Posts

, , , ,

276. People of the Book

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Boulder Librarian

Author:   Geraldine Brooks

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery

372 pages, published October 1, 2008

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

People of the Book tells the story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the earliest Jewish volumes ever to be illuminated with images.  It begins in 1996 when Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, is offered the exclusive job of analyzing and conserving of the Haggadah which has been rescued from Serb shelling during the Bosnian war.  Intermixed with Hannah’s analysis is the history of the Haggadah at different points in time which trace the book’s journey from its salvation back to its creation which also shines a spotlight on the history of the Jewish people in Europe throughout the centuries.

Quotes 

“Book burnings. Always the forerunners.  Heralds of the stake, the ovens, the mass graves.”

 

“We were too intelligent, too cynical for war. Of course, you don’t have to be stupid and primitive to die a stupid, primitive death.”

 

“…The hagaddah came to Sarajevo for a reason. It was here to test us, to see if there were people who could see that what united us was more than what divided us. That to be a human being matters more than to be a Jew or a Muslim, Catholic or Orthodox.”

 

“I asked once, and the library assistant told me there were more than a hundred thousand books there, and more than sixty million pages of documents. It’s a good number, I think: ten pages for every person who died. A kind of monument in paper for people who have no gravestones.”

 

“I had to remind myself that Islam had once swept north as far as the gates of Vienna; that when the haggadah had been made, the Muslims’ vast empire was the bright light of the Dark Ages, the one place where science and poetry still flourished, where Jews, tortured and killed by Christians, could find a measure of peace.”

 

“…the book has survived the same human disaster over and over again. Think about it. You’ve got a society where people tolerate difference, like Spain in the Convivencia, and everything’s humming along: creative, prosperous. Then somehow this fear, this hate, this need to demonize ‘the other’–it just sort of rears up and smashes the whole society. Inquisition, Nazis, extremist Serb nationalists…same old, same old.”

 

“It did not even occur to David to consult Ruti herself about this, or any other matter. Had he done so, he would have been most surprised by the result. He did not realize it, but his love for his daughter marched hand in hand with a kind of contempt for her. He saw his daughter as a kind-hearteed, dutiful, but vaguely pitiable soul. David, like many people, had made the mistake of confusing “meek” with “weak.” 

My Take

I enjoyed People of the Book and learned a lot about Jewish history (which translates to how badly the Jews have been treated throughout history).  Author Geraldine Brooks weaves an engrossing tale that brings history to life.

/by
, , , , , ,

275. Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Jackie Funk

Author:   Michael Pollan

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

152 pages, published December 29, 2010

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

The title of Food Rules describes its content perfectly.  In this short book Michael Pollan, the author of many best-selling books on food (including The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food; both of which I read and enjoyed) offers the reader practical advice on what to eat and what not to eat.  His main advice is to “eat food, mostly plants, not too much.”  The book elaborates on each part of this guidance with enough explanation to understand the reason behind the recommendation.

Quotes 

“Populations eating a remarkably wide range of traditional diets generally don’t suffer from these chronic diseases. These diets run the gamut from ones very high in fat (the Inuit in Greenland subsist largely on seal blubber) to ones high in carbohydrate (Central American Indians subsist largely on maize and beans) to ones very high in protein (Masai tribesmen in Africa subsist chiefly on cattle blood, meat and milk), to cite three rather extreme examples. But much the same holds true for more mixed traditional diets. What this suggests is that there is no single ideal human diet but that the human omnivore is exquisitely adapted to a wide range of different foods and a variety of different diets. Except, that is, for one: the relatively new (in evolutionary terms) Western diet that that most of us now are eating. What an extraordinary achievement for a civilization: to have developed the one diet that reliably makes its people sick!”

 

“Not everyone can afford to eat well in America, which is a literal shame, but most of us can: Americans spend less than 10 percent of their income on food, less than the citizens of any other nation.”

 

“Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”

 

“As grandmothers used to say, ‘Better to pay the grocer than the doctor”

 

“The whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead.”

 

“Use the apple test. If you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, you’re not hungry.”

 

“If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t. .”

 

“…There’s a lot of money in the Western diet. The more you process any food, the more profitable it becomes. The healthcare industry makes more money treating chronic diseases (which account for three quarters of the $2 trillion plus we spend each year on health care in this country) than preventing them. ”

 

“For a product to carry a health claim on its package, it must first have a package, so right off the bat it’s more likely to be processed rather than a whole food.”

 

“The healthiest food in the supermarket – the fresh produce- doesn’t boast about its healthfulness, because the growers don’t have budget or packaging. Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign they have nothing valuable to say about your health.”

 

“Be the kind of person who takes supplements — then skip the supplements.”

 

“Eating what stands on one leg [mushrooms and plant foods] is better than eating what stands on two legs [fowl], which is better than eating what stands on four legs [cows, pigs, and other mammals].”

 

“Leave something on your plate… ‘Better to go to waste than to waist”

 

“Human beings ate well and kept themselves healthy for millennia before nutritional science came along to tell us how to do it; it is entirely possible to eat healthily without knowing what an anti-oxidant is.”

 

“So don’t drink your sweets, and remember: There is no such thing as a healthy soda.”

 

“The banquet is in the first bite.”

 

“For as you go on, you’ll be getting more calories, but not necessarily more pleasure.”

 

“So: Ask yourself not, Am I full? but, Is my hunger gone? That moment will arrive several bites sooner.” 

My Take

Having read and enjoyed two previous books by Michael Pollan, I was looking forward to this mini-book which distilled his eating philosophy into small, bite-sized, easily remembered chunks.  I was not disappointed.  Food Rules offers a lot of pithy, common-sense advice in response to the age old question:  What should I eat?  While I’m still following the low-carb recommendation of Gary Taubes (author of Why We Get Fat), I am intentionally eating more vegetables and some fruit after being reminded of their healthful properties.

/by
, , , , ,

274. Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Allie Brosh

Genre:  Humor, Memoir, Cartoon, Graphic Novel

371 pages, published October 29, 2013

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

Hyperbole and a Half is a graphic novel by Allie Brosh who has a blog by the same name.  In it she provides insightful takes on her nontraditional childhood and challenting adulthood.  She also spends a lot of time analyzing the behavior of her dogs.

Quotes 

“Most people can motivate themselves to do things simply by knowing that those things need to be done. But not me. For me, motivation is this horrible, scary game where I try to make myself do something while I actively avoid doing it. If I win, I have to do something I don’t want to do. And if I lose, I’m one step closer to ruining my entire life. And I never know whether I’m going to win or lose until the last second.”

 

“The absurdity of working so hard to continue doing something you don’t like can be overwhelming.”

 

“Dear 25 year old [note: not “Dear 25-year-old me” or “Dear 25-year-old self,” just “Dear 25 year old”],”

 

“The shelter worker said, “This one hates everything and she doesn’t know anything, and I hope you aren’t planning on taking her outside ever because she’s more like a bear than a dog, really, and unfortunately, she can scale a seven-foot-tall fence like the fucking Spider-Man.” And we were like, “Sure, why not.”

 

“We’re going to play a different game now. It’s called “who can yell ‘help’ the loudest and the most.”

 

“Procrastination has become its own solution – a tool I can use to push myself so close to disaster that I become terrified and flee toward success. A more troubling matter is the day-to-day activities that don’t have massive consequences when I neglect to do them.”

 

“Fortunately, it turns out that being scared of yourself is a somewhat effective motivational technique.”

 

“Being a good person is a very important part of my identity, but being a genuinely good person is time-consuming and complicated.”

 

“You don’t have to be a good person to feel like a good person, though. There’s a loophole I found where I don’t do good, helpful things, but I keep myself in a perpetual state of thinking I might.”

 

“I don’t just want to do the right thing. I want to WANT to do the right thing.”

 

“And that’s the most frustrating thing about depression. It isn’t always something you can fight back against with hope. It isn’t even something – it’s nothing. And you can’t combat nothing.”

 

“At first, I’d try to explain that it’s not really negativity or sadness anymore, it’s more just this detached, meaningless fog where you can’t feel anything about anything—even the things you love, even fun things—and you’re horribly bored and lonely, but since you’ve lost your ability to connect with any of the things that would normally make you feel less bored and lonely, you’re stuck in the boring, lonely, meaningless void without anything to distract you from how boring, lonely, and meaningless it is.”

 

“Nobody can guarantee that it’s going to be okay, but – and I don’t know if this will be comforting to anyone else – the possibility exists that there’s a piece of corn on a floor somewhere that will make you just as confused about why you were laughing as you have ever been about why you are depressed.”

 

“The longer I procrastinate on returning phone calls and emails, the more guilty I feel about it. The guilt I feel causes me to avoid the issue further, which only leads to more guilt and more procrastination. It gets to the point where I don’t email someone for fear of reminding them that they emailed me and thus giving them a reason to be disappointed in me.”

 

“Reality should follow through on what I think it is going to do.”

 

“I cope with it the best way I know – by being completely unreasonable and trying to force everything else in the world to obey me and do all the nonsensical things I want.”

 

“Fear and shame are the backbone of my self-control. They are my source of inspiration, my insurance against becoming entirely unacceptable. They help me do the right thing. And I am terrified of what I would be without them. Because I suspect that, left to my own devices, I would completely lose control of my life. I’m still hoping that perhaps someday I’ll learn how to use willpower like a real person, but until that very unlikely day, I will confidently battle toward adequacy, wielding my crude skill set of fear and shame.”

 

“I had tasted cake and there was no going back. My tiny body had morphed into a writhing mass of pure tenacity encased in a layer of desperation. I would eat all of the cake or I would evaporate from the sheer power of my desire to eat it.” 

My Take

I picked up Hyperbole and a Half from the “Librarian Recommendations” shelf at the wonderful Boulder Library.  While I haven’t read many graphic novels, I thoroughly enjoyed this one.  Allie Brosh has a unique and insightful sense of humor that had me laughing out loud at times (to get an idea of it you can check out her blog at http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/.  I especially enjoyed her story about burying a time capsule letter as a child which she addressed to “Dear 25 year old” rather than “Dear 25 year old self” or “Dear 25 year old me,” asked numerous questions about which kinds of dogs she liked and then implored the recipient to “Please write back.”  Her recounting of getting lost in the woods with her mother and her advice to her untrainable dogs also makes for interesting and entertaining reading.

/by
, , , ,

273. Before the Fall

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Noah Hawley

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller

401 pages, published May 31, 2016

Reading Format:  e-Book on Overdrive

Summary

On a foggy summer night, 11 people – 10 privileged, one down-on-his-luck painter – depart Martha’s Vineyard on a private jet headed for New York.  Sixteen minutes later plane has crashed into the ocean.  The only survivors are Scott Burroughs, the painter, and a four-year-old boy who is now the last remaining member of an immensely wealthy and powerful media mogul’s family.   Before the Fall weaves between the aftermath of the crash and the backstories of the passengers and crew members including a Media Mogul and his family, a captain of Wall Street and his wife, a party boy just in from London, a young woman questioning her path in life, and a career pilot.

Quotes 

“In the absence of facts…. we tell ourselves stories.”

 

“It’s hard to be sad when you’re being useful. And he liked that idea. That service to others brought happiness. It was self-involvement that led to depression, to spiraling questions about the meaning of things.”

 

“Life is a series of decisions and reactions. It is the things you do and the things that are done to you.  And then it’s over.”

 

“Everyone is from someplace. We all have stories, our lives unfolding along crooked lines, colliding in unexpected ways.”

 

“You have kids and you think I made you, so we’re the same, but it’s not true. You just get to live with them for a while and maybe help them figure things out.”

 

“It is the job of the human brain to assemble all the input of our world—sights, sounds, smells—into a coherent narrative. This is what memory is, a carefully calibrated story that we make up about our past.”

 

“Anything is possible. Everything is gettable. You just have to want it badly enough.”

 

“Because what if instead of a story told in consecutive order, life is a cacophony of moments we never leave? What if the most traumatic or the most beautiful experiences we have trap us in a kind of feedback loop, where at least some part of our minds remains obsessed, even as our bodies move on?”

 

“What’s a handshake, after all, except a socially acceptable way to make sure the other guy doesn’t have a knife behind his back.”

 

“Someone had told her once that mothers existed to blunt the existential loneliness of being a person. If that was true then her biggest maternal responsibility was simply companionship. You bring a child into this fractious, chaotic world out of the heat of your womb, and then spend the next ten years walking beside them while they figure out how to be a person.”

 

“Where the average person appreciates the beauty of surf and waves, Gus, an engineer, sees only practical design. Gravity, plus ocean current, plus wind. Poetry to the common man is a unicorn viewed from the corner of an eye—an unexpected glimpse of the intangible. To an engineer, only the ingenuity of pragmatic solutions is poetic. Function over form. It’s not a question of optimism or pessimism, a glass half full or half empty. To an engineer, the glass is simply too big.”

 

“Never fight tomorrow’s fight today,”

 

“But money, like gravity, is a force that clumps, drawing in more and more of itself, eventually creating the black hole that we know as wealth. This is not simply the fault of humans. Ask any dollar bill and it will tell you it prefers the company of hundreds to the company of ones. Better to be a sawbuck in a billionaire’s account than a dirty single in the torn pocket of an addict.” 

My Take

Having read and enjoyed The Good Father by Noah Hawley (in addition to the Fargo television series which he created), I looked forward to Before the Fall.  I was not disappointed.  In addition to penning a suspenseful mystery, Hawley provides the reader with an examination of human nature and an exploration of existential issues.  All in an entertaining, suspenseful format.

/by
, , ,

271. Slam

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Nick Hornby

Genre:  Fiction, Humor

309 pages, published October 16, 2007

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Slam is narrated by Sam, a 16-year-old living in the UK whose life is getting very complicated.  His parents are divorced, he is struggling in school, his best advice comes from a Tony Hawk poster and he has just found out that his ex-girlfriend Alicia is pregnant.

Quotes 

“I hate time. It never does what you want it to.”

 

“When I went back into the kitchen, I wanted to sit on my mum’s lap. I know that sounds stupid and babyish , but I couldn’t help it. On my sixteenth birthday, I didn’t want to be sixteen, or fifteen or anyteen. I wanted to be three or four, and too young to make any kind of mess.”

 

“I’d never really had arguments like this before, arguments I couldn’t understand properly, arguments where both sides were right and wrong all at the same time.”

 

“There are many differences between a baby and an I-Pod. And one of the biggest is, no one going to mug you for your baby.”

 

“Definitely avoid going out with ugly girls who say they want to be models. Not because they’re ugly, but because they’re mad.”

 

“It seems to make a difference to some girls. If you say something that isn’t sexist to the right sort ofgirl, she likes you more. Say one of your mates is going on about how all girls are stupid, and you say ‘not all girls are stupid,’ then it can make you look good. There have to be girls listening, though, obviously. Otherwise it’s a waste of time.”

 

“Seeing as he wasn’t very bright, I was pretty sure that he was going to be good at fighting.”

 

“There was a lot of work to do, and arguments to have, and kids to take care of, and money to find from somewhere, and sleep to lose.

I could do it, though. I could see that.

I wouldn’t be sitting here now if I couldn’t do it, would I?

I think that’s what Tony Hawk was trying to tell me all along.” 

My Take

Having recently read Funny Girl (also by Nick Hornby), I was looking forward to another delightful and fun book.  I was not disappointed.  Hornby is a witty and poignant writer who creates great dialogue and has a keen understanding of human nature and relationships.   I look forward to reading more good books by this very talented writer.

/by
, , , ,

269. The King’s Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Lisa Goldberg

Author:   Mark Logue and Peter Conradi

Genre:  Non Fiction, Historical Fiction, Biography

242 pages, published November 1, 2010

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The King’s Speech is the story of Lionel Logue, a speech therapist from Australia working in London, and King George VI (aka Bertie) of England, Logue’s most famous patient.  For several decades, Logue helped Prince Albert (who would become King George VI when his older brother, the Duke of Windsor, abdicated the English throne to marry Wallis Simpson) overcome a lifelong stammering problem.  In this historical novel, we learn how Logue accomplished this feat as well as a lot of British and Australian history from that era.

 

Quotes 

“When the fresh patient comes to me the usual query is: “Will I be able to speak like the King?” and my reply is: “Yes, if you will work like he does.”

 

“Every public speaker likes his hearer to imagine his oratory as an unpremeditated gift of nature, and not the result of prolonged and patient study.”

 

My Take

A few years ago, I saw the movie version of The King’s Speech and really enjoyed it.  I was, therefore, keen to read the novel upon which it was based.  Like the movie, I found the book to be a very interesting, behind the scenes peek into history.  I always like learning more about history, especially British history, and was pleased to learn more about King George VI , the Duke of Windsor and the pre-World War II period.

 

/by
, , ,

266. The Great Divorce

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   C.S. Lewis

Genre:  Fiction, Christian, Theology

146 pages, published 1945

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The Great Divorce is C.S. Lewis’s vision of the Afterworld in which the narrator boards a bus on a rainy English afternoon and embarks on an incredible voyage through Heaven and Hell.  Along the way, he meets a variety of supernatural beings far removed from his expectations, and comes to some significant realizations about the nature of good and evil.

 

Quotes 

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.”

 

“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.”

 

“Milton was right,’ said my Teacher. ‘The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” There is always something they insist on keeping even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy—that is, to reality.”

 

“You cannot love a fellow creature fully till you love God.”

 

“The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother-love or patriotism or art: but lust is less likely to be made into a religion.”

 

“Son,’ he said,’ ye cannot in your present state understand eternity…That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say “Let me have but this and I’ll take the consequences”: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why…the Blessed will say “We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven, : and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly.”

 

“There have been men before … who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God himself… as if the good Lord had nothing to do but to exist. There have been some who were so preoccupied with spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.”

 

“Everything becomes more and more itself. Here is joy that cannot be shaken. Our light can swallow up your darkness; but your darkness cannot now infect our light.”

 

“That thing is Freedom: the gift whereby ye most resemble your Maker and are yourselves part of eternal reality.”

 

“Hell is a state of mind – ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind – is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains.”

 

“I wish I had never been born,” she said. “What are we born for?” “For infinite happiness,” said the Spirit. “You can step out into it at any moment…”

 

“And yet all loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies, and itchings that (Hell) contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale against the least moment of the joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all. Bad cannot succeed even in being bad as truly as good is good.”

 

My Take

I listened to The Great Divorce on the heels of The Screwtape Letters and there is a lot of similarity between the two books.  Both books are characterized by admonitions on how to live a holy life dedicated to God, and how we so often get that wrong (even though we may think we are getting it right).  Pride truly is the worst sin.  If you have an interest in Christian Apologetics, then both The Great Divorce and the The Screwtape Letters are essential reading.

/by
, , , , ,

264. The Screwtape Letters

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  John Breen

Author:   C.S. Lewis

Genre:  Fiction, Theology, Christian, Fantasy

223 pages, published 1942

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

This classic satire by the acclaimed C.S. Lewis is a sardonic portrayal of human life by the demon Screwtape, a senior tempter in the service of “Our Father Below.” The device used by Lewis are letters from the experienced old devil Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, a novice demon in charge of securing the damnation of an ordinary young man.

 

Quotes 

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality. ”

 

“We must picture hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives with the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.”

 

“Humour is…the all-consoling and…the all-excusing, grace of life.”

 

“The man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring two-pence what other people say about it, is by that very fact forewarmed against some of our subtlest modes of attack.”

 

“Nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust and ambition look ahead.”

 

“[God] will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest chemist’s shop.”

 

“Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”

 

“She’s the sort of woman who lives for others – you can tell the others by their hunted expression.”

 

“One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures, whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food;

(2) He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.”

 

“Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.”

 

“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

 

“You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption ‘My time is my own’. Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to him employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which h allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright.”

 

“The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour’s talents–or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall.”

 

“When He [God] talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.”

 

“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin.” The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.”

 

“Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.”

 

“A woman means by Unselfishness chiefly taking trouble for others; a man means not giving trouble to others…thus, while the woman thinks of doing good offices and the man of respecting other people’s rights, each sex, without any obvious unreason, can and does regard the other as radically selfish.”

 

“A moderated religion is as good for us as no religion at all—and more amusing.”

 

“By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the the impossible.”

 

My Take

Even though it has been almost 80 years since The Screwtape Letters was published, it still has a lot of relevance to modern day life and makes the expression “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions” particularly apt.  C.S. Lewis’ clever device of a conversation between demons on how best to ensnare human beings made me really think about how I was living my own life and what God expects of me.  Lots of food for thought told in a very interesting fashion.

/by
, , , ,

261. Funny Girl

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Nick Hornby

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, Humor

452 pages, published February 3, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Funny Girl is the story of Sophie Straw, a blonde bombshell from a small English town who, in addition to her beauty, has a talent for making people laugh.  Sophie moves to London to pursue her dream of being the British version of Lucille Ball.  Set in 1960’s, we follow Sophie as her she lands a leading role on a BBC Comedy Playhouse series and makes her dream a reality.

 

Quotes 

“I’ve never been happy in the way that I’ve been happy in this room, and in the studios,” said Sophie. “I’ve never laughed so much, or learned so much, and everything I know about my job is because of the people here. Even you, Clive. And I’m worried that I’ll spend the rest of my working life looking for an experience like this one, where everything clicks and everyone pushes you to do the best you can, better than anything you think you’re capable of.”

 

“Love meant being brave, otherwise you had already lost your own argument: the man who couldn’t tell a woman he loved her was, by definition, not worthy of her.”

 

“What was he doing with her? How on earth could he love her? But he did. Or, at least, she made him feel sick, sad, and distracted. Perhaps there was another way of describing that unique and useless combination of feelings, but “love” would have to do for now.”

 

“She began to fear that she would always be greedy, all the time. Nothing ever seemed to fill her up. Nothing ever seemed to touch the sides.”

 

“She wasn’t the sort of catch one could take home and show off to people; she was the sort of catch that drags the angler off the end of the pier and pulls him out to sea before tearing him to pieces as he’s drowning. He shouldn’t have been fishing at all, not when he was so ill-equipped.”

 

“Years later, Tony would discover that writers never felt they belonged anywhere. That was one of the reasons they became writers. It was strange, however, failing to belong even at a party full of outsiders.”

 

“They already knew that they would be telling people about the morning for a long time to come, maybe for the rest of their lives, and the taxi ride was the first attempt at a first draft of a story that would have to satisfy parents, siblings, children, and grandchildren.”

 

“Clive was rapidly coming to the conclusion that being engaged to somebody meant that he spent an awful lot of time not doing things he wanted to do.”

 

“He was kind, he was single, he was vulnerable, he made her laugh (not always intentionally, true, but often enough). Every time she saw him, he seemed to have become a little more handsome.”

 

“The anger was clearly real, though. It was in there, sloshing around, looking for the nearest hole to escape through.”

 

“And also, what kind of job was comic magician? She didn’t think she could bear to be married to a comic magician, even if his breath were sweeter than Parma violets and his kisses were like atom bombs. Comic magicians belonged on seaside piers. Comic magicians were what she had come to London to escape, not to find, and certainly not to marry.”

 

“There aren’t any buts,” said Bill. “That’s the whole point of being a writer, isn’t it? If I wanted buts, I’d go and work in a fucking but factory.”

 

My Take

Listening to the audio book version of Funny Girl was a delight.  This was the second book that I have read by Nick Hornby (the first being A Long Way Down), but it won’t be the last.  I was charmed by the characters (especially Sophie), the stories and the writing.  I so enjoyed living in the 1960’s London world of Sophie Straw that I was disappointed when the book ended.

/by
, , , ,

259. Rose Under Fire

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Elizabeth Wein

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, World War II

368 pages, published September 10, 2013

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

While flying an Allied fighter plane from Paris to England, American ATA pilot and amateur poet, Rose Justice, is captured by the Nazis and sent to Ravensbrück, a notorious women’s concentration camp.  During her time there, Rose befriends the “Rabbits,” a group of women subjected to horrific Nazi experimentation. In the face of unspeakable crimes, Rose and her friends suffer horribly, but also find the strength to act with compassion, courage and cunning.

 

Quotes 

“Hope is the most treacherous thing in the world. It lifts you and lets you plummet. But as long as you’re being lifted you don’t worry about plummeting.”

 

“God knows what I thought! Your brain does amazing acrobatics when it doesn’t want to believe something.”

 

“There are four forces which work together if you want to put something into the sky and have it stay there. One of these is lift.

 

Lift is made when the air pressure under a wing is greater than the air pressure over the wing. Then the wing gets pushed upwards. That’s how birds fly. That’s how kites fly – a kite is basically just a solitary wing. That’s how airplanes fly.

 

But people need lift too. People don’t get moving, they don’t soar, they don’t achieve great heights, without something buoying them up.”

 

“Hope has no feathers

Hope takes flight

tethered with twine

like a tattered kite,

slave to the wind’s

capricious drift

eager to soar

but needing lift

 

Hope waits stubbornly

watching the sky

for turmoil, feeding on

things that fly:

crows, ashes, newspapers,

dry leaves in flight

all suggest wind

that could lift a kite

 

Hope sails and plunges

firmly caught

at the end of her string –

fallen slack, pulling taught,

ragged and featherless.

Hope never flies

but doggedly watches

for windy skies.”

 

“Incredible. It is just incredible that you can notice something like that when your face is so cold you can’t feel it anymore, and you know perfectly well you are surrounded by death, and the only way to stay alive is to endure the howling wind and hold your course. And still the sky is beautiful.”

 

‘When you cut down the hybrid rose,

its blackened stump below the graft

spreads furtive fingers in the dirt.

It claws at life, weaving a raft

of suckering roots to pierce the earth.

The first thin shoot is fierce and green,

a pliant whip of furious briar

splitting the soil, gulping the light.

You hack it down. It skulks between

the flagstones of the garden path

to nurse a hungry spur in shade

against the porch. With iron spade

you dig and drag it from the gravel

and toss it living on the fire.

 

‘It claws up towards the light again

hidden from view, avoiding battle

beyond the fence. Unnoticed, then,

unloved, unfed, it clings and grows

in the wild hedge. The subtle briar

armors itself with desperate thorns

and stubborn leaves – and struggling higher,

unquenchable, it now adorns

itself with blossom, till the stalk

is crowned with beauty, papery white

fine petals thin as chips of chalk

or shaven bone, drinking the light.

 

‘Izabela, Aniela, Alicia, Eugenia,

Stefania, Rozalia, Pelagia, Irena,

Alfreda, Apolonia, Janina, Leonarda,

Czeslava, Stanislava, Vladyslava, Barbara,

Veronika, Vaclava, Bogumila, Anna,

Genovefa, Helena, Jadviga, Joanna,

Kazimiera, Ursula, Vojcziecha, Maria,

Wanda, Leokadia, Krystyna, Zofia.

 

‘When you cut down the hybrid rose

to cull and plough its tender bed,

trust there is life beneath your blade:

the suckering briar below the graft,

the wildflower stock of strength and thorn

whose subtle roots are never dead.”

 

My Take

Rose Under Fire is the third book in a loose trilogy by Elizabeth Wein (the others are Code Name Verity and The Pearl Thief).  Even though Code Name Verity was by far my favorite, I did enjoy Rose Under Fire.  While it was hard to read another book dealing with the Holocaust, Wein manages to tell an inspirational story and, as a bonus, embellishes it with some very beautiful poems.

/by