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262. Paris for One

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Jojo Moyes

Genre:  Fiction, Short Stories, Romance

106 pages, published February 5, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The main story in this collection by JoJo Moyes is an account of 26 year old, introverted Nell, who lives in the UK and has never been to Paris.  After planning a romantic weekend to Paree with her new boyfriend, she is bitterly disappointed when he fails to show and she is stuck in the City of Light by herself.  However, when Nell meets the mysterious Fabien, things begin to turn around.

 

Quotes 

“Nell looks at the label and comes to. “Oh, I’d never wear it. I like to buy things on a cost-per-wear basis. This dress would probably work out at like…thirty pounds a wear. No. I couldn’t.” “You don’t ever do something just because it makes you feel good?” The assistant shrugs. “Mademoiselle, you need to spend more time in Paris.”

 

“She is in Paris, in Parisian clothes, getting ready to go out with a Frenchman she picked up in an art gallery!  She pulls her hair back into a loose knot, puts on her lipstick, sits down on the bed and laughs.”

 

“Are you still with this man?

On no, She sniffed. I realized pretty quickly I couldn’t marry a man without a bookshelf.

No bookshelf?

In his house. Not even a little one in his loo for the Reader’s Digest.

Many people in this country don’t read books.

He didn’t have one book. Not even a true crime. Or a Jeffrey Archer. I mean, what does that tell you about someone’s character?”

 

“Because she knew already that this would be the thing that would end them. And that in the deepest part of her, she had known it from the beginning, like someone stubbornly ignoring a weed growing until it blocked out the light.”

 

My Take

Since starting my reading quest, I’ve read a lot of Jojo Moyes (After You, One Plus One, The Girl You Left Behind, Silver Bay) and have, for the most part, thoroughly enjoyed her books.  While Paris for One is more a trifle than her other books, it was still fun to spend time with it.  Perfect for a quick escape.

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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.

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260. Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Adam Grant

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

326 pages, published February 2, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

In Originals, author Adam Grant studies different types of originality and explores how can to develop new ideas, policies, and practices while minimizing risk.  Grant relates anecdotes from the worlds of business, politics, sports, and entertainment and investigates how to recognize a good idea, speak up without getting silenced, build a coalition of allies, choose the right time to act, and manage fear and doubt.  He also discusses how parents and teachers can nurture originality in children and how leaders can build cultures that welcome dissent.

 

Quotes 

“Argue like you’re right and listen like you’re wrong.”

 

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world,” E. B. White once wrote. “This makes it difficult to plan the day.”

 

“To become original, you have to try something new, which means accepting some measure of risk.”

 

“If originals aren’t reliable judges of the quality of their ideas, how do they maximize their odds of creating a masterpiece? They come up with a large number of ideas. Simonton finds that on average, creative geniuses weren’t qualitatively better in their fields than their peers. They simply produced a greater volume of work, which gave them more variation and a higher chance of originality. “The odds of producing an influential or successful idea,” Simonton notes, are “a positive function of the total number of ideas generated.”

 

“Timing accounted for forty-two percent of the difference between success and failure.”

 

“Having a sense of security in one realm gives us the freedom to be original in another.”

 

“In the deepest sense of the word, a friend is someone who sees more potential in you than you see in yourself, someone who helps you become the best version of yourself.”

 

“Procrastination may be the enemy of productivity, but it can be a resource for creativity.”

 

“Overall, the evidence suggests that liking continues to increase as people are exposed to an idea between ten and twenty times, with additional exposure still useful for more complex ideas.”

 

“Being original doesn’t require being first. It just means being different and better.”

 

“Shapers” are independent thinkers: curious, non-conforming, and rebellious. They practice brutal, nonhierarchical honesty. And they act in the face of risk, because their fear of not succeeding exceeds their fear of failing.”

 

“If we communicate the vision behind our ideas, the purpose guiding our products, people will flock to us.”

 

“When we use the logic of consequence, we can always find reasons not to take risks.”

 

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

 

“The least favorite students were the non-conformists who made up their own rules. Teachers tend to discriminate against highly creative students, labeling them as troublemakers.”

 

“This explains why we often undercommunicate our ideas. They’re already so familiar to us that we underestimate how much exposure an audience needs to comprehend and buy into them.”

 

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” George Bernard Shaw”

 

“People who suffer the most from a given state of affairs are paradoxically the least likely to question, challenge, reject, or change it.”

 

“Entrepreneurs who kept their day jobs had 33 percent lower odds of failure than those who quit. If you’re risk averse and have some doubts about the feasibility of your ideas, it’s likely that your business will be built to last. If you’re a freewheeling gambler, your startup is far more fragile. Like the Warby Parker crew, the entrepreneurs whose companies topped Fast Company’s recent most innovative lists typically stayed in their day jobs even after they launched. Former track star Phil Knight started selling running shoes out of the trunk of his car in 1964, yet kept working as an accountant until 1969. After inventing the original Apple I computer, Steve Wozniak started the company with Steve Jobs in 1976 but continued working full time in his engineering job at Hewlett-Packard until 1977. And although Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin figured out how to dramatically improve internet searches in 1996, they didn’t go on leave from their graduate studies at Stanford until 1998. “We almost didn’t start Google,” Page says, because we “were too worried about dropping out of our Ph.D. program.” In 1997, concerned that their fledgling search engine was distracting them from their research, they tried to sell Google for less than $2 million in cash and stock. Luckily for them, the potential buyer rejected the offer. This habit of keeping one’s day job isn’t limited to successful entrepreneurs. Many influential creative minds have stayed in full-time employment or education even after earning income from major projects. Selma director Ava DuVernay made her first three films while working in her day job as a publicist, only pursuing filmmaking full time after working at it for four years and winning multiple awards. Brian May was in the middle of doctoral studies in astrophysics when he started playing guitar in a new band, but he didn’t drop out until several years later to go all in with Queen. Soon thereafter he wrote “We Will Rock You.” Grammy winner John Legend released his first album in 2000 but kept working as a management consultant until 2002, preparing PowerPoint presentations by day while performing at night. Thriller master Stephen King worked as a teacher, janitor, and gas station attendant for seven years after writing his first story, only quitting a year after his first novel, Carrie, was published. Dilbert author Scott Adams worked at Pacific Bell for seven years after his first comic strip hit newspapers. Why did all these originals play it safe instead of risking it all?”

 

My Take

Not surprisingly, there were some original (and counterintuitive) ideas in Originals.  I was surprised to learn that many of the most successful entrepreneurs were people who kept their day jobs rather than throwing everything they had at their new idea.  It was also interesting to learn that the sheer volume of ideas created led to more original and viable outcomes (this is similar to the argument made by the author of Peak that geniuses are created rather than born).  While not super-compelling, there are some interesting ideas in Originals that are worth a read.

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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.

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258. Go Set a Watchman

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Harper Lee

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction

278 pages, published July 14, 2014

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Go Set a Watchman is the sequel to the American classic To Kill a Mockingbird and the only other book written by Harper Lee who died within two years of its publication.   The title comes from Isaiah 21:6: “For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth” and alludes to Jean Louise Finch’s (aka Scout) view of her father, Atticus Finch, as the moral compass or watchman of Maycomb.  In Go Set a Watchman, Jean Louise  is now 26 years old and has returned home to Alabama from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus.  Set during the Civil Rights struggles, Jean Louise’s world view comes crashing down when she discovers some disturbing truths about her family and longtime beau and must decide what values will define her.

 

Quotes 

“Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.”

 

“Every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his conscience. There is no such thing as a collective conscious.”

 

“[T]he time your friends need you is when they’re wrong, Jean Louise. They don’t need you when they’re right”

 

“A man can condemn his enemies, but it’s wiser to know them.”

 

“She was almost in love with him. No, that’s impossible, she thought: either you are or you aren’t. Love’s the only thing in this world that is unequivocal. There are different kinds of love, certainly, but it’s a you-do or you-don’t proposition with them all.”

 

“If you did not want much, there was plenty.”

 

“The only thing I’m afraid of about this country is that its government will someday become so monstrous that the smallest person in it will be trampled underfoot, and then it wouldn’t be worth living in. The only thing in America that is still unique in this tired world is that a man can go as far as his brains will take him or he can go to hell if he wants to, but it won’t be that way much longer.”

 

“But a man who has lived by truth—and you have believed in what he has lived—he does not leave you merely wary when he fails you, he leaves you with nothing. I think that is why I’m nearly out of my mind.”

 

“She was a person who, when confronted with an easy way out, always took the hard way. The easy way out of this would be to marry Hank and let him labor for her. After a few years, when the children were waist-high, the man would come along whom she should have married in the first place. There would be searchings of hearts, fevers and frets, long looks at each other on the post office steps, and misery for everybody. The hollering and the high-mindedness over, all that would be left would be another shabby little affair à la the Birmingham country club set, and a self-constructed private Gehenna with the latest Westinghouse appliances. Hank didn’t deserve that.”

 

“[S]ome men who cheat their wives out of grocery money wouldn’t think of cheating the grocer. Men tend to carry their honesty in pigeonholes, Jean Louise. They can be perfectly honest in some ways and fool themselves in other ways.”

 

“I’m only trying to make you see beyond men’s acts to their motives. A man can appear to be a part of something not-so-good on its face, but don’t take it upon yourself to judge him unless you know his motives as well. A man can be boiling inside, but he knows a mild answer works better than showing his rage. A man can condemn his enemies, but it’s wiser to know them. … Have you ever considered that men, especially men, must conform to the demands of the community they live in simply so they can be of service to it?”

 

My Take

Having read, and loved, To Kill a Mockingbird, I was very interested to check out Go Set a Watchman, Harper’s Lee update to her classic American novel.  I was also intrigued that these were the only two books ever written by Lee.  While Mockingbird is by far the superior novel, there is much of interest in Watchman.  The de-pedalsting (not really a word) of the moral giant Atticus Finch took me by surprise, but added a fascinating conflict for Jean Louise (aka Scout) to grapple with.  I was also intrigued by the characters’ differing views on the Civil Rights movement and what that meant to Southern states and towns of the time.  If you, like me, are a fan of To Kill a Mockingbird, then a I recommend giving Go Set a Watchman a read.  Also worth noting is the very good voice work by Reese Witherspoon.

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251. Artemis

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Andy Weir

Genre:  Fiction, Science Fiction

305 pages, published November 14, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Jazz Bashara is a petty criminal trying to make ends meet who lives on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon.  Everything changes when Jazz is given the offer to commit the perfect crime for a lucrative reward.  However, she soon discovers that she’s in the middle of a conspiracy for control of Artemis.

 

Quotes 

“On a scale from one to ‘invade Russia in winter,’ how stupid is this plan?”

 

“How dare you call me lazy? I’d come up with a scathing retort but, meh, I’m just not motivated.”

 

“A clumsy, awkward success is still a success.”

 

“By the way, we also hate it when people . . . call Artemis “the city in space.” We’re not in space; we’re on the moon. I’m mean, technically, we’re in space, but so is London.”

 

“I live in Conrad Down 15, a grungy area fifteen floors underground in Conrad Bubble. If my neighborhood were wine, connoisseurs would describe it as “shitty, with overtones of failure and poor life decisions.”

 

“And like all good plans, it required a crazy Ukrainian guy.”

 

“Quality is quality,” Jin said. “Age is irrelevant. No one bitches about Shakespeare fans.”

 

“My cart is a pain in the ass to control, but it’s good at carrying heavy things. So I decided it was male. I named him Trigger.”

 

“Very few people get a chance to quantify how much their father loves them. But I did. The job should have taken forty-five minutes, but Dad spent three and a half hours on it. My father loves me 366 percent more than he loves anything else. Good to know.”

 

“There was something weird about being on the moon and fighting for your life with a stick and some fire.”

 

“But no idiot-proofing can overcome a determined idiot.”

 

“The moon’s a mean old bitch. She doesn’t care why your suit fails. She just kills you when it does.”

 

“It’s all part of the life-cycle of an economy. First it’s lawless capitalism until that starts to impede growth. Next comes regulation, law enforcement, and taxes. After that: public benefits and entitlements. Then, finally, overexpenditure and collapse.”

 

“I didn’t want to spend any more time inside the mind of an economist. It was dark and disturbing.”

 

My Take

I picked up the Artemis audio book because I had really enjoyed Andy Weir’s The Martian.  Unfortunately, Artemis didn’t match the inventiveness, creativity and fun of The Martian.  I found it hard to care for Jazz, the protagonist, and was bored by much of the technical aspects.  My recommendation is to skip.

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250. And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:  Fredrik Backman

Genre:  Fiction, Short Stories, Novella

97 pages, published November 1, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Bestselling author Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove and Bear Town) has written a moving, poignant short novella about the end of life transition faced by the elderly through the characters of Grandpa and his grandson Noah.

 

Quotes 

“Our teacher made us write a story about what we want to be when we’re big,” Noah tells him.

“What did you write?”

“I wrote that I wanted to concentrate on being little first.”

“That’s a very good answer.”

“Isn’t it? I would rather be old than a grown-up. All grown-ups are angry, it’s just children and old people who laugh.”

“Did you write that?”

“Yes.”

“What did your teacher say?”

“She said I hadn’t understood the task.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said she hadn’t understood my answer.”         

 

“Those who hasten to live are in a hurry to miss.”

 

“Isn’t that the best of all life’s ages, an old man thinks as he looks at his grandchild. When a boy is just big enough to know how the world works but still young enough to refuse to accept it.”

 

“You were a busy man, ” she whispers, regret filling every word because she knows she bears the same guilt.

“And now Ted is a busy man,” he says.

But the universe gave you both Noah. He’s the bridge between you. That’s why we get the chance to spoil our grandchildren, because by doing that we’re apologizing to our children.”

 

“Almost all grown adults walk around full of regret over a good-bye they wish they’d been able to go back and say better.”

 

“…this would be my greatest fear: imagination giving up before the body does. I guess I’m not alone in this. Humans are a strange breed in the way our fear of getting old seems to be even greater than our fear of dying.”

 

My Take

Having really enjoyed Fredrick Backman’s A Man Called Ove and Bear Town, I was looking forward to listening to the audio version of this short novella.  It did not disappoint.  Poignant, sweet, heartwarming, and sad.  It makes you think about how wonderful life is and how sad it will be say goodbye at the end.

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248. Gwendy’s Button Box

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:  Stephen King and Richard T. Chizmar

Genre:  Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Novella

171 pages, published May 16, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Gwendy Peterson is your typical thirteen year old girl from the small town of Castle Rock, Maine.  It is 1974 and Gwendy is not happy with the few extra pounds she carries and has the usual young teen issues.  When the mysterious Mr. Fariss approaches her and offers her an curious button box, Gwendy reluctantly agrees to take it.  Gwendy soon discovers that the mysterious button box has powers she can only begin to imagine.

 

Quotes 

“Secrets are a problem, maybe the biggest problem of all. They weigh on the mind and take up space in the world.”

 

“I am what you might call a rambling man, and America is my beat.”

 

“Wanting to know things and do things is what the human race is all about. Exploration, Gwendy! Both the disease and the cure!”

 

“Nailed it. So okay. The media says, ‘Girls, women, you can be anything you want to be in this brave new world of equality, as long as you can still see your toes when you stand up straight.’” He has been watching me, Gwendy thinks, because I do that every day when I get to the top. She blushes. She can’t help it, but the blush is a surface thing. Below it is a kind of so-what defiance. It’s what got her going on the stairs in the first place. That and Frankie Stone.”

 

My Take

I always enjoy Stephen King books and his brief novella Gwendy’s Button Box was no exception.  Even though it is short, the engaging characters, engrossing plot and the sense of dread that hangs over the whole story hooked me in.  Recommended if you are looking for a quick, fun read.

 

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247. La Belle Sauvage (The Book of Dust #1)

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Philip Pullman

Genre:  Fiction, Fantasy, Young Adult

464 pages, published October 19, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

When Malcolm Polstead, a young teenage boy who works in his father’s inn on the banks of the river Thames, finds a secret message inquiring about a dangerous substance called Dust, his world changes in dramatic ways.  A suspicious cast of characters are all interested in a baby girl named Lyra in the care of the nuns at the nearby Abbey.  When a flood of biblical proportions is unleashed, it is up to Malcolm and his friend Alice to save Lyra and perhaps a lot more.

 

Quotes 

“This is a deep and uncomfortable paradox, which will not have escaped you; we can only defend democracy by being undemocratic. Every secret service knows this paradox.”

 

“Once we use the word spiritual, we don’t have to explain anymore, because it belongs to the Church then, and no one can question it.”

 

“the pleasure of knowing secrets was doubled by telling them”

 

“War asks many people to do unreasonable things.”

 

My Take

This is the first book that I have read by Philip Pullman (author of The Golden Compass), but it won’t be the last.  He knows how spin a compelling and captivating yarn and I was happy to be along for the ride with Malcom, Alice and Baby Lyra as they journeyed through flooded landscapes, obstacles and hazards  in Malcom’s trusty canoe named La Belle Sauvage.  An entertaining tale for readers of all ages.

 

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245. Man’s Search for Meaning

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:  Viktor E. Frankl

Genre:  Non Fiction, Memoir, Psychology, Philosophy, History

184 pages, published 1946

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s memoir is a classic depiction of his life and survival in a series of Nazi death camps.  Frankl lost his parents, brother, and pregnant wife to the Nazi’s, but still managed to find meaning and purpose in his life and to go on living after the end of the war.  In fact, he did more than that, developing a psychological framework called logotherapy. Logotherapy is based on the premise that human beings are motivated by a “will to meaning,” an inner pull to find a meaning in life and includes the following principles: Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones: Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life; and We have freedom to find meaning in what we do, and what we experience, or at least in the stand we take when faced with a situation of unchangeable suffering.

 

Quotes 

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

 

“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”

 

“For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.”

 

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

 

“But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”

 

“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”

 

“Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.”

 

“Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.”

 

“Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.”

 

“I do not forget any good deed done to me and I do not carry a grudge for a bad one.”

 

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how”.”

 

“Dostoevski said once, “There is only one thing I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.” These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of the their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful.”

 

“If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.”

 

“The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him?  No, thank you,’ he will think. ‘Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, although these are things which cannot inspire envy.”

 

“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.”

 

“It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.”

 

“Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.”

 

“A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes – within the limits of endowment and environment- he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.”

 

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

 

“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”

 

“I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsiblity on the West Coast.”

 

“Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.”

 

“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.”

 

“But today’s society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy and, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that an individual’s value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler’s program, that is to say, ‘mercy’ killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer. Confounding the dignity of man with mere usefulness arises from conceptual confusion that in turn may be traced back to the contemporary nihilism transmitted on many an academic campus and many an analytical couch.”

 

My Take

At the time of Viktor Frankl’s death in 1997, his hugely influential book Man’s Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in 24 languages and the Library of Congress found it to be among the ten most influential books in America.  I was horrified by Frankl’s depiction of the Holocaust, but moved by his description of courage, dignity, and compassion among some of the men he encountered in the concentration camps.  I was also inspired by his analysis that no matter what your circumstances, you always have a choice and how we choose reflects on our humanity.

 

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