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177. The Book That Matters Most

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Ann Hood

Genre:  Fiction, Romance

358 pages, published August 9, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

After her 25 year marriage has fallen apart when her husband leaves her for another woman and with her two grown children pursuing their own lives outside of the country, Ava is at loose ends.  She joins a book group, looking for companionship and a place to get her moorings.  When Ava’s friend and the book group’s leader announces that the year’s theme is for each member to present the book that matters most to them, Ava rediscovers a book from her childhood that helped her through the untimely deaths of her sister and mother. Alternating with Ava’s story is that of her troubled daughter Maggie, who, living in Paris, descends into a destructive relationship with an older man.  Ava’s mission to find that book and its enigmatic author takes her on a quest that unravels the secrets of her past and offers her and Maggie the chance to remake their lives.

 

Quotes 

“It mattered most to me then because of where I was in my life. So in a way, there isn’t just one book that matters most, there might be several, or even a dozen.”

 

“When you read a book, and who you are when you read it, makes it matter or not.”

 

“Could a writer understand how her book had saved someone long ago, when the world was a fragile, scary place and the people she loved weren’t in it anymore? Could a writer understand that her book had mattered more than anything?”

 

“If you wait long enough, someone had told him once, you settle into being married.”

 

My Take

As a book lover, I was intrigued to listen to The Book That Matters Most.  In fact, the thing I liked most about this book was seeing what book was chosen by each character as mattering most in their lives.  I also loved To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, and Catcher in the Rye.  I haven’t read the other selections (Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina, Slaughter House Five, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn), but am intrigued to do so after finishing The Book That Matters Most.  The other parts of the book that focus on Eva and her daughter were fine, but a bit clichéd.

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176. Rules of Civility

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Amor Towles

Genre:  Historical Fiction, Fiction

335 pages, published July 26, 2011

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

On the last night of 1937, boarding house roommates and friends Katey Kontent and Eve Ross are at a Greenwich Village jazz bar when they meet Tinker Grey, a handsome banker with blue eyes and a winning smile. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a yearlong journey from her work as a law firm secretary to  pool to the upper echelons of New York society and the executive suites of Condé Nast. Katey experiences a world of wealth firsthand and discovers that there is often more to things and people than first meets the eye.

 

Quotes 

“In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions—we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come.”

 

“Whatever setbacks he had faced in his life, he said, however daunting or dispiriting the unfolding of events, he always knew that he would make it through, as long as when he woke in the morning he was looking forward to his first cup of coffee. Only decades later would I realize that he had been giving me a piece of advice.”

 

“Uncompromising purpose and the search for eternal truth have an unquestionable sex appeal for the young and high-minded; but when a person loses the ability to take pleasure in the mundane–in the cigarette on the stoop or the gingersnap in the bath–she had probably put herself in unnecessary danger.”

 

“As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion….if the next thing you’re going to say makes you feel better, then it’s probably the wrong thing to say. This is one of the finer maxims that I’ve discovered in life. And you can have it, since it’s been of no use to me.”

 

“Most people have more needs than wants. That’s why they live the lives they do. But the world is run by those whose wants outstrip their needs.”

 

“The principle here is that a new generation owes a measure of thanks to every member of the previous generation. Our elders planted fields and fought in wars; they advanced the arts and sciences, and generally made sacrifices on our behalf. So by their efforts, however humble, they have earned a measure of our gratitude and respect.”

 

“For better or worse, there are few things so disarming as one who laughs well at her own expense.”

 

“Slurring is the cursive of speech…”

 

“Because when some incident sheds a favorable light on an old and absent friend, that’s about as good a gift as chance intends to offer.”                                     

 

“Right from the first, I could see a calmness in you – that sort of inner tranquility that they write about in books, but that almost no one seems to possess. I was wondering to myself: How does she do that? And I figured it could only come from having no regrets – from having made choices with …. such poise and purpose.”

 

“—I probably shouldn’t tell you this, I said.

—Kay-Kay, those are my six favorite words in the English language.”

 

“After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel? For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone? Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli. By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration—and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.”

 

“For as it turns out, one can revisit the past quite pleasantly, as long as one does so expecting nearly every aspect of it to have changed.”

 

“Anyone who has ridden the subway twice a day to earn their bread knows how it goes: When you board, you exhibit the same persona you use with your colleagues and acquaintances. You’ve carried it through the turnstile and past the sliding doors, so that your fellow passengers can tell who you are – cocky or cautious, amorous or indifferent, loaded or on the dole. But you find yourself a seat and the train gets under way; it comes to one station and then another; people get off and others get on. And under the influence of the cradlelike rocking of the train, your carefully crafted persona begins to slip away. The super-ego dissolves as your mind begins to wander aimlessly over your cares and your dreams; or better yet, it drifts into ambient hypnosis, where even cares and dreams recede and the peaceful silence of the cosmos pervades.”

 

“Really. Is there anything nice to be said about other people’s vacations?”

 

“For however inhospitable the wind, from this vantage point Manhattan was simply so improbable, so wonderful, so obviously full of promise – that you wanted to approach it for the rest of your life without ever quite arriving.”

 

“If we only fell in love with people who were perfect for us…then there wouldn’t be so much fuss about love in the first place.”

 

“…be careful when choosing what you’re proud of–because the world has every intention of using it against you.”

 

“That’s the problem with living in New York. You’ve got no New York to run away to.”

 

My Take

Published in 2011, Rules of Civility won The New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA) Fiction Book of the Year award.   After reading it, I can understand why.  While the plot meanders all over the place, you cannot help but be impressed by the quality of Amor Towles’ writing.  Just look at the quotes I pulled out.  The man knows how to write.  I didn’t like Rules of Civility as much as his recent A Gentlemen in Moscow (which garnered a rare five stars from me), but I still really enjoyed it and can wholeheartedly recommend it.

 

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174. The Cuckoo’s Calling

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Boulder Librarian

Author:   Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Crime, Thriller, Suspense

455 pages, published April 30, 2013

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

While The Cuckoo’s Calling, a murder mystery and book one of a series featuring private detective Cormoran Strike, lists the author as Robert Galbraith, that is a pseudonym.  It is actually written by J. K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame.  The book opens with Detective Strike hired to investigate the death of supermodel Lula Landry (known to her friends as the Cuckoo) which has been ruled a suicide by the police.  After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator.  He is down to one client, has creditors on his back, has just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.  The Landry case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers.

 

Quotes 

“Seven and a half million hearts were beating in close proximity in this heaving old city, and many, after all, would be aching far worse than his.”

 

“Other people his age had houses and washing machines, cars and television sets, furniture and gardens and mountain bikes and lawnmowers: he had four boxes of crap, and a set of matchless memories.”

 

“You’re like everyone else, Strike; you want your civil liberties when you’ve told the missus you’re at the office and you’re at a lap-dancing club, but you want twenty-four-hour surveillance on your house when someone’s trying to force your bathroom window open. Can’t have it both ways.”

 

“Humans often assumed symmetry and equality where none existed.”

 

“In the inverted food chain of fame, it was the big beasts who were stalked and hunted.”

 

“The dead could only speak through the mouths of those left behind, and through the signs they left scattered behind them.”

 

“When you are young, and beautiful, you can be very cruel.”

 

“There’s people who’d expect you to take a bullet for them and they don’t bother rememb’ring yuh name.”

 

“Couples tended to be of roughly equivalent personal attractiveness, though of course factors such as money often seemed to secure a partner of significantly better looks than oneself.”

 

“Strike was used to playing archaeologist among the ruins of people’s traumatised memories;”

 

“I am become a name.”

 

My Take

When my son Nick was in Elementary School (he is currently a college student), he and I read all of the Harry Potter books together and we both loved living in the wildly inventive and fantastic world created by J.K. Rowling.  Based in modern day London, Rowling has created a different type of world in The Cuckoo’s Calling, one that I also enjoyed inhabiting during the almost 16 hours that I spent listening to the audio book version.  The Cuckoo’s Calling has everything you could want from a mystery/suspense/thriller:  compelling and real characters, a gritty plot that hums along at a rapid clip, an inside look at a world different from the one you inhabit, plenty of red herrings to keep you guessing and some surprise twists at the end.  It’s no surprise that I’m looking forward to reading book 2 in this series.

 

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172. Then Came You

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Jennifer Weiner

Genre:  Fiction

400 pages, published July 12, 2011

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The lives of four very different women intertwine in unexpected ways in Then Came You.  Each woman has a problem: Princeton senior Jules Wildgren needs money to help her dad with one final shot at rehab.  Pennsylvania housewife Annie Barrow needs money to stay financially afloat.  In her early 40’s and unable to conceive, India Bishop wants to have a child.  India’s stepdaughter Bettina wants her original family back.  Through egg donation and surrogacy, we follow the stories of these four interesting women.

 

Quotes 

“The thing about bad decisions is that they don’t feel like bad decisions when you’re making them. They feel like the obvious choice, the of-course-that-makes-sense move. They feel, somehow, inevitable.”

 

My Take

Then Came You is a quick, fun, light read.  I enjoyed all of the characters and scenarios created by Jennifer Weiner and was interested in seeing how she would wrap up the story (she inserts an obligatory twist).  However, it is a bit on the fluffy side and has not stayed with me several weeks after finishing.

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167. Sweet Tooth

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Ian McEwan

Genre:  Historical Fiction, Fiction

378 pages, published November 13, 2012

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

In 1972, Cambridge student Serena Frome’s beauty, intelligence and staunch anti-Communism make her an ideal recruit for the UK’s intelligence service MI5.  Once there, Serena becomes a part of operation “Sweet Tooth,” the intelligence agency’s efforts to manipulate the cultural conversation by funding writers whose politics align with those of the government.

Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, recruits Tom Haley, a promising young writer and they begin a tempestuous love affair.   With Serena fearing that Tom will discover her role in his financing, Sweet Tooth finishes with an unexpected twist.

 

Quotes 

“Love doesn’t grow at a steady rate, but advances in surges, bolts, wild leaps, and this was one of those.”

 

“There was, in my view, an unwritten contract with the reader that the writer must honour. No single element of an imagined world or any of its characters should be allowed to dissolve on an authorial whim. The invented had to be as solid and as self-consistent as the actual. This was a contract founded on mutual trust.”

 

“By degrees, he joins that sorry legion of passive men who abandon their children in order to placate their second wives.”

 

“Arguing with a dead man in a lavatory is a claustrophobic experience.”

 

“My needs were simple.   I didn’t bother much with themes or felicitous phrases and skipped fine descriptions of weather, landscapes and interiors. I wanted characters I could believe in, and I wanted to be made curious about what was to happen to them. Generally, I preferred people to be falling in and out of love, but I didn’t mind so much if they tried their hand at something else. It was vulgar to want it, but I liked someone to say ‘Marry me’ by the end.”

 

“I was irritated by the way he conflated his own shifting needs with an impersonal destiny. I want it, therefore…it’s in the stars!”

 

“And feeling clever, I’ve always thought, is just a sigh away from being cheerful.”

 

“What I took to be the norm — taut, smooth, supple — was the transient special case of youth. To me, the old were a separate species, like sparrows or foxes.”

 

“Four or five years – nothing at all. But no one over thirty could understand this peculiarly weighted and condensed time, from late teens to early twenties, a stretch of life that needed a name, from school leaver to salaried professional, with a university and affairs and death and choices in between. I had forgotten how recent my childhood was, how long and inescapable it once seemed. How grown up and how unchanged I was.”

 

“Everyone knew as much as they needed to know to be happy.”

 

“Here were the luxury and priviledge of the well-fed man scoffing at all hopes and progress for the rest. [He] owed nothing to a world that nurtured him kindly, liberally educated him for free, sent him to no wars, brought him to manhood without scary rituals or famine or fear of vengeful gods, embraced him with a handsome pension in his twenties and placed no limits on his freedom of expression. This was an easy nihilism that never doubted that all we had made was rotten, never thought to pose alternatives, never derived hope from friendship, love, free markets, industry, technology, trade, and all the arts and sciences.”

 

My Take

Having previously read Atonement, Amsterdam, On Chesil Beach, The Children Act, Saturday and Nutshell, I am a big fan of the brilliant English writer Ian McEwan.  While not his best work, Sweet Tooth is still a very interesting book with a compelling female lead character (Serena Frome) who delivers an inside look at the Cold War mentality in Britain during the early 1970’s.  McEwan also has a lot to say about the pleasures and purposes of reading (something I can relate to) and some fascinating asides on logical math problems.

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165. The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens’ London

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Judith Flanders

Genre:  Non-Fiction, History

545 pages, published July 14, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The Victorian City explores what it was like to live in the everyday world of Charles Dickens’ London.  From the time of his arrived in London in 1822, Charles Dickens obsessively walked its streets, recording its pleasures, curiosities and cruelties.   Judith Flanders, one of Britain’s foremost social historians, uses Dickens’ own words to lead us on a journey through the markets, transport systems, sewers, rivers, slums, alleys, cemeteries, gin palaces, chop-houses and entertainment hot spots of London in the 1800’s.  The nineteenth century was a time of unprecedented change and nowhere was this more apparent than London. In only a few decades, the capital grew from a compact town into a sprawling metropolis of 6.5 million inhabitants, the largest city the world had ever seen.  Technology (railways, street-lighting, and sewers) transformed both the city and the experience of city-living, as London expanded in every direction.

 

Quotes 

“Dickens’ London was a place of the mind, but it was also a real place.  Much of what we take today to be the marvellous imaginings of a visionary novelist turn out on inspection to be the reportage of a great observer.”

 

“the way that people lived was not Dickensian, merely life.”

 

“How are you off for soap?” or “What a shocking bad hat!”

 

My Take

While there are certainly some very interesting parts of The Victorian City, there is not enough to justify the length (545 pages) of this wordy tome.  I did learn a lot about London, a city that I love, and have a new appreciation for Charles Dickens (a writer I need to read more from), but I could have gotten all of this benefit in under 300 pages.

 

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163. Summer House with Swimming Pool

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Boulder Librarian

Author:   Herman Koch

Genre:  Fiction, Suspense

387 pages, published January 26, 2011

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

When famous actor Ralph Meier winds up dead, the authorities begin to suspect Dr. Marc Schlosser, Ralph’s personal doctor and friend.  As the story unfolds, we learn that the real truth is a lot more complex than simple malpractice.  Still haunted by his eldest daughter’s rape during his family’s stay at Ralph’s extravagant beachfront summerhouse, one they shared with Ralph’s family, film director Stanley Forbes and Stanley’s younger girlfriend, Emmanuelle, Marc believes that the perpetrator of the rape could be either Ralph or Stanley.  Stanley, who is weirdly fixated on Marc’s daughters’ future fashion careers, seems like an obvious suspect.  However, Marc’s reasons for wanting Ralph dead become increasingly compelling as events start to unravel.

 

Quotes 

“There are times when you run back through your life, to see whether you can locate the point at which it could still have taken a different turn.”

 

“You get a stain on your pants. Your favorite pair of pants. You wash them ten times in a row at 160 degrees. You scrub and scour and rub. You bring in the heavy artillery. Bleaches. Abrasive cleaners. But the spot doesn’t go away. If you scrub and scour too long, it will only be replaced by something else. By a stretch of fabric that is thinner and paler. The paler cloth is the memory. The memory of the spot. Now there are two things you can do. You can throw the pants away, or you can walk around for the rest of your life with the memory of the stain. But the paler cloth reminds you of more than just the stain. It also reminds you of when the pants were still clean.”

 

“Free-ranging single men are like a house that has been empty too long. There must be something fishy about the house, the woman thinks. Up for sale for six months and it’s still vacant.”

 

“Life as a widow, she thinks, will always be like this. The friends will go on proposing toasts for months (for years!). To her. To their new center of attention. What she doesn’t know yet is that, after a few courtesy calls, it will all be over. The silence that will follow is the same silence that always falls after a life in the shadows.”

 

“Flippancy. A laughing matter. It’s like with funerals. They are, first and foremost, expected to be fun. There is laughter and drinking and bad language. To keep the whole thing from being too bourgeois. A bourgeois funeral is an artist’s worst nightmare.”

 

“An overburdened liver sounds different from a healthy one. An overburdened liver groans. It groans and begs. It begs for a day off.  A day to deal with the worst of the garbage.”

 

My Take

Best-selling Dutch author Herman Koch is a unique voice whose writing is a bit unnerving.  On the recommendation of a Boulder Librarian (who also recommended Summer House with Swimming Pool) I had previously read The Dinner.  While I found that book to be the superior read, Summer House has its captivating moments.  Koch takes you inside the warped psyche of Dr. Marc Schlosser.  Marc’s take on biology and human relations is sometimes ghoulish and creepy, but it is never boring.  If you liked The Dinner, you might want to give Summer House with Swimming Pool a try.

 

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159. The Age of Miracles

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Karen Thompson Walker

Genre:  Fiction, Science Fiction, Young Adult

294 pages, published June 21, 2012

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The premise of The Age of Miracles is that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow.  While the days and nights grow longer and longer, the world’s environment, including gravity and electro magnestism, are hugely impacted.  When the worlds’ governments declare that they will keep the standard 24 hour daily calendar, even though days and nights no longer correspond to it, some people respond by becoming rebellious real-timers who are shunned and eventually ostracized.  In this dystopian future, we follow the life of middle schooler Julia as she tries to cope not just with the impact of the slowing, but all of the ups and downs of the ordinary landscape of her life.

 

Quotes 

“How much sweeter life would be if it all happened in reverse, if, after decades of disappointments, you finally arrived at an age when you had conceded nothing, when everything was possible.”

 

“Some say that love is the sweetest feeling, the purest form of joy, but that isn’t right. It’s not love–it’s relief.”

 

“The only thing you have to do in this life is die,” said Mrs. Pinsky…”everything else is a choice.”

 

“Doesn’t every previous era feel like fiction once it’s gone?”

 

“We were, on that day, no different from the ancients, terrified of our own big sky.”

 

“This was middle school, the age of miracles, the time when kids shot up three inches over the summer, when breasts bloomed from nothing, when voices dipped and dove. Our first flaws were emerging, but they were being corrected. Blurry vision could be fixed invisibly with the magic of the contact lens. Crooked teeth were pulled straight with braces. Spotty skin could be chemically cleared. Some girls were turning beautiful. A few boys were growing tall.”

 

“It was that time of life: Talents were rising to the surface, weaknesses were beginning to show through, we were finding out what kinds of people we would be. Some would turn out beautiful, some funny, some shy. Some would be smart, others smarter. The chubby ones would likely always be chubby. The beloved, I sensed, would be beloved for life. And I worried that loneliness might work that way, too. Maybe loneliness was imprinted in my genes, lying dormant for years but now coming into full bloom.”

 

“Later, I would come to think of those first days as the time when we learned as a species that we had worried over the wrong things: the hole in the ozone layer, the melting of the ice caps, West Nile and swine flu and killer bees. But I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different—unimagined, unprepared for, unknown.”

 

“I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different—unimagined, unprepared for, unknown.”

 

“Even beauty, in abundance, turns creepy.”

 

“And this one fact seemed to point to other facts and others still: Love frays and humans fail, time passes, eras end.”

 

“I liked the idea, how the past could be preserved, fossilized, in the stars. I wanted to think that somewhere on the other end of time, a hundred light years from then, someone else, some distant future creature, might be looking back at a preserved image of me and my father at that very moment in my bedroom.”

 

“A man should enjoy things if he can; he should spend his final days in the sun. Mine will be spent by a reading lamp.”

 

“Seth and I used to like to picture how our world would look to visitors someday, maybe a thousand years in the future, after all the humans are gone and all the asphalt has crumbled and peeled away. We wondered what thise visitors would find here. We liked to guess at what would last. Here the indentations suggesting a vast network of roads. Here the deposits of iron where giant steel structures once stood, shoulder to shoulder in rows, a city. Here the remnants of clothing and dishware, here the burial grounds, here the mounds of earth that were once people’s homes.  But among the artifacts that will never be found – among the objects that will disintegrate long before anyone from elsewhere arrives – is a certain patch of sidewalk on a Californian street where once, on a dark afternoon in summer at the waning end of the year of the slowing, two kids knelt down together on the cold ground. We dipped our fingers in the wet cement, and we wrote the truest, simplest things we knew – our names, the date, and these words: We were here.”

 

My Take

The Age of Miracles has an interesting premise, i.e. what happens if the rotation of the earth begins to slow.  While Thompson explores the real world ramifications of a slowing, most of her book is focused on the life of Julia, a California middle schooler who is coping with ordinary issues that face many 12 and 13 years old:  the loss of friends as you move from one stage of growing up to the next, her parents’ estrangement, first love, social isolation, peer pressure, etc.  These issues are handled with a deft touch and you do feel compassion for Julia as she tries to navigate the difficult world of pre-teen angst while the real world is busy falling apart.  If found The Age of Miracles to be an enjoyable read, but without a great deal of lasting impact.

 

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157. One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   B.J. Novak

Genre:  Fiction, Short Stories, Humor

288 pages, published February 4, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

One More Thing is a collection of humorous, witty and sometimes surprisingly affecting short stories from B.J. Novak, an actor, writer, and director best known for his work on The Office (where he played Ryan the temp).  In one story, a boy wins a $100,000 prize in a box of Frosted Flakes, only to discover that claiming the winnings may break up his family.  A woman sets out to seduce motivational speaker Tony Robbins and asks Tony Robbins himself for help achieving this mission.  Author John Grisham contemplates an epic typo.  A new arrival in heaven, overwhelmed by infinite options, procrastinates over his long-ago promise to visit his grandmother.  One of my favorites is a retelling of the classic fable The Tortoise and the Hare in which a revenge minded hare is obsessed with scoring a rematch against the tortoise who ruined his life.

 

Quotes 

“…slow and steady wins the race, till truth and talent claim their place.”

 

“In the aftermath of an athletic humiliation on an unprecedented scale—a loss to a tortoise in a footrace so staggering that, his tormenters teased, it would not only live on in the record books, but would transcend sport itself, and be taught to children around the world in textbooks and bedtime stories for centuries; that hundreds of years from now, children who had never heard of a “tortoise” would learn that it was basically a fancy type of turtle from hearing about this very race—the hare retreated, understandably, into a substantial period of depression and self-doubt.”

 

“If you love something, let it go.

If you don’t love something, definitely let it go.

Basically, just drop everything, who cares.”

 

“Regret is just perfectionism plus time.”

 

“But nobody remembers how long anything takes; they only remember how good it was in the end.”

 

“You have infinite time here, and there are infinite things to do, but you still don’t end up doing much of it. You do what you love most, over and over.”

 

“It’s not always enough to be brave, I realized years later. You have to be brave and contribute something positive, too. Brave on its own is just a party trick.”

 

“I think it’s better to not know certain things. It gives the world an extra bit of mystery, which is important to us as human beings.”

 

“Being young was her thing, and she was the best at it. But every year, more and more girls came out of nowhere and tried to steal her thing.  One of these days I’m going to have to get a new thing, she thought to herself–but as quietly as she could, because she knew that if anyone caught her thinking this thought, her thing would be right over right then.”

 

“I was sad that summer was over. But I was happy that it was over for my enemies, too.”

 

“In my opinion, there are two types of perfect. The first is the type that seems so obvious and intuitive to you and everyone else that in a perfect world it would simply be considered standard; but, in reality, in our flawed world, what should be considered standard is actually so rare that it has to be elevated to the level of “perfect.” This is the type of perfect that makes you and most other people think, “Why isn’t everything like this? Why is it so hard to find …” a black V-neck cotton sweater, or a casual non-chain restaurant with comfortable booths, etc.—“that is just exactly the way everyone knows something like this should be?” “Perfect,” we all say with relief when we finally find something like this that is exactly as it should be. “Perfect. Why was this so hard to find?”

The other type of perfect is the type you never could have expected and then could never replicate.”

 

“All eyes are beautiful, I said, which is why it’s such an easy compliment.”

 

“It is an inside joke of history that all its most exciting adventures inevitably end their careers as homework. Beheadings, rebellions, thousand-year wars, incest on the royal throne, electricity, art, opera, dogs in outer space.”

 

My Take

My family and I love watching The Office, so I was interested to see what B.J. Novak (who was a creative force on that classic show in addition to playing the somewhat dodgy temp Ryan) would come up with.  I also had really enjoyed reading two books by Novak bestie Mindy Kaling.  While Novak’s stories are often entertaining and sometimes thought provoking, the collection is a bit uneven.  He tackles a wide variety of subjects, themes, tones, and narrative voices.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.  Still, I am happy to have read this book, even if I didn’t enjoy it as much as Kaling’s work.

 

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156. A Gentleman in Moscow

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Blair Norman, Barbara Corson

Author:   Amor Towles

Genre:  Historical Fiction, Fiction

462 pages, published September 6, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

In A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles depicts Russia during the beginning and middle of the twentieth century through the eyes of Count Alexander Rostov.  In 1922, Count Rostov is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin.   Rostov, a paragon of sophistication and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors.  Unexpectedly, his changed circumstances provide him a unique viewpoint into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

 

Quotes 

“if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them.”

 

“For his part, the Count had opted for the life of the purposefully unrushed. Not only was he disinclined to race toward some appointed hour – disdaining even to wear a watch – he took the greatest satisfaction when assuring a friend that a worldly matter could wait in favor of a leisurely lunch or stroll along the embankment. After all, did not wine improve with age? Was it not the passage of years that gave a piece of furniture its delightful patina? When all was said and done, the endeavors that most modern men saw as urgent (such as appointments with bankers and the catching of trains), probably could have waited, while those they deemed frivolous (such as cups of tea and friendly chats) had deserved their immediate attention.”

 

“For what matters in life is not whether we receive a round of applause; what matters is whether we have the courage to venture forth despite the uncertainty of acclaim.”

 

“The principle here is that a new generation owes a measure of thanks to every member of the previous generation. Our elders planted fields and fought in wars; they advanced the arts and sciences, and generally made sacrifices on our behalf. So by their efforts, however humble, they have earned a measure of our gratitude and respect.”

 

“He had said that our lives are steered by uncertainties, many of which are disruptive or even daunting; but that if we persevere and remain generous of heart, we may be granted a moment of lucidity—a moment in which all that has happened to us suddenly comes into focus as a necessary course of events, even as we find ourselves on the threshold of the life we had been meant to lead all along.”

 

“the Confederacy of the Humbled is a close-knit brotherhood whose members travel with no outward markings, but who know each other at a glance. For having fallen suddenly from grace, those in the Confederacy share a certain perspective. Knowing beauty, influence, fame, and privilege to be borrowed rather than bestowed, they are not easily impressed. They are not quick to envy or take offense. They certainly do not scour the papers in search of their own names. They remain committed to living among their peers, but they greet adulation with caution, ambition with sympathy, and condescension with an inward smile. ”

 

“It is a sad but unavoidable fact of life,” he began, “that as we age our social circles grow smaller. Whether from increased habit or diminished vigor, we suddenly find ourselves in the company of just a few familiar faces.”

 

“It is a well-known fact that of all the species on earth Homo sapiens is among the most adaptable. Settle a tribe of them in a desert and they will wrap themselves in cotton, sleep in tents, and travel on the backs of camels; settle them in the Arctic and they will wrap themselves in sealskin, sleep in igloos, and travel by dog-drawn sled. And if you settle them in a Soviet climate? They will learn to make friendly conversation with strangers while waiting in line; they will learn to neatly stack their clothing in their half of the bureau drawer; and they will learn to draw imaginary buildings in their sketchbooks. That is, they will adapt.”

 

“After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel? For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone? Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli. By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration—and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.”

 

“I’ll tell you what is convenient,” he said after a moment. “To sleep until noon and have someone bring you your breakfast on a tray. To cancel an appointment at the very last minute. To keep a carriage waiting at the door of one party, so that on a moment’s notice it can whisk you away to another. To sidestep marriage in your youth and put off having children altogether. These are the greatest of conveniences, Anushka—and at one time, I had them all. But in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have mattered to me most.”

 

“Invariably dressed in black, the Countess was one of those dowagers whose natural independence of mind, authority of age, and impatience with the petty made her the ally of all irreverent youth.”

 

“Alexander Rostov was neither scientist nor sage; but at the age of sixty-four he was wise enough to know that life does not proceed by leaps and bounds. It unfolds. At any given moment, it is the manifestation of a thousand transitions. Our faculties wax and wane, our experiences accumulate and our opinions evolve–if not glacially, then at least gradually. Such that the events of an average day are as likely to transform who we are as a pinch of pepper is to transform a stew.”

 

My Take

I had high expectations for A Gentleman in Moscow after my friend Barbara told me that she loved the book so much that as soon as she finished reading it, she started rereading it again.  I cannot think of higher praise.  While high expectations can sometimes ruin an experience, that was not the case here.  It started a bit slowly, but after an hour or two of listening to the audio book version (with excellent voice work by Nicholas Guy Smith), I was hooked.  Full of humor, a magnificent cast of characters, and one wonderful scene after another, A Gentleman in Moscow reveals layer after layer of discovery and growing self awareness as Count Rostov comes to understand the reality of the world surrounding him and his place in it.

 

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