Becoming, written by Michelle Obama
A behind the scenes look, both personally and professionally, Obama walks the reader through the highs and lows of different seasons of her life. Her deep love for her parents and brother, staunch commitment to her husband and daughters, value she places on education, determination to make the most of the opportunities she's been given, the way skin color has impacted her family's life, and support she's intentional about giving to those who need it are clearly seen throughout her story. I chose this book for the "political" category of a reading challenge I'm doing this year.
p. ix, Now I think it's one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child - What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that's the end.
p. 7, Even if we didn't know the context, we were instructed to remember that context existed. Everyone on earth, they'd tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.
p. 43, Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result. It's vulnerability that breeds with self-doubt and then is escalated, often deliberately, by fear.
p. 81, This is what a control freak learns inside the compressed otherworld of college, maybe above all else: There are simply other ways of being.
p. 117, It was one thing to get yourself out of a stuck place, I realized. It was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck.
p. 205, I began to see how I'd been stoking the most negative parts of myself, caught up in the notion that everything was unfair and then assiduously like a Harvard-trained lawyer, collecting evidence to feed that hypothesis.
p. 251, Bullies were scared people hiding inside scary people.
p. 270, I've learned that it's harder to hate up close.
p. 284, I was humbled and excited to be the First Lady, but not for one second did I think I'd be sliding into some glamorous, easy role. Nobody who has the words "first" and "black" attached to them ever would. I stood at the foot of the mountain, knowing I'd need to climb my way into favor.
p. 318, I also wanted to make sure that when I visited a new place as First Lady, I really visited it - meaning that I'd have a chance to meet the people who actually lived there, not just those who governed them.
p. 347, Our family time was when big worries and urgent concerns got abruptly and mercilessly shrunk to nothing so that the small could rightly take over.
p. 361, Friendships between women, as any woman will tell you, are built of a thousand small kindnesses like these, swapped back and forth and over again.
384, (K)ids will invest more when they feel they're being invested in.
p. 419, I've never been a fan of politics, and my experience over the last ten years has done little to change that. I continue to be put off by the nastiness - the tribal segregation of red and blue, this idea that we're supposed to choose one side and stick to it, unable to listen and compromise, or sometimes even to be civil.
This story is about someone who has the consistent appearance in his life of a double, a person who looks, acts, and dresses just like him. I chose a story from this book for the "short story" category of a reading challenge I'm doing this year.
A book about losing a parent you've only recently become close to, as well as the inherent risk of losing your connection to the culture that defines half of you when that parent dies. A story of how food is strongly tied to relationships, memories, and healing. A tribute to one woman's relationship with her mom. I chose this book for the "on the New York Times Bestseller for more than 10 weeks" category of a reading challenge I'm doing this year.
Life is So Good: One Man's Extraordinary Journey Through the 20th Century and How He Learned to Read at Age 98, written by George Dawson and Richard Glaubman
This is the fascinating and inspiring story of a man who lived through an entire century. Dawson was the grandson of a slave, a man whose life experiences could have led to a life of anger and bitterness. Instead, he worked hard, took his marriage and parenting responsibilities seriously, and chose to have an optimistic perspective on his circumstances. I chose this book for the "historical non-fiction" category of a reading challenge I'm doing this year.
p. 219, People always ask me if I will ever get married again. I might. I might. There's lots of women that would like to marry me. That's because I treats them right and I am hones. I have never been unfaithful.
For me, it's like fishing. Some folks, they go fishing and they keep reeling in, changing bait, and trying again and again. Me, I cast out and then I stick with it. I just wait and be patient. There's no sense in changing. I just take my chances and then that is that. There's no way to know that any change is going to make anything better. That's true with fishing and with women.
p. 246, A person can't always be thinking about tomorrow and still enjoy themselves today, right now.
p. 254, "Some people are growing children, not raising children, and there's a big different."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, people grow hogs. You give them a place to live, give them all the food they need to keep growing, and make sure that they don't get sick on you. With children you got to raise them. Of course, you feed and clothe them. But a parent has to take the time to teach them right and wrong. A parent has to discipline them. And a parent got to be there to listen to them, help them with their problems. I think most people do their best, but there are some parents these days that are growing children, not raising children."
"Well, people grow hogs. You give them a place to live, give them all the food they need to keep growing, and make sure that they don't get sick on you. With children you got to raise them. Of course, you feed and clothe them. But a parent has to take the time to teach them right and wrong. A parent has to discipline them. And a parent got to be there to listen to them, help them with their problems. I think most people do their best, but there are some parents these days that are growing children, not raising children."
The Prayer of Jesus: Secrets to Real Intimacy with God, written by Hank Hanegraaff and foreword by Lee Strobel
A short, valuable book about prayer that was written as a response of sorts to The Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through to the Blessed Life, written by Bruce Wilkinson. Using the instruction Jesus gave for prayer, the reader is reminded of both why we pray and how to pray. This book was the September part of a year-long gift from a friend, one book to unwrap and read each month.
p. 10, The tragedy of contemporary Christianity is that we measure the success of our prayer life by the size and scope of our accomplishments, rather than the strength of our relationship with God.
p. 21, (R)elationships are cemented not just by giving and getting but by love and communication.
p. 30, While our Father knows what we need before we even ask, our supplications are in and of themselves an acknowledgement of our dependence on him.
p. 45, With the word "amen" we are in effect saying, "May it be so in accordance with the will of God." It is a marvelous reminder that any discussion on prayer must begin with the understanding that prayer is a means of bringing us into conformity with God's will, not a magic mantra that ensures God's conformity to ours.
p. 59, (I)t served as a subtle reminder that we cannot rightly pray give and not be givers ourselves.
p. 84, The bottom line is this: Relationships, whether human or divine, never grow apart from the investment of quality time.
p. 87, The more you meditate on Scripture, the clearer the voice of the Master will be within the sounds of silence.
This second book from The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series has characters displaying infidelity and integrity, laziness and resourcefulness, bitterness and kindness. As with the first book, there are also thought-provoking parts mixed in with humorous ones. I chose this book for the "set in Africa" category of a reading challenge I'm doing this year.
p. 40, That was the difficulty, he realised. If you made any point about behavior these days, you sounded old-fashioned and pompous. The only way to sound modern, it appeared, was to say that people could do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, and no matter what anybody else might think. That was the modern way of thinking.
p. 41, "There are some people who know that going fast is not always the best way of getting there, is it? It is better to be late than the late, is it not?"
p. 62, There was far too much interest in the past, she thought. People were forever digging up events that had taken place a long time ago. And what was the point in doing this if the effect was merely to poison the present? There were many wrongs in the past, but did it help to keep bringing them up and giving them a fresh airing?
p. 113, The Americans were very clever; they sent rockets in to space and invented machines which could think more quickly than any human being alive, but all this cleverness could also make them blind. They did not understand other people. They thought that everyone looked at things in the same way as Americans did, but they were wrong.
And Then There Were None, written by Agatha Christie
Ten strangers on a deserted island, each invited there by someone who never shows up. As they start to die, by one apparent murder at a time, the survivors try to figure out who's killing them all. I chose this book for the "by Agatha Christie" category of a reading challenge I'm doing this year.
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