This is the list of books I read in 2009.  This year I am going to try to at least pull out a favorite quote and maybe write a little about the book.  I'll add to this page all year, then.  (If you want to know when I've added to this list, just go to the bottom of the page here and fill out the little form with Security code, e-mail address and a quick comment, then check the box for Subscribe to this Entry and click Submit.)

The Lost Symbol- by Dan Brown 

The DaVinci Code (another Dan Brown best-seller) was a rip-roaring, hang-on-for-the-ride page-turner.  The Lost Symbol was likewise fast-paced with enough twists and turns to cause motion sickness. There are things I liked about this book and things I did not like.

Things I did not like:

- the twists and turns of intricate plot did get a bit tiresome.  It wasn't that I couldn't keep up, because I could.  But it was sort of like being on a roller coaster ride you really love - about three cycles too many.  You want to say, "This was fun, but enough already. I want to get off." 

- the pandering to the Masons.  Good god.  It is as if he somehow offended them in the past books and was threatened with bodily harm or professional ruin if he didn't repair whatever damage he did to their reputation. 

- the violence.  I don't like gratuitous violence on screen or in books. If I could have covered my eyes through those passages and still been able to read the book, I would have.

Things I did like:

- the discussions and descriptions of Noetic science and of ancient scientific writings that, for example, described 10 dimensions.

- the unmasking of our cultural prejudices and fears.  Here's a good example:

"You're in a cult?"
Langdon nodded and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.  "Don't tell anyone, but on the pagan day of the sun god Ra, I kneel at the foot of an ancient instrument of torture and consume ritualistic symbols of blood and flesh."
The class looked horrified.
Langdon shrugged.  "And if any of you care to join me, come to the Harvard chapel on Sunday, kneel beneath the crucifix, and take Holy Communion."
The classroom remained silent.
Langdon winked.  "Open your minds, my friends.  We all fear what we do not understand." - the discussion of scientific observations of the effect of our minds on matter.  This all seems obvious to me, and not a threat to either religion or science.

The ideas that are most "shocking" and "threatening" in this book are simply ideas that people should look into a little further and they may find comfort, truth for their souls and a feeling of oneness.  I speak of the Christian scriptures (Psalms and John) "Know ye not that ye are gods?" and the Buddha's "You are God yourself." and Dan Brown's "A wise man once told me, the only difference between you and God is that you have forgotten you are divine."

These are not heresy.  These are born from people taking God seriously, looking within, deep within, past the human ego, past all we think we know, and finding the Source of our being, the One who is the Same in all of us.  That is none other than God.  We forget. We hide. We mask. We worry and pontificate and control.  But when you strip it all away, what's inside ("the kingdom of heaven is within you") is the Energy that upholds the world, and our very lives.


Twice as Much in Half the Time - Secrets to Simplifying Your Life, by Amy Jones

This is one of those glossy picture-books-for-adults type of motivational book. I was a little embarrassed to be reading it after I saw the picture of the author and she reminded me of a right-wing televangelist, plus she's über perky... and the pages read like elaborated PowerPoint slides. "What kind of fluff is this?" I thought.

But, I read it and found that even though the succint text is formulaic, and there are liberal inspirational quotes, if you take seriously the questions she asks you to address, you end up with good, practical advice.

I did not come away with a new understanding of how to accomplish twice as much in half the time.  I did, however, come away with more incremental progress in the work I've been doing for over six months.  The book is good for helping you to define what's most important in your life and set priorities built on those values (instead of letting the circumstances of your work, home, family, etc. run your life for you).  So, it was a worthwhile read.


Complications - A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, by Atul Gawande

This book was one of my daughter's senior summer advanced placement English class reading assignments (as was The Glass Castle). I've always wanted to read the books on her syllabus, you know, catch up on classics I missed in high school or college, or, tap into the new ideas with which they are challenging our youth.  This book is the latter, and I"m glad I read it.

There is an aspect of this book that is like sausage-making or law-making:  you really don't want to see what goes into this process; you'd rather not know.  But, it is important that doctors like Gawande tell it like it is: we are all fallible human beings just trying to do our best to help, and that includes the doctor in whose hands we place our very life sometimes.

Gawande is a surgeon, so we learn about his training, and walk with him through the surgeon's experience in a teaching hospital: "see one, do one, teach one."  And, in some cases, they really do mean one.  Just one procedure. So, that means that after having been taught by observation and narration once, how to, say, insert a "central line" which involves finding the right spot on a patient's chest, numbing it, poking a three inch needle into the spot at a steep angle, feeling to make sure you got under the clavicle and piercing into the main vein, oh, and then, forcing in a dilator to open up the vein so you can thread through it a long, floppy guidewire, flush it all out and suture it in place, you as a newbee had to do this by yourself.  The poor author tried this on three different patients, failing and having to be rescued by a resident on staff, while the patient bled into his chest cavity, or yelled, "Ouch!".

It may sound crazy and not very helpful to the patients, but the author describes how, in the end, this forcing of experience, experience, experience is the best way to develop a doctor.  You can read and observe all you want, but until the patient's life is in your hands, and you have to diagnose, decide and act, you are not really developing.  Gawande comes to the conclusion that I heard from my own doctor in his book The Wide Open Door, and that is that so much of doctoring is intuition and feeling. 

He admits that this is unnerving.  He gave a great example of a woman in her early 20's who showed up at the emergency room with a rash on her swollen leg.  It looked like a clear case of cellulitis. Gawande had recently seen a case of flesh-eating virus, and deep down, had a feeling about this woman.  All of the evidence pointed to cellulitis, and the likelihood of it being a flesh-eating virus was less than 5%.  But if she did have it, they had to act immediately, because if they delayed, it spread so fast that they would surely have to amputate her leg, or, worse, she would die.  Given the symptoms and evidence, it would have been reasonable to send her home with antibiotics (in fact, that's what her general practictioner had done, a few days before) instead of scaring her to death with the possibility surgery, of losing her leg or her life.  He shared his "feeling" with the woman and her Dad, and, long-story-short, her leg was full of the virus and was dying at a rapid rate.  They saved her and saved her leg.

He talks about autopsies and how they are teaching tools - you go in after death to confirm if you had the diagnosis right, if you determined the correct "cause of death."  Here's the alarming truth:  according to three studies done in 1998 and 1999, about 40% of autopsies turn up a major misdiagnosis in the cause of death.  What's more, this rate of misdiagnosis has not improved since at least 1938, despite all the advanced tools we have now.

Gawande takes us through story after real-life story to show how good doctors, with good training and good intentions really mess up.  Sometimes they get the diagnosis and treatment right.  Sometimes they let bias and fatigue get in the way and they get it wrong.  And sometimes they do everything right and still get it wrong. The author summarizes reality:
"The core predicament of medicine - the thing that makes being a patient so wrenching, being a doctor so difficult, and being a part of a society that pays the bills they run up so vexing - is uncertainty.  With all that we know nowadays about people and disease and how to diagnose and treat them, it can be hard to see this, hard to grasp how deeply the uncertainty runs.  As a doctor, you come to find, however, that the struggle in caring for people is more often with what you do not know than what you do.  Medicine's ground state is uncertainty.  And wisdom - for both patients and doctors - is defined by how one copes with it."If this doesn't sound like your doctor, if your doctor is always full of confidence, then consider this.  Studies that examined not just the accuracy but also the confidence of physicians' judgments found no connection between them.  Doctors with high confidence in a judgment they made proved no more accurate than doctors with low confidence. 

Even though this is disheartening, it is what I've suspected all along.  I just appreciate the doctors who are honest with me about the uncertainties and risks instead of pretending they are God.  It's time we stopped putting on pedestals doctors, priests and celebrity sports stars.  Like Gawande, 
"...what we in fact covet in our way, is the alterable moment - the fragile but crystalline opportunity for one's know-how, ability, or just gut instinct to change the course of another's life for the better." 
The Glass Castle - by Jeannette Walls

This is a memoir of a girl's growing up in abject poverty that... didn't need to be.  Walls' parents were idealistic, very intelligent, passionate, flawed human beings.  The mother an artist, the dad an engineer type who worked with his hands at any job that would have him and that he could stand, at least until his alcoholism got him in trouble again.

Dad's drinking was where most of the money in the family went, so the three children in the family basically starved and the mother did not like being a mother, had her own demons with which to deal, and so languished in bed instead of caring for her children.  The author's earliest memory is of being on fire - at three years old she was cooking her own hot dogs on the gas stove and her tutu caught the flames.  She was badly burned over much of her torso; this was probably the only time she was taken to the hospital and cared for.  When she recovered, she went back to cooking without supervision because kids have to be tough, her mom said.

Walls' existence was one of deprivation, neglect, embarrassment, illness, and running, always running, from "authorities" of one sort or another, then hiding in some dilapidated building and sleeping in cardboard boxes for beds.  The fascinating twist amid all this squalor and pain was that the children were fairly brilliant and often home-schooled by these derelict genius parents who loved art and music, engineering and science.  So, Walls grew up with intelligence and prodigious survival skills on many levels.

When she finally grew up and moved away from her parents, she made her way in the world using her skills.  She got a good job, supported herself and eventually married and leads the normal life she deserves. Her parents moved to New York to be near her and the other kids, but chose to live the life of squatters in abandoned city buildings, making the most of soup kitchens and refining their skills at dumpster diving.  This is how they want to live.  The book presents this interesting challenge of loving your parents who did you so wrong when you were growing up, and accepting them in all their faults and embarrassing life choices.  Pretty big challenge, though we probably all have the same challenge, only scaled down and not as desperate as the author's was.

This was a difficult book to read.  It took my breath away sometimes.  Reading any book that portrays a small family making its way through the world, playing the game, putting on a good face while barely scraping by and desperately living pay day to pay day is always hard for me to read because it brings back memories of when that was us.  Reading this book is like seeing what could have been, and gives me the shivers.

Death of a Salesman - by Arthur Miller

After my mom died, I went through the books on a shelf in her room and found this classic.  I took it home with me to read, since I had never read it in high school or college. It was written in 1949 and won multiple awards, including a Pulitzer.  The subtitle is, "Certain private conversations in two acts and a requiem."

Miller's "private conversations" lay bare the gelatinous mess that is the relationship between family members.  The wife, sons, father - they all hold their love for each other in their hands like Jello - it's glistening, it's sweet, and if you hold too tightly, it squishes right through your fingers and splats on the floor.  It's painful to behold.  Like a friend of mine recently remarked about her own relationship with her father, "We always end up saying or doing the exact wrong thing." They, like the characters in Death of a Salesman, love each other deeply but carry insecurities and baggage that makes them put up masks and tip-toe around each other which creates static and interference in their conversations instead of letting the love come through, plain-faced and vulnerable.

This happened repeatedly with the father and his sons and it was really something to behold the strength of the love they had for each other and how they suffered for it.  I guess people are just not so good at communicating what we really feel.  I find this type of existence difficult (as did they, I'm sure) so I avoid it.  I would guess that I have this type of relationship somewhere in my life, but with my most important relationships, I just can't afford it. 

Miller's peek into these private conversations illustrates Thoreau's observation that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." The tender look into these lives so wrought with angst and longing, shame and desperation, also underscores my personal motto borrowed from Philo of Alexandria, "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

New Seeds of Contemplation

- by Thomas Merton

This is a reworking and expansion of the Seeds of Contemplation Merton published in 1962. Never having read the original I can't compare, but I can tell by the unapologetically sexist language which chapters he left largely untouched.  I noticed, it but it didn't really bother me.  I simply considered the time in which it was written.  And, in the context of the subject matter of this book, such things are trivial nothings.

It took me a long time to read this book.  I got it from the local library. I enjoyed it at once.  It's the kind of writing that inspires that "Ohhh... this is so good, I have to savor it," reaction.  So, I'd put it down so I could just sit with the beauty (or the provocation) of what I read, allowing it to sink into me, instead of plowing through as if it were only text on a page.  The first library due date came, and I renewed it.  The second came and I had only slightly made my way through the book.  I found I'd been saving it the way one waits to open an especially delightful wine.  I renewed it again.

I indulged in Merton's acerbic characterizations of our Western pollution of religious experience in his chapter about What Contemplation is Not.  He effectively undresses the religion that is "the opiate of the people" - keeping people happy and cozy in groupthink nests of togetherness - "... deadening their awareness of their deepest and most personal needs, alienating them frome their true selves, putting conscience and personality to sleep and turning free, reasonable men into passive instruments of the power politician."He goes on to tell that in the spiritual practice of contemplation you don't get nice slogans, rules to follow that lead to certainty and the satisfaction of knowing you are right, they are wrong, and you can therefore be at peace because you "are saved."  "Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict ... 
On the contrary, ...the experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the deptah of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding. ... This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the spurious "faith" of everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance of conventional opinion.  This false "faith" which is what we often live by and which we even come to confuse with our "religion" is subjected to inexorable questioning. 
... finally to reject all the prejudices and conventions that we have hitherto accepted as if they were dogmas...
... the worst of it is that even apparently holy conceptions are consumed along with all the rest. It is a terrible breaking and burning of idols... so that no ... thing may occupy the place that God has commanded to be left empty:  the center, the existential altar which simply  "is." "

I love a guy with strong opinions. 

I also love "contemplation," which is a real misnomer, because the word "contemplate" to me implies "to think about."  The contemplation about which Merton writes and which I practice, is not about thinking.  It is more about letting go of thinking so that you come empty to the place where you and the Creator just are, and are one. 

This is a good place. 

It's kind of like returning to your ideal home, where the people love you and accept you unconditionally, where you sense the bloodline so strongly and you know where you come from; you know who you are. Upon leaving, you feel stronger stepping back into your daily life tasks. You are walking a little taller, feeling lighter, you have more energy because you know what you have to give; you know your own strength and are not afraid of what is to come. 

Contemplation, the visit to that empty place, is like that. It is unpolluted by my illusions, fears, plans, concerns and certitudes.  It is free.  It is Light.  It is where I come from and who I am.  That's the strength I bring to my daily tasks, and to the world.

Merton has tremendous and unflinching insight into the human heart.  Consider this excerpt of a prayer -
"Untie my hands and deliver my heart from sloth.  Set me free from the laziness that goes about disguised as activity when activity is not required of me, and from the cowardice that does what is not demanded, in order to escape sacrifice."

We have all either been this person or known this person, but I've never heard it called out this way.

He describes our weaknesses so well, but all the while holding fast to the holiness of humanity, the privilege it is to dwell with each other and share each other's burdens, to understand and help one another.

There is much to "contemplate" in this book.  The next library due date came.  I ignored it. 

Then another due date came with, uh, a form letter and an ultimatum that basically said, "Come on, lady.  You borrowed this book.  If you have no intentions of bringing it back because you just enjoy it so much, then fine.  That'll be $16.95 please.  We'll just have to go buy another one for the shelves."

I paid.  I still have the book.  I'm not giving it back.  I'm looking forward to reading it again.


Womenomics, 1. Write your own rules for success 2. How to Stop Juggling and Struggling and Finally Start Living and Working the Way You Really Want - by Claire Shipman and Katty Kay 

Wow.  Subtitles are getting longer and longer, aren't they?  That this one is numbered 1. and 2. is perhaps because two ladies co-wrote this book - two reporters, one for Good Morning America (Shipman) and one for the BBC News (Kay).

This book is a grand hurrah for women, their economic power and desirable position in the work world right now.  The first chapter is devoted to establishing the economic powerhouse that is women. 

Shipman and Kay give lots of examples of women's challenges with work, most of which revolve around women having an irrevocable, pulling, absolute commitment to their kids and spouse.  The authors describe that struggle today's "have it all" women face when they realize that they are enjoying a great career at the expense of being at their kids' soccer games, school plays and teacher conferences.

Shipman and Kay encourage women to stop trying so hard to fit into the expectations that say if you are serious you work late, and weekends, take on whatever juicy new assignment is offered, even if it means more time away from the family, and show up at all the meetings, even the ones that are a waste of time.  They say, "Write your own rules."  This means, look hard at your life.  Look at your time and how you want to spend it.  Lay out your day in a way that makes sense to you and then tell your boss what you need.  Learn to say no, and realize you will survive.  Their argument is that women are way too valuable for employers not to take them seriously in these negotiations.

The authors are not glib about how hard it is to take this approach.  They give you words to use to approach different kinds of bosses.  They give you scenarios and advice on what to say and what not to say.  They help you understand how your boss react and what that boss's point of view may be.  And they provide a valuable gut-check list with which working women should get familiar.  It will help them know when to say yes and when to say no to certain job opportunities.  Here is a sampling of questions in that gut-check list: 

PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENT

• How important is your career to you?

• The above is hard to answer in isolation, right?  So think about how important your career is compared to other aspects of your life.  Make a pie chart, a numbered list, a graph - whatever works - and see how it rates compared to family hobbies, or other interests.  Now you can see how important your career is in relation to the other things in your life.

FAMILY/LIFE 

• Do you spend enough time with your children/aged parent/community group/sport?  What is enough time? For you - not anyone else.
• Would having more time to devote to family or yourself make a difference in your life?  Be realistic.  Don't fantasize about long, lazy days at home with your kids playing happily outside as you roll homemade pasta.  Thing about what you'd actually do with another few hours each day or week...

STRESS

• If you have significant stress at or over work, is it about time?  What might help? Working fewer hours?  Having a more flexible schedule? Or would it require a new boss or a new career?  Really be a sleuth here and uncover what you like least.

They are big on making charts and lists.  They challenge women to take themselves and their values seriously.  And then, create what they call "The New All."  The New All will sound and look suspiciously like "The Mommy Track," that choice to which working moms are relegated that keeps them earning less, with less opportunity and less respect and value in their professions because they can't put in the same hours and energy they could if they didn't value their kids.

The difference here, it seems, is that these women are choosing fewer hours, demanding flexible hours and holding their heads high even when they pass up a plum assignment because it would have them traveling 20 days out of the month.  In fact, working a less than 40 hour week is one of the strategies the authors encourage women to be ready to accept - along with the cut in pay that implies.  

The book is chock full of examples of companies that understand the value of flex time, job sharing, part time, and results-oriented evaluation, like Best Buy, Deloitte and Touche and Marriott.  At Best Buy, people in the back office (not the sales floor) have no set hours or days.  If you meet someone getting off the elevator at 10:30 in the morning as you are coming in, you really would have no idea whether that person was leaving for the day because they came in at 3:00 am, or whether they were leaving for some home commitment and would be back at 2:00. All that matters is that work gets done. 

I think it is good news if more companies are moving in this direction. According to Womenomics it just makes good economic sense.  To me, they can't move there fast enough! 


Do What You Are - Discover the Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of Personality Type - Paul D. Tieger & Barbara Barron 
 
This hefty book serves as a reference book on all the Meyers-Briggs personality types as well as serving as a guide and workbook for the individual who knows what type s/he is.  The authors say that

"Some statistics claim we will have as many as five to eight different careers and as many as ten or twelve different jobs within those careers during work lives that will last nearly fifty years!" Well, my goodness.  It's a good thing one of the hallmarks of my personality is flexibility and being adaptable to change!  This was an interesting read, and is a good source for people exploring their career choices.  The approach explores each MB personality type, and for each one, the authors provide three in-depth profiles of individuals with that type.  The profile is a detailed case history of a person's job history and development, challenges, and finally their current job, which they like. The benefit of this approach is obvious - it's like letting the reader interview someone of their own type and learn through similarities and differences.  After each profile, the authors discuss Why This Career Works for This Person.  After all three, the authors discuss  Common Threads among the three and then list at length and in some detail Popular Occupations for that personality type.  They cover how to customize your job search and give advice on using your strengths to achieve success.  Importantly, they also point out possible pitfalls and blind spots.  I like the lists of work-related strengths and weaknesses.

My personality type is one that is so curious and broad-minded, that she sees value in virtually any approach at all!  That is not helpful sometimes.  So, this book was indeed helpful in pointing out the type of characteristics that are intrinsically rewarding and important for me to have in my work life. I can pay attention to those elements as I move through my career, being sure I negotiate for those things and construct my work life to include them.


Difficult Conversations - How to Discuss What Matters Most - by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen of the Harvard Negotiation Project

This book seemed like an attempt of the writing team to cull the best advice they could give, drawing from their experience as professional negotiators.  I consider myself pretty open-minded, fairly articulate and aware, so, I thought that I would be able to really get a lot out of this book.  The first few chapters, I found, were easy stuff for me because it was presentation of ideas that have earned a place in my own psyche and behavior simply because I have lived long enough to have learned.  These would be things like listening to the other person and trying to get inside their experience, their way of looking at an issue, even if, and especially when, their perspective seems to be the opposite of yours.  Also, listening for a "third story" in the whole conversation - not yours, not theirs, but the third one, which gives yet another opportunity for insight.  There was also good advice about how to turn from blaming to an approach that acknowledges each person's contribution to the conversation at hand.  All good.  Not new, and, stuff I already try to do.  But, it is worth saying that I suppose there are people in the world who have not figured out these approaches and if you are one, then run, don't walk, to the bookstore and study up.  This is how adults should behave, so it's time you learned.

In later chapters, the authors got down to business with case studies, pages of example conversation dialog, annotated with the coach's observations.  Fabulous teaching technique!  It's also where I began to feel like these negotiators were Olympic-grade communicators.  I sat on the sidelines with my amateur skills and thought, Holy cow, this is tough stuff. 

An example would be this conversation:
GRETA:  Mom, you need to stay on the exercise plan.  I worry that you don't understand how important it is. 

MOM:  Greta, please stop hounding me about this.  You don't understand.  I'm doing the best I can.

GRETA:  Mom, I do understand.  I know that exercising can be difficult, but I want you to stay well.  I want you to be around for your grandchildren.

MOM:  Greta, I really don't like these conversations.  It's all very hard for me, the diet, the exercise.

GRETA:  I know it's hard.  Exercising is no fun, but the thing is, after a week or two, it gets easier, and you start to look forward to it.  We can find you some sort of activity that you'll really enjoy.

MOM:  [choked up] You don't realize.... It's very stressful.  I'm just not going to talk about it anymore.  That's all there is to it!

Wow.  My heart goes out to both of these ladies.  Greta sounds like she's being as loving as she can.  Mom is clearly upset.  I don't know what to do!  Sounds like a very reasonable conversation to me.  But that just shows my amateur status!

Then the text goes on to say, "Not surprisingly, these conversations leave Greta feeling frustrated, powerless and deeply sad.  Greta wonders how she might be more assertive, how she can persuade her mother to change.  But assertiveness isn't Greta's problem.  What's missing from her stance is curiosity.  In a follow-up conversation, Greta shifts her goal from persuading to learning.  To do this she limits herself to listening, asking questions and acknowledging her mother's feelings."

The authors show us the new conversation wherein Greta learns about her mom's deep-seated fears and sorrow over having a disease that her own mother died from and not having her husband (who has passed away) to help her through it. Mom is overwhelmed and Greta offers to help with that. Important stuff.

Every difficult conversation has opportunities where, if you employ curiosity, inviting the other person to talk more about the feelings and meanings behind their words, the conversation becomes more productive.  The authors also emphasize persistence, and feelings, always feelings.  That part gets a little annoying, because not everyone is into "sharing their feelings." But the real point of the emphasis is that feelings underlie, sometimes deeply, all the words we throw around, all the emotion that comes with them, and it is important to identify those feelings so that you have a fighting chance of addressing the real issues, not just the surface ones, which, really get you nowhere.  Hence the subtitle - How to Discuss What Matters Most. When you identify the underlying feelings and issues, you are more likely to be discussing what matters most, instead of discussing the red herrings and nonsensical emotional stresses we use to cover up the real issues.

The authors' command of difficult conversations is masterful, and kind of intimidating.  They provide a helpful roadmap in the back, which can help coach you through, if you're really serious about getting better at this.  If you find yourself often coming out of conversations feeling like you weren't heard, or like it was a waste of time, or it wasn't productive, or like you want to strangle somebody, then it is worth taking a look at this book.

Change of Heart - by Jodi Picoult

This was an entertaining book.  It is good material to make into a movie, with its timeless questions, court room scenes and colorful characters.  There's a priest who seeks counsel from a rabbi. There's an agnostic who turns the priest onto the Gnostics and the gospel of Thomas. There's regular folks trying to claw their way through some of life's difficulties, and there is a daughter-of-the-rabbi lawyer who uses logic above all and is surprised to find her "prince charming" doctor who loves her as she is in her size 14 body. And as if this were not enough day-to-day drama, one of the central characters is one that people want to believe is the messiah.  He's a convicted murderer, a carpenter, a healer, a gifted guy.  The author uses this unusual person to explore the reactions and thinking of atheists, agnostics, Christians and Jews.  Here's a typical conversation between a Jew and an agnostic:
"...an atheist's got more in common with a Christian, since he believes you can know whether or not God exists - but where a Christian says absolutely, the atheist says absolutely not.  For me, and any other agnostic - the jury's still out."There's plenty of dissing religion.  Here's a gem launched against the Roman Catholic church:

"I had always believed that the Catholic Church was evidence of religious survival of the fittest:  the purest, most powerful ideas were the one that had prevailed over time.  But Fletcher was saying that the most powerful ideas had been subjugated... because they jeopardized the existence of the Orthodox church. ...Or in other words, the reason the Church had survived and flourished was not because its ideas were the most valid, but because it had been the world's first bully."

It doesn't bother me when people diss religion.  It did bother me when the "messiah convict" in the book healed a bird and a man and, the public, catching a whiff of this, started to line up outside the prison with their sick, looking for a healing.  It bothered me how quickly there sprang up the vocal, sign-carrying for and against camps ready to canonize and crucify this guy, respectively. It's human nature with all its judgments and illusory self-centered thinking that weighs on me. But, I don't think that's going to change anytime soon!

My experience is more like the rabbi's response to the priest in this quote:
"That's the answer to your question about the photo, by the way. You're a different person on the outside than you were when this picture was snapped, but not on the inside. Not at the core.  And not only is that part of you the same as it was when you were six months old... it's also the same as me and your mother and ... everyone else in this world.  It's the part of us that's connected to God, and at that level we're all identical."So, that core is like dipping a cup into the ocean.  The water in that cup is not the ocean, but it is certainly the same stuff.  That's us.  That "stuff" is pretty powerful - much more powerful than we imagine or expect.  My mother healed a bird too, like the guy in the story.  Was she the messiah?  No.  Was she a radiant cupful of the Energy that animates the universe? Absolutely. 

There was one other quote I liked:
"Religion is intriguing, but in a historical sense.  A man should live his life a certain way not because of some divine authority, but because of a personal moral obligation to himself and others."That's one of the things I enjoy about religion - the history.  I love to observe the ritual of people who have handed down over generations an expression of meaning - it doesn't matter which religion it is.  Anthropologically it is fascinating to me, and always holds a bright thread of Wisdom, Wisdom that's accessible and enlightening when I'm humble enough to enter into that culture's ritual from their perspective. 

Lastly, if I'm filled with that Stuff that sustains the universe, I experience "divine authority" and "personal moral obligation to myself and others" as the same thing.  I don't think that this book was meant to evoke that kind of a bottom line, but it is a fun read for anyone who's ever had questions about faith, religion, capital punishment, sin and forgiveness.

New Moon and Eclipse - by Stephenie Meyer

Okay, so these are number 2 and 3 of the Twilight series.  I read them a while ago - right after Twilight, as a matter of fact.  The Twilight series is a page-turner and was a fun three books to read.  I liked Edward a lot.  I liked his wit, his passion, his wisdom gleaned over hundreds of years.  I liked how smart and beautiful he was.  I didn't like the character of Bella.  She annoyed me. I didn't like how insecure and needy and reckless she was.  I didn't like the decisions she made and why.  I kept thinking that perhaps the author was painting an accurate portrait of some teenage girl angst, but if that is the case, god deliver me of that kind of teenager.

In New Moon we got to learn about the wolves, not to be confused with werewolves, which, we learn in the last book, are quite different.  I thought it was cool that this tribe of people had it in them to be shapeshifters, turning into wolves when life required it. 

After dissing Bella here, I have to say, I liked her in her new form in Eclipse.  In fact, I really liked how it all ended and I was so happy for Bella and Edward in their new life together.  I thought it was interesting that her Dad accepted her by degrees, not wanting or needing details.  He was a good model for how a person can take something very threatening to him and overcome it with love.

In the end, I recalled my favorite quote from the series:  When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it's not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end.  I feel this way about many things in my life.  In the end, Bella's dream did not come to an end - it was fulfilled for all eternity.

Twilight - by Stephenie Meyer

Well, I'm not much of a follow-the-crowd type person, so I stood by as a "watcher" last year when the Twilight series of books lit up the teen and twenty-somethings like nothing since Harry Potter.  I didn't go see the movie when it came out, but my daughters did. They have posters of Edward, the vampire, on the walls of their bedrooms now.

So, I had blown through more books at about the same time my daughter was finishing hers, and we looked at each other and decided that I would read Twilight if she would read an older series classic, the Clan of the Cave Bear.  She's enjoying Clan, even though it is nothing like Twilight, and I enjoyed Twilight even though it doesn't compare to the sheer richness and first-love excitement of the Harry Potter series.

Twilight is fun because it conjures the forbidden world of vampires, but makes them palatable (excuse the pun).  Very creative.  These are "vegetarian" vampires, who, similar to recovering alcoholics, have sworn off drinking human blood because they believe it is a monstrous thing to do.  So, there is a lot of drama around a love affair between vampire Edward and his human girlfriend.  There's lots of cool quirky complications like the fact that he's stone cold and she's, well, warm-blooded; he never ages but rather stays a perfect 17 forever while she of course continues to age; he and his group of vampires have to keep up a cover story of a family of "adopted teenagers" in order to live in the human world, and, since they live forever, they have to move on to another place before their community realizes there is something strange about their ever-youthful neighbors.

So, I thought Twilight was fun to keep up with and imagine with.  There is a sweet love story embedded throughout, between Edward the vampire and Bella the unremarkable high school human.  She is hopelessly devoted to him, although I think a lot of it has to do with his being a very effective predator in that he exudes everything he would need in order to attract his prey.  The catch is that even though she is prey, he's kinda in love with her, so he has to continually be on guard not to snap and have her for dinner.

Turns out, if he did decide to devour her and if it didn't kill her (if he stopped before drinking her dry) then she would turn into a vampire too (painful process, but it only lasts three days).  Bella thinks this sounds like a small price to pay to be with him forever and wishes he would just get it over with.  He disagrees.  And that is where the next book in the series begins.  'Reading that now.   


Secret Currency of Love  - edited by Hilary Black

This is a fascinating collection of essays by successful women writers.  The subject is money and their relationship with it - how it formed them, how they manage it (or not), how it destroyed them, taught them, freed them and the people they love.

The essays can be pretty shocking in their honesty.  Very, very healthy, well-educated and well-off women admit that they don't understand money, they don't protect their investments, they let other people walk all over them.  Others tell of the damage done at a young age by parents who were either more interested in money than in their children, or, by parents that were so cheap they left gaping insecurities in their children.

One of my favorite essays was by Marisa Belger, called For Richer or Poorer (here is the link: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/01/10/secret_currency/index.html).  This essay was featured on Salon.com and I really didn't know what to make of some readers' very negative reactions to Ms. Belger.  I thought it was great!  She recounted her experience of falling in love with a man much poorer than herself, and how after they were married, he stopped working altogether and how that affected their marriage.  It's an amazingly intimate story and their love triumphs in the end, but not before some real soul-searching and a near break-up over money, who made it, how much there was, how the bills got paid, what it meant to work, what it meant to love and be married, etc.

This book is worth the read especially for young women who have not thought much about money and how it can and should affect their relationship with any "significant other" in their lives.  A real eye-opener.

People of the Book - by Geraldine Brooks

I liked this book well enough.  It was an interesting historical fiction novel that blended elements of National Treasure, Bones, DaVinci Code and An American Tail.  It traced the journey of a precious 15th century, gilded, illustrated haggadah all over the map and over centuries.  A Hebrew treasure, it was protected through unbelievable hardships and dangers, wars, persecutions, catastrophes.  It was protected by Jew, Christian and Muslim alike. 

The author uses a vivid imagination to paint the lives of ordinary people throughout the centuries and the sacrifices they made to save the book.  There is fascinating detail about paper and ink forensics, as well as how bright colored ink was produced and used in the 15th century.  There's a little bit of personal life of the modern day subject of the book, the person who is trained to handle, evaluate and restore ancient artifacts like the book.  And there is spying, cheating, intrigue and suspense. 

As someone who loves words, I enjoyed the whole premise of a book of words and ideas that were so dangerous and so treasured, and all the sacrifice and love that went into the book. A good read, all in all.

Confessions of a Pagan Nun - by Kate Horsley 

This is a fascinating little novel, set in the 5th century somewhere in Ireland.  Reading it was like having a front row seat to the birth of Christianity in that remote part of the world.  The birth experience can involve strong pain, desperation, confusion, contracting, concentration, fear, messiness, blood, danger, death, exhilaration, triumph, wonder, love, exhaustion, new life.  All those elements were present in this book as it depicted Christianity coming to that part of the world.

This book's perspective of pre-Christianity was especially enjoyable for me, who sometimes wonders if she is in post-Christianity.  That is to say that the main character, Gwynneve, lived, loved and described her sense of what it means to be human and spirit in a way that was religious (many gods and superstitions, and the pagan goddess Brigit over all) and natural (her mother taught her about the blessedness in the woods, its medicines and creatures, and a sense that god was strong in everything she saw, touched or breathed in the woods).  Nature-lover that I am, like Gwynn and like Chief Seattle, I have no problem embracing all of it, and Jesus too. 

I enjoyed the language like this passage where she talks about missing her home in the country.
"I still have a place in my eyes for the strong oak and pine that embraced my tribe, and a place in my nose for the smell of the soft grass beside the furrowed fields."Gwynn is a wise soul, who, as an early teen, was drawn to a certain druid and begged him to teach her.  Druids knew how to read and write and studied the ancient cultures - skills and ideas that were miles beyond what the plain folk could comprehend.  A person had to study for nine years and memorize 350-some stories before they were allowed to "give their opinion" or in any other way consider themselves wise or worthy of the title druid.  She did this, and learned to read and write, learned different languages, translated scrolls from Augustine to Patrick to Plato and wrote her own story of her life as a wanderer, then as a nun in the cloistered monastary of Saint Brigit (the Christians co-opted the goddess Brigit and made her Saint Brigit to win the local souls).  Here is some of her innocent wisdom, much of which is followed by, "May God forgive me for I am just an ignorant woman and I don't know about these things."

"... For do we not all have reason to choose weakness, and is it not our duty to resist it, or the world would be full of mewling and burdensome souls?  I have often seen that the rich, though they have more meat than the poor, are yet weaker.  For the poor can thresh flax from pink to gray light though their hands bleed with cuts while the rich will wail for a physician."

and

"...But beauty and perfection do not guarantee grace and fulfillment and are always sacrificed.  Life itself seems a ritual of sacrifice, and the world the altar on which plants and animals lay their own lives for the sustenance of others, and on which we lay our youth, our well-being, our loved ones, and finally our lives."

and this, from her aged years

"I began to accept the limitations of my life and the alteration of my aspirations, an acceptance that younger women consider weakness and surrender.  But I found that the limitations I accepted, as youth and its dreams fell away, composed a narrow and secret passage leading to an expanse of space and liberation I had not realized existed."

and this, which I love, about the cowardice of bitterness

"I learned that I cannot wait to love what is in my presence, for it or I may well be gone tomorrow.  To some...this lesson poisons the heart with bitterness.  But such bitterness has no value and is, in fact cowardly.  For bitterness risks nothing."Gwynn led a brutal and spare life wandering with the man who became her teacher and her life companion.  When he was finally kidnapped by the local Christians because of his heretical druid satire, she was alone and she wandered until she found the monastery.  She stayed there because she was drawn to the life of work and prayer and protection.  She was their scribe.  She saw and learned more of the treachery of power as it took over during those times that the Christian "tonsured ones" purged the land of "heretics," which were basically anyone who didn't confess to belief in Jesus Christ as the one true God and take on the mantle of the rules of the church at that time.  Women as scribes and intelligent beings were thought to be possessed by demons and were a threat.  So Gwynn was doomed just because she was literate and therefore threatening.  I love this passage near the end of the book because her conclusions are somewhat timeless.  How often through the centuries has this played out? :

"I have seen that the Christian philosophy of the bishops compels people to turn away from the earth and toward heaven. It encourages a view of earth as a place of degradation and temptation and spreads this view of our one mother to include all mothers, whose wombs are considered unclean."As you might guess, Gwynn was not one to give in to bitterness.  She did not hate Jesus because of what people did in his name.  She was learned, so she was able to embrace the hero Jesus as many did at that time, because he offered peace, because he defied death, which was a constant terror to those who lived in that inhospitable land, and he freed them from the many gods (like rulers who declared themselves gods) and proclaimed One, who was compassionate.  These are the things she embraced, along with the wisdom of the Pelagians of the time (who were routed out as heretics) who maintained that one didn't need "the tonsured ones," the priests, in order to talk to this God.  No intermediary was required.  And they disagreed with Augustine, that man was born sinful.  They said we were born good, with an innate ability to choose good over evil.  She read and transcribed all of it, and she lived by the natural Light her mother passed onto her, and by the light of Reason.  For this, of course, she was abused, chained, and finally executed, dumped headlong into a well, while the townspeople wept, remembering how she had sat with them in their sicknesses, and fed them in their hunger.

"Perhaps our solitary walk with mortality is indeed ony a portion of what is real.  Perhaps we are like leaves on the top of a beautiful tree that have no concept of the size of the tree and the manner in which it is attached to the earth."I liked this book because it was historical and human, hopeful and challenging.  The writing was beautiful; poetic.  Words and and language and writing were so important in her life, just as they are in mine. But as I have also learned that it is not wise to "live in one's head" all the time, I really appreciated the humanity and earthy-ness of this book.  Here she speaks of philosophers, but she may as well be speaking to TV producers. "...They have created their own delusions, perhaps for entertainment, or to distract themselves from the knowledge that in order to act upon what is solid, they must develop compassion and courage rather than philosophies." 

Here's to humanity in all its messy, inconvenient, longing proclivities.  Here's to passion and words and realities that defy words.

"...I agree wit the Pelagians, though I be found out and my head held under the water of some brown lake for heresy; all that God has made is sacred, but in ways that the human cannot understand with thoughts but must know in the moment between breaths."

Face the Fire - by Nora Roberts

Okay, so I had to finish the Three Sisters Island trilogy, and Face the Fire was number 3.  I liked it.  The overwhelming message throughout the trilogy was Strong Women.  Strong, Stronger, Strongest.  And the animating sustenance that built the strength was love, community and trust.  Good message!

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - by Jean-Dominique Bauby

Pretty darn amazing book.  The writing is poetic, smart, and you can't help but smile through most of it.  Of course you'd expect the editor of a major magazine to be a talented writer. But two things come together to create "amazing." 1) The book takes us to a place we possibly have never been before, and likely will not see again soon.  2) The feat of patience and irrepressible love of life that made this book possible is no less than inspiring.

Let's get to it then.  The author was the editor of Elle Magazine, France.  He led the dashing life you would imagine.  Then at 43, on his way to pick up his son for an evening at the theater, he suffered a stroke.  He was in a coma 20 days, and when he emerged, he was unable to move anything except his left eye.

He could not communicate, and he looked like hell.  All gnarled and stiff, confined to a bed or wheelchair.  Not able to move facial features, and his right eye sewn shut permanently, he could only present a fairly scary, drooling face to the world.  We've all seen these people.  We don't want to recoil in horror, but part of us always does.  The thing is, inside this paralyzed, frightening, useless body, his mind was the same as ever.  Same creativity, brilliant observations, personality - all there. But no way to tell that, from the outside.  No way to even suggest what he's thinking, what he needs, wants, cares about.  When he cried, people just thought his eye was watering.

He was a victim of something called "locked-in syndrome."  There are others like him, but, rarely, I think, have we been able to break through the outside and actually hear what's going on inside one of these unfortunates.  What a gift to hear him.  How it facilitates compassion and respect for those others who cannot communicate, and who we must not assume are dim-witted or less than human because of it!

Here is an excerpt of him describing some of the patients in the hospital and his experience being there: "...a battalion of cripples forms the bulk of the inmates.  Survivors of sport, of the highway, and of every possible and imaginable kind of domestic accident, these patients remain at Berck [the hospital] for as long as it takes to get their shattered limbs working again.  I call them "tourists."

"And to complete the picture, a niche must be found for us, broken-winged birds, voiceless parrots, ravens of doom, who have made our nest in a dead-end corridor of the neurology department.  Of course, we spoil the view.  I am all too conscious of the slight uneasiness we cause as, rigid and mute, we make our way through a group of more fortunate patients.

The best place to observe this phenomenon is the rehabilitation room... Garish and noisy, a hubbub of splints, artificial limbs, and harnesses of varying complexity... Here we see a young man with an earring who suffered multiple fractures in a motorbike accident; a grandmother in a fluorescent nightgown learning to walk after a fall from a stepladder; and a vagrant whose foot was somehow amputated by a subway train. Lined up like a row of onions, this human throng waves arms and legs under minimal supervision, while I lie tethered to an inclined board that is slowly raised to a vertical position.  Every morning I spend half an hour suspended this way, frozen to attention in a posture that must evoke the appearance of the Commendatore's statue in the second act of Mozart's Don Giovanni.  Below, people laugh, joke, call out.  I would like to be part of all this hilarity, but as soon as I direct my one eye toward them, the young man, the grandmother, and the homeless man turn away, feeling the sudden need to study the ceiling smoke detector.  The "tourists" must be  very worried about fire."

At this point, you should be saying, "Wait a minute.  How is he 'writing' this if he is paralyzed and cannot speak?"  That's part 2 of "amazing."  He and his speech therapist worked out a system whereby she would read the alphabet to him.  He would blink his left eye when she got to the letter she was supposed to write down.  Thus he dictated this book, letter by letter.  He died of pneumonia two days after it was published.

More than his amusing and insightful descriptions of his experience in the hospital, Jean-Dom's book is a memoir of his life.  It is beautiful and worth reading.

Heaven and Earth- by Nora Roberts

This is the second in the Three Sisters Island trilogy.  The trilogy features three sisters who are witches, and descendents of witches who created the island on which they live.  Of course there is a historical and mystical battle that started back in the 1600's and which has caused suffering for centuries, as the descendents are unable to right the wrongs, change the tide, heal the wounds of their foremothers.  The three sisters' spirits represent Air, Earth and Fire.  This book focuses on the Earth heroine, who is very grounded, and wants nothing to do with her "gift." She's a sherrif's deputy and is into protecting the powerless.  She's also a hard ass, sarcastic and nasty.

This actually makes for a fun character because of all the zinger lines and her "make my day" snarl. She kind of reminds me of the character "Silver" on the 2009 version of the TV show "90210."  She doesn't get along with the witch with whom she was raised, and who she loved, because she just doesn't want to deal with her powers.  Turns out it is because it scares her.  Her powers are dark, and the centuries' old battle she has to fight is with evil.

The novel gets more horror-story-like than I'd prefer to read.  But that is only a small part of it toward the end, when the epic battle must be fought.  It would require lots of movie special effects to represent it on screen.  Of course Earth prevails. Underneath all the pyrotechnics and good versus evil drama, I really liked the messages of courage, vulnerability, and the transforming power of love, always love.

Dance Upon the Air - by Nora Roberts

Every once in a while I need a good girly, contemporary novel.  That's when I read Nora Roberts.  I picked this up for light reading (like watching a "chick flick") and because it is first in the trilogy called Three Sisters Island.  Silly me, I thought it might have something to do with the Three Sisters Island where I grew up, in Niagara Falls. But, no.  The three sisters are witches who created the island as a haven and escape from persecution in 1692.

Now, witches don't scare me; nor do I "disapprove" of them. And Nora Roberts' witches are the cool kind.  Serious about "do no harm;" very in touch with Nature; darn good at whatever they work hard at - one is a business owner; one's a sheriff's deputy and one is a cook and caterer.  Their wisdom is very Dumbledore-like.  Here is an experienced witch talking to a novice:
"Not causing harm is a responsibility that comes from what I've been given.  You're the same."
"I don't see how that can be.  I've been powerless."
"And because of it you have empathy for those in pain and those who despair.  Nothing happens to us without purpose, little sister.  What we do because of it, what we do about it, is the key to who and what we are."The book is full of wonderful images of powerful women, very feminist and spiritual at once.  Being in touch with Nature is important to these women, which of course, I like a lot. Two more favorite quotes:
"The goddess doesn't require sacrifice.  She's a mother. Like a mother, she requires respect, love, discipline, and wants happiness for her children."

This kind of spirituality makes me smile. Women who go searching, such as Sue Monk Kidd, for instance, in her book Dance of the Dissident Daughter, eventually find woman-based religions and talk of the goddess.  I can embrace and enjoy all of it. My own hero, Jesus, is not threatened by any of it.  He may have called God father, but if he came to another place and time, he may have said goddess.  It's all God. ("It's all Good.")

Roberts knows how to capture beauty - in anything.  But her descriptions of natural beauty were a treat, like this one:
"Mornings, a fine glassy frost might glitter on the ground only to melt under the strengthening sun until it beaded on the grass like tears on lashes."

So, this book was fun, spiritually inspiring, supportive of women (there was a sub plot of spousal abuse), suspenseful, had great characters who were likable and believable, both the men and the women. I liked it. So now I'm on to the next in the trilogy.

Split Second - by David Baldcacci

I like David Baldacci because his thriller novels are set in Washington, DC and Northern Virginia, two areas with which I'm familiar.  So, when the hero is meeting someone in Reston, or the bad guys are prowling around the Watergate building, it makes me feel more like I'm right in the story.

Split Second was a fun read because it had lots of plot twists and turns and no, I did not figure out the ultimate twist (we always try, don't we?) until it was revealed at the end.  The characters were likable, and fairly believable, and I would recommend the book for anyone who likes the fast-paced murder mystery thriller genre.

The Big Moo - edited by Seth Godin

This is one of those "inspirational" business books, a collaboration of business thinkers and entrepreneurs sharing their stories and wisdom advice about what it takes to be remarkable in business.  Since there are 33 authors, some of the advice is radically different, even conflicting, and that's good, because not everyone approaches "remarkable" the same way.

The Big Moo is supposed to symbolize the next big thing, something that is too big and remarkable to ignore - your edge.  I found most of the entries were about how to be an upstart - how to start a brand new business, bring a brand new idea to market, etc.  The rules for start-ups are radically different for established, successful businesses, and there are a couple chapters that actually compare and contrast those rules and characteristics.  The book, however, favors the start-ups and shows thinly veiled disdain for established companies.  It caters to readers who seek adrenaline rushes and crazy-busy overachieving efforts.

Sometimes this gets tiresome.  For instance, this piece of sage advice: "Be impatient, don't tolerate mediocrity."  Ehhhh... I don't think so.  In my experience patience is one of the most powerful tools we have.  And it takes a particular insight to recognize what is mediocrity and what is merely human.  For most of us, when we think we see "mediocrity," what we're really seeing is our own prejudice projected, or our own worse characteristics in another (cause we can't bear to look at them in ourselves).

Okay, so what the advice-giver is really trying to do is make a statement about excellence.  I get that.  But, this writer has realized there is room for compassion, patience and more than one point of view. 

There were other entries I liked a lot.  For instance, I liked the railing against "gatekeepers," those layers that stand between us and the meaning-makers we need to get to know. "Entire industries and professions exist to keep us from interacting with the people we need to know:  politicians, business leaders, writers, musicians, and other cultural creatives — people who make things happen and contribute to (and reflect) our collective reality. ... we must find a way around the ... PR agencies, media trainers, publishing houses, record labels, ...and so on."Of course, this brings up the value of weblogs and twitter and other person-to-person, uncensored means of communicating with - anyone.  This will be a social phenomenon to watch, with potential to effect remarkable change in the way we learn, develop our opinions, connect.

'Loved the article on Planting Rocks - it talked about our instinct to clear a field of all rock and obstacles to make a rich, flat, arable field for planting, cultivating and harvesting.  Except that some cultures' agricultural models have taught us that leaving in (or even bringing in) rocks were their salvation, because the rocks absorb sunlight and so heat the soil, they collect dew and so add moisture, they decay, adding fertilizer, and they prevent erosion.  The metaphorical leap is clear: "All day organizations like yours are busy making themselves more efficient, removing every impediment and noncontributing element they can find.  The goal, it seems, is to create a pasture that's pristine, easy to plow, and optimally organized. Maybe...that's not such a good idea.  ...Where are the rocks you've been clearing?  What would happen if you put some back?"I also liked the repeated calls to stop being boring, to take a risk, to not take yourself so seriously.  As one who has let her entrepreneurial flame blow out several times, I recognize that sometimes it was because I was taking myself too seriously - I wilted under the pressure to develop the winning business plan, to think of everything, so that I would not make a foolish mistake. To be fair, I have also had to balance the fact that I have an obligation to support the family, with people depending on me, so sometimes my choices have been out of faithfulness to them - not having the right to risk their future just because I'm willing to risk mine.  As I intimated in the reviews of hope for the flowers and When the Heart Waits, I do think there will be another "me" that gets called to the front of the line eventually.  There will be another span of my life when my risks will be my own and I have no doubt that this slumbering little flame will leap to the task and have some fun!


The History of Love - by Nicole Krauss

Well, I was underwhelmed by this book.  My opinion changed as I read it.  First, I was amazed and entertained by the author's prodigious imagination - a spectacle to behold!  The detail, the surprise, the whimsy and charm, the fun of it all.  And, I liked one of the main characters who was an old man convinced he was going to die any day.  He did not want to die alone and forgotten, so every day he would go out of his apartment and do something to cause a ruckus so that if he died that day, there would be several people who would say, "Oh yeah.  I saw him.  I know that guy.  He's the one who knocked over the toothpaste display in the drug store."  Or, "He's the guy who had that long argument with the clerk at the check-out counter."  The old man dreamed up one way after another way to draw attention just in case he was going to die that day.  I thought that was pretty funny.

However. After that, the "prodigious imagination," I think, got way out of control.  I kept hearing echoes of Simon Cowell on American Idol, when he tells a singing contestant, "That was absolute self-indulgent nonsense."  That's how I felt reading the twists and turns, the unnecessarily voyeuristic, crippled, warped scenarios that didn't really add anything to the plot for me.  The plot itself whiplashed between and among lives in a way that was hard to understand. 

And the "History of Love" book, which was quoted repeatedly in the novel was interesting, but painful and not particularly redeeming.  I didn't like the characters much.  I didn't like the mother and daughter's relationship.  I didn't find the book believable and it didn't hold my interest, given all the incestual whiplash going on in the telling of the story.

Even though I was, on balance, disappointed, Nicole Krauss is a good writer, and there were a few passages I especially liked.  Here is one, that echoes my own love of "the space between" (think Dave Matthews' song), and my own new-found respect and love of silence: "Only after they charged him with the crime of silence did Babel discover how many kinds of silences existed.  When he heard music he no longer listened to the notes, but the silences in between.  When he read a book he gave himself over entirely to commas and semicolons, to the space after the period and before the capital letter of the next sentence.  He discovered the places in a room where silence gathered; the folds of curtain drapes, the deep bowls of the family silver...."There was another passage I particularly liked.  It vividly captures what it is like to live with a heavy burden.  In this case, it was a man's knowledge that his siblings and parents had perished at the hands of the Nazis. "He learned to live with the truth. Not to accept it, but to live with it.  It was like living with an elephant.  His room was tiny, and every morning he had to squeeze around the truth just to get to the bathroom.  To reach the armoire to get a pair of underpants he had to crawl under the truth, praying it wouldn't choose that moment to sit on his face.  At night, when he closed his eyes, he felt it looming above him."That's a fairly brilliant description of what it feels like from the inside, when one carries around a burden.  Good writing.


hope for the flowers, a tale- partly about life partly about revolution and lots about hope for adults and others (including caterpillars who can read) - by trina paulus

This is a 1970's flower-child classic about two caterpillars who feel driven to join a tight mass of hundreds of other caterpillars climbing up, up, up a pillar so high that its top is in the clouds.  It is treacherous and arduous work, and the only way to muscle through to the top is to step on any caterpillar that gets in your way.

Favorite quote: "... he heard a tiny whisper from the top:  'There's nothing here at all!' It was answered by another: 'Quiet fool! They'll hear you down the pillar.  We're where they want to get.  That's what's here!' "And then, when he gets up to the top, he's crushed to find that not only is there nothing up there, but as far as he can see, there are more pillars with more caterpillars struggling to the top.  As you may guess, the main character, Stripe, decides to go back down the pillar - itself a treacherous move.  That leads to another favorite quote: "He stopped struggling.  The others stared at him as though her were mad."We have to get used to this posture.  Before one can change, one has to STOP what it is you're doing.  People will usually think you are mad.  The older I get, the more comfortable I am with this.  Perhaps I am on my way to being an "old woman who wears purple" too - but that is a different book.

Caterpillars, when they stop, when they give in and let go of everything, give us a remarkable demonstration of what is possible in Nature - to be created anew.  It is something I think about as I'm going through "the change."  When you get older, you have to face up to how many things change - the way you look and move, the way people treat you, or need you, or don't need you; your stamina, what you value, what you don't value any more.  Lots of changes.  And there's no going back. "It's a big step since you can never return to caterpillar life.
"During the change, it will seem to you or to anyone who might peek that nothing is happening - but the butterfly is already becoming.
"It just takes time!"Let me say that it looks to the caterpillar like nothing is happening too!  This "in between time" is dark, and it is best to just let go and trust.  If I am feeling hopeful, then I tell myself that the "me" that is supposed to be, is already becoming. "For courage she hung right beside the other cocoon and began to spin her own. 'Imagine, I didn't even know I could do this.  That's some encouragement that I'm on the right track.  If I have inside me the stuff to make cocoons — maybe the stuff of butterflies is there too."Well, we can only hope.

The name of the book is hope for the flowers (the lower case is a 70's thing) because "without butterflies there would be very few flowers."  So, the lesson is: whatever I am becoming, I must become because the beauty and wholeness of the world is depending on me to play my role.  Okay.  I'm up for it.  I just hope that when I let go of the me that is now, my friends and family still embrace what I become.  Cause I like them, and I want the role I play to bring them comfort and beauty and happiness too.


The Spirit of Indian Women - edited by Judith Fitzgerald & Michael Oren Fitzgerald

Favorite quotes:  It is hard to pick a favorite, so I will share this one, which is cited in the introduction and is actually fro the book Literature of the American Indian by A. Lavonne Brown Ruoff:
"As employed in religious rituals, thought and word can bring rain, heal physical and mental sickness, maintain good relations, bring victory against an enemy, win a loved one, or ward off evil spirits.  Because of the great power of thought and word, Indian people feel both should be used with care." I think that is very true and wish I remembered it more consistently.
Probably my favorite parts of this book were the portraits and the descriptions of life "before the white man."  The portraits are striking and speak eloquently of the ritual, values and beauty of the people.  This photo of "wife of Slow Bull, Oglala Lakota" is one of my favorites.  Look at the strength in that face.

The descriptions of life before the white man were precious - usually a first-person testimony of an ancient woman remembering her life as a girl. Stories of sleeping under the stars, of waking and leaving the village before dawn to gather wood; of the ritual of greeting the sun. 

And the Inuit of the far North! Stories of bathing in the freezing water and drying with pine branches; and most fascinating, their relationship with the Northern Lights, which they called the Good Shadows!  They played with them - realizing that a disturbance below actually made the lights quiver.  So, they'd all get together and on a signal, clap and make noise and the lights would quiver.  Likewise, if an iceberg cleaved and fell with a great noise, it would move the lights.  They could tell where there were herds of animals in the distance by watching the disturbance in the lights and then following to that spot.

When the Heart Waits - by Sue Monk Kidd

Favorite quotes:  Well, the first one echoes my own dear book, whose working title, before the publishers changed it was You Carry Me in Your Womb. QUOTE 1  '.. remember ...we're carried in God's womb, in God's divine heart, even when we don't know it... First God was only "up there." Then God was "all around." Next I began to see that God was also "within me." And now, most shocking of all, I was finding that I am and always was "within God." '

QUOTE 2  [Here she is quoting Rainer Maria Rilke] ' I beg you.. to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.  Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.'

QUOTE 3 'There are some things that we must simply wait to receive.  We live our questions and wait for the knowing to happen.  Like the tree, we wait for the sap to rise.'I liked the book, even though like most of Kidd's "spiritual" books, I have to hunt for the gems, navigating my way around much of the personal narrative that frankly doesn't add to the subject matter for me.  I figured I could use all the help I could get from it though, because it seems targeted to "the woman in midlife crisis," and she described that woman very well!  She quoted Jung (one of my favorites) - "... we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life's morning - for what was great in the morning  will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie."  Dun dun, DUNNNN!  Yeah, I think I needed to read this.

A favorite gem was the subchapter on "Diapause."  Using the metaphor of the caterpillar who spins a cocoon and waits in silence until it transforms into a new self, Kidd studied up on caterpillars and butterflies, trying to answer the question, "How does the caterpillar know it is time to spin a cocoon?"  Turns out, not unlike people, some caterpillars resist cocooning, and delay it while all their buddies around them are busy spinning away.  The delay keeps them in their "old" state longer, and their eventual transformation comes a good year after their buddies'.  This period of hesitation, resistance and delay between when she's supposed to be going into the dark cocoon of silence and transformation and when she actually gets up the gumption to do it, is called Diapause.

I think I "Diapaused" myself right by some opportunities already! Sure sounds familiar.  But, sure as the sap rises and the butterfly comes, I'll grow my way to the person I'm supposed to be.