This novel is about a young, unwed woman forced to give up her baby, a woman who never gives up on finding her daughter.. It's also about a woman raised in an orphanage, then, along with all the other orphans, declared mentally ill so the institution can receive more money, a woman who endured horrific treatment as a child and made her way in the world as an adult. It's about these two women finding each other.
Two sisters, one a single mother of two kids and the other unable to have kids, work through their personal struggles as the former leaves her kids with the latter for a summer in order to pursue a career goal.
p. 272, "In my experience, no time spent on a worthwhile goal is ever wasted, even if you don't get what you want right then."
Meet the Frugalwoods: Achieving Financial Independence Through Simple Living, written by Elizabeth Willard Thames
Encouragement and advice, given through the sharing of the author's personal experience, about not getting caught up in our culture's materialism, setting goals and doing whatever it takes to reach them, taking control of your finances, and being intentional in the choices you make about how you live your life.
I read this book three years ago, but checked it out again after it came to mind during a discussion I was in. A quick read, it clearly communicates the ineffectiveness of multitasking and gives suggestions for how to manage time more wisely.
p. 11, People are proud of their skills at multitasking, but the truth is that multitasking is neither a reality nor is it efficient.
p. 27, (quoting Jonathan B. Spira, CEO and chief analyst of Basex Research) 2.1: Average estimated lost productivity per person per day due to interruptions, based on a 40-hour workweek. $650 billion: Estimated annual loss to the U.S. economy due to unnecessary interruptions plus recovery time
p. 46, (quoting Mary Kay Ash) No matter how busy you are, you must take time to make the other person feel important.
p. 48, "Saying that you're a good multitasker is the same as saying that you're good at using a less effective method to get things done."
p. 76, (quoting Publilius Syrus) To do two things at once is to do neither.
Dust storms. The loss of a mom. The grief of a dad. The guilt of a daughter. The discouragement of s disability. The power of music, perseverance, and time. This is a school book for the kids that I read myself.
Set in San Francisco in the early 1900's, a Chinese teenager wants the best education she can get, but it's only available to the wealthy white girls. The creativity and resourcefulness that lands her in a prestigious local school are the same traits that will help her serve her community when disaster strikes.
p. 72, "Sometimes you have to throw out lots of sand to find your nugget. But you'll never find it if you stop shaking."
p. 152, Is it a weed, or something more valuable? But what is a weed, other than a plant that's out of place through no fault of its own? Just like those building on Market Street, weeds are survivors. Long after all the other plants die, weeds live on.
p. 156, Ma says a thoughtful person makes a better friend than a person full of thoughts.
p. 163, Mrs. Lowry says silence is wisdom's best reply.
p. 232, Is it harder to give up one's dinner, or take it as charity?
p. 287, Maybe sorrow and its opposite, happiness, are like dark and light. One can't exist without the other. And those moments of overlap are like when the moon and the sun share the same sky.
The Wise Woman is filled with life lessons centered around two girls, one a peasant and the other a princess, in need of behavior and attitude changes. It's also indirectly about parenting and the long-term effects of the choices we make in raising our kids. This is a school book for the kids that I read myself.
p. 23, People are so ready to think themselves changed when it is only their mood that is changed! Those who are good-tempered because it is a fine day, will be ill-tempered when it rains: their selves are just the same both days; only in the one case, the fine weather has got into them, in the other the rainy.
p. 26, ... for a fancy in her own head would outweigh any multitude of facts in another's.
p. 47, But the man who will do his work in spite of his fear is a man of true courage.
p. 53, However strange it may well seem, to do one's duty will make any one conceited who only does it sometimes. Those who do it always would as soon think of being conceited of eating their dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself on not picking pockets? A thief who was trying to reform would. To be conceited of doing one's duty is then a sign of how little one does it, and how little one sees what a contemptible thing it is not to do it. Could any but a low creature be conceited of not being contemptible? Until our duty becomes to us common as breathing, we are poor creatures.
p. 58, But the shepherdess was one of that plentiful number who can be wiser concerning other women's children than concerning their own. Such will often give you very tolerable hints as to how you ought to manage your children, and will find fault neatly enough with the system you are trying to carry out; but all their wisdom goes off in talking, and there is none left for doing what they have themselves said. There is one road talk never finds, and that is the way into the talker's own hands and feet. And such never seem to know themselves - not even when they are reading about themselves in print.
p. 82, "Nobody can be a real princess - do not imagine you have yet been anything more than a mock one - until she is a princess over herself, that is, until, when she finds herself unwilling to do the thing that is right, she makes herself do it."
p. 107, "For you," she said, "you are sufficiently punished by the work of your own hands. Instead of making your daughter obey you, you left her to be a slave to herself; you coxed when you ought to have compelled; you praised when you ought to have been silent; you fondled when you ought to have punished; you threatened when you ought to have inflicted - and there she stands, the full-grown result of your foolishness! She is your crime and your punishment."
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