Be Frank With Me, written by Julia Claiborne Johnson and narrated by Tavia Gilbert
A woman in her early twenties is sent from New York to Los Angeles to work as an author's assistant for a book that's on a deadline. The author is unfriendly, won't let anyone see her manuscript, and delegates care of her son to her assistant. The son is nine years old, loves to see decades before his time, and, though it's never said outright, is on the autism spectrum. Sweet, funny, and sad, this novel is about what it means to belong, the security of knowing someone has your back, and making the effort to do what's right, even when it's hard.
The Bell Jar, written by Sylvia Plath and narrated by Maggie Gyllenhaal
This semi-autobiographical novel about a young woman's journey into and through a breakdown is hard because the subject matter is difficult, but it's also beautifully written and compelling. While I couldn't relate to details of the protagonist's life, I could see pieces of my own battle with mental health that has spanned decades. Seen through the lens of her life in the 1950s, the story addresses issues about gender roles, societal expectations, and treatment of mental illness, I was caught off-guard when I went to listen to the final chapter and discovered it was a biography of Plath, so what I'd believed was the second to last chapter was actually the end of the story.
Homecoming, written by Kate Morton
Set in Australia during the December of two years, 1959 and 2018, this novel is about the tragic death of a mother and her kids, the closeness and estrangement of relationships in another family, and the mystery of how the two families are connected. Passed along to me by a friend, I thoroughly enjoyed this story of loyalty, lies, and various kinds of loss, along with honesty and the healing it brings.
p. 201, This was the magic of books, the curious alchemy that allowed a human mind to turn black ink on white pages into a whole other world.
Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid, written by Lemony Snicket
I saw this book quoted on the Friends of the Library Facebook page, looked it up, and promptly put it on hold. It's a fun read, something to finish in one short sitting or pick up periodically over time. While some of the quotes, or bitter truths, are serious, many are witty and made me laugh.
The Library Book, written by Susan Orlean
I'm not sure where I heard about this book, but it's been on my TBR since September 2023. Primarily about a horrible fire at Los Angeles Public Library in 1986, it's also about the importance of libraries in general, the history and present day of this particular library, specific directors and staff members going back to the 1800s, and Harry Peak, the man believed to have started the fire. The author writes for The New Yorker and the book was well-written.
p. 7, Our visits to the library were never long enough for me. The place was so bountiful. I loved wandering around the bookshelves, scanning the spines until something happened to catch my eye. Those visits were dreamy, frictionless interludes that promised I would leave richer than I arrived.
p. 102, Burning books is an inefficient way to conduct a war, since books and libraries have no military value, but it is a devastating act. Destroying a library is a kind of terrorism. People think of libraries as the safest and most open places in society. Setting them on fire is like announcing that nothing, and nowhere, is safe.
p. 102, Books are a sort of cultural DNA, the code for who, as a society, we are, and what we know. All the wonders and failures, all the champions and villains, all the legends and ideas and revelations of a culture last forever in its books.
p. 103, Taking books away from a culture is to take away its shared memory. It's like taking away the ability to remember your dreams. Destroying a culture's books is sentencing it to something worse than death: It is sentencing it to seem as if it never lived.
p. 103 (quoting Ray Bradbury), "The library was my nesting place," he wrote, "my birthing place; it was my growing place."
p. 266, There are so many things in a library, so many books and so much stuff, that I sometimes wondered if any one single person could possibly know what all of it is. I preferred thinking that no one does - I liked the idea that the library is more expansive and grand than one single mind, and that it requires many people together to form a complete index of its bounty.
p. 309, A library is a good place to soften solitude; a place where you feel part of a conversation that has gone on for hundreds and hundreds of years even when you're all alone.
The Music of Bees, written by Eileen Garvin and narrated by Therese Plummer
This novel, set in nearby Hood River, is about beekeeping, but it's also about friendship, small town dynamics, and discovering the people, causes, places, and activities that you find meaningful. A middle-aged woman grieving the unexpected death of her husband and two young men, one a recent paraplegic with an awful dad and the other needing a fresh start after some legal trouble, become part of each other's healing and growth.
As with her first book, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life, which I read two years ago, Warren writes from a Christian tradition (Anglican) that's different than my own. Compline, a prayer designated for the end of the day (copied below), has been a particularly meaningful one to her and she dedicates a full chapter in the book to each phrase in the prayer. I appreciate how she comes at prayer, faith, life, and God's love through the lens of these particular words and the Bible verses they sync up with.
Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love's sake. Amen.
~ Book of Common Prayer
p. 18, I needed worlds to contain my sadness and fear. I needed comfort, but I needed the sort of comfort that doesn't pretend that things are shiny or safe or right in the world. I needed a comfort that looked unflinchingly at loss and death. And Compline is rung round with death.
p. 28, (N)o matter what we claim to believe or disbelieve, what rises to the surface in our most vulnerable moments is inevitably the story on which we build our lives.
p. 41, Feeling sadness is the cost of being emotionally alive. It's the cost, even of holiness. Christians have to let ourselves be a people who mourn. It's part of the deal. It's a defining characteristic of those Jesus called "blessed."
p. 48, Psalms of lament - both communal and individual - are the most common type of psalm in the Psalter. They voice disappointment, anger, sadness, pain, deep confusion, and loss. If our gathered worship expresses only unadulterated trust, confidence, victory, and renewal, we are learning to be less honest with God that the Scriptures themselves are.
p. 60, Attentiveness is at a critical risk of extinction.
p. 61, Just as our pupils dilate to let in more light, to see more than we first thought we could, prayer adjusts our eyes to see God in the darkness.
p. 70, We work as prayer and pray as work. And our prayer and our work transform each other.
p. 97, A lot of what appears as kindness or patience or holiness in my life is fueled by good health, energy, and simple pleasures. When these are taken away, it's clear that I am not that kind or patient after all. I just didn't have back pain.
p. 106, If sharing our imperfections makes us seem cooler and more approachable, then it's not true weakness. The things that are really wrong with us are embarrassing and uncomfortable. True vulnerability is too tender to trust with any except those who love us most.
p. 109, I learned that prayer is a tutor, not a performance. It's the stretcher on which we collapse and are carried to the Healer.
p. 121, But reminding ourselves, day by day, that we will die, teaches us to live. It allows us to know that the day to seek God, the day to repair relationships, the day to help others and bless the world around us is today - because it may be our last.
p. 137, The people I most respect are those who have suffered but did not numb their pain - who faced their darkness. In the process they have become beautifully weak, not tough as nails, not bitter or rigid, but men and women who bear vulnerability with joy and trust. They are almost luminescent, like a paper lantern, weak enough that light shines through.
p. 146, What he promises is abundant life, and it takes a lifetime of practicing this craft of the Christian faith to gain an idea of what that looks like. But the afflicted teach me that it isn't what I think it is; it isn't a perfect marriage or a life of endless success. It is always a cross and a resurrection.
p. 152, To risk joy requires hope. And hope is the opposite of anxiety. < snip > It is not naive optimism. Hope admits the truth of our vulnerability. It does not trust God to keep all bad things from happening. But it assumes that redemption, beauty, and goodness will be there for us, whatever lies ahead.
p. 157, To choose joy is to see all existence as a gift, which is why the practice of joy is inseparable from the practice of gratitude. Gratitude gives birth to joy because gratitude teaches us to receive life as a gift in the moment we're in, regardless of what lies ahead.
Recitatif, written by Toni Morrison and narrated by Bahni Turpin, with introduction written and narrated by Zadie Smith
In 1960s America, two young girls are wards of the state with mothers who are unable to care for them. The reader knows one of the them is black and the other white, but it's never made clear which is which. They become close friends during their few months together, then cross paths periodically over the passing decades. There's a lot of tension in their interactions as adults, as they're leading very different lives because of both race and class, while also having a shared history that bonded them together. I learned about this book last year in "End your reading slump with these short novels and novellas", a Modern Mrs. Darcy post from 2/7/24. The first half is an introduction that describes the story in detail, so consider that as you decide which half of the book to read first.
29:09 (Zadie Smith), But whatever your personal allegiance is, when you deliberately turn from any human suffering, you make what should be a porous border between your people and the rest of humanity into something rigid and deadly.
57:17 (Zadie Smith quoting Toni Morrison), I don't subscribe to patriarchy, and I don't think it should be substituted with matriarchy.
Stay, written by Catherine Ryan Hyde
An older woman scorned in her community. A young teenager with a parents who constantly fight. A young teenager shutting himself off from the world. An older teenager fighting in Vietnam. Guilt, depression, isolation, addiction. Nature, running, friendship, encouragement. Bad marriages, bad parenting, bad coping skills. Accountability, learning, changing. This novel addresses some hard topics in a way that's hopeful without being overly optimistic.
p. 68, "You don't control as much as you think you do. I'm not trying to be cruel. Just the opposite. You'll have a much happier life if you get a strong bead on what's your responsibility and what isn't."
p. 146, When somebody holds a view that seems to make no sense, know that it makes sense to them, but for reasons you don't know anything about yet. And I guess in a lot of cases, you never will.
p. 188, "Want to know why that stuff takes so much out of you? Easy. It's all stuff that's out of your control. You're trying to change things that're not within your control to change. And whenever you try to do something that's impossible to do, you're going to find yourself a little on the tired side. Make sense?"
p, 232, "I'll just tell you this. If you're thinking of going out again, don't. Don't even mess with it. Just consider that I did the research for you and it still stinks out there. And the addiction problem you used to have hasn't gotten any better while you were recovering in these rooms. If anything, it's gotten worse. It's like you're in here thinking you have all this insurance, but meanwhile your disease is out there doing push-ups on the porch. You think you can let it out of the box and then put it back in again when you're ready because you did it the one time, so maybe you get overconfident and think you did that with your own superior will. So you let it out, and then you look at it, and you look at the box, and your disease is like a thousand times bigger than the box, and you can't for the life of you figure out how you ever got it to fit in there in the first place."
p. 246, "We're all just doing our best, even if it doesn't look so good from the outside."
p. 252, "People need help with perspective sometimes. If they're all alone in their own head, they can lose perspective. Sometimes you need to use somebody else like a mirror. Let them reflect back to you the way the world really is."
The Swimmers, written by Julie Otsuka and narrated by Traci Kato-Kiriyama
Initially about the unwritten rules among a group of people who use the same pool, it's ultimately about one person in that group, the progress of her dementia when the routine of her daily swim is taken away, and her relationship with her daughter. Written in a way that was much different than I expected, I enjoyed this short novel.
We Are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust, written by Jacob Boas with foreword by Patricia C. McKissack
The author who wrote the foreword is one whose picture books I've checked out from the library, so I came across this book when searching for more of them. A five part biography, this book includes a lot of excerpts from the teens' diaries. While they all experienced horrific things and were eventually killed, their circumstances and perspectives were different from each other. As a sidenote, the author was born in a concentration camp in 1943 and currently resides in Portland.
White Picket Fences, written by Susan Meissner and narrated by Bernadette Dunn
White Picket Fences, written by Susan Meissner and narrated by Bernadette Dunn
A family is living the proverbial white picket fence life. Except, of course they're not. With characters that include a teenage boy who survived a fatal fire when he was little, a teenage girl whose traveling dad is unable to be found, and two Holocaust survivors sharing their experiences, this story alternates between the present and the past. It's about secrets, both the ones we keep to protect ourselves and those we keep to protect others, and whether those secrets actually protect or destroy us. This is the fifth book of Meissner's that I've read. While not my favorite of the bunch, it was still good to listen to while going on walks and working on puzzles.
