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83. Modern Romance

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  

Author:   Aziz Ansari

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Humor

288 pages, published June 16, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

With the advent of smart phones, texting, social media, and on-line dating, things have changed dramatically in the past few decades.  Single people today have more romantic options than at any point in human history, but are often more frustrated as they try to find Mr. or Mrs. Right.  In Modern Romance, comic Aziz Ansari takes a look at modern day courting and relationships.  Ansari teamed up with NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg and consulted with some of the world’s leading social scientists. They designed a massive research project, including hundreds of interviews and focus groups conducted everywhere from Tokyo to Buenos Aires to Wichita.  They analyzed behavioral data and surveys and created their own online research forum on Reddit, which drew thousands of messages.  The result is a unique book which combines social science and humor.

 

Quotes

“Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide: Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort, give me edge. Give me novelty, give me familiarity. Give me predictability, give me surprise. And we think it’s a given, and toys and lingerie are going to save us with that. Ideally, though, we’re lucky, and we find our soul mate and enjoy that life-changing mother lode of happiness. But a soul mate is a very hard thing to find.”

 

“Like most fedora wearers, he had a lot of inexplicable confidence.”

 

“When I’ve really been in love with someone, it’s not because they looked a certain way or liked a certain TV show or a certain cuisine. It’s more because when I watched a certain TV show or ate a certain cuisine with them, it was the most fun thing ever.”

 

“We want something that’s very passionate, or boiling, from the get-go. In the past, people weren’t looking for something boiling; they just needed some water. Once they found it and committed to a life together, they did their best to heat things up. Now, if things aren’t boiling, committing to marriage seems premature.”

 

“As a medium, it’s safe to say, texting facilitates flakiness and rudeness and many other personality traits that would not be expressed in a phone call or an in-person interaction.”

 

“No matter how many options we have, the real challenge is figuring out how to evaluate them.”

 

“That’s the thing about the Internet: It doesn’t simply help us find the best thing out there; it has helped to produce the idea that there is a best thing and, if we search hard enough, we can find it. And in turn there are a whole bunch of inferior things that we’d be foolish to choose.”

 

“This kind of rigor goes into a lot of my decision making. Whether it’s where I’m eating, where I’m traveling, or, god forbid, something I’m buying, I feel compelled to do a lot of research to make sure I’m getting the best.  At certain times, though, this “I need the best” mentality can be debilitating. I wish I could just eat somewhere that looks good and be happy with my choice. But I can’t. The problem is that I know somewhere there is a perfect meal for me and I have to do however much research I can to find it.”

 

“Finding someone today is probably more complicated and stressful than it was for previous generations—but you’re also more likely to end up with someone you are really excited about.”

 

“There is no official guidebook anywhere on texting yet, but a cultural consensus has slowly formed in regard to texts. Some basic rules:  Don’t text back right away. You come off like a loser who has nothing going on.  If you write to someone, don’t text them again until you hear from them.  The amount of text you write should be of a similar length to what the other person has written to you. Carrying this through, if your messages are in blue and the other person’s messages are green, if there is a shit ton more blue than green in your conversation, this person doesn’t give a shit about you.  The person who receives the last message in a convo WINS!”

 

“We repeatedly found that one text can change the whole dynamic of a budding relationship. … When I spoke with Sherry Turkle about this, she said that texting, unlike an in-person conversation, is not a forgiving medium for mistakes. In a face-to-face conversation, people can read each other’s body language, facial expressions, and tones of voice. If you say something wrong, you have the cues to sense it and you have a moment to recover or rephrase before it makes a lasting impact. Even on the phone you can hear a change in someone’s voice or a pause to let you know how they are interpreting what you’ve said. In text, your mistake just sits there marinating on the other person’s screen, leaving a lasting record of your ineptitude and bozoness.”

 

“Unlike phone calls, which bind two people in real-time conversations that require at least some shared interpretation of the situation, communication by text has no predetermined temporal sequencing and lots of room for ambiguity. Did I just use the phrase “predetermined temporal sequencing”? Fuck yeah, I did.”

 

“The most popular time to sext is Tuesday between 10:00 A.M. and noon. Yes, we looked this up twice. Strange!”

 

“Sheena Iyengar, a Columbia University professor who specializes in research on choice, put it to me another way: “People are not products,” she said bluntly. “But, essentially, when you say, ‘I want a guy that’s six foot tall and has blah, blah, blah characteristics,’ you’re treating a human being like one.”

 

“After the rings, the priest should just say, “Enjoy it, bing-bongs. Due to our brain’s tendency toward hedonic adaptation, you won’t feel quite this giddy in a few years. All right, where’s the pigs in a blanket? I’m outta here.”

 

“Want to know what’s filling up the phones of nearly every single woman? It’s this: “Hey,” “Hey!” Heyyy!!” “Hey what’s going?” “Wsup,” “Wsup!” “What’s going on?” “Whatcha up to?”

 

“True love? This guy has a job and a decent mustache. Lock it down, girl.”

 

“This change in communication may have some side effects, though. In her book Alone Together, MIT social psychologist Sherry Turkle convincingly makes the case that younger people are so used to text-based communications, where they have time to gather their thoughts and precisely plan what they are going to say, that they are losing their ability to have spontaneous conversation. She argues that the muscles in our brain that help us with spontaneous conversation are getting less exercise in the text-filled world, so our skills are declining. When we did the large focus group where we split the room by generation—kids on the left, parents on the right—a strange thing happened. Before the show started, we noticed that the parents’ side of the room was full of chatter. People were talking to one another and asking how they had ended up at the event and getting to know people. On the kids’ side, everyone was buried in their phones and not talking to anyone around them. It made me wonder whether our ability and desire to interact with strangers is another muscle that risks atrophy in the smartphone world.”

 

My Take

As an avid viewer of Parks and Rec and Master of None, I have enjoyed Aziz Ansari’s humor for many years and was curious about this book. As an older Gen X-er who met my husband in Law School and has been happily married since 1994, I have never engaged in the world described in Modern Romance and am very grateful to avoid it.  As described by Ansari, on-line dating, communicating with potential romantic interests by texting, and all of the dating and hook up apps that singles use today seem overwhelming and a huge time suck.  After reading this informative and often funny book, it is impressive that any young people actually meet a significant other and make the commitment to marriage.

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82. Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  

Author:   Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton

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

224 pages, published May 14, 2013

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Professors Dunn and Norton delve into behavioral science research to explain how money can buy happiness—if you follow the five core principles of smart spending:

 

  1.  Buy Experiences:  Most Americans describe owning a home as an essential component of the American dream. But recent happiness research suggests that home ownership is far from dreamy.  Material things (from beautiful homes to fancy pens) turn out to provide less happiness than experiential purchases (like trips, concerts, and special meals).  Whether you’re spending $1 or $200,000, buying experiences rather than material goods can inoculate you against buyer’s remorse.

 

  1.  Make It a Treat:  Many residents of London have never visited Big Ben.  What stops them? When something wonderful is always available, people are less inclined to appreciate it. Limiting our access to the things we like best may help to “re-virginize” us, renewing our capacity for pleasure.  Rather than advocating wholesale self-denial (say, giving up coffee completely), we’ll demonstrate the value of turning our favorite things back into treats (making that afternoon latte a special indulgence rather than a daily necessity.

 

  1.  Buy Time:  By permitting us to outsource our most dreaded tasks, from scrubbing toilets to cleaning gutters, money can transform the way we spend our time, freeing us to pursue our passions.  Yet wealthier individuals do not spend their time in happier ways on a daily basis; thus they fail to use their money to buy themselves happier time.  When people focus on their time rather than their money, they act like scientists of happiness, choosing activities that promote their well-being.  For companies, this principle entails thinking about compensation in a broader way, rewarding employees not only with money but with time.

 

  1.  Pay Now, Consume Later:  In the age of the iPad, products are available instantly and our wallets are lined with plastic instead of paper.  Digital technology and credit cards have encouraged us to adopt a “consume not and pay later” shopping mind-set.  By putting this powerful principle into reverse—by paying up front and delaying consumption—you can buy more happiness, even as you spend less money.  Because delaying consumption allows spenders to reap the pleasure of anticipation without the buzzkill of reality, vacations provide the most happiness before they occur.

 

  1.  Invest in Others:  New research demonstrates that spending money on others provides a bigger happiness boost than spending money on yourself.  And this principle holds in an extraordinary range of circumstances, from a Canadian college student purchasing a scarf for her mother to a Ugandan woman buying lifesaving malaria medication for a friend. The benefits of giving emerge among children before the age of two, and are detectable even in samples of saliva.  Investing in others can make individuals feel healthier and wealthier—and can even help people win at dodge ball.

 

Quotes

“Looking back on their past decisions about whether to purchase experiences, 83 percent of people sided with Mark Twain, reporting that their biggest single regret was one of inaction, of passing up the chance to buy an experience when the opportunity came along.”

 

“The Big Ben Problem suggests that introducing a limited time window may encourage people to seize opportunities for treats. Imagine you’ve just gotten a gift certificate for a piece of delicious cake and a beverage at a high-end French pastry shop. Would you rather see the gift certificate stamped with an expiration date two months from today, or just three weeks from now? Faced with this choice, most people were happier with the two-month option, and 68 percent reported that they would use it before this expiration date.25 But when they received a gift certificate for a tasty pastry at a local shop, only 6 percent of people redeemed it when they were given a two-month expiration date, compared to 31 percent of people who were given the shorter three-week window. People given two months to redeem the certificate kept thinking they could do it later, creating another instance of the Big Ben Problem—and leading them to miss out on a delicious treat.  Several years ago, Best Buy reported gaining $43 million from gift certificates that went unredeemed, propelling some consumer advocates and policy makers to push for extended expiration dates. But this strategy will likely backfire. We may have more success at maximizing our happiness when treats are only available for a limited time.”

My Take

There a lot of practical advice in Happy Money that, if followed, is likely to make you happier.  In my life, I have long practiced “pay now, consume later,” especially with travel (which also involves spending on an experience, rather than a product).  For me, at least half the fun of a trip is the planning that goes into it.  I also really enjoy looking back on trips that I have taken in the past and have never regretted any money that I have spent on travel.  I am also a big fan of “make it a treat” and can personally attest to the happiness boost that results.  As a devoted student of happiness, I can unequivocally recommend Happy Money as a way to increase your happiness.

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74. Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Christopher Funk

Author:   Peter Diamandis

Genre:  Non Fiction, Science, Economics

400 pages, published February 21, 2012

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

In Abundance, tech entrepreneur turned philanthropist Peter Diamandis makes the case that the world is a lot better off than you think it is and that we are getting close to the time we will be able to meet and exceed the basic needs of every human being on earth.  Diamandis backs up this bold claim with extensive research and shows how four forces (exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion) are all helping to solve humanity’s biggest problems.  Abundance profiles many innovators doing amazing work including Larry Page, Steven Hawking, Dean Kamen, Daniel Kahneman, Elon Musk, Bill Joy, Stewart Brand, Jeff Skoll, Ray Kurzweil, Ratan Tata, and Craig Venter.   After discussing human needs by category—water, food, energy, healthcare, education, and freedom, Diamandis sets forth concrete targets for change and lays out a strategic roadmap for governments, industry and entrepreneurs to achieve these goals.

 

Quotes

“Quite simply, good news doesn’t catch our attention. Bad news sells because the amygdala is always looking for something to fear.”

 

“It’s incredible,” he says, “this moaning pessimism, this knee-jerk, things-are-going-downhill reaction from people living amid luxury and security that their ancestors would have died for. The tendency to see the emptiness of every glass is pervasive. It’s almost as if people cling to bad news like a comfort blanket.”

 

“Today Americans living below the poverty line are not just light-years ahead of most Africans; they’re light-years ahead of the wealthiest Americans from just a century ago. Today 99 percent of Americans living below the poverty line have electricity, water, flushing toilets, and a refrigerator; 95 percent have a television; 88 percent have a telephone; 71 percent have a car; and 70 percent even have air-conditioning. This may not seem like much, but one hundred years ago men like Henry Ford and Cornelius Vanderbilt were among the richest on the planet, but they enjoyed few of these luxuries.”

 

“I’ve got a hunk of gold and you have a watch. If we trade, then I have a watch and you have a hunk of gold. But if you have an idea and I have an idea, and we exchange them, then we both have two ideas. It’s nonzero.”

 

“Poverty was reduced more in the past fifty years than in the previous five hundred.”

“Teaching kids how to nourish their creativity and curiosity, while still providing a sound foundation in critical thinking, literacy and math, is the best way to prepare them for a future of increasingly rapid technological change.”

 

“The true measure of something’s worth is the hours it takes to acquire it.”

 

“Technology is a resource-liberating mechanism. It can make the once scarce the now abundant.”

 

“if everyone on Earth wants to live like a North American, then we’re going to need five planets’ worth of resources.”

 

“The negativity bias—the tendency to give more weight to negative information and experiences than positive ones—sure isn’t helping matters. Then there’s anchoring: the predilection for relying too heavily on one piece of information when making decisions. “When people believe the world’s falling apart,” says Kahneman, “it’s often an anchoring problem. At the end of the nineteenth century, London was becoming uninhabitable because of the accumulation of horse manure. People were absolutely panicked. Because of anchoring, they couldn’t imagine any other possible solutions. No one had any idea the car was coming and soon they’d be worrying about dirty skies, not dirty streets.”

 

“Today most poverty-stricken Americans have a television, telephone, electricity, running water, and indoor plumbing. Most Africans do not. If you transferred the goods and services enjoyed by those who live in California’s version of poverty to the average Somalian living on less than a $1.25 a day, that Somalian is suddenly fabulously rich.”

 

“Decentralized means learning cannot easily be curtailed by autocratic governments and is considerably more immune to socioeconomic upheaval.”

 

“A week’s worth of the New York Times contains more information than the average seventeenth-century citizen encountered in a lifetime.”

 

“If we were to forgo our television addiction for just one year, the world would have over a trillion hours of cognitive surplus to commit to share projects.”

 

“From the very beginning of time until the year 2003,” says Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, “humankind created five exabytes of digital information. An exabyte is one billion gigabytes—or a 1 with eighteen zeroes after it. Right now, in the year 2010, the human race is generating five exabytes of information every two days. By the year 2013, the number will be five exabytes produced every ten minutes … It’s no wonder we’re exhausted.”

 

“Abundance is not about providing everyone on this planet with a life of luxury—rather it’s about providing all with a life of possibility.”

 

“Nanotechnology has the potential to enhance human performance, to bring sustainable development for materials, water, energy, and food, to protect against unknown bacteria and viruses, and even to diminish the reasons for breaking the peace [by creating universal abundance].”

 

“Today mammography requires an expensive, large, stationary machine that takes a crude, two-dimensional picture. But imagine a ‘bra’ that has tiny X-ray pixel emitters on the top and X-ray sensors on the bottom. It’s self-contained, self-powered, has a 3G or Wi-Fi-enabled network, and can be shipped to a patient in a FedEx box. The patient puts on the bra, pushes a button, and the doctor comes online and starts talking: ‘Hi. All set to take your mammogram? Hold still.’ The X-ray pixels fire, the detectors assemble and transmit the image, and the doctor reads it on the spot. The patient ships back the package, and she’s done. With little time and little money.”

 

My Take

Abundance is my kind of book.  I have always been a “glass half full” person and it is encouraging to read an optimistic take on the future of the world.  So many people think that we live in terrible times and that things are getting worse.  Peter Diamandis repeatedly demonstrates that folly of that mindset and that things have never been better.  Not only is the world-wide poverty rate declining dramatically and rapidly, but there are a plethora of technological innovations coming our way that will make life better and more meaningful.  Abundance made me realize how good we have it now and excited for all of the future developments that are coming our way soon.

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73. The Husband’s Secret

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:   Heather Bohart

Author:   Liane Moriarty

Genre:  Fiction

396 pages, published July 30, 2013

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

The Husband’s Secret is a suspenseful novel that, as with many Liane Moriarity books, tells the intersecting stories of several Australian women.  The central character is Cecilia Fitzpatrick who, for all intents and purposes, seems to have it all.  She’s an incredibly successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, and a devoted wife and mother.  Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home.  However, when rummaging through the attic she discovers a letter that is only meant to be read upon her husband’s death.  She can’t help herself and reads it and discovers her husband’s secret.  Once she does, not only Cecelia and her family but many of others in her community, experience life changing repercussions.

 

Quotes

“This was how it could be done. This was how you lived with a terrible secret. You just did it. You pretended everything was fine. You ignored the deep, cramplike pain in your stomach. You somehow anesthetized yourself so that nothing felt that bad, but nothing felt that good either.”

 

“Her goodness had limits. She could have easily gone her whole life without knowing those limits, but now she knew exactly where they lay.”

 

“Falling in love was easy.  Anyone could fall.  It was holding on that was tricky.”

 

“All these years there had been a Tupperware container of bad language in her head, and now she opened it and all those crisp, crunchy words were fresh and lovely, ready to be used.”

 

“None of us ever know all the possible courses our lives could have, and maybe should have taken.”

 

“It’s all about our egos. She felt she was on the edge of understanding something important. They could fall in love with fresh, new people, or they could have the courage and humility to tear off some essential layer of themselves and reveal to each other a whole new level of otherness, a level far beyond what sort of music they liked. It seemed to her everyone had too much self-protective pride to truly strip down to their souls in front of their long-term partners. It was easier to pretend there was nothing more to know, to fall into an easygoing companionship. It was almost embarrassing to be truly intimate with your spouse; how could you watch someone floss one minute, and the next minute share your deepest passion or most ridiculous, trite little fears? It was almost easier to talk about that sort of thing before you’d shared a bathroom and a bank account and argued over the packing of the dishwasher.”

 

“Marriage was a form of insanity; love hovering permanently on the edge of aggravation.”

 

“Polly had arrived in the world outraged to discover that her sisters had gotten there before her.”

 

“The words “I´m sorry” felt like an insult. You said “I´m sorry” when you bumped against someone´s supermarket trolley. There need to be bigger words.”

 

“When you didn’t let a woman help, it was a way of keeping her at a distance, of letting her know that she wasn’t family, of saying I don’t like you enough to let you into my kitchen.”

 

“She was a far better mother when she had an audience.”

 

“Life would go back to being unendurable, except – and this was the worst part – she would in fact endure it, it wouldn’t kill her, she’d keep on living day after day after day, an endless loop of glorious sunrises and sunsets that Janie never got to see.”

 

My Take

The Husband’s Secret is the second book by Liane Moriarity that I read this year (the first was Big Little Lies).  Moriarity has a formula to her books.  She sets up several women with intersecting lives as her characters, spends the first part of the book alluding to an event while keeping some mystery about the details of the event, and then shows how the characters lives change in reaction to the event.  It’s a formula that works pretty well.  Moriarity creates interesting and well developed characters and locations and the element of mystery keeps you turning the pages.  I recommend The Husband’s Secret.  A great read while on vacation.

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70. Stories I Tell My Friends

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Rob Lowe

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Memoir, Movies

320 pages, published April 26, 2011

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary 

Stories I Tell My Friends is Rob Lowe’s memoir in which he tells stories about his fascinating life.  Lowe recounts the pain of his parents’ divorce as a child from the Midwest and tells how his life shifted when his mother moved to a counterculture Malibu of the mid-seventies where his neighbors and friends were Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez, and Sean Penn.  After he was cast in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders, Lowe soon became a teen idol and a member of the Brat Pack.  Lowe went on to a movie career with lots of ups and downs, moving to television when was cast as speechwriter Sam Seaborn in the iconic series The West Wing.

Quotes

“So I came to the realization: Nothing in life is unfair. It’s just life.”

 

“Fake confidence on the outside often trumps truthful turmoil on the inside.”

 

“The best part is not the biggest, it’s the one that’s most memorable.”

 

“They don’t really listen to speeches or talks. They absorb incrementally, through hours and hours of observation. The sad truth about divorce is that it’s hard to teach your kids about life unless you are living life with them: eating together, doing homework, watching Little League, driving them around endlessly, being bored with nothing to do, letting them listen while you do business, while you negotiate love and the frustrations and complications and rewards of living day in and out with your wife. Through this, they see how adults handle responsibility, honesty, commitment, jealousy, anger, professional pressures, and social interactions. Kids learn from whoever is around them the most.”

 

“I’m thinking of how unexpected and yet oddly preordained life can be. Events are upon you in an instant, unforseen and without warning, and often times marked with disappointment and tragedy, but equally often leading to a better understanding of the bittersweet truth of life.”

 

“To be counter to the culture, you are by definition willfully and actively ignoring the culture, i.e., reality. And when you ignore reality for too long, you begin to feel immune to, or above, the gravitational pull that binds everyone else. You are courting disaster.”

Read more

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68. Mr. Mercedes

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Stephen King

Genre:  Fiction, Crime, Thriller, Suspense

436 pages, published June 3, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary 

Mr. Mercedes, the first book in the Bill Hodges Trilogy by Stephen King, tells the story of a psychopathic serial killer nicknamed Mr. Mercedes after he intentionally plows through a crowd of people waiting for an unemployment fair to begin in a stolen Mercedes.  He escapes after killing eight people and wounding fifteen more.  Months later, retired cop Bill Hodges, who is still haunted by this unsolved crime, receives a crazed letter from someone who self-identifies as the “perk” and threatens more attacks.  Hodges takes the bait and starts conversing with Mr. Mercedes.  It soon becomes apparent that only Bill Hodges, with a couple of highly unlikely allies, can apprehend the killer before he strikes again in a bigger way.

Quotes

“Never tell a lie when you can tell the truth.”

 

“Every religion lies. Every moral precept is a delusion. Even the stars are a mirage. The truth is darkness, and the only thing that matters is making a statement before one enters it. Cutting the skin of the world and leaving a scar. That’s all history is, after all: scar tissue.”

 

“Hodges has read there are wells in Iceland so deep you can drop a stone down them and never hear the splash. He thinks some human souls are like that.”

 

“It’s easy—too easy—to either disbelieve or disregard someone you dislike.”

 

“Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master.”

 

“You know the three Ages of Man, don’t you?” Hodges asks. Pete shakes his head, grinning. “Youth, middle age, and you look fuckin terrific.”

 

“Any system created by the mind of man can be hacked by the mind of man.”

Read more

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60. A Thousand Pardons

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Jonathan Dee

Genre:  Fiction

214 pages, published March 12, 2013

Reading Format:  Book

Summary 

A Thousand Pardons tells the story of the Armsteads, who were once a privileged and loving couple, but have now reached a breaking point.  Ben, a partner in a prestigious law firm, has become unpredictable at work and withdrawn at home.  When Ben’s recklessness takes an alarming turn, everything the Armsteads have built together unravels, swiftly and spectacularly. Forced by necessity to go back to work, Helen finds a job in public relations and relocates with her adopted daughter Sara from their home in upstate New York to an apartment in Manhattan.  There, Helen discovers she has a rare gift which becomes indispensable in the world of image control:  She can convince arrogant men to publicly admit their mistakes which yields incredible results. Yet redemption is more easily granted in her professional life than in her personal one.  As she is confronted with the biggest case of her career, the fallout from her marriage, and Sara’s increasingly distant behavior, Helen must face the limits of accountability and her own capacity for forgiveness.

 

Quotes

“Have you ever been so bored by yourself that you are literally terrified? That is what it’s like for me every day. That is what it’s like for me sitting here, right now, right this second. It’s like a fucking death sentence, coming back to that house every night. I mean, no offense.”

“No offense?” Helen said. “It’s not that Helen herself is especially boring, I don’t mean that, or that some other woman might be more or less boring. It’s the situation. It’s the setup. It’s not you per se.”

 

“at some point, forgot to find anything else to want from life, and this had turned her into a boring person, a burden, a part of the upkeep, and she might have floated along mindlessly like that forever […] were it not for the fact that her lack of inner resources had driven her husband insane.”

 

“People are quick to judge,” she tells him, and “they are quick to condemn, but that’s mostly because their ultimate desire is to forgive.”

 

“They were at the very bloom of everything for which they felt destined and everything that others would begrudge them.”

 

“All that survived of his old life was the disgrace of its end, and there was something almost comfortable about that disgrace, about the burden of it; it seemed to be what he’d been courting all along.”

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57. Joyland

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Stephen King

Genre:  Fiction, Thiller

283 pages, published June 4, 2013

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary 

Joyland takes place in 1973 at a North Carolina amusement park which was the site of a vicious murder of a young woman in the “Haunted House.”  Devin Jones, a student at the University of New Hampshire, takes a summer job at Joyland in North Carolina and is told by the resident fortune teller that he will meet two children that summer, a girl with a red hat and a boy with a dog, and that one of them has The Sight.  Jones becomes close to Annie, a single mother, and her disabled son Mike.  Devin finds that he has a talent for “wearing the fur,” Joyland-talk for portraying Howie the Happy Hound, Joyland’s mascot.  One day, he saves a young girl in a red hat from choking on a park hot dog.  Devin later discovers that Mike is the child with “The Sight.”  Devin and his friends start investigating a string of unsolved murders that they believe are related to the Joyland murder.  It all comes together on a dark and stormy night at Joyland.

Quotes

“When it comes to the past, everyone writes fiction.”

 

“This is a badly broken world, full of wars and cruelty and senseless tragedy.  Every human being who inhabits it is served his or her portion of unhappiness and wake up nights.”

 

“All I can say is what you already know: some days are treasure. Not many, but I think in almost every life there are a few. That was one of mine, and when I’m blue — when life comes down on me and everything looks tawdry and cheap, the way Joyland Avenue did on a rainy day — I go back to it, if only to remind myself that life isn’t always a butcher’s game. Sometimes the prizes are real.  Sometimes they are precious.”

 

“I’m not sure anybody ever gets completely over their first love, and that still rankles.  Part of me still wants to know what was wrong with me.  What I was lacking.”

 

“When you’re twenty-one, life is a roadmap. It’s only when you get to be twenty-five or so that you begin to suspect that you’ve been looking at the map upside down, and not until you’re forty are you entirely sure. By the time you’re sixty, take it from me, you’re fucking lost.”

 

“My father had taught me – mostly by example – that if a man wanted to be in charge of his life, he had to be in charge of his problems.”

 

“The last good time always comes, and when you see the darkness creeping toward you, you hold on to what was bright and good. You hold on for dear life.”

 

“Young women and young men grow up, but old women and old men just grow older and surer they’ve got right on their side.”

 

“Pops gave him a cool stare that settled Tom down – a thing not always easy to do. “Son, do you know what history is?”  “Uh…stuff that happened in the past?”  “Nope,” he said, trying on his canvas change-belt. “History is the collective and ancestral shit of the human race, a great big and ever growing pile of crap.  Right now, we’re standin at the top of it, but pretty soon we’ll be buried under the doodoo of generations yet to come.  That’s why your folks’ clothes look so funny in old photographs, to name but a single example.  And, as someone who’s destined to buried beneath the shit of your children and grandchildren, I think you should be just a leetle more forgiving.”

 

“We could see other fires–great leaping bonfires as well as cooking fires–all the way down the beach to the twinkling metropolis of Joyland. They made a lovely chain of burning jewelry.  Such fires are probably illegal in the twenty-first century; the powers that be have a way of outlawing many beautiful things made by ordinary people.  I don’t know why that should be, I only know it is.”

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55. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Charles Duhigg

Genre:  Non Fiction, Self Improvement

286 pages, published February 28, 2012

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary 

In The Power of Habit, New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg explains why habits exist and how they can be changed by seeking to understanding human nature and its potential for transformation.   The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding that habits work through a Habit Loop, a neurological pattern that governs any habit.  It consists of three elements: a cue, a routine, and a reward.  Duhigg also looks at how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death.  He show us that the right habits were essential to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

Quotes

“Change might not be fast and it isn’t always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped.”

 

“Small wins are a steady application of a small advantage.”

 

 “Typically, people who exercise, start eating better and become more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family.  They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed.  Exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change.”

 

“Self-discipline predicted academic performance more robustly than did IQ. Self-discipline also predicted which students would improve their grades over the course of the school year, whereas IQ did not.… Self-discipline has a bigger effect on academic performance than does intellectual talent.”

 

“Willpower isn’t just a skill. It’s a muscle, like the muscles in your arms or legs, and it gets tired as it works harder, so there’s less power left over for other things.”

 

“As people strengthened their willpower muscles in one part of their lives—in the gym, or a money management program—that strength spilled over into what they ate or how hard they worked. Once willpower became stronger, it touched everything.”

 

“Champions don’t do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the other team to react. They follow the habits they’ve learned.”

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51. The Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Shonda Rhimes

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Memoir, Self-Improvement

336 pages, published November 10, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary 

On Thanksgiving Day, 2013, Shonda Rhymes, the uber-talented and successful creator of Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, How to Get Away With Murder, told her sister about some amazing invitations that she had received.  Her sister’s response, “Who cares?  You’re just going to say no anyway.  You never say yes to anything,” touched a nerve in Shonda and forced her to re-examine her approach to life.  She then decided to start saying yes, even when it scared her and took her far outside of her comfort zone.  The results were incredible.  She shared a box at the Kennedy Center with President Obama and the First Lady, posed for magazine covers, gave a commencement speech at her alma matter Dartmouth College, stopped everything when her children wanted to play, and most impressively, lost over 120 pounds.

 

Quotes

“Lucky implies I didn’t do anything. Lucky implies something was given to me. Lucky implies that I was handed something I did not earn, that I did not work hard for. Gentle reader, may you never be lucky. I am not lucky. You know what I am?  I am smart, I am talented, I take advantage of the opportunities that come my way and I work really, really hard.  Don’t call me lucky.  Call me a badass.”

 

“Losing yourself does not happen all at once.  Losing yourself happens one no at a time.”

 

“You can quit a job. I can’t quit being a mother. I’m a mother forever.  Mothers are never off the clock, mothers are never on vacation. Being a mother redefines us, reinvents us, destroys and rebuilds us. Being a mother brings us face-to-face with ourselves as children, with our mothers as human beings, with our darkest fears of who we really are.  Being a mother requires us to get it together or risk messing up another person forever.  Being a mother yanks our hearts out of our bodies and attaches them to our tiny humans and sends them out into the world, forever hostages.”

 

“You know what happens when all of your dreams come true? Nothing. I realized a very simple truth: that success, fame, having all my dreams come true would not fix or improve me, it wasn’t an instant potion for personal growth.”

 

“You just have to keep moving forward. You just have to keep doing something, seizing the next opportunity, staying open to trying something new. It doesn’t have to fit your vision of the perfect job or the perfect life. Perfect is boring, and dreams are not real. Just . . . DO.”

 

“They tell you:  Follow your dreams. Listen to your spirit. Change the world. Make your mark. Find your inner voice and make it sing. Embrace failure. Dream. Dream and dream big. As a matter of fact, dream and don’t stop dreaming until your dream comes true.  I think that’s crap.  I think a lot of people dream. And while they are busy dreaming, the really happy people, the really successful people, the really interesting, powerful, engaged people?  Are busy doing.”

 

“There is no list of rules. There is one rule. The rule is: there are no rules. Happiness comes from living as you need to, as you want to. As your inner voice tells you to. Happiness comes from being who you actually are instead of who you think you are supposed to be. Being traditional is not traditional anymore. It’s funny that we still think of it that way. Normalize your lives, people. You don’t want a baby? Don’t have one. I don’t want to get married? I won’t. You want to live alone? Enjoy it. You want to love someone? Love someone. Don’t apologize. Don’t explain. Don’t ever feel less than. When you feel the need to apologize or explain who you are, it means the voice in your head is telling you the wrong story. Wipe the slate clean. And rewrite it. No fairy tales. Be your own narrator. And go for a happy ending. One foot in front of the other. You will make it.”

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