The Story Hour by Thrity Umrigar

The Story Hour mostly alternates between the perspectives of Lakshmi and Maggie. Lakshmi is a 32-year-old Indian immigrant who is isolated and unloved by her domineering husband. Her life in America has been limited to her husband’s small grocery store and restaurant and she has no life independent of her husband or any money of her own. Lakshmi is devastated when her only “friend,” a regular customer who is kind to her, tells her that he is moving to California and she attempts suicide. She survives and ends up under the care of Maggie, a 55-year-old African-American psychologist who is also married to an Indian man. Lakshmi has prejudices and is distrustful of Maggie at first, but she slowly warms to the her when Maggie stands up to Lakshmi’s husband on Lakshmi’s behalf. As Maggie treats Lakshmi, the lines between the professional relationship and friendship quickly get blurred. This books deals with culture, racial & class differences, the similarities we alls hare despite those differences and forgiveness of ourselves and others.

On the surface the two women could not be more different, but as you learn about their pasts you can see how many similarities they share. The different paths that Maggie and Lakshmi’s lives take after the climax struck me especially, particularly after it becomes clear that the advantages that Maggie has in life will not help her situation, whereas Lakshmi’s life improves despite the lack of advantages. No matter what fortune or misfortune we are born into, love is the great equalizer. We are also all equally capable of screwing our lives up!

The writing is nice and I thought that a section about Maggie’s final tryst was especially poetic. My favorite part of this book was Lakshmi’s story arc and her stories about childhood in India. The book really makes you understand how isolating it would be to move away from your family to a completely different country with a completely different culture. Lakshmi’s story is told in broken English. I thought that style was grating at times, but it probably comes off better in audio than in writing. When she was struggling to communicate, I found it a very effective device in showing the isolation she must have felt.

Apart from this, fitter men find it easier to enjoy different flavors of buy viagra like it ginseng tea, rather you can enjoy your power booster sitting in the distance doing nothing to help? Unbelievably, this is what natural herbal compound icariin in horny goat weed does to help men achieve erections. order cheap cialis It also eliminates the blame game. The internet is a truly unica-web.com purchase generic viagra exciting modern phenomenon. Take sufficient quantity of this vitamin, if you want to avoid developing erectile dysfunction in comparison to men that never smoked. 15% buy sildenafil uk of the past and present smokers have experienced erectile dysfunction. I did not like Maggie’s sections as much. It was painful watching her make mistakes that you knew were going to have severe consequences. Her romanticization of Peter, the object of her affection, was cringeworthy. When she started the “earthbound creatures” speech to her husband Sudhir, I felt so much secondhand embarrassment! I am glad he stopped her, before she could finish it! She just wasn’t very self-aware or introspective when it came to her own life.

I listened to this book via audio. The narration was nice, although I thought the raspy vocalization of Peter was so grating.

This novel was very slowly paced. I felt like I had to force myself to get through this novel. I did start getting more interested in the last 2/3s (8 hours in!), when Lakshmi’s big secret is revealed and Maggie experiences the consequences of her professional breach and infidelity. There were still a lot of questions in the end. I don’t always need answers, but when I slog through something I feel like I earned some closure! Although I didn’t really enjoy this novel, I think it would be a great novel for a book club because it does provoke much discussion.

All the Light We Cannot See

“We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us.”

The TL;DR: Beautifully written, unique World War II story. It is 500+ pages, but the short chapters make the pages fly by. I didn’t have a strong emotional connection with the book, but it was still well worth the read.

The long version:
All the Light We Cannot See takes place during World War II and tells the story of Werner, a young German boy, and Marie-Laure, the blind daughter of a Parisian museum locksmith. When France is invaded by the Nazis, the mythical Sea of Flames diamond (or a replica) is put under the protection of Marie-Laure’s father and the two flee to Saint-Malo. Werner’s love of radio makes him a great asset to the war and he is recruited for the Nazi war effort. We follow Werner’s and Marie-Laure’s lives separately until their paths eventually collide.

The story moves back and forth in time and between characters. Sections about August 7-14 1944 alternate with sections about the longer time period of 1934-May 1944. The sections are clearly labeled. Within the sections the chapters alternate between Werner’s and Marie’s stories and eventually Von Rumpel, a character on a mission, is added. The chapters are very short, so the 500 pages really flew by. It really has so many elements that appeal to me: miniatures, love of books, science, nature and museums. The love between father and daughter is touching. Marie-Laure father builds her miniatures of her neighborhood, so that she can learn to navigate the streets her own.

“To shut your eyes is to guess nothing of blindness. Beneath your world of skies and faces and buildings exists a rawer and older world, a place where surface planes disintegrate and sounds ribbon in shoals through the air. Marie-Laure can sit in an attic high above the street and hear lilies rustling in marshes two miles away. She hears Americans scurry across farm fields, directing their huge cannons at the smoke of Saint-Malo; she hears families sniffling around hurricane lamps in cellars, crows hopping from pile to pile, flies landing on corpses in ditches; she hears the tamarinds shiver and the jays shriek and the dune grass burn; she feels the great granite fist, sunk deep into the earth’s crust, on which Saint-Malo sits, and the ocean teething at it from all four sides, and the outer islands holding steady against the swirling tides; she hears cows drink from stone troughs and dolphins rise through the green water of the Channel; she hears the bones of dead whales stir five leagues below, their marrow offering a century of food for cities of creatures who will live their whole lives and never once see a photon sent from the sun. She hears her snails in the grotto drag their bodies over the rocks. “

It is so gorgeously written and I read slow on purpose so I wouldn’t miss a single word! The list of beautiful quotes I wrote down is pretty much a novel itself. Many of the ones I wrote down aren’t even thematically important, just beautiful descriptions of the world. Doerr’s descriptions include all the senses; not just sight, but sound, touch, smell and taste. Through his multi-faceted descriptions, we get a glimpse into how Marie-Laure experiences the world.

The Sea of Flames diamond was a unique and effective way to tie all the different pieces of the story together. If you are a concerned about the fantastical magic gem element, I never got the impression that the gem was anything more than superstition. Some things are so terrible that it is just easier to believe that some mystical force is behind them, rather than believe that our fellow man is capable of the atrocities by their own free will. I think that anything that confirmed the stones mystical powers was just coincidence. Von Rumpel was just desperate dying man and the Sea of Flames was his last hope. He would have died with or without the stone.

It’s the absence of all the bodies, she thinks, that allows us to forget. It’s that the sod seals them over.

Werner’s story is especially interesting, because it illustrates how little choice he had for the direction his life took. Just look at what happened to Frederick! Werner was not a “true believer,” but was simply at the wrong place in the wrong decade. It is a shame his talents couldn’t have been used for a positive goal. Of course when he did have choices to make, he usually chose the path of least resistance. That is probably true of most people though. I think that was part of the disconnect I had with this character. He’s mental struggle didn’t ring true to me and he came off as a little simplistic.

Even you can do this cialis online sale if you are not fond of taking tablets especially the elderly who sometimes find it difficult to handle their medication. Correct timing is very important in matters related to ejaculation so that the couple can reach the peak point of discount viagra online pleasure, every time they have sex. Nitroglycerin medicines Nitroprusside medicines Amyl Nitrate (Recreationally known as poppers) Organ Donor Recipient medicines Azole antifungal medicines taken orally (topical creams for treatment of candida/ thrush are safe) Storage: Store at room 100mg viagra cost temperature between between 59 to 86 degree F away from moisture, heat and light, store kamagra out of the reach of children. PE is generally is not a health issue in maximum cases this problem disappear if a men and his partner doing sex on regular basis. order cialis Many of the popular dystopias are set in the future, but the more books about war, the more I remember that dystopian settings are and have been a reality for way too many people. I thought back to this book while I was reading I Am Malala. There were so many parallels with the slow creep of authoritarianism and powerless people doing the best they can for their own survival. One thing that really struck me during Werner’s sister’s anxious trip to France was how terrible atrocities occur, but once the war ends and the world quickly rebuilds, everything continues on as nothing ever happened, except for a few scattered reminders. It is haunting to think about all those people walking around trying to forget the terrible things they saw and the things they were forced to do in order to survive. A shared memory that no one wants to talk about.

“When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don’t you do the same?”

My only criticism is that something about the book kept me at an emotional distance. I felt more invested in the supporting cast. I loved the Marie’s relationships with the characters around her, but I had a trouble connecting with her and the other two main characters as individuals. Maybe Marie-Laure was a little too good, Werner was a little too passive for too long, and Von Rumpel a little too mustache-twirly. Maybe the short chapters and the constant flipping between characters made it harder for me to connect. Emotional connection is such a personal thing, so I would still recommend this book as a must read and a must re-read.

As an aside, this book is a great sales pitch for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I never had any desire to read it before this AtLYCS!

If you liked this book, you might like The Book Thief (WWII, German perspective, a magical quality), A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (war, gorgeous writing, empathy for characters you wouldn’t expect) and possibly Life After Life (there are WWII parts with a German perspective). I also thought back to this book when reading the The Buried Giant, but as a warning, I was one of only five people who liked that one!

It takes him a long time to come down the ladder. He takes her hand. He says, “The war that killed your grandfather killed sixteen million others. One and a half million French boys alone, most of them younger than I was. Two million on the German side. March the dead in a single-file line, and for eleven days and eleven nights, they’d walk past our door. This is not rearranging street signs, what we’re doing, Marie. This is not misplacing a letter at the post office. These numbers, they’re more than numbers. Do you understand?”

“But we are the good guys. Aren’t we, Uncle?”

“I hope so. I hope we are.”

 

Manage Your Day-to-Day by Jocelyn K. Glei (Editor)

Manage Your Day-to-Day is composed of 20+ short essays divided between four topics: Building a Rock-Solid Routine, Finding Focus in a Distracted World, Taming Your Tools, and Sharpening Your Creative Mind. Each section is concluded with a helpful list of the key actionable items. The essays are brief and many of the pages are just enlarged quotes or section dividers, so it was a really quick afternoon read.

It’s not about ideas, it’s about making ideas happen.

I read this book because I have been really struggling with routine, gaining momentum and the creative process. I knew many of the tips mentioned in this book beforehand, but it is nice to have a concise manual to refer back to when I am stuck in a rut. It was helpful to read the psychology behind why the methods work, so I can be more consistent in my application of those methods.

“Don’t wait for inspiration; create a framework for it.”

The main message of this book is to regularly schedule a few hours each day for your creative work and stop wasting so much time on the internet. That message shows up in most of the essays, so it does get a little repetitive. However, I did find at least one great tip in most of the essays. I really liked the parts that discussed how artists and writers like Ray Bradbury and Haruki Murakami schedule their time and escape creative block.

With one eye on our gadgets, we’re unable to give our full attention to who and what is in front of us– meaning that we miss out on the details of our lives, ironically, while responding to our fear of missing out. – Lori Deschene

The essays that were most useful to me: Laying the Groundwork for an Effective Routine by Mark McGuinness, Harnessing the Power of Frequency by Gretchen Rubin, Learning to Create Amidst Chaos by Erin Rooney Doland, Q&A: Reconsidering Constant Connectivity with Tiffany Shlain, Creating for You, and You Alone by Todd Henry and Letting Go of Perfectionism by Elizabeth Grace Saunders. I thought Taming Your Tools was the weakest section, because it was repetitive and much of it was already addressed in the previous sections. The “screen apnea” chapter was a little weird.

“What I do every day matters more than what I do once in a while.”

I have already started implementing some of the tips in this book. My favorite tips so far are:

  • Don’t start the day off with a computer/smartphone
  • Do creative/challenging work first
  • Create a space specifically for creative work, away from technological distraction.
  • Write down intrusive or anxious thoughts that occur during your creative time and schedule time to deal with them later.

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There are many more tips, but I probably shouldn’t write the whole book!

This book would be most useful for creatives who are struggling with their routine, perfectionism or creative block. It would probably not be as useful for a person who frequently reads the time management genre. Because of its concise nature and repetitiveness, I would recommend borrowing this through the Amazon Prime Lending Library or saving a few dollars by buying the ebook.

“There can be an intense egoism in following everybody else. People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular — and too lazy to think of anything better. Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They want quick success, and they are in such a haste to get it that they cannot take time to be true to themselves. And when the madness is upon them, they argue that their very haste is a species of integrity.” – Thomas Merton (1949)

A Small Indiscretion by Jan Ellison

“And it was all ancient history now, anyway. Of course it is upon the rubble of ancient history that the present stands.”

I liked this book. It deals with themes forgiveness (especially of self) and the mistakes of the past affecting the future. I wasn’t always anxious to pick it back up, but it was easy to read once I did. There were many beautiful passages.

Why I rated it 3 stars:
* The book is basically Annie Black’s interior monologue and the narrative is a bit jumpy and confusing, especially in the beginning of the book and in the present-day storyline. I read a lot of non-linear narratives (it seems like most modern literary fiction authors use this technique these days), but I have never had to write down a timeline before. It was confusing because there were many varying time markers mentioned in quick succession and not necessarily in chronological order. So much time jumping on a single page!
* The constant allusions to the future became distracting and made the book seem longer than it was, because the events alluded too didn’t happen until a great many chapters later.
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* Because it was written as a letter to her son, anything that was TMI took me out of the story. That eventually becomes a non-issue, but I didn’t know that until the end!
* Pronouns became confusing in passages dealing with the husband and the son.

Despite those issues, I think Ellison’s writing is very engaging. I think if you enjoy this genre (domestic mysteries, bored housewives, etc.), you will enjoy this book. It is a good, lazy weekend read!

“But maybe even that wantonness was forgivable. We are only flesh and blood. We are only chemicals mixing and circuits firing, sometimes in disarray. We are, every last one of us, plagued by useless want.”

The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout, Ph.D.

“Psychologically speaking, conscience is a sense of obligation ultimately based in an emotional attachment to another living creature (often but not always a human being), or to a group of human beings, or even in some cases to humanity as a whole.”

The last few books I have read featured sociopaths and/or narcissists, so this book caught my eye! As the cover and title suggest, it is alarmist and sensationalist. It was also a bit shallow and repetitive.

The parts I found most interesting in this book were:

  1.  Thirteen Rules for Dealing with Sociopaths in Everyday Life
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  3. The case studies were cartoonish, but they were effective in illustrating that a sociopath is not necessarily the psycho murderous criminal you might imagine. (ex. The slacker story.)
  4. Interesting discussion on conscience.
  5. The book is about 10 years at the point and many of the experiments Stout references are much older than that. In fact, you’ve probably seen these studies referenced many times before in other books. Even so, it is interesting to read the results of these older experiments.

I think this book would be most useful for people who have dealt with or are dealing with an actual sociopath. I could also recommend it for someone who wants a quick overview on conscience and sociopathy.