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459. Maybe in Another Life

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Drue Emerson

Author:   Taylor Jenkins Reid

Genre:   Fiction, Romance

342 pages, published July 7, 2015

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

29 year old Hannah Martin is at a crossroads in her life.  Spending her twenties bouncing from city to city and job to job, she returns to her hometown of Los Angeles to be close to her best friend Gabby.  Shortly after relocating, she meets up with ex-boyfriend Ethan at a bar with friends.  At the end of the evening Hannah has to decide whether to go home with Ethan or not.  At this point, the book follows the two differing paths that her life will take depending on that fateful decision.

Quotes 

“I know there may be universes out there where I made different choices and they led me somewhere else, led me to someone else. And my heart breaks for every single version of me that didn’t end up with you.”

 

“Life is long and full of an infinite number of decisions. I have to think that the small ones don’t matter, that I’ll end up where I need to end up no matter what I do.”

 

“When you sit there and wish things had happened differently, you can’t just wish away the bad stuff. You have to think about all the good stuff you might lose, too. Better just to stay in the now and focus on what you can do better in the future.”

 

“That’s what you do when you want something. You don’t look for reasons why it won’t work. You look for reasons why it will.”

 

“I think I have to believe that life will work out the way it needs to. If everything that happens in the world is just a result of chance and there’s no rhyme or reason to any of it, that’s just too chaotic for me to handle. I’d have to go around questioning every decision I’ve ever made, every decision I will ever make. If our fate is determined with every step we take . . . it’s too exhausting. I’d prefer to believe that things happen as they are meant to happen.”

 

“Fate or not, our lives are still the results of our choices.”

 

“It doesn’t matter if we don’t mean to do the things we do. It doesn’t mean if it was an accident or a mistake. It doesn’t even matter if we think this is all up to fate. Because regardless of our destiny, we still have to answer for our actions. We make choices, big and small, every day of our lives, and those choices have consequences.”

 

“I’m just going to do my best and live under the assumption that if there are things in this life that we are supposed to do, if there are people in this world we are supposed to love, we’ll find them. In time. The future is so incredibly unpredictable that trying to plan for it is like studying for a test you’ll never take. I’m OK in this moment.”

 

“If you love someone, if you think you could make them happy for the rest of your life together, then nothing should stop you. You should be prepared to take them as they are and deal with the consequences. Relationships aren’t neat and clean. They’re ugly and messy, and they make almost no sense except to the two people in them. That’s what I think. I think if you truly love someone, you accept the circumstances; you don’t hide behind them.”

 

“You can only forgive yourself for the mistakes you made in the past once you know you’ll never make them again.”

 

“You don’t need to find the perfect thing all the time. Just find one that works, and go with it.”

 

“It’s very easy to rationalize what you’re doing when you don’t know the faces and the names of the people you might hurt. It’s very easy to choose yourself over someone else when it’s an abstract.”

 

“I don’t believe that being in love absolves you of anything. I no longer believe that all’s fair in love and war. I’d go so far as to say your actions in love are not an exception to who you are. They are, in fact, the very definition of who you are.”

 

My Take

Maybe in Another Life is the first book that I have read by Taylor Jenkins Reid and it was a fun chicklit escape.  In fact, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it and how quickly I sped through it.  It made me think a bit about the role that both chance and choice play in our life.  While not novel, the characters and plot more than hold your interest until the two satisfying conclusions.

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413. Daisy Jones & The Six

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Joni Renee

Author:   Taylor Jenkins Reid

Genre:   Fiction, Historical Fiction, Music

355 pages, published March 5, 2019

Reading Format:  Audio Book

Summary

Daisy Jones & The Six is a fictional account of a band whose album Aurora came to define the late seventies rock ‘n’ roll era.   Led by the brooding Billy Dunne and headlined by the adventuresome and reckless Daisy, the band briefly have their moment in the sun but come crashing to earth when internal tensions prove to much to overcome.

Quotes 

“I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else’s muse.

I am not a muse.

I am the somebody.

End of fucking story.”

 

“I used to think soul mates were two of the same. I used to think I was supposed to look for somebody that was like me. I don’t believe in soul mates anymore and I’m not looking for anything. But if I did believe in them, I’d believe your soul mate was somebody who had all the things you didn’t, that needed all the things you had. Not somebody who’s suffering from the same stuff you are.”

 

“She had written something that felt like I could have written it, except I knew I couldn’t have. I wouldn’t have come up with something like that. Which is what we all want from art, isn’t it? When someone pins down something that feels like it lives inside us? Takes a piece of your heart out and shows it to you? It’s like they are introducing you to a part of yourself.”

 

“Men often think they deserve a sticker for treating women like people.”

 

“You have these lines you won’t cross. But then you cross them. And suddenly you possess the very dangerous information that you can break the rule and the world won’t instantly come to an end. You’ve taken a big, black, bold line and you’ve made it a little bit gray. And now every time you cross it again, it just gets grayer and grayer until one day you look around and you think, There was a line here once, I think.”

 

“I think you have to have faith in people before they earn it. Otherwise it’s not faith, right?”

 

“You can justify anything. If you’re narcissistic enough to believe that the universe conspires for and against you—which we all are, deep down—then you can convince yourself you’re getting signs about anything and everything.”

 

“Confidence is being okay being bad, not being okay being good.”

 

“But knowing you’re good can only take you so far. At some point, you need someone else to see it, too. Appreciation from people you admire changes how you see yourself.”

 

“But loving somebody isn’t perfection and good times and laughing and making love. Love is forgiveness and patience and faith and every once in a while, it’s a gut punch. That’s why it’s a dangerous thing, when you go loving the wrong person. When you love somebody who doesn’t deserve it. You have to be with someone that deserves your faith and you have to be deserving of someone else’s. It’s sacred.”

 

“Passion is…it’s fire. And fire is great, man. But we’re made of water. Water is how we keep living. Water is what we need to survive.”

 

“You can’t control another person. It doesn’t matter how much you love them. You can’t love someone back to health and you can’t hate someone back to health and no matter how right you are about something, it doesn’t mean they will change their mind.”

 

“Love and pride don’t mix.”

 

“But at some point, you have to recognize that you have no control over anybody and you have to step back and be ready to catch them when they fall and that’s all you can do. It feels like throwing yourself to sea. Or, maybe not that. Maybe it’s more like throwing someone you love out to sea and then praying they float on their own, knowing they might well drown and you’ll have to watch.”

 

“I believe you can break me

But I’m saved for the one who saved me

We only look like young stars

Because you can’t see old scars”

 

“It is what I have always loved about music. Not the sounds or the crowds or the good times as much as the words — the emotions, the stories, the truth — that you can let flow right out of your mouth.

 

“I wish someone had told me that love isn’t torture. Because I thought love was this thing that was supposed to tear you in two and leave you heartbroken and make your heart race in the worst way. I thought love was bombs and tears and blood. I did not know that it was supposed to make you lighter, not heavier. I didn’t know it was supposed to take only the kind of work that makes you softer. I thought love was war. I didn’t know it was supposed to… I didn’t know it was supposed to be peace.”

 

“It’s funny. At first, I think you start getting high to dull your emotions, to escape from them. But after a while you realize that the drugs are what are making your life untenable, they are actually what are heightening every emotion you have. It’s making your heartbreak harder, your good times higher. So coming down really does start to feel like rediscovering sanity. And when you rediscover your sanity, it’s only a matter of time before you start to get an inkling of why you wanted to escape it in the first place.”

 

“It scared me that the only thing between this moment of calm and the biggest tragedy of my life was me choosing not to do it.”

 

“I’m not perfect. I’ll never be perfect. I don’t expect anything to be perfect. But things don’t have to be perfect to be strong. So if you’re waiting around, hoping that something’s going to crack, I just… I have to tell you it’s not gonna be me. And I can’t let it be Billy. Which means it’s gonna be you.”

 

“When people asked me for my autograph, I used to write, “Stay Solid, Daisy J.” But when it was a young girl – which wasn’t often but it did happen from time to time – I used to write, “Dream big, little bird. Love, Daisy”

 

“If I’ve given the impression that trust is easy – with your spouse, with your kids, with anybody you care about – if I’ve made it seem like it’s easy to do….then I’ve misspoken. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. But you have nothing without it. Nothing meaningful at all. That’s why I chose to do it. Over and over and over. Even when it bit me in the ass. And I will keep choosing it until the day I die”

 

My Take

I really enjoyed Daisy Jones & The Six, especially the audio version which has multiple narrators who do a terrific job bringing this story of a 70’s rock band to vibrant life.  Listening to it, I really felt like I was there as the band went on a wild ride that burned bright but ultimately led to their dissolution.  The book also has a lot of interesting things to say about love, trust, soul mates and the creative process.  Highly recommended.

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