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219. Republican Like Me: A Lifelong Democrat’s Journey Across the Aisle

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Mike Brady

Author:  Ken Stern

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Politics, Public Policy

288 pages, published October 24, 2017

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

In Republican Like Me, Ken Stern, a former CEO of National Public Radio and card carrying Liberal, takes a year to  crisscross the country in an attempt to better understand what makes  Republicans tick.  He spent a good deal of time listening, talking, and praying with Republicans from all corners, neocons to traditionalists, fiscal conservatives to social conservatives, moderates to libertarians.  He considers the issues that divide and provoke the left and right:  immigration, gun control, abortion, the environment and global warming, elitism and the establishment, the government, the “makers” and the “takers,” and attitudes toward gender and race.  He introduces the people he met and the viewpoints and opinions he heard, and examines their impact on his own long-standing views.

 

Quotes 

 

 

My Take

Many Americans are still wondering how Donald Trump was elected President.  Much like J.V. Vance in Hillbilly Elegy (which I really enjoyed), Ken Stern, the author of Republican Like Me has some answers.  Stern (a lifelong committed Democrat) looks at political issues from a Republican viewpoint and discovers that they have some good points and things are not as clear cut as he had always assumed.  He also takes on the left-wing media bias that infects our newspapers and newsrooms.  If you are interested in understanding why our country is so polarized and what can be done about it, I recommend checking out this interesting book.

 

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218. The Art of People: 11 Simple People Skills That Will Get You Everything You Want

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Author:  Dave Kerpen

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Business, Self Improvement, Psychology

288 pages, March15, 2016

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

In The Art of People, author Dave Kerpen provides straightforward, sensible advice in pithy chapters laced with relevant anecdotes.  His focus is on building relationships and truly understanding and connecting with your colleagues, customers, and partners.  He covers ideas such as:

  • The single most important question you can ever ask to win attention in a meeting
  • The one simple key to networking that nobody talks about
  • How to remain top of mind for thousands of people, everyday
  • Why it usually pays to be the one to give the bad news
  • How to blow off the right people
  • And why, when in doubt, buy him a Bonsai

 

Quotes 

“However, when you’re accountable to too many people, it’s like being accountable to no one. Thus, the best scenario is to find one accountability partner who can help you and whom you can help.”

 

“The problem with sharing accomplishments on social media (aka bragging), however, is there’s no tone or body language to help convey your meaning, and that means it’s very easy for people to lose the context and not get your intention right.”

 

“After conducting years of research on the most effective and least effective traits of leaders, Bell advised leaders to “listen like children watch TV.”

 

“People in general don’t want advice even when they ask for it. They just want to feel heard.”

 

“There’s no better way to show that you care about the person you’re meeting with than to genuinely, authentically ask her what you can do to help.”

 

“It’s not my job to teach you. It’s your job to learn. I’m just here to coach you along the way,” Doc would say to us on a typical day. He was one part teacher, one part coach, and one part cheerleader—always positive, helpful, and encouraging.”

 

“Many people are so afraid to get a “no” that they don’t ask for a “yes.” The ironic thing here is that they’re virtually guaranteeing getting a “no” by not asking for a “yes.”

 

My Take

The Art of People is a modern update of the classic How to Win Friends and Influence People, which I found to be an extremely useful book.  Like that classic how-to, The Art of People contains numerous tips and sound advice on how to interact with others in a genuine way to create win-win situations.  Some of it is common sense, but there were enough new suggestions for me to recommend this book.

 

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214. 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Author:  Dan Harris

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Self-Improvement, Happiness, Psychology, Memoir, Philosophy

256 pages, published March 11, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

10% Happier chronicles journalist Dan Harris’ journey of self discovery after having a nationally televised panic attack on Good Morning America.  Harris explores the worlds of neuroscience, meditation, and network news and comes out the other end with increased calm, focus, and happiness.

 

Quotes 

“Everything in the world is ultimately unsatisfying and unreliable because it won’t last.”

“Make the present moment your friend rather than your enemy. Because many people live habitually as if the present moment were an obstacle that they need to overcome in order to get to the next moment. And imagine living your whole life like that, where always this moment is never quite right, not good enough because you need to get to the next one. That is continuous stress.”

 

“But it was in this moment, lying in bed late at night, that I first realized that the voice in my head—the running commentary that had dominated my field of consciousness since I could remember—was kind of an asshole.”

 

“The Buddha captured it well when he said that anger, which can be so seductive at first, has “a honeyed tip” but a “poisoned root.”

 

“The ego is never satisfied. No matter how much stuff we buy, no matter how many arguments we win or delicious meals we consume, the ego never feels complete.”

 

“the Buddha’s main thesis was that in a world where everything is constantly changing, we suffer because we cling to things that won’t last.”

 

“What mindfulness does is create some space in your head so you can, as the Buddhists say, “respond” rather than simply “react.” In the Buddhist view, you can’t control what comes up in your head; it all arises out of a mysterious void. We spend a lot of time judging ourselves harshly for feelings that we had no role in summoning. The only thing you can control is how you handle it.”

 

“We live so much of our lives pushed forward by these “if only” thoughts, and yet the itch remains. The pursuit of happiness becomes the source of our unhappiness.”

 

“Don’t you ever get pissed off, annoyed, irritated, sad—anything negative?” “No, I accept what is. And that’s why life has become so simple.” “Well, what if somebody cuts you off in your car?” “It’s fine. It’s like a sudden gust of wind. I don’t personalize a gust of wind, and so it’s simply what is.”

 

“The fact that you exist is a highly statistically improbable event, and if you are not perpetually surprised by the fact that you exist you don’t deserve to be here.”

 

“Perhaps the most meaningful exchange I had on the subject was a completely random discussion with my uncle Martin at my parents’ annual summer pool party. Martin, a former entrepreneur who was now in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, turned to me and asked an intriguing question: “Which is more exciting to you? Reality or memory?” I paused, considered it, and said, “I wish I could say reality, but it’s probably memory.” And then I asked, “What about you?” At which point Martin stared blankly back at me and asked, “What was the question?”

 

“Striving is fine, as long as it’s tempered by the realization that, in an entropic universe, the final outcome is out of your control. If you don’t waste your energy on variables you cannot influence, you can focus much more effectively on those you can. When you are wisely ambitious, you do everything you can to succeed, but you are not attached to the outcome—so that if you fail, you will be maximally resilient, able to get up, dust yourself off, and get back in the fray. That, to use a loaded term, is enlightened self-interest.”

 

“There’s no point in being unhappy about things you can’t change, and no point being unhappy about things you can.”

 

“Marturano recommended something radical: do only one thing at a time. When you’re on the phone, be on the phone. When you’re in a meeting, be there. Set aside an hour to check your email, and then shut off your computer monitor and focus on the task at hand. Another tip: take short mindfulness breaks throughout the day. She called them “purposeful pauses.” So, for example, instead of fidgeting or tapping your fingers while your computer boots up, try to watch your breath for a few minutes. When driving, turn off the radio and feel your hands on the wheel. Or when walking between meetings, leave your phone in your pocket and just notice the sensations of your legs moving. “If I’m a corporate samurai,” I said, “I’d be a little worried about taking all these pauses that you recommend because I’d be thinking, ‘Well, my rivals aren’t pausing. They’re working all the time.’ ” “Yeah, but that assumes that those pauses aren’t helping you. Those pauses are the ways to make you a more clear thinker and for you to be more focused on what’s important.”

 

“She nailed the method for applying mindfulness in acute situations, albeit with a somewhat dopey acronym: RAIN. R: recognize A: allow I: investigate N: non-identification”

 

“When you have one foot in the future and the other in the past, you piss on the present.”

 

“Meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It’s about feeling the way you feel.”

 

My Take

I listened to the audio version of 10% Happier (read by the author) and enjoyed Dan Harris’ easygoing and honest style.  He seemed like a very decent guy and I was happy to accompany him on his quest for inner peace.  Along the way, I picked up some good happiness tips, especially on the value of meditation and the importance of living in the present moment.

 

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Happy Together: Using the Science of Positive Psychology to Build Love That Lasts

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Gretchen Rubin

Authors:  Suzann Pileggi Pawelski, James O. Pawelski

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Psychology, Self Improvement, Happiness

343 pages, published January 16, 2018

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Happy Together is written by Suzann Pileggi Pawelski and James O. Pawelski, a husband and wife team who specialize in the field of Positive Psychology.  In their book, the Pawelski present the concept of Aristotelian love, i.e. seeing the good in your partner and being motivated by that goodness to improve yourself, as the ideal in relationships.  Happy Together focuses on develop key habits for building and sustaining long-term love by promoting a healthy passion, prioritizing positive emotions, mindfully savoring experiences together, and seeking out strengths in each other.

 

Quotes 

The PERMA model of flourishing, for example, consists of five elements of a fulfilling life.  Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment.  Relationships, of course, are right at the center of PERMA.  Indeed, relationships may be the most important part of a happy and flourishing life.

 

My Take

As my friends and family are well aware, I am very interested in the topic of happiness and actively try to structure my life in a manner that will increase my happiness.  As such, I read a lot of books on the subject of happiness and was very interested in reading Happy Together after seeing it recommended by best-selling author (The Happiness Project, Happier at Home, Better than Before, The Four Tendencies) and happiness guru Gretchen Rubin (who has had a huge impact on the way I live my life).  I liked, but did not love, Happy Together.  When I read a book like this, I like to have a lot of practical tips as takeaways.  There were a few that I will try to implement.  Namely, the importance of taking time to savor positive experiences in your relationship and expressing gratitude to your partner on a regular basis with the emphasis on them.  I also liked a metaphor that the authors use of a superpower cape with a red side and a green side.  The red side helps you fix problems in your relationship while the green side helps you engage in actions that improve a relationship by creating and sustaining happiness, satisfaction and enjoyment in a relationship.  It has inspired me to try to focus on the green side of the cape!

 

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212. Pandemic

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Scott Nelson

Author:  Sonia Shah

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Science, Health, Medicine, History, Public Policy

288 pages, published February 16, 2016

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Pandemic recounts the history of pandemics in the world with particular focus on the nature and spread of cholera, Ebola, SARS and AIDS.  It then explores the decline in animal species and spread of animals to all corners of the world and how that can lead to increased risk for human populations, what types of pathogens are likely to cause a global pandemic in the near future and what we can do to prevent it.

 

Quotes 

“In the nineteenth century, cholera struck the most modern, prosperous cities in the world, killing rich and poor alike, from Paris and London to New York City and New Orleans. In 1836, it felled King Charles X in Italy; in 1849, President James Polk in New Orleans; in 1893, the composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in St. Petersburg.”

 

“But far from being a harmless source of fertilizer, dog feces is both an environmental contaminant (and is classified as such by the Environmental Protection Agency) and a source of pathogens that can infect people. Like human excreta, dog poo teems with pathogenic microbes, such as strains of E. coli, roundworms, and other parasites. One of the most common parasitic infections in Americans is the result of their exposure to dog feces. The dog roundworm Toxocara canis is common in dogs and, because of the ubiquity of dog feces, widespread in the environment. It can contaminate soil and water for years.”

 

“the global bonfire of fossil fuels will heighten the likelihood of pandemics on its own, in a way that is likely to be even more consequential than all of its contributing factors put together.”

 

“Globally, 12 percent of bird species, 23 percent of mammals, and 32 percent of amphibians are at risk of extinction. Since 1970, global populations of these creatures have declined by nearly 30 percent. Just how these losses will shift the distribution of microbes between and across species, pushing some over the threshold, remains to be seen.”

 

“As avian diversity declined in the United States, specialist species like woodpeckers and rails disappeared, while generalist species like American robins and crows boomed. (Populations of American robins have grown by 50 to 100 percent over the past twenty-five years.)48 This reordering of the composition of the local bird population steadily increased the chances that the virus would reach a high enough concentration to spill over into humans.”

 

“a single opossum, through grooming, destroyed nearly six thousand ticks a week.”

 

My Take

Pandemic is a fascinating, but chilling, read.  While human beings have largely conquered many ravaging diseases of the past (small pox, typhus, polio), we are still at risk from old and new diseases, especially in our global age where air travel can quickly spread a disease from its point of origin to all corners of the globe.  I also found the discussion of animal sources of disease to be intriguing.  Another reason not to have a dog or cat!

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206. The Alice Network

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Kate Quinn

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, World War II

520 pages, published June 6, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The Alice Network tells two parallel stories.  The first takes place in 1947 and focuses on college girl and American Charlie St. Clair who is pregnant, unmarried, and at a crossroads in her life.  She travels to England to enlist the help of the grizzled and standoffish former English spy Eve Gardiner in a desperate bid to find her cousin Rose who disappeared during World War II.  Also along for the ride is Eve’s assistant Finn, a handsome, and magnetic Scottish ex-con who Charlie finds her falling for.  The second story spotlights Eve’s time during World War I when she was part of the “Alice Network,” a group of female spies stationed primarily in France.  We follow the trio’s journey as they uncover the truth about Rose and Eve’s past during both of the World Wars and come to terms with themselves and each other.

 

Quotes 

“What did it matter if something scared you, when it simply had to be done?”

 

‘To tell the truth, much of this special work we do is quite boring. I think that’s why women are good as it. Our lives are already boring. We jump an Uncle Edward’s offer because we can’t stand the thought of working in a file room anymore, or teaching a class full of runny-nosed children their letters. Then we discover this job is deadly dull as well, but at least there’s the enlivening thought that someone might put a Luger to the back of our necks. It’s still better than shooting ourselves, which we know we’re going to do if we have to type one more letter or pound one more Latin verb into a child’s ivory skull.”

 

“Hope was such a painful thing, far more painful than rage.”

 

“It is facile to condemn the French for giving in to the Nazis too easily when many French citizens would have still borne the horrendous scars of the first occupation, would have clearly remembered having to stand back while German sentries robbed them of everything but the nearly inedible ration bread because the only alternative was to be arrested, beaten, or shot. The French survived not one but two brutal occupations in a span of less than forty years, and deserve more credit for their flinty endurance than they receive.”

 

“You think there are no idiots in the intelligence business, that your superiors are all brilliant men who understand the game? […] This business is rife with idiots. They play with lives and they play badly, and when people like you die as a result, they shrug and as ‘Risks have to be taken in wartime.’ You’d really march yourself into a firing squad for that kind of fool?”

 

My Take

While The Alice Network is an enjoyable read in the spy/World War genre, I found The Nightingale to be a much better book.  The characters fell a bit flat and the plot could have been more intriguing.  Not a bad book by any means.  There is just better material about World War I and II out there.

 

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203. Spoonbenders

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Author:   Daryl Gregory

Genre:  Fiction, Humor

416 pages, published June 27, 2017

Reading Format:  Audiobook

Summary

Spoonbenders tells the story of the Telemachus family.  Teddy Telemachus is a charming con man with a gift for sleight of hand and some shady underground associates. In need of money, Teddy tricks his way into a classified government study about telekinesis and its possible role in intelligence gathering. There he meets the lovely Maureen McKinnon, a genuine psychic with enormous power.  The two marry, have three gifted children, and become the Amazing Telemachus Family, performing astounding feats across the country. Irene is a human lie detector. Frankie can move objects with his mind. And Buddy, the youngest, can see the future.  Decades later, the Telemachuses are not so amazing. Irene is a single mom ability always discern whether someone is telling the truth makes it hard to hold down a job, let alone have a relationship. Frankie’s in serious debt to his dad’s old mob associates.  Buddy has completely withdrawn into himself and inexplicably begun digging a hole in the backyard.  Irene’s son Matty has just had his first out-of-body experience.  The problems are resolved with some twists, turns, affection and humor.

 

Quotes 

“The problem with getting old was that each day had to compete with the thousands of others gone by.  How wonderful would a day have to be to win such a beauty contest? To even make it into the finals? Never mind that memory rigged the game, airbrushed the flaws from its contestants, while the present had to shuffle into the spotlight unaided, all pockmarked with mundanities and baggy with annoyances.”

 

“Then they were off again, across the unbroken sprawl of Chicagoland, a single city made up of interlocking strip malls, decorated at random intervals by WELCOME TO signs with defiantly rural names—River Forest, Forest Glen, Glenview—and enough dales and groves and elms and oaks to populate Middle Earth. The flatlanders had been especially determined to tag every bump of land with a “Heights” or “Ridge.” Pity the poor hobbit trying to find anything to climb in the town of Mount Prospect.”

 

“They piled into Irene’s Festiva, a car that won the award for most ironic distance between name and driving experience.”

 

“Smocks were the official uniform of those hanging on to the bottom rungs of the economic ladder; a parachute that would never open.”

 

“Belief that one was hard to fool was the one quality shared by all suckers.”

 

“Broke up. With Led, her almost husband and with other boyfriends, the phrase felt right; she broke them off from her, let them fall away like the spent stage of an Apollo rocket. She was stronger without them and never looked back.”

 

“Duty eats free will for breakfast.”

 

“Everything he knows about the whirlpool of past and future tells him that the universe does not owe you anything, and even if it did, it would never pay up.”

 

“I can’t believe this is allowed by state law. You can’t just put a pile of shaved beef—” “Italian beef,” she said. “Italian beef on top of a sausage—” “Italian sausage.” “Right, and then they just let you eat it?” “In Chicago,” she said, “meat is a condiment.”

 

“You know why I’m raising you kids to be Cubs fans?” Buddy shakes his head. “Any mook can be a fan of a winning team,” Dad says. “It takes character to root for the doomed. You show up, you watch your boys take their swings, and you watch ’em go down in flames—every damn day. You think Jack Brickhouse is an optimist? No-siree. He may sound happy, but he’s dying inside. There’s no seat in Wrigley Field for a God damn Pollyanna. You root-root-root for the home team, and they lose anyway. It teaches you how the world works, kid. Sure, start every spring with your hopes and dreams, but in the universe in which we live, you will be mathematically eliminated by Labor Day. Count on it.”

 

“The thing about skeletons was, you never knew how much space they were taking up in the closet until you got rid of them.”

 

“She’d discovered a fact of modern life by standing at a cash register for hours: mindless work could nevertheless fill up your mind, like radio static. If she stayed busy—pushing canned goods down the chute with her left hand while busily ten-keying the prices with her right, making small talk, sorting cash—then she didn’t have to think about what day it was, what time certain flights landed, or how she was going to die alone.”

 

“He lit the cigarette and inhaled gratefully.

“You want one?”

“No thanks. Had a touch of the cancer a few years ago.”

“What kind?”

“Prostate.”

“I’m not asking you to smoke it in your ass.”

 

My Take

I found Spoonbenders to be a very enjoyable audiobook.  Author Daryl Gregory has a great writing style and has created a rag tag family, some with psychic powers and some without, of eccentrics.  Their ups and downs and quests for love and acceptance hold your attention in this pleasant and humorous diversion.

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201. Career of Evil

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Robert Galbraith (pseudonym for J.K. Rowling)

Genre:  Fiction, Crime, Thriller, Suspense

492 pages, published October 20, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Career of Evil is the third book in the Cormoran Strike crime thriller series, written by J.K. Rowling under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.  Private Detective Strike returns with his assistant Robin Ellacott, in a mystery based around soldiers returning from war.  When a mysterious package is delivered to Robin Ellacott, she is horrified to discover that it contains a woman’s severed leg.  Strike surmises that there are four people from his past who he thinks could be responsible.  With the police focusing on the one suspect Strike does not think is the perpetrator, he and Robin take matters into their own hands, and delve into the dark and twisted worlds of the other three men.

 

Quotes 

“The story, like all the best stories, split like an amoeba, forming an endless series of new stories and opinion pieces and speculative articles, each spawning its own counter chorus.”

 

“Except that once you had broken up, it was much easier to do so again. He ought to know. How many times had he and Charlotte split? How many times had their relationship fallen to pieces, and how many times had they tried to reassemble the wreckage? There had been more cracks than substance by the end: they had lived in a spider’s web of fault lines, held together by hope, pain and delusion.”

 

“You could find beauty nearly anywhere if you stopped to look for it, but the battle to get through the days made it easy to forget that this totally cost-free luxury existed.”

 

“He possessed a finely honed sense for the strange and the wicked. He had seen things all through his childhood that other people preferred to imagine happened only in films.”

 

“Nobody who had not lived there would ever understand that London was a country unto itself. They might resent it for the fact that it held more power and money than any other British city, but they could not understand that poverty carried its own flavour there, where everything cost more, where the relentless distinctions between those who had succeeded and those who had not were constantly, painfully visible.”

 

“Being sworn at by random people was the price you paid for living in London.”

 

“Hell’s built on regret.”

 

“This, he thought, was how women roped you in. They added you to lists and forced you to confirm and commit. They impressed upon you that if you didn’t show up a plate of hot food would go begging, a gold-backed chair would remain unoccupied, a cardboard place name would sit shamefully upon a table, announcing your rudeness to the world.”

 

“Strike knew how deeply ingrained was the belief that the evil conceal their dangerous predilections for violence and domination. When they wear them like bangles for all to see, the gullible populace laughs, calls it a pose, or finds it strangely attractive.”

 

“Those who did not know the ocean well forgot its solidity, its brutality.”

 

My Take

Career of Evil is the third book in J.K. Rowling’s series based on Detective Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin Ellacott.  I had previously enjoyed The Cuckoo’s Calling and The Silkworm, mostly because of the character development and relationship of Strike and Robin, rather than the central crime/mystery.  I found the same to be true with Career of Evil, although I found it to be a slightly lesser book than the first two installments.  However, I still recommend it and plan on reading the fourth book in the series when it is published.

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195. Moriarity

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Michael Koss

Author:   Anthony Horowitz

Genre:  Fiction, Crime, Suspense, Mystery

285 pages, published December 9, 2014

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Moriarty is author Anthony Horowitz’s second entry into the Sherlock Holmes genre, following up on The House of Silk.   The books are not related and even have different characters.  Notably, there is no Sherlock Holmes in Moriarity other than as a remote figure.   The stand in for Holmes is Inspector Athelney Jones, a Scotland Yard detective and devoted student of Holmes’s methods, whom Conan Doyle introduced in The Sign of Four.

 

Quotes 

“Give him his due: this is a man who has always faced his fears square on, whether they be a deadly swamp adder, a hideous poison that might drive you to insanity or a hell-hound set loose on the moors. Holmes has done many things that are, frankly, baffling – but he has never run away.”

 

“Robert Pinkerton used to say that a lie was like a dead coyote. The longer you leave it, the more it smells.”

 

“It seemed that there was nothing you could find here that was not expensive and very little that was actually necessary.”

 

My Take

I would have given Moriarty three stars, but the big twist at the end deserved an extra half star.  I enjoyed this take on the Sherlock Holmes genre more than The House of Silk.  However, both pale in comparison to Magpie Murders which is the best mystery by Anthony Horowitz that I have read.  If you are a mystery devotee and a fan of Sherlock Holmes, then you will enjoy Moriarty.

 

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194. The Silkworm

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling)

Genre:  Fiction, Crime, Mystery, Thriller

455 pages, published June 24, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The second in J.K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike’s detective series (the first was The Cuckoo’s Calling which I really enjoyed), The Silkworm picks up where the first book left off.  We rejoin Strike and his talented assistant Robin Ellacott in a new mystery.  Strike is hired by Leonora Quine to find her missing husband, novelist Owen Quine.  As Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine’s disappearance than his wife realizes. The novelist had just completed a poisonous book portraying many of his friends and acquaintances in a harsh light which means that there are plenty of motives for murder and a web of deceit and avarice for Strike to untangle and solve.

 

Quotes 

“The whole world’s writing novels, but nobody’s reading them.”                       

 

“We don’t love each other; we love the idea we have of each other. Very few humans understand this or can bear to contemplate it. They have blind faith in their own powers of creation. All love, ultimately, is self-love.”

 

“Though they spent so much time trying to make themselves beautiful, you were not supposed to admit to women that beauty mattered.”

 

“…writers are a savage breed, Mr. Strike. If you want life-long friendship and selfless camaraderie, join the army and learn to kill.  If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels.”

 

“Strike had always marvelled at the strange sanctity conferred upon celebrities by the public, even while the newspapers denigrated, hunted or hounded them. No matter how many famous people were convicted of rape or murder, still the belief persisted, almost pagan in its intensity: not him. It couldn’t be him. He’s famous.”

 

“In the depths of his tiredness, surrounded by these blank, sheep-like visages, he found himself pondering the accidents that had brought all of them into being. Every birth was, viewed properly, mere chance. With a hundred million sperm swimming blindly through the darkness, the odds against a person becoming themselves were staggering.”

 

“Keeping busy was the only answer: action had always been his drug of choice.”

 

“She emanated that aura of grandeur that replaces sexual allure in the successful older woman.”

 

“I said that the greatest female writers, with almost no exceptions, have been childless. A fact. And I have said that women generally, by virtue of their desire to mother, are incapable of the necessarily single-minded focus anyone must bring to the creation of literature, true literature. I don’t retract a word. That is a fact.”

 

My Take

The Silkworm provides a new murder mystery for Private Detective Cormoran Strike and his Assistant/Partner Robin Ellacott to solve.  After thoroughly enjoying the fantastically creative world created by J.K. Rowling in the Harry Potter series, I was happy to see that her writing talent translates to Detective/Crime Thriller genre.  While the details of the mystery are not the most gripping, her two lead characters of Cormoran and Robin are so richly drawn, nuanced, and compelling that I loved spending time with them in the gritty world of modern day London.  The solution to the book’s central mystery was almost beside the point.

 

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