Saturday, May 31, 2014

Book #41: The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis

I remember the first time I read The Screwtape Letters, maybe seven years ago, I was absolutely blown away by the premise and by how straightforward it was. It was totally different than what I'd imagined it would be (for some reason I read it without having heard what it was about) and I could not believe how seemingly . . . accurate Screwtape was (although "accurate" feels like the wrong word). If I were to really imagine individual devils watching over us and trying to think of ways to get us to "choose the wrong" and pull us towards Hell, I think they would think exactly like Screwtape and Wormwood do. That's the unsettling thing about this book--it kind of uncovers the underlying mentalities that we all have that are bad for us and bring us further from heaven.

This time around, there were a few sections that hit me as especially appropriate (probably because they are things I have been struggling with lately), and I thought I'd write them down so that I could remember them later. These are long, but really struck me as true. This first one is about how we can waste our time doing nothing egregious but how that's almost as bad as actually sinning because it makes us worse off in the end:

"As uneasiness and his reluctance to face it cut him off more and more from all real happiness, and as habit renders the pleasures of vanity and excitement and flippancy at once less pleasant and harder to forgo (for that is what habit fortunately does to a pleasure) you will find that anything or nothing is sufficient to attract his wandering attention. You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday's paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but in conversations with those he cares nothing about on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and out-going activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, sot hat at least he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, 'I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.' The Christians describe the Enemy as one 'without whom Nothing is strong'. And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.
You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickeness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you are able to separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts" (59-61).

This was the other one that I really took to heart, about how we feel like we own our time and dislike having "our time" interrupted by having to do things we don't want to do:

"You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption 'My time is my own'. Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to his employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which he allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright.
You have here a delicate tax. The assumption which you want him to go on making is so absurd, that, if once it is questioned, even we cannot find a shred of argument in its defence. The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon as his chattels. He is also, in theory, committed to a total service of the Enemy; and if the Enemy appeard to him in bodily form and demanded that total service for even one day, he would not refuse. He would be greatly relieved if that one day involved nothing harder than listening to the conversation of a foolish woman; and he would be relieved almost to the pitch of disappointment if for one half-hour in that day the Enemy said 'Now you may go an amuse yourself'" (112-113).

I really am amused by a lot of the things Screwtape says in this book, and I feel like it was a good exercise in self-reflection as I read it. It's good to realize that there are a lot of thoughts and thought processes you want to avoid, and to have those pointed out by a "devil" makes it a lot more clear how you want to be thinking. So I'm glad to have re-read this book, and I'm sure I'll revisit it again sometime in the future.

Book #40: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

I feel like I'd heard about this book from a number of different places, and meant to get around to reading it but never did. I happened to see it at the library in CA before we left for Mexico, so I brought it with me. I basically had no idea what the book was going to be about, when I first read it, so it was a pleasant surprise to find out that it was about this aspect of history that I haven't thought too much about--the internment of Japanese people in America, specifically from Seattle, and the relations between Chinese and Japanese people in America at that time. The novel is told from the perspective of Henry, a young Chinese boy, who falls in love with a Keiko, a Japanese girl, at a time when the Chinese and Japanese do not get along (and basically when nobody is getting along with the Japanese in America). It was really fascinating to learn about that time period in that place. Sometimes when I think about WWII (or any time period) I think of only the fighting in Normandy and that's it--and I forget all of the other places in the world that were affected by the war and how that played out in other places, even in Seattle. So this book was a very interesting read for that purpose. I also really liked how the author interspersed the old story about Henry and Keiko with Henry's later life, while he's trying to find out about what happened to Keiko decades later.

I didn't absolutely love the writing style in all places. There wasn't anything specific that annoyed me, but it felt a little cheesy in places, especially with the young kid romance stuff. I also felt like the relationship between Henry and his parents seemed so formulaic--Asian kid who disappoints his hard-driving father, you know. I never really felt like I bought the dad and how he treated Henry. But overall, it was a great story and a really interesting read about a fascinating time period.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Book #39: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel by Robin Sloan

I've seen this book ALL over the place, for years now. I feel like it's one that's been all over the book blog world--meaning it's probably really, really good and I've been missing out, right? I've checked it out from the library at home several times, actually, but never really got around to cracking it. I guess the title and cover didn't get me excited enough. Which is a SHAME, because if I had cracked it, I wouldn't have been able to put it down. I'm so glad to have finally read it! I read it yesterday and thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed it. The book is about a young guy in San Francisco who ends up working the late night shift at a 24-hour bookstore because he's desperate for a job. He eventually realizes that there is a lot of funny stuff going on with the people who frequent the bookstore, and starts to delve into the mystery to figure out what it is. His friends all get involved too, and they have this big adventure to put all the pieces of the mystery together, going between SF and NYC and delving into computer coding and Google and museum archives and cults and Latin books. It's a super fun read with a huge variety of ideas and spaces and connections and a heist! The characters all have different skills and backgrounds--Clay (the narrator) and his friends all are very different and bring different benefits to the table, and it makes the story so interesting and funny. I loved Clay's voice and his asides and internal monologue--he was very entertaining to listen to, and the story was fascinating. It was different than any other book I've read--a mix of a fantasy/sci fi world (not really, but kind of in feeling) with the real life techie world of San Francisco. And I like how it talks about the world of reading books and what it says about how books are important to us (even in a world of Kindles and the Internet).

I feel like anyone would be entertained by this book and the story of Mr. Penumbra and his bookstore.

Book #38: Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

I don't know why I've never read this book before, but I'm pretty sure because I've known that the movie made about this book was rated R. And I can see why, because there is a bit of swearing throughout the book. But oh, man, this book is funny! I (obviously) love all adaptations of Jane Austen, and I love how this one does it, with a very, very modern character and a very, very loose and not obvious connection (other than the main love interest being named Darcy). (I feel like sometimes Jane Austen adaptations try too hard or tweak the story too much to make it fit, so I like how this didn't do that.

Bridget Jones is the Elizabeth Bennet character, although she's not much like Lizzie at all (except speaking her mind and saying what she wants to). I just thought that Jones's character was hilarious, how she wrote (since this was her diary, after all) and all of the things she did (like recording her weight every day, and the number of cigarettes each day) and all of her side commentary. I loved reading all of her reactions to the ridiculous situations she'd get put into and how crazy she acted about boys and how she'd deal with stuff with her friends (by going out and getting hammered, of course). It's such a foreign life to the one I lead, haha. Anyways, this book was a perfect, easy, entertaining and fun read for a relaxing Mexican vacation! Nothing too serious for me this week.

Book #37: Midnight in Austenland by Shannon Hale

I read the first Austenland book by Hale a few years ago. I honestly hadn't heard that there was a sequel to it, so when I ran across this book at the library while randomly searching the shelves to find books to read on our trip, I was surprised but also thrilled to find it. I remembered enjoying the first one, although it was a little mindless and a very easy read (which made it a perfect fit for a vacation read). But the idea of an Austenland is very appealing and fun to imagine, and I was definitely up for reading more about it. And Hale's style is cute and funny, and she's LDS so also very reliably clean.

I finished this on the plane on the way to Mexico, which shows how quickly it moved. And I think I liked it even more than the first one. The interesting thing about this book was that this added a mystery into the whole idea of visiting Austenland, so Charlotte, the main character, ends up solving a murder mystery while she's there. I thought it was a great twist to make a sequel to Austenland different than just replaying the first book. And I really liked Charlotte's background: she was a recently divorced woman, with kids, whose husband had an affair and left her. I liked how she was different than the young single woman heroine that you expect from a lot of romance novels like this, and I liked how Hale interspersed her background at the beginning of each chapter, so you feel like you get to know her while the story continues in England. Charlotte's internal monologue was charming, and I really enjoyed getting to know her character. I'm not sure how I felt about the "convenient" ending, which solves Charlotte's problem of having to choose between her new love interest and her kids (of course she was going to choose her kids, so she was going to have to leave the man she liked, but a deus ex machina appeared to save the day). I also am not sure how believable the murderer or his motivation was (but I won't give any more spoilers about that), but overall, it was an enjoyable read!

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Book #36: A Joyful Mother of Children: The Magic and Mayhem of Motherhood by Linda J. Eyre

After finishing Seabiscuit I was looking around on the Leiningers' book shelves to find something that I wanted to read, and I stumbled across the shelf of parenting books. My friend Libby has mentioned Linda Eyre a number of times and how much she likes her, so I thought it would be interesting to skim through a mothering/parenting book by her. It didn't take very long to read, but I felt like she had a lot of good ideas and topics that I think will be very interesting and useful in a few years when we have multiple children who are older and a lot more chaos. She says a lot of things that really seem like they will help and tells a lot of stories about the chaos of their nine-child household and how she dealt with it and kept herself happy throughout it all. Some of the ideas sound really great, like a "Sunday Session," where you sit down and plan out all of your goals in different areas of your life for that week and get your schedule set out and planned, which makes your life so much easier and calmer to have it all ready. That really does sound fantastic, and I really like the idea of setting goals to focus on every week. A lot of the suggestions that are made seem to be giving you ideas of how to be more conscientious and plan-ful in doing the things you really want to do, which is what I really want to do and I'm always trying to figure out how to do that better. Maybe we should start implementing that and get that to be a habit as we get more busy as life goes on.

I kind of want to buy this book and keep it around for when I need it. But at least since I'm writing about it here I won't forget about it!

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Book #35: Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand

There's been a long space between books that I've read here on the blog. I have just not been in the reading mood lately. We've had so much going on lately--we have had both of our families visit us, Tommy graduated from Duke, and we are getting ready to move. So I just have been wanting to get stuff done and work on my to-do list more than finding good books to read. But we are in Utah now, visiting the Leiningers, and as soon as we got here I bunkered down to read Seabiscuit. I tried to read this before and for some reason didn't really get into it, but I LOVED Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand, and I really thought that I should like this one. So I tried it out again and it was totally worth it.

One of my favorite things about Unbroken was all of the chapters of background, historical information about flying in WWII and Japanese soldiers, and all that sort of stuff. Laura Hillenbrand really is a fantastic writer and knows how to fill in information that gives a lot of color to the stories she tells. In this book there are a few really fascinating chapters of background on the life of a jockey and the world of racing, and I found it so amazing. I feel like reading books like this I am always blown away by the amount of research that it must have taken to write this book and to put so much color into it. She found people who were alive then and who experienced Seabiscuit and who knew all of the people she's writing about, and interviewed them and got a lot of wonderful details that make the whole story really fascinating. And even though this book was about horse racing, something I knew nothing about, I never felt like I was lost or like I didn't understand what was going on, and I never felt like she had to go too technical into explaining everything about how horse racing works. This book had everything that I loved about Unbroken, and I really hope she writes more books because I love her writing style and how she encapsulates an entire story from so many different angles.