The Black Pearl, written by Scott O'Dell and illustrated by Milton Johnson
Soon after becoming a partner in his father's pearling business, a sixteen year old boy discovers a giant pearl. One man believes it belongs to Manta Diablo, a dangerous monster of the sea, and harm will come to those who keep it. Four men want to pool their resources to buy it. One man wants to give the pearl to the church, believing the generosity will bring blessing on his family. One man wants to steal it for personal gain. The teenager who found the pearl learns that maturity comes not from professional advancement, feats of physical strength, or acts of bravery, but in humbly doing what's right. I chose this book for the "book you can read in a day" category of a book challenge I'm doing this year.
A stray dog is claimed by a man who loves her, but can't keep her in his home. This predicament sets off a chain of events that leads her to cross hundreds of miles over two years to get back to him, a period of time where she provides comfort to people and animals who need her. This book was the March part of a year-long gift from a friend, one book to unwrap and read each month. I chose this book for the "book with non-human characters" category of a book challenge I'm doing this year.
Ella Minnow Pea: A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable, written by Mark Dunn
This novel is about an island where the use of specific letters is gradually outlawed as those letters fall off a statue, and the letters also drop from the written story along the way. Trying to prevent the total annihilation of language, as well as the quality of life that comes with the freedom to communicate freely, a young woman and some cohorts work against a deadline to find a solution to the problem that will be acceptable to the small group of leaders who have taken control of how people can communicate. Creative and amusing on the surface, but also with a wide vocabulary and some depth that makes you think. I chose this book for the "book with food on the cover" category of a book challenge I'm doing this year.
The House of Hope and Fear: Life in a Big City Hospital, written by Audrey Young, MD
The author started her career as a doctor at Harborview Medical Center in Washington, a facility where the policy was to never turn anyone away. The book is several years old now, published in 2009. I don't know how things have changed since then, but it's an opportunity to better understand how one particular hospital prioritized people over profits, including staff who turned down significant raises elsewhere because they were passionate about the work at Harborview, while simultaneously running the facility as a successful business. It's not only a reflection of the various specific issues that present in the emergency department and the logistics of managing care, but also about the greater issues of poverty, addiction, homelessness, affluence, and the cost, financial and otherwise, of medical care.
p. 227, The fact is that Harborview is one of a very few places in our society with no comfortable distance between the truly wealthy and the desperately poor, where there are no buffers like separate neighborhoods and separate schools to anesthetize against the sting of disparity.
Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, written by Allan Gurganus
Challenged to read a book with over 600 pages, I chose this 718 page novel on the recommendation of a friend. It's filled with heavy topics like trauma during and after war, child soldiers, child brides, the kidnapping of people from one country to make them slaves in another, abuse, the loss of loved ones, and societal expectations based on class and gender. Written in the voice of a woman nearing 100, one who was married to a 50 year old veteran when she was 15 and bore 9 of his kids, a woman whose closest friend was a former slave of her husband's family, it's also personal, humanizing the choices made by people in circumstances that ranged from uncomfortable to horrific. Really long and not necessarily an easy read, but well-written.
ETA: I originally chose this book for the "book with over 600 pages" category of a book challenge I'm doing this year, but I read Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham in June and decided to use it instead. Now this book is being used for my "book with a six word title" category.
ETA: I originally chose this book for the "book with over 600 pages" category of a book challenge I'm doing this year, but I read Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham in June and decided to use it instead. Now this book is being used for my "book with a six word title" category.
p. 6, ... why a quiet house, it grew on me. Stopped sounding like what was missing, started being what I had.
p. 10, Memory seems to work like that - meaning: wrong, for some of the right reasons.
p. 264, Once we depreciate others as being wholly unlike ourselves, we've succumbed to the same flattening they've practiced on us.
p. 265, The Book says we're all dead level in the eyes of God. Our Forefathers claimed everybody's created equal (of course, by the time you get delivered nine months later, seems like social class, skin color, looks, and health have pretty much knocked the pins out from under Conception's fair shake).
p. 274, Experience is a pop quiz you ain't ever quite prepared for.
p. 330, My mother once told me that, of all the electric feelings on life's totem pole of bargain-basement emotions, Jealousy and Self-Pity are the tackiest.
p. 341, You marry, it means you've signed on as a witness to that person's pain - meaning their history, entire.
p. 372, To folks most interested in rightful owners' control, parenthood can be the hardest job of all.
p. 399, Child? Beware of using up your last forty years in being the curator of your first fifty. That ain't getting ahead!
p. 552, To feel another person's big mitt close over all five of your own fingers - I cannot tell you how calming this was just then, how precious.
p. 573, Is Freedom not needing too much? Or maybe always having more than you can use? Tell me, Lady.
Shadow Spinner, written by Susan Fletcher
The Sultan is betrayed by his wife and responds by marrying, then killing, a new wife every night. Eventually he hears one of the wives telling a story and his interest is piqued. As long as she can tell stories he's never heard before, he spares her life, and therefore the lives of all young women, one night at a time. When she becomes dependent on another young woman for a particular story the Sultan wants to hear, several lives become entangled in the plot to satisfy his demands. This is a school book that I read to Tyler. I chose this book for the "set in the Middle East" category of a book challenge I'm doing this year.
p. 151, "We all have our demons to deal with, Little Pigeon. It's when we cherish them - cradle them to our breasts and feed them day after day - that's when they curdle our souls."
p. 187, It seemed that in this world we were piling up hurt upon hurt, and hate upon hate, and then hurt upon hurt again. Forgiveness. We couldn't forgive. We could only hate when we were hurt. And then the hurt and the hate would start up again - all in a terrible circle.
p. 194, Words are how the powerless can have power.
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