Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett

I found this to be a beautiful and poignant description of life and what it means to live. Pratchett’s comic, ever-present political and personal analyses will stick with you too, but when I closed this book, I felt uplifted and renewed.

The character of Death is ‘fired,’ and finds himself with time, something that has not existed for him before. He knows just what to do – spend it. As death learns about life and time, so does the reader. And if, at the end, you do not find yourself with a desire to stand in a wheat field and listen to the wind, I’ll eat my scythe.

Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

This one is not Pratchett's best, but the fact that it's by Terry Pratchett still means that is it wonderfully hilarious and thought-provoking. Sam Vimes is, as always, a brave and clever hero. My favorite quote:

“The fresh rain glistened on the towers and rooftops, all unaware of the teeming, rancorous world it was dropping into. Luckier rain fell on upland sheep, or whispered gently over forests, or pattered somewhat incestuously into the sea. Rain that fell on Ankh-Morpork, though, was rain that was in trouble.”

Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese

Not recommended. Whoa there is tons of sex in there! This book includes the coming-of-age of a set of twin boys and their female friend, and it lasts a long time. Don't start reading it because the storyline is fascinating and the medical informtaion intriguing. My favorite characters were Gosh and Hema, doctors and parents of the twins. Here are a few quotes about them:

The main character knows his father, Gosh, is terminally ill. “I spent as much time as I could with Ghosh. I wanted every bit of wisdom he could impart to me. All sons should write down every word of what their fathers have to say to them. I tried. Why did it take an illness for me to recognize the value of time with him? It seems we humans never learn. And so we relearn the lesson every generation and then want to write epistles. We proselytize to our friends and shake them by the shoulders and tell them, “Seize the day! What matters is this moment!” Most of us can’t go back and make restitution. We can’t do a thing about our should haves and our could haves. But a few lucky men like Ghosh never have such worries; there was no restitution he needed to make, no moment he failed to seize. Now and then Ghosh would grin and wink at me across the room. He was teaching me how to die, just as he’d taught me how to live.

A young boy has an operation and says of the operating room: “The place left a strong impression on the boy. It was otherworldly, hallowed ground, but still secular. The name “theater” was fitting.”

The main character comes across the original sculpture that his birth mother loved and had a print of over her desk. He had spent his childhood almost thinking of her as that sculpture. He is with his mother, Hema: "We lit candles. Hema fell to her knees, the flame throwing a flickering light on her face. Her lips moved. She believed in every kind of deity, and in reincarnation and resurrection-she knew no contradictions in the areas. How I admired her faith, her lack of self-consciousness—a Hindu lighting candles to a Carmelite nun in a Catholic church.

The main character finds something he’s been looking for for many years: “How like Ghosh this was! … Ghosh trusted me to do whatever it is I would choose to do [with the object]. That, too, is love. He’d been dead more than a quarter century and he was still teaching me about the trust that comes only from true love.”

Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett

I guess I read these in the wrong order, but I still love the role model that Sam Vimes is. He is The Man. He's got most things in life figured out pretty well, and his gut is the best I've ever seen for decision making. Pratchett will make you laugh and cry and laugh. I highly recommend this one.

Here's my favorite passage, and an example of how clear-thinking and valiant Sam is.

            “Who knew what lurked in the hearts of men? A copper, that’s who. After ten years, you thought you’d seen it all, but the shadows always dished up more. You saw how close men lived to The Beast. You found that people like Carcer were not mad. They were incredibly sane. They were just men without a shield. They’d looked at the world and realized that all the rules didn’t have to apply to them, not if they didn’t want them to. They weren’t fooled by all the little stories. They shook hands with The Beast.”

           “The Beast was howling. It wanted to shut that mouth up…

Vimes reached up and tore his badge off…

Vimes was only a step or two away now… The Beast screamed inside Vimes. It screamed that no one would blame him… the man deserved it…

…but young Sam was watching him, across thirty years.

When we break down, it all breaks down. That’s just how it works. You can bend it, and if you make it hot enough you can bend it in a circle, but you can’t break it. When you break it, it all breaks down until there’s nothing unbroken…

Vimes felt his hand begin to move of its own accord—

And stopped. Red rage froze.

There was The Beast, all around him. And that’s all it was. A beast. Useful, but still a beast. You could hold it on a chain, and make it dance, and juggle balls. It didn’t think. It was dumb. What you were, what you were, was not The Beast.

You didn’t have to do what it wanted. If you did, Carcer won.

He dropped the sword.

The Language of Flowers, by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

I wasn't a fan of the voice and was extremely disappointed in the sex scene. Not recommended.

I loved the use of the language of flowers and the courtship of the couple. She makes some very dumb decisions and really doesn't have enough backbone for me, but she is also very human - I appreciated that.

I like non-linear narrative and thought this one was well done. I'm grateful to have learned more about the lives and challenges of foster children.

Taming the Lion Within - 5 Steps from Anger to Peace, by Tonda Chervin, PhD

I enjoyed the examples in this book and found some helpful tidbits. I especially liked the discussions on meekness and its power. Here are a few favorite quotes:

A Christian psycho-therapist, Craig, points out that “Anger is always an attachment to a model of where you wish you were other than where you are, or how you wish it were other than the way it is. The minute you stop having models, your anger goes.”

By contrast, if you trace angry emotions back to the trigger point, you will often find a sense of weakness as part of the problem.

This analysis of anger as related to feelings of weakness can be found in a seminal way in the theories of the famous Dutch-born American psychologist, Conrad Baars. He believed that if the little child feels unloved because of frustration of basic physical and emotional needs, there is anguish in the heart. Anger is a basic response to being too weak to get what is necessary from one’s parents. It recurs later in life in over-reaction to any, even minor, situations of frustration.

St. Thomas Aquinas commented on Matt 11:29, “I am meek and humble of heart.” He wrote: “The whole New Law consists of two things: Meekness (or gentleness) and humility. Through meekness, a man is rightly related to his neighbor (see Psalm 131:1). Through humility, he is rightly related to himself and God (see Isaiah 66:2). Therefore humility makes man capable of (receiving) God.

The 18^th century doctor of the Catholic Church, St. Alphonsus Liguori, was of an extremely angry temperament himself. He wrote: “We cannot be free of the first motions of anger; we have to moderate them. This is done by “Meekness, the virtue of the lamb . . .”

Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson

The powerful and innovative magic realm that Sanderson weaves is captivating. However, I found his writing too gory for my taste. I do not want to know exactly what the mutilated body on the floor looks like, thank you very much.

There is a constant identity struggle throughout this book that continues throughout the series as the characters learn about their own capabilities, as their capabilities strengthen, and as they change. There is a lot of description - scenes, especially battle sequences, are played out step by step so that a fight choreographer for a movie would have nothing left to do. I didn't mind knowing exactly what was being thrown at whom, but I didn't need to know what the blood coming out of each person looked like. There was a lot of blood in this book.

The main character is a young woman who grows independent in a way that is great for her, because she is alone and needs strength and has power to help others, which she does. I don't see her as a role model though because her situation is so unique (and gory).

This is one of those books that I finished and felt like the time reading it had been mostly wasted. I'm putting it on the 'not recommended' list for me.

The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros

This is a coming of age story and involves a lot of identity seeking and realizations about the world. I really appreciated the way each chapter ended with a thought-provoking statement - I wanted to stop and consider what Cisneros was getting at, but I also wanted to keep reading and understand more of the story and life of the main character. There are some truly hilarious stories and some almost unbearably sad stories. 

If I remember correctly, this book was pretty clean. The girls find some hooker shoes one day and get into a spot of trouble while wearing them. One man takes advantage of the main character by stealing a kiss. She was affronted when her friend let boys kiss her.

This was a book-group pick, and one of the people in the book group was Latina and commented on how true-to-form it is for Latinos to insult each other by comparing them to bad food - cold frijoles and etc. I thought that was funny.

The One and Only Ivan, by Katherine Applegate

This is a beautiful story told from Ivan's point of view - a gorilla stuck in a roadside arcade. The themes of love, loss, persistence, optimism, and survival are present throughout, as well as thought provoking scenes discussing the benefits and drawbacks of deceiving oneself.

I enjoyed this discussion of anger:

"The freeway billboard has a drawing of Mack in his clown clothes and Stella on her hind legs and an angry animal with fierce eyes and unkempt hair.

"That animal is supposed to be me, but the artist made a mistake. I am never angry.

"Anger is precious. A silverback uses anger to maintain order and warn his troop of danger. When my father beat his chest, it was to say, Beware, listen, I am in charge. I am angry to protect you, because that is what I was born to do.

"Here in my domain, there is no one to protect."

While this book is short and written simply, I found it incredibly thought provoking.

The Tipping Point, by Malcom Gladwell

I loved this book. It is incredibly well-written and has so many interesting stories and facts. The "Tipping Point" is that magic moment when there is just enough friction to light the match. Gladwell makes the case that everything has a tipping point, and his ideas are fascinating.

"When we are trying to make an idea or attitude or product tip, we’re trying to change our audience in some small yet critical respect: we’re trying to infect them, sweep them up in our epidemic, convert them from hostility to acceptance. That can be done through the influence of special kinds of people, people of extraordinary personal connection. That’s the Law of the Few. It can be done by changing the content of communication, by making a message so memorable that it sticks in someone’s mind and compels them to action. That is the Stickiness Factor. But we need to remember that small changes in context can be just as important in tipping epidemics…

                

"The Power of Context is saying that those Tipping Points may be as simple and trivial as everyday signs of disorder like graffiti and fare-beating. The implications of this idea are enormous."

I think that anyone who reads this book would find influential ideas that could make their work or personal life better.