart. As a result, their average produced a more accurate estimate of the truth. The gain in accuracy with two immediately consecutive “dialectical” estimates was about half the value of a second opinion.”

 

 “A study of thousands of juvenile court decisions found that when the local football team loses a game on the weekend, the judges make harsher decisions on the Monday (and, to a lesser extent, for the rest of the week). Black defendants disproportionately bear the brunt of that increased harshness. A different study looked at 1.5 million judicial decisions over three decades and similarly found that judges are more severe on days that follow a loss by the local city’s football team than they are on days that follow a win.”

 

 “Vul and Pashler drew inspiration from the well-known phenomenon known as the wisdom-of-crowds effect: averaging the independent judgments of different people generally improves accuracy. In 1907, Francis Galton, a cousin of Darwin and a famous polymath, asked 787 villagers at a country fair to estimate the weight of a prize ox. None of the villagers guessed the actual weight of the ox, which was 1,198 pounds, but the mean of their guesses was 1,200, just 2 pounds off, and the median (1,207) was also very close. The villagers were a “wise crowd” in the sense that although their individual estimates were quite noisy, they were unbiased. Galton’s demonstration surprised him: he had little respect for the judgment of ordinary people, and despite himself, he urged that his results were “more creditable to the trustworthiness of a democratic judgment than might have been expected.”

 

“Most organizations prefer consensus and harmony over dissent and conflict. The procedures in place often seem expressly designed to minimize the frequency of exposure to actual disagreements and, when such disagreements happen, to explain them away.”

 

“Some judgments are biased; they are systematically off target. Other judgments are noisy, as people who are expected to agree end up at very different points around the target. Many organizations, unfortunately, are afflicted by both bias and noise.”

 

“In a negotiation situation, for instance, good mood helps. People in a good mood are more cooperative and elicit reciprocation. They tend to end up with better results than do unhappy negotiators.”

 

“On the other hand, a good mood makes us more likely to accept our first impressions as true without challenging them.”

 

“As you can guess, this is a test of the readers’ vulnerability to stereotypes: do people rate the essay more favorably when it is attributed to a middle-aged man than they do when they believe that a young woman wrote it? They do, of course. But importantly, the difference is larger in the good-mood condition. People who are in a good mood are more likely to let their biases affect their thinking.”

 

“Inducing good moods makes people more receptive to bullshit and more gullible in general; they are less apt to detect deception or identify misleading information. Conversely, eyewitnesses who are exposed to misleading information are better able to disregard it—and to avoid false testimony—when they are in a bad mood.”

 

“However, when the subjects were placed in a positive mood—induced by watching a five-minute video segment—they became three times more likely to say that they would push the man off the bridge. Whether we regard “Thou shalt not kill” as an absolute principle or are willing to kill one stranger to save five should reflect our deepest values. Yet our choice seems to depend on what video clip we have just watched.”

 

“A study of nearly seven hundred thousand primary care visits, for instance, showed that physicians are significantly more likely to prescribe opioids at the end of a long day.”

 

My Take

While Noise is a bit on the dense side, it did introduce me to some new concepts and change the way I look at the world.  For a non-fiction book, that is high praise.

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573.    Long Walk to Freedom

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:    Nelson Mandela

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

497 pages, published

Reading Format:   Audiobook

Summary

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

Quotes 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

My Take

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

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570.    Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by: 

Author:   Tiffany Dufu

Genre:   Non Fiction, Self Improvement, Memoir

304 pages, published February 14, 2017

Reading Format:   Book

 

Summary

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

 

Quotes 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Done is better than perfect.”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

My Take

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

 

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568. The Rise of Athens: The Story of the World’s Greatest Civilization

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:    Anthony Everitt

Genre:   Non Fiction, Foreign, History

512 pages, published December 6, 2016

Reading Format:    on Hoopla

Summary

The Rise of Athens is a comprehensive overview of the rise of the tiny city-state of Athens in ancient Greece to become one of history’s most influential civilizations, inspiring Alexander the Great, the Romans, and America’s own Founding Fathers.  Author Anthony Everitt provides detailed, insightful portrayals of the different Athenians who contributed to the city’s rise: Themistocles, a brilliant naval strategist who led the Greeks to a decisive victory over their Persian enemies; Pericles, arguably the greatest Athenian statesman of them all; and the wily Alcibiades, who changed his political allegiance several times during the course of the Peloponnesian War–and died in a hail of assassins’ arrows.  He also covers many of the battles that defined the Hellenic world including Thermopylae, Marathon, and Salamis. An unparalleled storyteller, Everitt combines erudite, thoughtful historical analysis with stirring narrative set pieces that capture the colorful, dramatic, and exciting world of ancient Greece.

Quotes 

“For all the wonders of ancient Athens, or rather because of them, I faced a fundamental question. How was it that this tiny community of 200,000 souls or so (in other words, no more populous than, say, York in England or Little Rock in Arkansas) managed to give birth to towering geniuses across the range of human endeavor and to create one of the greatest civilizations in history? Indeed, it laid the foundations of our own contemporary intellectual universe.”

 

 “Let your motto be, I lead. Strive to be best.”

 

 “War is glorious and, at the same time, a great evil.”

 

“Religion was about ritual rather than belief.”

 

“It is as if nothing had ever happened on that bloodstained shore. Had Helen been worth it?”

 

My Take

I read The Rise of Athens in advance of a trip to Greece which included a three day stay in Athens.  While it gets weighted down in certain sections, on the whole the book provides a lot of interesting history and stories about Athens and Greece which really enhanced my trip.

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564. The $64 Tomato

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Frank and Lisanne

Author:    William Alexander

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

304 pages, published March 2, 2007

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

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

Quotes 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

My Take

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

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556. Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Pat Walsh

Author:   Martin Luther King, Jr.

Genre:   Non Fiction, Race, History

Summary

Stride Toward Freedom tells the story of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott in 1955 led by Martin Luther King, Jr. that changed the trajectory of the civil rights movement.  Written by Dr. King, it includes his letters, speeches and a first hand account of the 50,000 Blacks who incorporated the  principles of nonviolence into their fight for equality.

Quotes 

“[Nonviolence] is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil.”

 

“Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love.”

 

“…the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.”

 

“There are several specific things that the church can do. First, it should try to get to the ideational roots of race hate, something that the law cannot accomplish. All race prejudice is based upon fears, suspicions, and misunderstandings, usually groundless. The church can be of immeasurable help in giving the popular mind direction here. Through its channels of religious education, the church can point out the irrationality of these beliefs. It can show that the idea of a superior or inferior race is a myth that has been completely refuted by anthropological evidence. It can show that Negroes are not innately inferior in academic, health, and moral standards. It can show that, when given equal opportunities, Negroes can demonstrate equal achievement.”

 

“The mere fact that we live in the United States means that we are caught in a network of inescapable mutuality. Therefore, no American can afford to be apathetic about the problem of racial justice. It is a problem that meets every man at his front door. The racial problem will be solved in America to the degree that every American considers himself personally confronted with it. Whether one lives in the heart of the Deep South or on the periphery of the North, the problem of injustice is his problem; it is his problem because it is America’s problem.”

 

“God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men, and brown men, and yellow men; God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race.”

 

“There is a pressing need for a liberalism in the North which is truly liberal, a liberalism that firmly believes in integration in its own community as well as in the Deep South. It is one thing to agree that the goal of integration is morally and legally right; it is another thing to commit oneself positively and actively to the ideal of integration—the former is intellectual assent, the latter is actual belief. These are days that demand practices to match professions. This is no day to pay lip service to integration; we must pay life service to it.”

 “Economic insecurity strangles the physical and cultural growth of its victims. Not only are millions deprived of formal education and proper health facilities but our most fundamental social unit—the family—is tortured, corrupted, and weakened by economic insufficiency. When a Negro man is inadequately paid, his wife must work to provide the simple necessities for the children. When a mother has to work she does violence to motherhood by depriving her children of her loving guidance and protection; often they are poorly cared for by others or by none—left to roam the streets unsupervised. It is not the Negro alone who is wronged by a disrupted society; many white families are in similar straits. The Negro mother leaves home to care for—and be a substitute mother for—white children, while the white mother works. In this strange irony lies the promise of future correction.”

 

 “The nonviolent approach does not immediately change the heart of the oppressor. It first does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it. It gives them new self-respect; it calls up resources of strength and courage that they did not know they had. Finally it reaches the opponent and so stirs his conscience that reconciliation becomes a reality.”

 

“Since crime often grows out of a sense of futility and despair, Negro parents must be urged to give their children the love, attention, and sense of belonging that a segregated society deprives them of.”

 

“Casualties of war keep alive post war hate.”

 

“During a crisis period, a desperate attempt is made by the extremists to influence the minds of the liberal forces in the ruling majority. So, for example, in the present transition white Southerners attempt to convince Northern whites that the Negroes are inherently criminal.”

 

“The accusation is made without reference to the true nature of the situation. Environmental problems of delinquency are interpreted as evidence of racial criminality. Crises arising in Northern schools are interpreted as proofs that Negroes are inherently delinquent. The extremists do not recognize that these school problems are symptoms of urban dislocation, rather than expressions of racial deficiency. Criminality and delinquency are not racial; poverty and ignorance breed crime whatever the racial group may be.”

 

“Many white men fear retaliation. The job of the Negro is to show them that they have nothing to fear, that the Negro understands and forgives and is ready to forget the past. He must convince the white man that all he seeks is justice, for both himself and the white man.”

 

“After the opposition had failed to negotiate us into a compromise, it turned to subtler means for blocking the protest; namely, to conquer by dividing. False rumors were spread concerning the leaders of the movement. Negro workers were told by their white employers that their leaders were only concerned with making money out of the movement. Others were told that the Negro leaders rode big cars while they walked. During this period the rumor was spread that I had purchased a brand new Cadillac for myself and a Buick station wagon for my wife. Of course none of this was true.”

 

 “Even where the polls are open to all, Negroes have shown themselves too slow to exercise their voting privileges. There must be a concerted effort on the part of Negro leaders to arouse their people from their apathetic indifference to this obligation of citizenship. In the past, apathy was a moral failure. Today, it is a form of moral and political suicide.”

 

“As he continued, one could see obvious disappointment on the faces of the white committee members. By trying to convince the Negroes that I was the main obstacle to a solution they had hoped to divide us among ourselves. But Ralph’s statement left no doubt. From this moment on the white group saw the futility of attempting to negotiate us into a compromise.”

 

“Many of them had predicted violence, and such predictions are always a conscious or unconscious invitation to action. When people, especially in public office, talk about bloodshed as a concomitant of integration, they stir and arouse the hoodlums to acts of destruction, and often work under cover to bring them about. In Montgomery several public officials had predicted violence, and violence there had to be if they were to save face.”

 

“I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”

 

“Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for “the least of these.”

 

“One of the great problems of mankind is that we suffer from a poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually.”

 

“The American racial revolution has been a revolution to “get in” rather than to overthrow. We want a share in the American economy, the housing market, the educational system and the social opportunities. This goal itself indicates that a social change in America must be nonviolent. If one is in search of a better job, it does not help to burn down, the factory. If one needs more adequate education, shooting the principal will not help. If housing is the goal, only building and construction will produce that end. To destroy anything, person or property, cannot bring us closer to the goal that we seek.”

 

“It seems to me that this is the method that must guide the actions of the Negro in the present crisis in race relations. Through nonviolent resistance the Negro will be able to rise to the noble height of opposing the unjust system while loving the perpetrators of the system. The Negro must work passionately and unrelentingly for full stature as a citizen, but he must not use inferior methods to gain it. He must never come to terms with falsehood, malice, hate, or destruction.”

 

“…Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess. It begins by loving others for their sakes. It is an entirely ‘neighbor-regarding concern for others,’ which discovers the neighbor in every man it meets. Therefore, Agape makes no distinction between friend and enemy; it is directed toward both. If one loves an individual merely on account of his friendliness, he loves him for the sake of the benefits to be gained from the friendship, rather than for the friend’s own sake. Consequently, the best way to assure oneself that love is disinterested is to have love for the enemy-neighbor from whom you can expect no good in return, but only hostility and persecution.”

 

My Take

While a short book, Strive Toward Freedom packs a lot of punch.  I learned a lot about the Montgomery bus boycott and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s moral philosophy, strategy and tactics.  I came away with an increased respect (from an already high level) for this extraordinary man and the movement he championed.

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553. The Hunting Party

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:    Lucy Foley

Genre:   Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Crime

406 pages, published January 24, 2019

Reading Format:   Audiobook on Hoopla

Summary

The Hunting Party is set in a remote luxury estate in the Scottish Highlands.  A group of friends from Oxford choose this locale for their annual New Year’s reunion/vacation together.  However, they soon discover that one of them is a killer.

Quotes 

“Some people, given just the right amount of pressure, taken out of their usual, comfortable environments, don’t need much encouragement at all to become monsters. And sometimes you just get a strong sense about people, and you can’t explain it; you simply know it, in some deeper part of yourself.”

 

 “But it is a lot easier to face the day when you know you won’t have to face other people and their happiness.”

 

“It is a dark place form which you can never quite return. It does something to you, the first time. An essential change somewhere deep in the soul, the amputation of something important. The first time is the worst, but with each death the soul is wounded further. After a while there is nothing left but scar tissue.”

 

“I suppose we all carry around different versions of ourselves”

 

“Some people, given just the right amount of pressure, taken out of their usual, comfortable environments, don’t need much encouragement at all to become monsters.”

 

“Sometimes these impulses overtake me — the urge to push things a bit further… even the urge to wound. I can’t stop myself, it’s like a compulsion.”

 

“Sometimes solitude is the only way to regain your sanity.”

 

“Here is a person held together by tape and glue and prescription-strength sleeping pills – the only thing I can be persuaded to make a foray into civilisation for, these days.”

 

“There are people who hold out for love, capital letters LOVE, and don’t stop until they’ve found it. There are those who give up because they don’t find it. Boom or bust – all or nothing. And then, perhaps in the majority, there are those who settle. And I think we’re the sensible ones. Because love doesn’t always mean longevity”

 

“Perhaps it’s simply growing older. A sense that she doesn’t have to prove herself any longer, that she knows exactly who she is. I envy that.”

 

“And being around people – people carrying on with their lives, busy and messy, settling down, having children, getting married – just emphasizes how much my own has stalled, indefinitely. Perhaps forever.”

 

“I’ve planned this trip, so I feel a certain ownership of it – the anxiety that people won’t enjoy themselves, that things might go wrong. And also a sense of pride, already, in its small successes … like this, the wild beauty outside the window.”

 

“It’s tricky (…) to be the latest addition to a group of old friends. It seems that I will always be the new girl, however many years pass. I will always be the last in, the trespasser.”

 

“…even if you don’t have much interaction with other human beings – as I do not – it turns out that the instinct to judge one another, that basic human trait, does not leave us.”

 

“They seemed almost at times like actors, I thought, making a great show of what a wonderful time they were having. They laughed a little too hard. They drank a great deal too much. And at the same time, despite all this evidence of merriment, they seemed to watch each other. Perhaps it’s hindsight, making this impression seem like more than it was. I suppose there are probably tensions in most groups of friends. But I was struck by the thought that they did not seem completely comfortable in one another’s company. Which was odd, as they’d told me right at the beginning that they were very old friends. But that’s the thing about old friends, isn’t it? Sometimes they don’t even realise that they no longer have anything in common. That maybe they don’t even like each other any more.”

 

“I was sometimes drawn to men like this. The reticent, brooding sort: the challenge of drawing them out, making them care.”

 

“What’s that expression the French have for it? Jolie laide: ugly beautiful.”

 

“And most people don’t realize how much more they have than they need. They are lazy, and greedy, and blind to how easy their lives are. Perhaps it isn’t their fault. Perhaps they merely haven’t had the opportunity to see how fragile their grip on happiness is. But sometimes he thinks he hates them all.”

 

My Take

Having really loved The Guest List by Lucy Foley, I was looking forward to reading another thriller by this talented writer.  While not quite as good, The Hunting Party was still a very fun, fast read with interesting characters and a few surprising twists.

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551. My Name is Lucy Barton

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:  Elizabeth Strout

Genre:   Fiction

193 pages, published January 12, 2016

Reading Format:   Book

Summary

While Lucy Barton, the titular protagaonist, is in a New York City hospital recovering slowly from an confounding infection following an appendectomy, her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to visit and stay with her.  Through mulitiple conversations, Lucy and her mother navigate a difficult past relationship and come to an understanding that finally brings some peace to Lucy.

Quotes 

“It interests me how we find ways to feel superior to another person, another group of people. It happens everywhere, and all the time. Whatever we call it, I think it’s the lowest part of who we are, this need to find someone else to put down.”

 

 “Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me.”

 

 “You will have only one story,” she had said. “You’ll write your one story many ways. Don’t ever worry about story. You have only one.”

 

“Then I understood I would never marry him. It’s funny how one thing can make you realize something like that. One can be ready to give up the children one always wanted, one can be ready to withstand remarks about one’s past, or one’s clothes, but then—a tiny remark and the soul deflates and says: Oh.”

 

“Because we all love imperfectly.”

 

“But I think I know so well the pain we children clutch to our chests, how it lasts our whole lifetime, with longings so large you can’t even weep. We hold it tight, we do, with each seizure of the beating heart: This is mine, this is mine, this is mine.”

“But the books brought me things. This is my point. They made me feel less alone.”

 

“You are wasting time by suffering twice. I mention this only to show how many things the mind cannot will itself to do, even if it wants to.”

 

“This must be the way most of us maneuver through the world, half knowing, half not, visited by memories that can’t possibly be true.”

 

“No one in this world comes from nothing.”

 

“I kept thinking how the five of us had had a really unhealthy family, but I saw then too how our roots were twisted so tenaciously around one another’s hearts.”

 

“I have sometimes been sad that Tennessee Williams wrote that line for Blanche DuBois, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Many of us have been saved many times by the kindness of strangers, but after a while it sounds trite, like a bumper sticker. And that’s what makes me sad, that a beautiful and true line comes to be used so often that it takes on the superficial sound of a bumper sticker.”

 

“I suspect I said nothing because I was doing what I have done most of my life, which is to cover for the mistakes of others when they don’t know they have embarrassed themselves. I do this, I think, because it could be me a great deal of the time.”

 

“… and that was when I learned that work gets done if you simply do it.”

 

“My more tenderhearted daughter, Becka, said to me during this time, “Mom, when you write a novel you get to rewrite it, but when you live with someone for twenty years, that is the novel, and you can never write that novel with anyone again!”

 

“There are times now, and my life has changed so completely, that I think back on the early years and I find myself thinking: It was not that bad. Perhaps it was not. But there are times, too—unexpected—when walking down a sunny sidewalk, or watching the top of a tree bend in the wind, or seeing a November sky close down over the East River, I am suddenly filled with the knowledge of darkness so deep that a sound might escape from my mouth, and I will step into the nearest clothing store and talk with a stranger about the shape of sweaters newly arrived. This must be the way most of us maneuver through the world, half knowing, half not, visited by memories that can’t possibly be true. But when I see others walking with confidence down the sidewalk, as though they are free completely from terror, I realize I don’t know how others are. So much of life seems speculation.”

 

“Sarah Payne, the day she told us to go to the page without judgment, reminded us that we never knew, and never would know, what it would be like to understand another person fully.”

 

“I took myself—secretly, secretly—very seriously! I knew I was a writer. I didn’t know how hard it would be. But no one knows that; and that does not matter.)”

 

“It has been my experience throughout life that the people who have been given the most by our government—education, food, rent subsidies—are the ones who are most apt to find fault with the whole idea of government.”

 

 “She said that her job as a writer of fiction was to report on the human condition, to tell us who we are and what we think and what we do.”

 

“A person gets tired. The mind or the soul or whatever word we have for whatever is not just the body gets tired, and this, I have decided, is—usually, mostly—nature helping us. I was getting tired. I think—but I don’t know—that he was getting tired too.”

 

“At times these days I think of the way the sun would set on the farmland around our small house in the autumn. A view of the horizon, the whole entire circle of it, if you turned, the sun setting behind you, the sky in front becoming pink and soft, then slightly blue again, as though it could not stop going on in its beauty, then the land closest to the setting sun would get dark, almost black against the orange line of horizon, but if you turn around, the land is still available to the eye with such softness, the few trees, the quiet fields of cover crops already turned, and the sky lingering, lingering, then finally dark. As though the soul can be quiet for those moments. All life amazes me.”

 

“I think of Jeremy telling me I had to be ruthless to be a writer. And I think how I did not go visit my brother and sister and my parents because I was always working on a story and there was never enough time. (But I didn’t want to go either.) There never was enough time, and then later I knew if I stayed in my marriage I would not write another book, not the kind I wanted to, and there is that as well. But really, the ruthlessness, I think, comes in grabbing onto myself, in saying: This is me, and I will not go where I can’t bear to go—to Amgash, Illinois—and I will not stay in a marriage when I don’t want to, and I will grab myself and hurl onward through life, blind as a bat, but on I go! This is the ruthlessness, I think.”

 

“What I mean is, this is not just a woman’s story. It’s what happens to a lot of us, if we are lucky enough to hear that detail and pay attention”

 

“Black Hawk was taken on a tour of cities after his capture. I read his autobiography as soon as I could. And I remembered the line he said: “How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.”

 

“But once in a while I see a child crying with the deepest of desperation, and I think it is one of the truest sounds a child can make.”

 

“Do I understand that hurt my children feel? I think I do, though they might claim otherwise. But I think I know so well the pain we children clutch to our chests, how it lasts our whole lifetime, with longings so large you can’t even weep. We hold it tight, we do, with each seizure of the beating heart: this is mine, this is mine, this is mine.”

 

“There is that constant judgment in this world: How are we going to make sure we do not feel inferior to another?”

 

My Take

After reading and really enjoying three previous books by the Pulitizer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge, Olive Again, and The Burgess Boys), I picked this book up from the “Librarian Recommends” section of my wonderful Boulder Public Library.  While not quite as good as the other Strout books that I have read, I did really enjoy “My Name is Lucy Barton.”  Strout has a lot of insight into the human condition and writes in such a way that you become engrossed in the lives of the characters and want to see what happens to them.

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