Deb Nance
How did I ever find this book, back in the day before I was able to find all the genuine book recommendations here in book blogger world? The Secret History is the story of a group of college kids who accidentally do something very, very wrong. A mystery of sorts. A brilliant story of the comradery that can quickly develop among young people and of the tragic consequences of following a charismatic, yet immoral leader.
You will not find a character who feels more real, a character who is not likely to resemble anyone who will ever meet in modern life than the main character of this novel. He is a classic English butler, deeply flawed, completely devoted to his job to the exclusion of family or friends, and he is unable to feel for others and he has trouble interpreting others' emotions. Nevertheless, the reader falls in love with him, and can't help feeling strongly compassionate for his lost opportunities.
It's the novel that comes closest for me of hitting that five star ranking, a story with wonderful, rich characters amid the confusing time before and after World War II in England, set among those who work as servants in the most affluent of estates.
This is one of those books that people either adore or they despise. I'm in the second group. I hated this book. Loathed it. Wanted to set it on fire. I absolutely don't get it. And one of my favorite people in the whole world has told me she loves this book. It's, in fact, her favorite book. How can that be?
I know I am missing something, but this book shocked me and offended me. Help me with this, someone.
A man chosen to lead his country who was way in over his head. All around him was corruption and and self-interest and flagrant wickedness. Not so Claudius, the quiet voice of reason in an insane world. Despite being the one person who continued to do the right thing and despite being in a position of power, Claudius was not a ruler at heart and it was his inability to act that gives this novel its poignancy.
It was the description of the waitress on the job that got me, the description she gave of how she loved to set the dishes on the table so quietly that she did not disturb the guests to her restaurant. I fell in love with this passage. This book became one of my first entry books into what has become a long personal study of happiness. The waitress mystified and intrigued me. How could a person with such a trivial job find such joy in her work? It was fascinating.
There is nothing like rereading an old favorite. This time, I listened to this book on audio. The author read each chapter, and then popped back in to comment with thoughts about her book, from a distance of twenty-five years after the book was originally published.
If you can only read a few books on writing, let this be one of them.
THIRD READ THOUGHTS
Writing Down the Bones is my go-to book about writing. Whenever I need a little motivation, I pull out this book and reread a chapter or two.
Writing Down the Bones shares the idea of writing as a practice. Author Natalie Goldberg has six rules for writing practice:
1. Keep your hand moving. (Don't pause to reread the line you have just written. That's stalling and trying to get control of what you're saying.)
2. Don't cross out. (That is editing as you write. Even if you write something you didn't mean to write, leave it.)
3. Don't worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. (Don't even care about staying within the margins and lines on the page.)
4. Lose control.
5. Don't think. Don't get logical.
6. Go for the jugular. (If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy.)
Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within (Shambhala Library) . Shambhala Publications. Kindle Edition.
I keep these rules close to me when I do my writing practice.
There is a lot more wisdom in the book.
Katagiri Roshi said: “Your little will can't do anything. It takes Great Determination. Great Determination doesn't mean just you making an effort. It means the whole universe is behind you and with you—the birds, trees, sky, moon, and ten directions.” Suddenly, after much composting, you are in alignment with the stars or the moment or the dining-room chandelier above your head, and your body opens and speaks.
Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within (Shambhala Library) . Shambhala Publications. Kindle Edition.
Basically, if you want to become a good writer, you need to do three things. Read a lot, listen well and deeply, and write a lot. And don't think too much. Just enter the heat of words and sounds and colored sensations and keep your pen moving across the page.
Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within (Shambhala Library) . Shambhala Publications. Kindle Edition.
This is an essential book for writers. So glad I read it.
I read this series way back when I was just a young thing, after viewing the wonderful PBS series of the late 1970s.
Several things prompted my reread of this book. I was reminded of the book when I saw friend Bryan from An Unfinished Person was reading this book. Then I saw this book on a list of mood-boosting books. And then I saw that a new video series made from this book was coming to PBS in early 2021. Now a question remained: Would this book live up to my memories of it?
Yes, it did. Feeling low? Read these stories of old-time veterinary care set in the Yorkshire Dales back before World War II, and I assure you that you will feel a little bit better. It's the perfect book for the distracted, with each chapter a complete or almost-complete story. It is the perfect book for those who are feeling sad with cheery humor. It's the perfect book for those who are downhearted with its stories of thoughtful care of the animals and hardworking farmers and villagers.
Highly recommended.
If I had to pick one book that has influenced my life more than any other, one book that touched my heart more than any other, one book that was the best novel I've ever read...I'd probably pick The Good Earth.
I first read this book when I was twelve. My mom suggested it and found a copy for me to read.
“Then Wang Lung turned to the woman and looked at her for the first time. She had a square, honest face, a short, broad nose with large black nostrils, and her mouth was wide as a gash in her face. Her eyes were small and of a dull black in color, and were filled with some sadness that was not clearly expressed. It was a face that seemed habitually silent and unspeaking, as though it could not speak if it would. She bore patiently Wang Lung's look, without embarrassment or response, simply waiting until he had seen her. He saw that it was true there was not beauty of any kind in her face—a brown, common, patient face. But there were no pock-marks on her dark skin, nor was her lip split. In her ears he saw his rings hanging, the gold-washed rings he had bought, and on her hands were the rings he had given her. He turned away with secret exultation. Well, he had his woman!”
O-lan's story was shocking to me. A woman who is hardworking and self-sacrificing to the extreme, and yet O-lan is always at the bottom, always the last to receive even the smallest of acknowledgments for anything she does. And the suffering O-lan experiences. It's heartbreaking. And it reminds me to appreciate the wonderful things in my own life that O-lan never got to enjoy.
The development of Wang Lung's character is slow but poignant, too.
“And out of his heaviness there stood out strangely but one clear thought and it was a pain to him, and it was this, that he wished he had not taken the two pearls from O-lan that day when she was washing his clothes at the pool, and he would never bear to see Lotus put them in her ears again.”
Watching the sons of O-lan and Wang Lung change as the family acquired wealth...it was a cautionary tale. Inevitable, I think.
Such an amazing book.
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
It's an alternate world and it's not a pretty one. Our main character, Winston, is a party official in a totalitarian world:
“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
Big Brother is always watching. Winston is not totally under the thumb of Big Brother, however; soon he is sought as a “thought criminal,” for his acts of insurrection that include such simple acts as keeping a journal and thinking for himself.
And always 1984 will remain as a warning, a caution, a reminder.
I read this book aloud to my fifth grade students every year, and I could happily read it aloud every year of my life and I'd never get tired of it. It's the story of a poor family during the Depression in Oklahoma. The boy saves up his money so that he can get some coon dogs, and these dogs are the true love of his life. The boy and his dogs go out at night and tree coons and the boy kills the coons, once treed, and sells them to earn money. The boy and his dogs have many great adventures...it's a fabulous story.
James Mustich in 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die writes, “Except for the Bible, it's hard to imagine a book so rooted in our collective subconscious as the Grimms' Children's and Household Tales...” and I think that is true. It was the Grimms brothers who first collected and edited such stories as Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, and Rumplestiltskin. This is a collection everyone should read.
When I'm asked what is my favorite book, I often pause for a moment and reply, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” My reply always gets a laugh. Some people have heard of the book, and some have even tried reading it, but no one I've mentioned it to has expressed a similar level of admiration for it, and no one I've recommended it to has ever read it through to completion.
It's obviously not a book for everyone.
Why do I love it so much? Pirsig was trying to teach writing on a college level, and he struggled with traditional ways of teaching. One day the casual remark of an associate at the college—“I hope you are teaching Quality to your students”—sets off a train of thought that leads Pirsig to try some innovative methods of teaching in his classroom and eventually helps Pirsig form some new connections between two old systems of thought.
Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:
“And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good—
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”
“Care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who's bound to have some characteristic of quality.”
“The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”
“When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process.”
“We're in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it's all gone. ”
“Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.”
‘You've got to live right, too. It's the way you live that predisposes you to avoid the traps and see the right facts. You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. That's the way all the experts do it. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn't separate from the rest of your existence. If you're a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren't working on your machine, what trap avoidance, what gimmicks, can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh? It all goes together ... The real cycle you're working in is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be “out there” and the person that appears to be “in here” are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together.'
First reading: I should not have read this book when I was sixteen.
I'm not sure anyone should read this book when she is sixteen.
It was dark and despairing and bleak and reading it left me feeling dark and despairing and bleak.
Nevertheless, The Bell Jar was the truest picture of teen depression I've ever read.
If only someone could write a book that good that would help teens find their way out of depression.
Second reading:
Did reading The Bell Jar at sixteen drop a bell jar on my head? Or was it already descending?
I was Esther as a teen, in many ways. I was competitive about academic achievement to the exclusion of everything else, and when all the prizes I'd worked for didn't come my way, I found myself lost and depressed and alone. Esther's experience provided no solace at sixteen; it only increased my pain.
Reading The Bell Jar as an adult who has scrambled to find ways to fight depression all her life was a different experience than reading the book as a teen. I saw how Esther isolated herself rather than finding people who could offer help. I saw how Esther plummeted rather than responded with resilience when her plans did not work out. I saw how the psychiatrists of Esther's time did not have the knowledge or the treatments to effectively help her.
The Bell Jar should be a book that is read and reread, with much to offer readers of all ages.
When I think of wonderful books that I've read only once and will probably never have time to read again, Watership Down comes to the top of my list. I became a rabbit in that world for the two weeks I spent reading this big book way back when it first came out. I still have days when I long to be a rabbit and go back to Watership Down.
Second read: I remember like it was yesterday instead of thirty years ago the first time I read Watership Down. I couldn't put it down. I read it at night, and during odd free moments at work. I picked it up again as soon as I got home. For the week I read WD, I was a rabbit. I , too, admired the unexpected leadership of Hazel. I, too, worried about our nervous prophet Fiver. I, too, loved my world of Frith (the sun) and El-ahrairah (our mighty rabbit folk hero) and I, too, was terrified of Lendri (badger) and Pfeffa (cat) and I, too, was mystified about the white burning sticks.
Happily, I decided to read this book again with my online 1001 Children's Books You Must Read group.
And, happily, the book held up. Delightful.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn tells the story of Francie Nolan and her family, from her childhood to her young adulthood. Francie grows up fast, often hungry, with her mom working in the poorly-paid job of janitor, and her dad seldom working. It's a powerful story, set in early-20th century Brooklyn, and Francie suffers many setbacks including the early loss of her father and having to quit school to go to work.
“You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,' but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.”
And that's the start of our introduction to one of life's most charming main characters, Huck Finn. Huck fakes his own death to escape his abusive dad, and goes through a series of wonderful adventures, meeting oodles of scary characters along the way.
I first heard the story of The Hobbit when I was in fifth grade. One of my neighbors, Greg, was also in fifth grade, and his teacher was reading The Hobbit aloud to the class. Every day, while we waited for our bus, Greg would share the events of the story to a crowd of eager listeners. I was captivated by the story.
I got a copy of the book when I was in junior high and I read it for myself. It immediately went on the list of my favorite books.
I've read it again and again over the years.
The Hobbit has everything a person could want in a story...warm, interesting main characters...an inviting world...a noble cause...a challenging quest...
I wasn't happy when my seventh-grade English teacher announced that we were going to read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Who wanted to read a book with a boy main character? Not me.
I completely changed my mind after we read together the very first chapter. The dynamics of the relationship between edgy Tom and his guardian Aunt Polly was spot-on perfect. And the story went on, and just got better and better. Skipping school. Tom got his fence painted and didn't do a lick of work—fabulous. Body snatchers in a graveyard. A haunted house. Lost in a cave. Witness to a murder. Buried treasure. Pirates. Attending his own funeral.
One of my all-time favorite reads.
I read Beverly Cleary books a gazillion times when I was a little girl. I missed the Ramona series, but I loved all the books about Henry and Ribsy and his friends on Klickitat Street. This one I read aloud to every class I taught, fifth grade and second grade, even though I was cautioned by a school librarian that this book would be too hard for my second graders. Before I knew it, every kid in my class was checking out (and reading, I'll have you know, Mrs. P—) Beverly Cleary.
Four siblings find a coin, and they come to realize that the coin is a magic coin. But it is not your usual magic coin—it only does half of what is asked of it. This has some unexpected and funny consequences. What you wish for—well, let's just say that you might want to think carefully before you pick up a magical coin and make a wish.
I remember the joy I had when I read this book when I was a kid. I remember the delight I felt when I discovered that the author had written other magical books. I read the whole series back in the early 1960s. It remains my favorite series of all time.