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24. The Nightingale

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Summer Youngs  

Author:  Kristin Hannah

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, World War II

Info:  440 pages, published February 3, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary 

The Nightingale tells the tale of two sisters, Vianne and Isabelle, and their experiences in rural France during World War II.  After her husband Antoine joins the French army at the start of the war, Vianne is left to manage on her own with her daughter Sophie and soon finds herself billeting a German officer with a softer side in her home.  Vianne eventually starts to shelter Jewish children after their parents are deported to a concentration camp and even adopts three-year-old Ari, the son of her best friend Rachel.  Vianne’s younger and bolder sister Isabelle joins the French Resistance and becomes the Nightengale, an integral part of the underground network that leads Allied soldiers through the Pyrenees to safety in Spain.  As the war progresses, the sisters’ relationship and strength are tested.  With life changing in unbelievably horrific ways, Vianne and Isabelle will find themselves facing frightening situations and responding in ways they never thought possible as bravery and resistance take different forms in each of their actions.

 

Quotes

“Men tell stories. Women get on with it. For us it was a shadow war. There were no parades for us when it was over, no medals or mentions in history books. We did what we had to during the war, and when it was over, we picked up the pieces and started our lives over.”

“If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.”

“Today’s young people want to know everything about everyone. They think talking about a problem will solve it. I come from a quieter generation. We understand the value of forgetting, the lure of reinvention.”

“But love has to be stronger than hate, or there is no future for us.”

“I am a mother and mothers don’t have the luxury of falling apart in front of their children, even when they are afraid, even when their children are adults.”

“Tante Isabelle says it’s better to be bold than meek. She says if you jump off a cliff at least you’ll fly before you fall.”

“She wanted to bottle how safe she felt in this moment, so she could drink of it later when loneliness and fear left her parched.”

“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

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19. After You

Rating: ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by: 

Author:  JoJo Moyes 

Genre:  Fiction, Romance, Humor

Info:  400 pages, published September 24, 2015

Format:  Audio Book

Summary 

After You is the sequel to the best-selling book Me Before You, a tearjerker that I thoroughly enjoyed.  The sequel catches up with Louisa “Lou” Clark, coping with the aftermath of the death of Will Traynor, the invalid she fell in love with after caring for him during the last six months of his life.  

Lou is working a menial job as an airport barmaid and struggling to live her life without Will.  She ends up in a church basement with the members of the Moving On support group and discovers a new love interest in paramedic Sam Fielding, a strong, sensitive almost perfect man.  Along the way she develops a bond with Will’s daughter whom he never knew about.

 

Quotes

“There’s only one response (to losing someone).  You Live.  You throw yourself into everything and try not to think about the bruises.”

“That’s life. We don’t know what will happen. That’s why we have to take our chances when we can.”

“Life is short, right? We both know that. Well, what if you’re my chance? What if you are the thing that’s actually going to make me happiest?”

“You learn to live with it, with them. Because they do stay with you, even if they’re not living, breathing people any more.It’s not the same crushing grief you felt at first, the kind that swamps you, and makes you want to cry in the wrong places, and get irrationally angry with all the idiots who are still alive when the person you love is dead.  It’s just something you learn to accommodate.  Like adapting around a hole. I don’t know. It’s like you become … a doughnut instead of a bun”  

“You don’t have to let that one thing be the thing that defines you.”

“Mum, you’re not going to get divorced, are you?” Her eyes shot open. “Divorced? I’m a good Catholic girl, Louisa. We don’t divorce. We just make our men suffer for all eternity.” She waited just for a moment, and then she started to laugh.”

“None of us move on without a backward look. We move on always carrying with us those we have lost.  What we aim to do in our little group is ensure that carrying them is not a burden, something that feels impossible to bear, a weight keeping us stuck in the same place. We want their presence to feel like a gift.”

“No. Really. I’ve thought about it a lot. You learn to live with it, with them. Because they do stay with you, even if they’re not living, breathing people anymore. It’s not the same crushing grief you felt at first, the kind that swamps you and makes you want to cry in the wrong places and get irrationally angry with all the idiots who are still alive when the person you love is dead. It’s just something you learn to accommodate. Like adapting around a hole. I don’t know. It’s like you become . . . a doughnut instead of a bun.”

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16.  Redeeming Love

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Adrienne Bulinski

Author:  Francine Rivers

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, Christian, Romance

Info:  465 pages, published May 9, 2005

Format:  Book

Summary 

Redeeming Love a historical romance novel set in the 1850s Gold Rush in California.  The story is inspired by the Book of Hosea from the Bible.  Its central theme is the redeeming love of God towards sinners. Angel, the main character, is abandoned by her father and sold to a house of prostitution after her mother dies.  Angel hardens herself to survive and expects nothing from men but betrayal.  When she meets Michael Hosea, Angel’s life begins to change.   Michael obeys God’s call to marry Angel and to love her unconditionally. Slowly, day by day, he defies Angel’s every bitter expectation, until despite her resistance, her frozen heart begins to thaw.  

 

Quotes

“Love is the way back into Eden. It is the way back to life.”

“If you love me as you claim to, then you love her as well. She’s part of me. Do you understand? She’s part of my flesh and my life. When you say things against her, you say them against me. When you cut her, you cut me. Do you understand?”

“All the way back, she had imagined him gloating and taunting, rubbing her face in her own broken pride. Instead, he knelt before her and washed her dirty, blistered feet. Throat burning, she looked down at his dark head and struggled with the feelings rising in her. She waited for them to die away, but they wouldn’t.”

“He was never angry when she made mistakes. He complimented and encouraged her. He shared his own mishaps with a sense of humor that made her less annoyed with her own incompetence. He gave her hope that she could learn, and pride when she did.”

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15. The Girl on the Train

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Heather Bohart

Author:  Paula Hawkins

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Suspense

Info:  395 pages, published January 13, 2015

Format:  Audio Book

Summary 

The Girl on the Train is psychological thriller told from the point of view of three women: Rachel, Anna, and Megan.  Rachel Watson is a 32-year-old alcoholic who frequently binges and has blackouts.  Rachel’s life has been in a downward tailspin since her divorce from Tom, who left her for another woman, Anna Watson. Tom and Anna are now married and have a baby daughter which exacerbates Rachel’s self-destructive tendencies, as it was her inability to conceive a child that began her spiral into alcoholism.  

Rachel’s drinking has caused her to lose her job, a fact which she hides from her roommate by taking the train into the city every day.  While the train slowly passes her old house, which is now occupied by Tom, Anna, and their daughter, Rachel begins watching an unknown, attractive couple who live a few houses away from Tom, and fantasizes about the couple’s perfect life together until Rachel sees the wife kissing another man.  

When the wife goes missing after Rachel experiences a drunken blackout, Rachel begins to question whether she bears any responsibility.  As Rachel inserts herself into Scott Hipwell’s life and the investigation into Megan’s disappearance, the story unfolds in unpredictable ways.

 

Quotes

“But I did become sadder, and sadness gets boring after a while, for the sad person and for everyone around them.”

“I’d never realized, not until the last year or two of my life, how shaming it is to be pitied.”

”let’s be honest: women are still only really valued for two things—their looks and their role as mothers.”

“She must be very secure in herself, I suppose, in them, for it not to bother her, to walk where another woman has walked before.  She obviously doesn’t think of me as a threat. I think about Ted Hughes, moving Assia Wevill into the home he’d shared with Plath, of her wearing Sylvia’s clothes, brushing her hair with the same brush. I want to ring Anna up and remind her that Assia ended up with her head in the oven, just like Sylvia did.”

“I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts.  Who was it said that following your heart is a good thing? It is pure egotism, a selfishness to conquer all.”

“How much better life must have been for jealous drunks before emails and texts and mobile phones, before all this electronica and the traces it leaves.”

“it’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to mourn for it.”

“Hollowness:  that I understand. I’m starting to believe that there isn’t anything you can do to fix it. That’s what I’ve taken from the therapy sessions: the holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mold yourself through the gaps.”

“The thing about being barren is that you’re not allowed to get away from it. Not when you’re in your thirties. My friends were having children, friends of friends were having children, pregnancy and birth and first birthday parties were everywhere. I was asked about it all the time. My mother, our friends, colleagues at work. When was it going to be my turn? At some point our childlessness became an acceptable topic of Sunday-lunch conversation, not just between Tom and me, but more generally. What we were trying, what we should be doing, do you really think you should be having a second glass of wine? I was still young, there was still plenty of time, but failure cloaked me like a mantle, it overwhelmed me, dragged me under, and I gave up hope.”

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14. The Language of Flowers

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Deidre Farrell

Author:  Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Genre:  Fiction, Romance

Info:  323 pages, published August 23, 2011

Format:  Book

Summary 

The Language of Flowers follows the fraught life of a Victoria Jones, who by the age of 18, had lived in 32 foster homes, and becomes a flower arranger.  Victoria learns the human lessons of love and trust with the aid of a flower dictionary, a type of Victorian-era book which defines what different types of flowers mean.

 

Quotes

“If it was true that moss did not have roots, and maternal love could grow spontaneously as if from nothing, perhaps I had been wrong to believe myself unfit to raise my daughter. Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else.”

“Common thistle is everywhere,” she said. “Which is perhaps why human beings are so relentlessly unkind to one another.”

“She was perfect. I knew this the moment she emerged from my body, white and wet and wailing. Beyond the requisite ten fingers and ten toes, the beating heart, the lungs inhaling and exhaling oxygen, my daughter knew how to scream. She knew how to make herself heard. She knew how to reach out and latch on. She knew what she needed to do to survive. I didn’t know how it was possible that such perfection could have developed within a body as flawed as my own, but when I looked into her face, I saw that it clearly was.”

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10. The Life We Bury

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Heather Ringoen 

Author:  Allen Eskens

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Crime

Info:  303 pages, published October 14, 2014

Format:  Book

 

Summary 

As part of a college English class assignment, Joe Talbert must interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. At a nearby nursing home, Joe meets Carl Iverson, a dying Vietnam veteran who has been medically paroled after spending thirty years in prison for the crimes of rape and murder.  As Joe writes about Carl’s life, especially Carl’s service in Vietnam, he cannot reconcile the heroism of the soldier with the contemptible acts of the convict.  Joe, along with his female neighbor and love interest Lila, throws himself into uncovering the truth, but he is constrained in his efforts by having to deal with his extremely dysfunctional mother, the guilt of leaving his autistic brother vulnerable, and a haunting childhood memory.

 

Quotes

“What if I was wrong? What if there was no other side. What if, in all the eons of eternity, this was the one and only time that I would be alive. How would I live my life if that were the case?”

“Add to that cauldron an ever increasing measure of cheap vodka–a form of self-medication that quelled the inner scream but amplified the outer crazy–and you get a picture of the mother I left behind.”

“But deep down, I knew the truth: I needed her—not as a son needs a mother, but as a sinner needs the devil. I needed a scapegoat, someone I could point at and say, “You’re responsible for this, not me.” I needed to feed my delusion that I was not my brother’s keeper, that such a duty fell to our mother. I needed a place where I could store Jeremy’s life, his care, a box that I could shut tight and tell myself it was where Jeremy belonged—even if I knew, deep down, that it was all a lie. I needed that thin plausibility to ease my conscience.”

“We are surrounded every day by the wonders of life, wonders beyond comprehension that we simply take for granted. I decided that day that I would live my life—not simply exist. If I died and discovered heaven on the other side, well, that’d be just fine and dandy. But if I didn’t live my life as if I was already in heaven, and I died and found only nothingness, well…I would have wasted my life. I would have wasted my one chance in all of history to be alive.”

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9. We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Nancy Sissom

Author:  Karen Jane Fowler

Genre:  Fiction, Animals

Info:  320 pages, published May 30, 2013

Format:   Audio Book

Summary 

We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves is narrated by Rosemary Cooke who had an extremely non-conventional childhood in Bloomington, Indiana, where her father was a  psychology professor and her mother a non-practicing scientist. Rosemary had two siblings, Lowell, who has vanished, and Fern, whose doomed fate is the central mystery of the novel.

 

Quotes

“Language does this to our memories–simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An oft-told story is like a photograph in a family album; eventually, it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.”

“You learn as much from failure as from success, Dad always says. Though no one admires you for it.”

“The world runs,” Lowell said, “on the fuel of this endless, fathomless misery. People know it, but they don’t mind what they don’t see. Make them look and they mind, but you’re the one they hate, because you’re the one that made them look.”

“No Utopia is Utopia for everyone”

“The secret to a good life,” he told me once, “is to bring your A game to everything you do. Even if all you’re doing is taking out the garbage, you do that with excellence.”

“You know how everything seems so normal when you’re growing up,” she asked plaintively, “and then comes this moment when you realize your whole family is nuts?”

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4. The Night Circus

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Aileen and Grace Schwab

Author:  Erin Morgenstern

Genre:  Fiction, Fantasy

Info:  516 pages, published September 13, 2011

Format:  Book

 

Summary 

The Night Circus is a surrealistic fairy tale set near Victorian London in a wandering magical circus that is open only from sunset to sunrise. Le Cirque des Rêves, the Circus of Dreams, features such wonders and “ethereal enigmas” as a blooming garden made all of ice, acrobats soaring without a net, and a vertical cloud maze where patrons who get lost simply step off and float gently to the floor.

The circus has no set schedule, appearing without warning and leaving without notice; they travel in a train disguised as an ordinary coal transport. A network of devoted fans styling themselves “rêveurs” (“dreamers”) develops around the circus; they identify to each other by adding a splash of red to garb that otherwise matches the characteristic black and white of the circus tents.

 

Quotes

“Taking his time, as though he has all of it in the world, in the universe, from the days when tales meant more than they do now, but perhaps less than they will someday, he draws a breath that releases the tangled knot of words in his heart, and they fall from his lips effortlessly.”

“Celia.” he says without looking up at her, “why do we wind our watch?”

“Because everything requires energy,” she recites obediently, eyes still focused on her hand. “We must put effort and energy into anything we wish to change.”

“Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon, or a wolf and a scarlet-clad little girl. And is not the dragon the hero of his own story? Is not the wolf simply acting as a wolf should act? Though perhaps it is a singular wolf who goes to such lengths as to dress as a grandmother to toy with its prey.”

“Do you remember all of your audiences?” Marco asks. “Not all of them,” Celia says. “But I remember the people who look at me the way you do.”  “What way might that be?”

“As though they cannot decide if they are afraid of me or they want to kiss me.”

“I am not afraid of you,” Marco says.”

“You’re not destined or chosen, I wish I could tell you that you were if that would make it easier, but it’s not true. You’re in the right place at the right time, and you care enough to do what needs to be done. Sometimes that’s enough.”

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3. Purity

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  

Author:  Jonathan Franzen 

Genre:   Fiction

Info:  608 pages, published September 1, 2015

Format:   Audio Book

 

Summary 

Purity is the name of the book’s title character, who is also known as Pip.  When we first meet Pip she is living in a crowded Oakland house under the burden of colossal college debt. She soon becomes involved in “The Sunlight Project,” a WikiLeaks-style group headquartered in a South American rain forest that seeks to uncover secrets and expose them on the web.  

Run by the charismatic Andreas Wolf, who grew up in socialist East Germany, the Sunlight Project becomes the jumping-off point of discovery for Pip.  In addition to the main character, the book’s title Purity refers to the desired goal of every character.

Quotes

“Everyone thinks they have strict limits,” she said, “until they cross them.”

“There’s the imperative to keep secrets, and the imperative to have them known. How do you know that you’re a person, distinct from other people? By keeping certain things to yourself.”

“It’s like having one red sock in a load of white laundry. One red sock, and nothing is ever white again.”

“The world was overpopulated with talkers and underpopulated by listeners.”

“I’m starting to think paradise isn’t eternal contentment. It’s more like there’s something eternal about feeling contented. There’s no such thing as eternal life, because you’re never going to outrun time, but you can still escape time if you’re contented, because then time doesn’t matter.”

“The aim of the Internet and its associated technologies was to “liberate” humanity from the tasks—making things, learning things, remembering things—that had previously given meaning to life and thus had constituted life. Now it seemed as if the only task that meant anything was search-engine optimization.”

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