Posts

, , , , , ,

244. The Child Finder

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Rene Denfeld

Genre:  Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, Crime, Suspense

256 pages, published September 5, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Three years after five year old Madison Culver disappeared without a trace in a snow filled Oregon forest while her family was choosing a Christmas tree, the authorities believe she is dead.  Holding on to hope that their daughter is still alive, her parents turn to Naomi, a private investigator with a track record of finding lost and missing children who is known as The Child Finder.  Naomi understands children like Madison because she herself was once a lost girl.

 

Quotes 

“No matter how far you have run, no matter how long you have been lost, it is never too late to be found.”

 

“Fear never keeps anyone safe.”

 

“No one ever told you what to do when love went away. It was always about capturing love, and keeping love. Not about watching it walk out the door to die alone rather than in your arms.”

 

“In the years since, she had discovered the sacrament of life did not demand memory.”

 

“But he saw Naomi as the wind traveling over the field, always searching, never stopping, and never knowing that true peace is when you curl around one little piece of something. One little fern. One little frond. One person to love.”

 

“I’m afraid,” she confessed, her voice quiet.

“Of what?”

“That if the box is opened I might want and want and never be filled.” She took a breath. “That you will get tired of filling it.” She paused and spoke her deepest fear, turning to his ear. “That you will use me and throw me away.”

 

“A farm without stock, a home without children. The world here was dying.”

 

My Take

The Child Finder is a quick and compelling read that had me hooked from the get go.  The story hums along with well drawn and indelible characters.  While the subject is disturbing (kids kidnapped or disappeared), it is handled well, in a non-gratuitous manner.  Recommended.

 

/by
, ,

243. Bear Town

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Frederik Backman

Genre:  Fiction

432 pages, published September, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Beartown is the name of a small town in Sweden (although it could be anywhere with cold weather that is surrounded by forest) that has seen better days.  The one thing Beartown has going for it is hockey.  The sport is beloved by all, young and old, and the teenage hockey team, especially the very talented Kevin, are treated like Gods by the townspeople.  When Kevin is accused of rape by the manager’s daughter, the town rallies to his defense with a few notable exceptions.  As the case and hockey finals progress, no resident of Beartown is left unaffected.

 

Quotes 

“Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn’t through love, because love is hard, It makes demands. Hate is simple. So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that’s easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe – comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third is that we dehumanize our enemy.”

 

“Everyone has a thousand wishes before a tragedy, but just one afterward.”

 

“All adults have days when we feel completely drained. When we no longer know quite what we spend so much time fighting for, when reality and everyday worries overwhelm us and we wonder how much longer we’re going to be able to carry on. The wonderful thing is that we can all live through far more days like that without breaking than we think. The terrible thing is that we never know exactly how many.”

 

“You never have the sort of friends you have when you’re fifteen ever again. Even if you keep them for the rest of your life, it’s never the same as it was then.”

 

“If you are honest, people may deceive you. Be honest anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfishness. Be kind anyway. All the good you do today will be forgotten by others tomorrow. Do good anyway.”

 

“There are few words that are harder to explain than “loyalty.” It’s always regarded as a positive characteristic, because a lot of people would say that many of the best things people do for each other occur precisely because of loyalty. The only problem is that many of the very worst things we do to each other occur because of the same thing.”

 

“A simple truth, repeated as often as it is ignored, is that if you tell a child it can do absolutely anything, or that it can’t do anything at all, you will in all likelihood be proven right.”

 

“What an uncomfortable, terrible source of shame it is for the world that the victim is so often the one left with the most empathy for others.”

 

“She’s fifteen, above the age of consent, and he’s seventeen, but he’s still “the boy” in every conversation. She’s “the young woman”.

 

“The love a parent feels for a child is strange. There is a starting point to our love for everyone else, but not this person. This one we have always loved, we loved them before they even existed. No matter how well prepared they are, all moms and dads experience a moment of total shock, when the tidal wave of feelings first washed through them, knocking them off their feet. It’s incomprehensible because there’s nothing to compare it to. It’s like trying to describe sand between your toes or snowflakes on your tongue to someone who’s lived their whole life in a dark room. It sends the soul flying.”

 

“Bitterness can be corrosive. It can rewrite your memories as if it were scrubbing a crime scene clean, until in the end you only remember what suits you of its causes.”

 

“But sometimes that’s what it takes, a culture of silence to foster a culture of winning.”

 

“Some people say hockey is like religion, but that’s wrong. Hockey is like faith. Religion is something between you and other people; it’s full of interpretations and theories and opinions. But faith…that’s just between you and God. It’s what you feel in your chest when the referee glides out to the center circle between two players, when you hear the sticks strike each other and see the black disk fall between them. Then it’s just between you and hockey.”

 

“Humanity has many shortcomings, but none is stronger than pride.”

 

“Ignore everything else, just concentrate on the things you can change.”

 

“If you spend your whole life being someone else, who will be you?”

 

“Some of you were born with talent, some weren’t. Some of you are lucky and got everything for free, some of you got nothing. But remember, when you’re out on the ice you’re all equals. And there’s one thing you need to know: desire always beats luck.”

 

“You never stop being scared of falling from the top, because when you close your eyes you can still feel the pain from each and every step of the way up.” 

 

“Another morning comes. It always does. Time always moves at the same rate, only feelings have different speeds. Every day can mark a whole lifetime or a single heartbeat, depending on who you spend it with. ”

 

“The only thing the sport gives us are moments. But what the hell is life, Peter, apart from moments?”

 

“We love winners, even though they’re very rarely particularly likeable people. They’re almost always obsessive and selfish and inconsiderate. That doesn’t matter. We forgive them. We like them while they’re winning.”

 

“On the one hand, our entire species survived because we stuck together and cooperated, but on the other hand we developed because the strongest individuals always thrived at the expense of the weak. So we always end up arguing about where the boundaries should be drawn. How selfish are we allowed to be? How much are we obliged to care about each other?”

 

“What you create, others can destroy. Create anyway. Because in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and anyone else anyway.”

 

“One of the plainest truths about both towns and individuals is that they usually don’t turn into what we tell them to be, but what they are told they are.”

 

“There are two things that are particularly good at reminding us how old we are: children and sports.”

 

“There’s a label she used to love but which she loathes when it’s pronounced in a Beartown accent: “career woman.” Peter’s friends call her that, some in admiration and some with distaste, but no one calls Peter a “career man.” It strikes a nerve because Kira recognizes that insinuation: you have a “job” so you can provide for your family, whereas a “career” is selfish. You have one of those for your own sake.”

 

“The very worst events in life have that effect on a family: we always remember, more sharply than anything else, the last happy moments before everything fell apart.”

 

“David drives back to Björnstad. Sits in the car and cries in anger. He is ashamed. He is disgusted. With himself. For an entire hockey life he has trained a boy, loved him like a son, been loved back as a father. There is no player as loyal as Benji. No bigger heart than his. How many times has David hugged number sixteen after a game and told him that? “You are the bravest bastard I know, Benji.” The bravest bastard I know. ” And after all those hours in locker rooms, all those nights in the bus, all the conversations and blood, sweat and tears, the boy didn’t dare tell his coach his greatest secret. It’s a betrayal, David knows it’s a terrible betrayal. There is no other way to explain how much a grown man must have failed for such a warrior of a boy to make him think his coach would be less proud of him if he was gay. David hates himself for not being better than his father. For that is a son’s job.”

 

“Not a second has passed since she had children without her feeling like a bad mother. For everything. For not understanding, for being impatient, for not knowing everything, not making better packed lunches, for still wanting more out of life than just being a mother.”

 

My Take

Having previously read (and really enjoyed) A Man Called Ove, I was looking forward to another book by Swedish author Frederik Backman.  I was not disappointed by Beartown.  Backman captures the determination, angst, sense of inferiority and pathos of growing up in a small town that isn’t quite making it.  He also shows how the sport of hockey is an all consuming religion for many players.  I’ve seen a bit of this from friends whose kids are hockey players.  A compelling, easy reading book with well drawn characters and an engaging plot that I wholeheartedly recommend.

 

/by
, , , , , , ,

Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Katy Fassett

Author:  Bill Browder

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Memoir, History, Foreign, Politics, Business

380 pages, published February 3, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Red Notice is a real-life political thriller memoir written by American businessman Bill Browder who made multi-millions investing in Russia in the early days after the Berlin Wall came down.  After the Russians started to target Browder and his Hermitage Fund, his attorney Sergei Magnitsky was ruthlessly jailed and murdered by the Kremlin.  Browder then led an effort to expose the corruption inside Russia and obtain justice for Sergei.

 

Quotes 

“Seventy years of communism had destroyed the work ethic of an entire nation. Millions of Russians had been sent to the gulags for showing the slightest hint of personal initiative. The Soviets severely penalized independent thinkers, so the natural self-preservation reaction was to do as little as possible and hope that nobody would notice you.”

 

“I arrived in the late afternoon at Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport. I stared out of my window as the plane taxied to the terminal and was astonished to see the burned-out carcass of an Aeroflot passenger plane lying on the side of the runway. I had no idea how it had gotten there. Apparently it was too much of a bother for the airport authorities to have it moved. Welcome to Russia.”

 

“There’s a famous Russian proverb about this type of behavior. One day, a poor villager happens upon a magic talking fish that is ready to grant him a single wish. Overjoyed, the villager weighs his options: “Maybe a castle? Or even better—a thousand bars of gold? Why not a ship to sail the world?” As the villager is about to make his decision, the fish interrupts him to say that there is one important caveat: whatever the villager gets, his neighbor will receive two of the same. Without skipping a beat, the villager says, “In that case, please poke one of my eyes out.”

 

“After Khodorkovsky was found guilty, most of Russia’s oligarchs went one by one to Putin and said, ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich, what can I do to make sure I won’t end up sitting in a cage?’ I wasn’t there, so I’m only speculating, but I imagine Putin’s response was something like this: ‘Fifty per cent.”

 

“The imagination is a horrible thing when it’s preoccupied with exactly how someone might try to kill you.”

 

“This whole exercise was teaching me that Russian business culture is closer to that of a prison yard than anything else. In prison, all you have is your reputation. Your position is hard-earned and it is not relinquished easily. When someone is crossing the yard coming for you, you cannot stand idly by. You have to kill him before he kills you. If you don’t, and if you manage to survive the attack, you’ll be deemed weak and before you know it, you will have lost your respect and become someone’s bitch. This is the calculus that every oligarch and every Russian politician goes through every day.”

 

“While Putin expected a bad reaction from the United States, he had no idea what kind of hornet’s nest he’d stirred up in his own country. One can criticize Russians for many things, but their love of children isn’t one of them. Russia is one of the only countries in the world where you can take a screaming child into a fancy restaurant and no one will give you a second look. Russians simply adore children.”

 

“Early in this book, I said that the feeling I got from buying a Polish stock that went up ten times was the best thing to ever happen to me in my career. But the feeling I had on that balcony in Brussels with Sergei’s widow and son, as we watched the largest lawmaking body in Europe recognize and condemn the injustices suffered by Sergei and his family, felt orders of magnitude better than any financial success I’ve ever had. If finding a ten bagger in the stock market was a highlight of my life before, there is no feeling as satisfying as getting some measure of justice in a highly unjust world.”

 

“This was not what they wanted to hear because ever since Barack Obama had become president in 2009, the main policy of the US government toward Russia had been one of appeasement.”

 

My Take

Author Bill Browder knows how to tell a compelling tale and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the audio version of Red Notice.  The first half of the book takes you through his interesting childhood.  His Grandfather ran for President of the United States representing the Communist Party and his parents were both Socialists.  Browder rebelled by going into business with the aim of making as much money as possible.  He was able to do this by capitalizing on unique opportunities in Eastern Europe and then Russia.  During the second half of the book, the Russian government turned on Browder and killed his attorney, the idealistic Sergei Magnitsky.  Browder then recounts his pursuit of justice against Vladimir Putin and his henchmen in honor of Sergei.  A captivating read from start to finish.

 

/by
, , , ,

235. The Good Father

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:  Noah Hawley

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller

320 pages, published March 20, 2012

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The Good Father tells the story of Dr. Paul Allen, the Chief of Rheumatology at Columbia Presbyterian, who has young twin boys from his happy second marriage and Danny, a wayward, somewhat troubled son from his unhappy first marriage.  When twenty year old Danny is arrested for assassinating a Presidential candidate, Paul sets out a journey to clear his son and try to figure out where things went wrong.  As he delves into his son’s past, his research leads him to explore the lives of other assassins to find out what made them tick.

 

Quotes 

“There are things in this world that no human being should be able to endure. We should die of heartbreak, but we do not. Instead, we are forced to survive, to bear witness.”

 

“I was an old man, the father of the vilified. Would this be my life from here on out? Was I to become the argumentative man who can’t control the volume of his own voice? The conspiracy nut with boxes of data who spouts dates and facts, as if coincidence alone can prove the existence of God?”

 

“He worried that he was destined to be a hobbyist, a dreamer incapable of finishing anything. The fact that the college seemed to encourage this kind of “experimentation” made him doubt its motives as an institution of higher learning.”

 

“Staring up at me, hearing my tired voice, he reached out his tiny hand. He knew me, even though he had never seen me before. And I knew him. He was the love I’d been trying to express my whole life.”

 

“I’m sorry,” I said, “did you just say elections are about hope?”

 

My Take

After enjoying the first two seasons of the FX series Fargo (especially the characters and dialogue from first season), I was interested to read a book by Noah Hawley, the show’s creator.   Hawley is also an Emmy, Golden Globe, PEN, Critics’ Choice, and Peabody Award-winning author, screenwriter, and producer, so he has an amazing pedigree.  The Good Father was an intriguing portrait of a confused father who tries to unravel the mystery behind his estranged son’s assassination of a Presidential candidate.  This well written book made me think about lots of issues related to parenting, including the question of how well do we really know those who are closest to us.  Recommended reading.

 

/by
, , , , ,

232. Into the Water

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Paula Hawkins

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense

368 pages, published May 2, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Summary:   Into the Water is a mystery/thriller by Paula Hawkins, author of the wildly successful The Girl on the Train.  This book tells the stories of different women, from the days of alleged witchcraft to the present, who died in a place called the Drowning Pool.

 

Quotes 

“Beware a calm surface—you never know what lies beneath.”                    

 

“There are people who are drawn to water, who retain some vestigial primal sense of where it flows. I believe that I am one of them. I am most alive when I am near the water, when I am near this water. This is the place where I learned to swim, the place where I learned to inhabit nature and my body in the most joyous and pleasurable way.”

 

“No one liked to think about the fact that the water in that river was infected with the blood and bile of persecuted women, unhappy women; they drank it every day.”

 

“Yes, it is. It’s, like, when someone has an affair, why does the wife always hate the other woman? Why doesn’t she hate her husband? He’s the one who’s betrayed her, he’s the one who swore to love her and keep her and whatever forever and ever. Why isn’t he the one who gets shoved off a fucking cliff?”

 

“We now know that memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust’s jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and recategorized with every act of recollection.”

 

“Watching someone in the throes of raw grief is a terrible thing; the act of watching feels violent, intrusive, a violation. Yet we do it, we have to do it, all the time; you just have to learn to cope with it whatever way you can.”

 

“She had never realized before her life was torn apart how awkward grief was, how inconvenient for everyone with whom the mourner came into contact. At first it was acknowledged and respected and deferred to. But after a while it got in the way—of conversation, of laughter, of normal life.”

 

My Take

After thoroughly enjoying The Girl on the Train, I had high hopes for Paula Hawkins follow up effort Into the Water.  While Into the Water is not bad, it not nearly as the captivating read of The Girl on the Train.  The character development was fine, but the plot and twists were just so-so.

/by
, , ,

231. The Underground Railroad

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Heather Ringoen

Author:  Colson Whitehead

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction

306 pages, published August 2, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The Underground Railroad tells the story of Cora and other slaves as they suffer through the brutalities of slavery in the South and dream of freedom.  When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells Cora about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. The two are hunted by the merciless Slave Catcher Ridgeway as they make their way out of Georgia.  Author Colson Whitehead traces the brutal importation of Africans to the United States and re-creates the unique terrors black people faced in the pre-Civil War era.

Quotes 

“And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes–believes with all its heart–that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers. This nation shouldn’t exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are.”

 

“Slavery is a sin when whites were put to the yoke, but not the African. All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man.”

 

“She wasn’t surprised when his character revealed itself—if you waited long enough, it always did. Like the dawn.”

 

“Stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood.”

 

“The whites came to this land for a fresh start and to escape the tyranny of their masters, just as the freemen had fled theirs. But the ideals they held up for themselves, they denied others.”

 

“If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn’t be in chains. If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it’d still be his. If the white man wasn’t destined to take this new world, he wouldn’t own it now.  Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor–if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American imperative.”

 

“The world may be mean, but people don’t have to be, not if they refuse.”

 

“Men start off good and then the world makes them mean. The world is mean from the start and gets meaner every day. It uses you up until you only dream of death.”

 

“Truth was a changing display in a shop window, manipulated by hands when you weren’t looking, alluring and ever out of reach.”

 

“Sometimes a useful delusion is better than a useless truth.”

 

“Yet when his classmates put their blades to a colored cadaver, they did more for the cause of colored advancement than the most high-minded abolitionist. In death the negro became a human being. Only then was he the white man’s equal.”

 

“There was an order of misery, misery tucked inside miseries, and you were meant to keep track.”

 

“The only way to know how long you are lost in the darkness is to be saved from it.”

 

My Take

While The Underground Railroad was richly rewarded (Man Booker Prize Nominee for Longlist (2017), Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2017), National Book Award for Fiction (2016), Arthur C. Clarke Award (2017), Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction (2017)

The Rooster – The Morning News Tournament of Books (2017), NAIBA Book of the Year for Fiction (2017), Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction (2017), Kirkus Prize Nominee for Fiction (2016), Goodreads Choice Award for Historical Fiction (2016), PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Nominee (2017), I did not connect with this book as much as I expected too.  It was too graphically and unrelentingly violent.  The subject of slavery is depressing and this is quite a depressing read.  If you want to read a book about slavery, I prefer The Invention of Wings.

/by
, , , ,

229. The Pearl Thief

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Elizabeth Wein

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Foreign

320 pages, published May 2, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The Pearl Thief is a prequel to Code Name Verity and follows the life of fifteen-year-old Lady Julia Beaufort-Stuart before she became a World War II spy operating under the code name of Verity.  When she returns to her grandfather’s Scottish estate, Julia gets entangled in a mystery involving some very valuable river pearls.

 

Quotes 

“It is possible there are some things you want so badly that you will change your life to make them happen.”

 

“I need complicated railroad journeys and people speaking to me in foreign languages to keep me happy. I want to see the world and write stories about everything I see.”

 

“I love the story of a thing. I love a thing for what it means a thousand times more than for what it’s worth.”

 

“It’s like being raised by wolves — you don’t realize you’re not one yourself until someone points it out to you. Sometimes it makes me so mad that not everyone treats me just like another wolf.”

 

“For the pleasure of giving, because what’s the point of just having? If I give a thing, I remember how happy we both were when I made the gift.”

 

“Inspector Milne’s suspicious prying appeared to have awakened her inner Bolshevik, and so I discovered my own lady mother is not above quietly circumventing the law.”

 

“That is a terrifically intimate thing, you know? Letting a stranger light your cigarette. Leaning forward so he can hold a flame to your lips. Pausing to breathe in before you pull back again.”

 

My Take

After reading and really enjoying Code Name Verity, I put in a request at the Library for the prequel and sequel.  The prequel, The Pearl Thief, was first up.   I liked it, but not nearly as much as Code Name Verity.  It was a bit hard to follow at times and I had trouble keeping some of the characters straight.  While Julie, the main character, has a lot of appeal, I still found the book to be limited in other regards.

/by
, , , ,

228. The Alchemist

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Paul Coelho

Genre:  Fiction, Fantasy, Foreign, Happiness

197 pages, published May 1, 1993

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Paulo Coelho’s extremely popular master work tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different—and far more satisfying—than he ever imagined. Santiago’s journey teaches us about the wisdom of listening to our hearts, of recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life’s path, and, most importantly, to follow our dreams.

 

Quotes 

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

 

“It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”

 

“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”

 

“One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.”

 

“I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living now.”

 

“When each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.”

 

“Don’t give in to your fears. If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart.”

 

“This is what we call love. When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there’s no need at all to understand what’s happening, because everything happens within you.”

 

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

 

“We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.”

 

“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”

 

“I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.”

 

“To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation.”

 

“It’s one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it’s another to think that yours is the only path.”

 

“There is only one way to learn. It’s through action. Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey.”

 

“It is said that all people who are happy have God within them.”

 

“The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.”

 

“If someone isn’t what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”

 

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”

 

“Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.”

 

“You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it’s better to listen to what it has to say.”

 

“If you start by promising what you don’t even have yet, you’ll lose your desire to work towards getting it.”

 

My Take

Like The Richest Man in Babylon, The Alchemist is falls into a category of allegorical books that I usually enjoy reading.  Through the simple tale of boy on a quest to find his treasure and fulfill his destiny, The Alchemist imparts numerous pearls of wisdom about life, love, dreams, fear, hope and happiness.  I highly recommend the audio version which is perfectly narrated by the wonderful Jeremy Irons.

 

/by
, ,

225. Little Fires Everywhere

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Celeste Ng

Genre:  Fiction

352 pages, published September 12, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Little Fires Everywhere opens with the revelation that Isabelle, the youngest of four children in the Richardson family of Shaker Heights, Ohio has burned down the family home.  As the story unwinds, we learn that even in a picture perfect family and community, things are not always as ideal as they seem.  This revelation is laid bare after the arrival of Mia Warren, an artist and single mother to teenage daughter Pearl, who lives life completely on her own terms, with little regard for the consequences.

 

Quotes 

“Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground, and start over. After the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow. People are like that, too. They start over. They find a way.”

 

“Rules existed for a reason: if you followed them, you would succeed; if you didn’t, you might burn the world to the ground.”

 

“Most of the time, everyone deserves more than one chance. We all do things we regret now and then. You just have to carry them with you.”

 

“To a parent, your child wasn’t just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all at the same time. You could see it every time you looked at her: layered in her face was the baby she’d been and the child she’d become and the adult she would grow up to be, and you saw them all simultaneously, like a 3-D image. It made your head spin. It was a place you could take refuge, if you knew how to get in. And each time you left it, each time your child passed out of your sight, you feared you might never be able to return to that place again.”

 

“Anger is Fear’s Bodyguard.”

 

“One had followed the rules, and one had not. But the problem with rules… was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time they were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure what side of the line you stood on.”

 

“It came, over and over, down to this: What made someone a mother? Was it biology alone, or was it love?”

 

“The occasional embrace, a head leaned for just a moment on your shoulder, when what you really wanted more than anything was to press them to you and hold them so tight you fused together and could never be taken apart. It was like training yourself to live on the smell of an apple alone, when what you really wanted was to devour it, to sink your teeth into it and consume it, seeds, core, and all.”

 

“I’ll tell you a secret. A lot of times, parents are not the best at seeing their children clearly.”

 

“It bothers you, doesn’t it?” Mia said suddenly. “I think you can’t imagine. Why anyone would choose a different life from the one you’ve got. Why anyone might want something other than a big house with a big lawn, a fancy car, a job in an office. Why anyone would choose anything different than what you’d choose.”

 

“Most communities just happen; the best are planned.”

 

“All her life, she had learned that passion, like fire, was a dangerous thing. It so easily went out of control. It scaled walls and jumped over trenches. Sparks leapt like fleas and spread as rapidly; a breeze could carry embers for miles. Better to control that spark and pass it carefully from one generation to the next, like an Olympic torch. Or, perhaps, to tend it carefully like an eternal flame: a reminder of light and goodness that would never – could never – set anything ablaze. Carefully controlled. Domesticated. Happy in captivity. The key, she thought, was to avoid conflagration.”

 

“All up and down the street the houses looked like any others—but inside them were people who might be happy, or taking refuge, or steeling themselves to go out into the world, searching for something better. So many lives she would never know about, unfolding behind those doors.”

 

“The firemen said there were little fires everywhere,” Lexie said. “Multiple points of origin. Possible use of accelerant. Not an accident.”

 

My Take

After reading and thoroughly enjoying Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You, I had high expectations for Little Fires Everywhere.  I was not disappointed.  Ng, who has a great talent for character development and dialogue, is a wonderful storyteller who also makes you think.  In Little Fires Everywhere, I was left reflecting on relationships between mothers and daughters and the value and cost of a perfectly planned life.  Highly recommended.

/by
, , ,

222. Five-Carat Soul

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  James McBride

Genre:  Fiction, Short Stories

320 pages, published September 26, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Winner of the U.S. National Book Award, Five-Carat Soul is a selection of short stories which focus on different African-American experiences. The stories feature a purgatory where a boxer and the other souls must make a case for themselves, a poor Pennsylvania neighborhood called The Bottom, telepathic zoo animals, a zealous toy collector and an eavesdropping Abraham Lincoln.

 

Quotes 

“The sadder the story, the more valuable the toy. That is a human element and it’s one that no painting has. The specific history of sorrow or joy in a child’s life, when determining the price, means the sky’s the limit.”

 

..an innocent child paying for generations of stolen trains, stolen cars, stolen land, stolen horses, stolen history, stolen people arriving at a strange land inside a merchant…                      

 

“Most cars drove through there because the drivers is either from The Bottom and wanna get home – or they ain’t from The Bottom and wanna get home in one piece.”

 

My Take

I really enjoyed all of the stories in Five-Carat Soul, especially the first one which delves into the arcane field of toy collecting. McBride, a masterful writer, draws the reader in with rich details into the various worlds he creates.  I listened to the audio version of this book and highly recommend it.  There are different narrators for each story and the voice work is excellent.

 

/by