12 books is a lot for one month, but many of these were just so engaging that I read through them quickly. My favorite was The Measure, followed by Remarkably Bright Creatures.
Nothing monumental happened this month… we’re just enjoying the leisurely summer days. I finished some scrapbooks I’ve been wanting to complete. I’ve had a small amount of success getting Sweet Girl to read, and I’ll keep trying. We are going to have a few days at a beach soon, and what’s a beach without a beach read???
I hope your summer is going well. I can’t believe it’s already ending for us in 3 weeks!
I know the photos are not showing up for email subscribers and I’ve no idea how to correct that, but you can click the title of the post to see the web version. Here are some reading quotations I liked on Facebook, and some diamond paintings I’ve recently completed.
The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas by Gal Beckerman
“…perhaps for their world-altering outcomes—but each contains an insight about what helps radical ideas come into being. We will bear down on this element in these histories, zoom in on the inkpot sitting on the writing desk of a seventeenth-century aristocrat, the steam drifting up from a printing press in 1930s Accra, the scissors and glue stick in a teenage girl’s bedroom in the 1990s. The stories are particular, but layered on top of each other, they become a sort of palimpsest through which, peeking out, we can see patterns, and even something like truths, about what allowed the most threatening, liberating concepts to grow.”
“These pre-digital forms of communication demanded patience. Because they took time to produce and time to transmit from one person to another, they slowed things down, favoring an incremental accumulation of knowledge and connection. They also lent coherence, a way for scattered ideologies and feelings to be shaped into a single compellingly new perspective. Those who joined such conversations, ones that were deliberate and perhaps more labor-intensive to produce, gained a firmer sense of identity and solidarity, which in turn freed them up to imagine how they might order the world differently.”
Please see my longer review here.
Small Fry: A Memoir by Lisa Brennan-Jobs
This was on sale for $1.99 in audiobook format so I figured, why not? As Lisa grew up, her famous father (Steve Jobs) became more and more involved in her life, though never as much as she would have liked. She lived with him for much of middle school. Lisa’s relationship with both of her parents had some major issues, but she explains well the stark contrast between her mother’s poverty and overbearing love and her father’s frugality despite his wealth and unpredictability and lack of affection.
“I began to think of him as a kind of prophet with loneliness and tragedy at the edges. Only we knew how lonely, how tragic. All light and dark. Nothing in between.”
The audiobook would have been better had it been read by Lisa herself but still, I found her “voice” authentic and her flaws very realistic.
“I see now that we were at cross purposes. For him, I was a blot on a spectacular ascent, as our story did not fit with the narrative of greatness and virtue he might have wanted for himself. My existence ruined his streak. For me, it was the opposite. The closer I was to him, the less I would feel ashamed. He was part of the world and he would accelerate me into the light.”
“Having a father, as far as I understood, felt not like being ordinary, but like being singled out. Our time together was not fluid, but stuttered forward like a flip book. How close are you supposed to be with your father? I wanted to collapse into him, to be inseparable. In his presence, I wasn’t sure how to hold my hands, how to arrange my limbs.”
Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops by Shaun Bythell
Having read The Diary of a Bookseller and Confessions of a Bookseller, I thought this might be a good read too. Bythell has a curmudgeonly affectionate way of describing the (actually eight, including staff) categories of customers he’s come across in his antiquarian bookstore in Scotland.
“This isn’t about us, though, the miserable, unfortunate few who have chosen to try to sell books to make a pitiful living. It is about our customers: those wretched creatures with whom we’re forced to interact on a daily basis, and who—as I write this under coronavirus lockdown—I miss like long-lost friends. From the charming and interesting to the rude and offensive, I miss them all. Apart from the fact that without them I have literally no income, to my enormous surprise I have discovered that I miss the human interaction.“
The Measure: A Novel by Nikki Erlick
Once I read the premise of this one, I had to read it asap. The entire world’s inhabitants received a box at their front door containing a string that reveals the number of years you will live. The book follows 8 individuals as they come to accept their fate, their choices and reactions, and the madness that envelops the world as a result. A compelling idea and it really led me to think about whether I’d want to know how long I have left and if that knowledge would change anything. It is a story about living deeply, but not necessarily as long as one might prefer. What is a meaningful life? Why do we Westerners pretend that we will live forever?
The Cactus: A Novel by Sarah Haywood
“If it wasn’t for the fact that I have colleagues, office life would be bearable.”
This was a quick, light-hearted read about a control freak who lightens up after resolving a family conflict, having a baby, and finding love.
“I experienced a jolt of recognition; it was nothing to do with his appearance—it was something else. The sensation was a little like opening your front door after a long period away; a feeling both that you’re re-encountering something familiar and that you’re seeing it anew.”
Maimonides by Abraham Joshua Heschel
No Jewish thinker has had a more significant impact on Jewish religious thought than Moses Maimonides (1138–1204). This biography is outstanding, especially considering that Heschel dashed it off in a couple months in his 20s! Maimonides is one of the major Jewish philosophers and is considered a leading scholar even now, a thousand years after his death. Heschel unfolds his life as a story, beginning with his formative years and progressing slowly, showing how his views and path changed over time. I found the descriptions of philosophy very readable and easy to follow. I have several passages underlined and I’m sure this book will be useful going forward as a reference.
What does it mean to be a human being? What was his account of living as a Jewish person in his times? And applicably to today’s times, what does it mean to live at a time when you disagree with the majority of political decisions being made?
I’ll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife & Motherhood by Jessi Klein
So good! Klein begins with the life-changing, identity-shifting event that is a newborn arriving into your life and continues her humorous reflections through each small stage. She sort of evokes Joseph Campbells’s The Hero’s Journey to talk about how potty changing symbolizes an identity shift and separation for her son, how to relate bad news to a child, etc. A funny chapter was about how “soul-crushingly precise” car seats must be, where an inspector had a wrench and a level and harped on the specificity of the angle to cause Klein to feel more fragile than ever before, like if a strap is accidentally twisted, all manner of calamity and potential disaster could ensue. Add in some stressful plane trips, Halloween costumes, marriage stressors, and body shape challenges (a “general thickness” that wasn’t there before), and you will laugh along in recognition.
“For most of us, it’s not a journey outward, to the most fantastic and farthest flung places, but inward, downward, to the deepest parts of your strength. To the innermost buried core of everything you are made of but didn’t know was there.”
Klein writes that until recently, the heroism of motherhood entails “swallow[ing] the pain and frustration and keep[ing] everything inside.”
Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature by Zibby Owens
Of course, I’ll read any book about books and reading. This one has been promoted so much lately that I finally threw up my hands in surrender and read it. I loved and identified with the first 3/4 of it, up until she describes falling in love soon after having her fourth child without letting the reader know that she’d divorced her husband! After that, the years she describes fly by and so much is packed into the last few chapters that they feel like an afterthought.
Owens has written other books, many magazine articles, and is the host of the podcast “Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books.” She authentically narrates growing up finding herself in her favorite characters in books and aptly describes the impact that reading had on her and her family. I loved the chapters about her college and graduate school years, all about her friendships and then new motherhood. She experienced many losses over her life and turned to books and writing to heal herself. I have read most of the books she is constantly mentioning throughout the narrative. That part started to bother me too (sort of felt like name-dropping).
“The more authors I spoke to on the podcast, the more I realized that being a writer was a trait shared by some of the most amazing people on the planet. That need to tell a story, to share, to help others, to use words as memories, as tools, to evoke emotions, reflected a lot about a person, even more than the content they wrote.”
Overall, a lovely exploration of how books, motherhood, love, and loss shape a person.
At Home in the World: Reflections on Belonging While Wandering the Globe by Tsh Oxenreider
I listened to about half of this one because the author’s voice started to get on my nerves. I admire that she and her husband took their 3 young kids and traveled around the world for 9 months. What an adventure! They travel to China, then New Zealand, Ethiopia, England, etc. I especially appreciated the side stories of her need for self-care along the way.
Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties: A Novel by Camille Pagán
“There is something about struggle that changes you in irrevocable ways. I had spent more than a year waiting to feel like myself again, but as I packed my bags the day before Jean was to return from Italy, it occurred to me that I would never again be the version of myself that I had been searching for. Instead, the separation and divorce had reduced me to the very essence of who I was.”
I got this for $1.99 on a Kindle special and it looked like an interesting storyline. Woman’s husband of 30 years divorces her and she must reevaluate her life, put herself first, etc. Rather ordinary, but somehow the characters really drew me in. I can’t say I’d want to read anything else Pagán wrote, but this was a good read.
“It was the knowledge that I no longer needed a guarantee to be happy. I hadn’t wanted to be alone. Now that I was, though, I knew that there was a whole new world out there waiting for me. And within this world happened to be a man whom I wanted to take a chance on. I wasn’t sure if it was too late to take that chance, but like Rose, I was going to have to give it a go.”
When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
I listened to Sedaris read this on audio, which I highly recommend. His droll voice is the perfect way to appreciate the irony and self-deprecation in his essays. I’ve recapped some of these stories to my family, who also find him delightful.
Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Bailey
“As one gets older life becomes all take and no give. One relies on other people for the treats and things. It’s like being an infant again.”
Eccentric widows become residents of the Claremont and live their days together, one much the same as another. The reader observes Mrs. Palfrey get adjusted to life there and watches as she meets a young writer, which contrasts just the right amount with her life as to show the difficulties of aging. A humorous yet touching character study.
Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel by Shelby Van Pelt
SUCH A great read. I couldn’t put this down and read it in a day. I enjoyed reading about how Marcellus the octopus ingeniously connects the other main characters. It’s a unique story with charming, easily-relatable characters.
“IF THERE IS ONE TOPIC OF CONVERSATION HUMANS never exhaust, it is the status of their outdoor environment. And for as much as they discuss it, their incredulity is . . . well, incredible. That preposterous phrase: Can you believe this weather we’re having? How many times have I heard it? One thousand, nine hundred and ten, to be exact. One and a half times a day, on average. Tell me again about the intelligence of humans. They cannot even manage to comprehend predictable meteorological events. Imagine if I were to stride over to my neighbors, the sea jellies, and, while shaking my mantle with disbelief, make a comment such as: Can you believe these bubbles these tanks are putting out today? Preposterous. (Of course, this would also be preposterous because the jellies would not answer. They cannot communicate on that level. And they cannot be taught. Believe me, I have tried.) Sun, rain, clouds, fog, hail, sleet, snow. Human beings have walked their earth on two feet for hundreds of millennia. One might think they would believe it already.”
