2023 Bookshelf

 

The Old Man and the Sea

"But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated." 

“I told the boy I was a strange old man,” he said. “Now is when I must prove it.” The thousand times that he had proved it meant nothing. Now he was proving it again. Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it.

"You are killing me, fish, the old man thought. But you have a right to. Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother. Come on and kill me. I do not care who kills who.

"The boy saw that the old man was breathing and then he saw the old man's hands and he started to cry." 

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WONDERFALLS by Oak Jones

I'm so proud of this book!

available on Amazon 

"How incessant is the wrong
Yet how dogged is the right
How continual is nature's song
Ask a waterfall at night..." (p.68)

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Sylvia by Twila Newey

"Each of four sisters has come to the funeral with a lifetime of joy and regret." -Amazon review

P 150 Eve looked at the picture of Jesus that hung on the wall behind the desk - a Salvador Dali painting of Jesus on the cross, a woman at his feet. It was a strange choice for an LDS bishop"

P 275 "The room seems to hold the weight of what might have been and relief of what is"

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Run the World by Becky Wade

Becky Wade comes the story of her year-long exploration of diverse global running communities from England to Ethiopia—9 countries, 72 host families, and over 3,500 miles of running

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Great Courses Pagan Religions by Hans-Friedrich Mueller

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Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

"A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other." - Chapter 2

"If those eyes of yours were bed-winches," returned Miss Pross, "and I was an English four-poster, they shouldn't loose a splinter of me. No, you wicked foreign woman; I am your match." 

Madame Defarge was not likely to follow these idiomatic remarks in detail; but, she so far understood them as to perceive that she was set at naught.

"Woman imbecile and pig-like!" said Madame Defarge, frowning. "I take no answer from you. I demand to see her." 

Besides the tension, anticipation, and humor in this scene, Oak pointed out that it's a good example of 2 female characters talking about another female character, passing the Bechdel Test. 

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The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin

"It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skilful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, - this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole.”

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Sex Educated by Bonnie Young

I was impressed with Bonnie when we presented at a MHA conference together. 

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The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide by David Miklowitz

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The Night Watchman.

"Jonet smiled as she took in her daughter’s shined shoes, her bright coat, her pincurl-waved hair, lipstick. Valentine had even lent her gloves. 'You look like a white woman,' said Jonet In Chippewa. Patrice laughed. They were both pleased at her disguise." 

Chapter 13

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Mine! by Heller and Salzman

"There is an increasing gap between what we feel like we own and what we actually own."

"Ownership is a storytelling battle among just six stories."

Case studies included :

• squatters rites in Boulder just a few blocks from me
• saving seats at Harvard graduation (I have my own story about this!)
• why filing a patent may give away more property than it protects
• 23-and-me, storing spit samples for future technology, when companies charge low prices for services or commodities because that's not the real value
• drones
• finding Spanish gold in Idaho
• patenting a plant
• why livestock babies go to the mom but human babies traditionally have gone to the dad
• Kiribati, Spritely Islands, Chinese and ownership in the South China Seas
• the difference between owning eggs and sperm
• indentured servanthood vs military commitment
• inheritance law
• the menu approach to marriage contract and why only 8 states have egalitarian marriage laws in which everything is split no matter whose name it's in
• online ownership and how all online books could disappear with a click

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The Hobbit 

“May the hair on your toes never fall out!”

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East Winds: A global quest to reckon with marriage. Rachel Rueckert

“Sometimes I'm grateful to find out that I'm wrong.”

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Morality, Jonathan Sacks

"I believe we’re experiencing the cultural equivalent of climate change." Intro. 

"It's not uncommon to hear someone assert, "'I don’t believe in a higher power.' Well, weather is a higher power."

"The problem with identity politics - simultaneously telling people that you must understand me and you can’t understand me."

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The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

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Lessons in Chemistry (Melissa)

"It was hard to enjoy the book because it reminded them so strongly of how life used to be, and it felt like PTSD." - a woman from bookclub who would have been a contemporary with Elizabeth Zott. I loved discussing this book and the Barbie Movie at book club.

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How to Hide an Empire: Daniel Immerwahr (Holly)

The logo map

Synthetica chapter was my favorite, but every chapter was a revelation.

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Maisy Dobbs (Jen)

"Truth walks towards us on the path of our questions. Don't struggle to answer her questions but let them do their work." 

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The Choice by Dr Edith Eva Eger

A concentration camp survivor turned therapist. 

"I didn't know that the problem wasn't that an angry man yelled at me, but that I believed what he was saying."  

"To forgive is to grieve—for what happened, for what didn’t happen—and to give up the need for a different past."

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Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb

“We can’t have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the same.”

“Relationships in life don't really end, even if you never see the person again. Every person you've been close to lives on somewhere inside you. Your past lovers, your parents, your friends, people both alive and dead (symbolically or literally)--all of them evoke memories, conscious or not.”

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The Island of the Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

Cyprus! 

"The human mind is the strangest place, both home and exile."

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Black Boy by Richard Wright 

"Hungry to be. Hungry to live." 

“Reading was like a drug, a dope. The novels created moods in which I lived for days.”

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Both Things Are True - Kate Holbrook

I appreciated the chapter on housework and the chapter about repenting of mocking people from the past or describing them as quaint in presentations. 

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Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

"Off with his whiskers!"

One of the first books written to entertain - not educate - children.

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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Book 4

Our Listen-While-We-Do-Saturday-Jobs book. 

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My Antonia, Willa Cather

Connection to the Land, Immigrant experience, Gendered Experience, The Past.

"Her biggest fault was setting down her work to play with the kids."

Jim: "For the first time it occurred to me that I’d be homesick for this river after I left."

"And then starting dinner, all eyes were on their mother, not on him, as she sat at the head of the table."

 'Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.'

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The Selection series, Kiera Cass

I was curious about what my girls were reading!

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The Great Divorce, CS Lewis

"Only the Greatest of all can make Himself small enough to enter Hell. For the higher a thing is, the lower it can descend - a man can sympathise with a horse but a horse cannot sympathise with a rat. Only One has descended into Hell." 

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The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Barbara Robinson

"And the Wise Men are always going to be Leroy and his brothers bearing ham.”

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