Candide, by Voltaire

Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer who embraced the ideals of a free and liberal society, along with freedom of religion and free commerce. His book, Candide, was a satire, funny, well done and relevant to the times but Voltaire’s purpose was to use wit to make his points.

He made fun of the teachings of the Church, but he was pushing for religious freedom. He had strong opinions and Candide was a tool to presenting his thoughts. The book is one of the most significant works of Western Canon due to its portrayal of the human condition.

The story is intended to satirize the idea of optimism. The approach was developed in the events of a trip which allowed the author to interchange the tragedy and the comedy within the various situations that occurred. This was a unique approach but provided a way to look at good and evil, as well as the role of God and Government in people’s lives. The satirical approach allowed him cover to focus on criticism.

A simple story, a young man leaves his home because he has been caught kissing the wrong person. Sill optimistic he joins the army. He is flogged and later almost burned alive. He continues to believe that he is indeed living in the "best of all possible worlds", as he was taught growing up, and sets out to see the world. Nothing goes well with one tragedy after another. Funny but sad. Then, after what seems to be an endless ordeal, he returns and settles for life in a garden. Even so, still optimistic perhaps, he says that "we must cultivate our garden".

Voltaire’s book, and his story, challenge the idea that "all is for the best" in a world where it is often assumed that things "work out for the best".

Quotes

“Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.” 

“Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.”

 “If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?” 

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Ivan Denisovich Shukov was taken prisoner by the Germans in 1943 and he later escaped and returned to his own troops. He admitted that the Germans has captured him, and that became his crime. He was assumed to be a spy. He was forced to confess to being a spy to avoid being shot, but then went to a soviet prison.  

The others in the prison also seem to have little logical reason for being there. One mans crime was being a Baptist. Many were there for being spies. Survival meant stealing, lying, and anything it took to stay alive. In prison they were not able to call the guards comrade but had to call them “Citizen”, removing their hats five steps before approaching them, and keeping it off until they had past two steps beyond. An inmate said that survial was "by the law of the taiga," or as we would put it, the law of the jungle.

Ivan says of the time "How can you expect a man who's warm, to understand a man who's cold?" The goal is to live through just one more day. On this "one day" Ivan is lucky when he was awakened by the sound of a hammer clanging against a steel rail, Ivan thinks he is sick guard pretends to take him to the punishment cells, but he only wants Ivan to mop the floor of the guardroom.

He did not have to work in the 20 below zero wind, and even got to stand in a warm place, while his guards discussed the wall his gang would have to make. He tricked the lunch staff and got an extra bowl of mush. He worked on building a wall and mistakenly put a long steel shaft in his pocket and he thought for sure he would be caught with it at the days, end when he remembered it was there, but then he was successful in getting the metal blade through the check station without being caught. He gets an extra meal ticket at dinner standing in line for a wealthy prisoner.

The day ends with Ivan sharing his story and talking about God with the Baptist prisoner.  The is the end of the book.

 

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was specifically mentioned in the Nobel Prize presentation speech when the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded the prize to Alexksandr Solzheitsyn in 1970,    

"Solzhenitsyn's One Day: The book that shook the USSR". BBC. Moscow. -Steve Rosenberg Nov. 19th 2012  / Vitaly Korotich declared: "The Soviet Union was destroyed by information - and this wave started from Solzhenitsyn's One Day.

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Salem's Lot by Stephen King

see review of Stephen King's newest book, the Outsider click here

see article on Stephen King as a literary influence click here

Salem’s Lot is small town America. The pace is slower, it seems quiet, but feelings are deep and just under the surface.  The townspeople still take care of their own. Stephen King has created this world for us and we find ourselves a part of it, anxious to read the master story teller’s tale.

The novel, Salem’s Lot, was Stephen King’s second novel published in 1975. King in two separate interviews, said this book was one of his favorites.  It is set in in Maine, of course, with a cast of interesting characters. We know King is not afraid to kill off his good guys and girls, so we start to care about, and root for them, when they must fight to stay alive. 

Marsten House sits on a hill above the town, a cemetery is just down the hill, and no one has lived in the house for years. The house has been recently purchased by Kurt Barlow an Austrian immigrant and his partner Richard Straker. Ben Mears, a writer, remembers the terror he felt in this house as a boy ,when he arrives back after 25 years, as a successful writer and planning to write about this house.

Ben makes friends with Matt Burke, a high school teacher, and with Susan Norton, a young college graduate. Danny Glick has just become the town’s first vampire but his brother Mark escapes.  Ben, Susan, Matt and Mark seek help from the local Catholic Priest. Holy Water, Crosses, and wooden stakes follow. Encounters with the master vampire follow. Some die of fear and many are turned into vampire followers. Mark, only a young boy, proves to be a challenge to the master vampire who at one-point spits in his face, but he loses his entire family to the vampires. 

The story seems like it might be predictable, but it holds us on the edge of our seat. This may well turn out to be one of your favorite Stephen King novels, if you have not read it yet, so I have not detailed out the ending but do highly recommend the book. 

Reviewing and reading a book written in 1975, considering it was made into a miniseries, may seem questionable to some? Why read this? My reason is that I never tire of the skill I find in Stephen King’s ability to tell a story. 

Quotes

“The town has a sense, not of history, but of time, and the telephone poles seem to know this. If you lay your hand against one, you can feel the vibration from the wires deep within the wood, as if souls had been imprisoned in there and were struggling to get out.” 

“Alone. Yes, that’s the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn’t hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym…”  

“The basis of all human fears, he thought. A closed door, slightly ajar.”

 “If a fear cannot be articulated, it can’t be conquered.” 

A Brief History Of Time by Stephen W. Hawkings

Stephen Hawking has sold over 10 million books of Brief History of Time translated into 35 language since it was published in 1988. The book discusses the “big bang”, black holes, string theory indicating a universe with 10 to 26 dimensions, quantum mechanics and more in a way that most readers are able to follow. The language is a pleasant surprise for the lay reader. Hawking’s approach is broader than many scientists in the questions he asks. “Up to now, most scientists have been too occupied with the development of new theories that describe what the universe is, to ask the question why. On the other hand, the people whose business it is to ask why, the philosophers, have not been able to keep up with the advances of scientific theories.”

It seems clear that after the universe came to be, that finding out what happened is a focus that is still being understood.

Hawking’s asks, not just how but “why does it exist”, and then tells us in the final statement of the book that if we could answer that we would “know the mind o God.”

It also seems clear that Hawking’s is not trying to tell us what or who God is, adding: "An expanding universe does not preclude a creator, but it does place limits on when he might have carried out his job!" 

It is interesting how educated minds open up to consider God.  Albert Einstein harbored a belief in, and reverence for, the harmony and beauty of what he called the mind of God as it was expressed in the creation of the universe and its laws.

Quotes

"There should be no boundary to human endeavor."  

"Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity."   

"I am just a child who has never grown up. I still keep asking these ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions. Occasionally, I find an answer."  

"An expanding universe does not preclude a creator, but it does place limits on when he might have carried out his job."

Miles Gone By, a literary autobiography, by William F. Buckley Jr.

"Miles Gone By" by William F. Buckley Jr. is a collection of his essays from over 50 years. He said that “it is material that he brought together with an autobiography in mind using articles, books and his newspaper columns”. 

Buckley’s diverse mix of his life-loves, history that includes his youth growing up, his impressive and interesting friends, love of sailing, love of language, music and skiing, are all puzzle pieces in getting to know him better.  It would be easy to overlook the uniqueness of this life by labeling the author as mostly reflecting a political point of view. 

Click her to see Review of God & Man At Yale

A favorite chapter was “God and Man at Yale A controversy revisited.” In 1950 this book was considered very controversial in it’s defense of individualism, religion and capitalism. He discussed the 25th anniversary edition of the book where he wrote a comprehensive introduction for the book.
The essays retell the stories that many Buckley followers know well. 

In the final chapter “Thoughts on a Final Passage” he likens his life to a voyage not really knowing where it would lead in another 5 years of retirement. He said that “you are moving at racing speed, parting the buttery sea as with a scalpel, and the waters roar by, themselves exuberantly subdued by your powers to command your way through them.” (An then you retire)

1st reviewed in 2006

Home and Exile by Chinua Achebe

see Daily Comments section of lessons from African Proverb click here

Chinua Achebe is a Nigerian author who is best known for his book “Things Fall Apart”, first published in 1959. This book, “Home and Exile”, published in 1998 and 10 years from his last book, came from three lectures at Harvard University. The lectures serve as a metaphor for the African story and this is illustrated by an African Proverb about Lions. We learn that “until the Lions produce their own historians, the story of the hunt will glorify only the hunter.”

African literature has few writers who tell the authentic story and many who push their own dark versions of what they feel is expected. Achebe is the African’s own historian, a proverb fulfilled, and we see things very differently from his view.

The first lecture, “My Home under Imperial Fire”, tells the African story in an autobiographical account. As with many writers we can see Achebe has an overpowering urge to tell his story. We learn of his childhood, family and what influenced him and his writing.

The second lecture, “The Empire Fights Back” compares African the literature written by outsiders with those of authentic African writers. Achebe examines reactions in England to some outsider books to the reactions of the Nigerians.

The final lecture, “Today, the Balance of stories” is where Achebe questions whether these efforts are worth it.

When we finish reading “Home and Exile” we feel we have tasted the African literary experience but are left wanting to know more. The simple conclusion to the book is that Africans should write about Africans.

See Review of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe by clicking on book above or here

Quotes

“In the end I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like. Just as in corrupt, totalitarian regimes, those who exercise power over others can do anything.” 

“The Igbo nation in precolonial times was not quite like any nation most people are familiar with. It did not have the apparatus of centralized government but a conglomeration of hundreds of independent towns and villages each of which shared the running of its affairs among its menfolk according to title, age, occupation, etc.; and its women folk who had domestic responsibilities as well as the management of the scores of four-day and eight-day markets that bound the entire region and its neighbors in a network of daily exchange of goods and news, from far and near.” 

Letters To A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke was a Bohemian-Austrian poet whose intense, mystical style dealt man’s existence and ways to deal with solitude and anxiety. He stressed that with "free will" the individual had to assume the responsibility for their own acts, even if they lacked a clear knowledge of what was right and wrong.  

Franz Xaver Kappus was 19-year-old in the Austrian army when he started corresponding with Rilke, who in return, over the next 6 years, sent him 10 letters. The two never met, but Kappus sought out advice on the poems he had written and in his interest in a literary career.

Author and critic Stephen Mitchell’s in 1989 translated some of Rilke’s selected works and said that “Rilke is unquestionably the most significant and compelling poet of the romantic transformation of spiritual quest that the twentieth century has known.”

Rilke’s letters offer some real insight into creative thinking and writing as well as a surprising level of cordiality. He said: "There is nothing less apt to touch a work of art than critical words: all we end up with there is more or less felicitous misunderstandings.” He added that "Nobody can advise you and help you. There is only one way. Go into yourself.  Examine the reason that bids you to write . . . ask yourself in your night's quietest hour: must I write? Read the lines as if they were unknown to you, and you will feel in your inmost self how very much they are yours."

The letters also offer thoughts on just living with phrases like these: "To love is also good, for love is hard. Love between one person and another: that is perhaps the hardest thing it is laid on us to do, the utmost, the ultimate trial and test, the work for which all other work is just preparation."

The book “Letters to a Young Poet” is the collection of letters that Kappus compiled and published in 1929—three years after Rilke's death from leukemia. It offers a different way to look at poetry and writing and some philosophy on life.

Quotes

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” 

 “Let everything happen to you                                                                    Beauty and terror                                                                                                Just keep going
No feeling is final” 

 “To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.” 

“I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.”

 “For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so,
because it serenely disdains to destroy us. Every angel is terrible"

How We Think by John Dewey

John Dewey was born in 1859 and died in 1952 and was one of the founders of the philosophical movement known as pragmatism. He wrote the book, “How We Think”, that concludes that we can be taught to think well, but not the process. He tells us that thinking is automatic, like breathing and our heartbeats.

Dewey tells us that our knowledge is what we are aware of, and that how we consider those things are beliefs. He tells us that beliefs have consequences, and that knowledge is relative to its interaction with the world.

He says that, “Genuine freedom is intellectual; it rests in the trained power of thought, in the ability to turn things over and to look at matters deliberately”. Thinking is more important than what is being thought about. “If a man’s actions are not guided by thoughtful conclusions, then they are guided by inconsiderate impulse.”

He tells us that thinking is the act of believing and offers an example: “I think that it is going to rain tomorrow’ is equivalent to saying, ‘I believe that it is going to rain tomorrow”.

Dewey tells us that the thinking process begins with a dilemma that suggests alternatives, indicating that thinking is evoked by confusion. He adds that schools do not need to teach information but should encourage stimulus that challenges external reality. The goal is to create curious and questioning minds that see wonder in science and philosophy, rather than monotony and routine in school.

Thinking doesn’t just happen, but it is evoked by something specific. Experience is a point of reference for the imagination.  The mind reflects by looking for additional evidence to compare with new experiences. Good and bad thinking in some cases can be in effected by the amount of experience or prior knowledge. With nothing to draw on the result is uncritical thinking.

Quotes

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.

Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.

We only think when we are confronted with problems.

Warlight, A Novel, by Michael Ondaatje

Michael Ondaatje is known for his writing of The English Patient

It is 1945 and fourteen-year-old Nathaniel and his older sister, Rachael, are told one day that their parents are leaving for Singapore and they will be staying with two criminals who will watch over them for a year that turns out to be more than that. This is Michael Ondaatje’s new novel, “Warlight,” beginning with something that seems clear enough, but it isn’t clear at all.

The brother and sister grow up during this time with a previous household renter named Moth as their official guardian. The other adult that became part of the temporary family unit was Darter, a colorful character clearly working outside the law. A temporary girlfriend of Darter, Olive Lawrence, brings some worldly glamour with her during her time with them and then writes to Nathaniel and Rachael for months after leaving. Their mother never writes.    

Nathaniel doesn’t do well in school and spends much of his time working, helping Darter in his life of crime, and with his first love, Agnes. Rachael likes school and is drawn to acting.

Someone has followed the two teenagers on several occasions, and when they are attacked and taken away, they are recused by friends of her mother who come with them back into their life. It turns out she has been on a secret mission and never did go to Singapore.

We shift into the second half of the novel where many seem to feel the novel slows into endless facts that don’t seem to connect but try to fill in all the blanks of the first half.  Nathaniel seeks answers to his mother’s earlier life and what she had really been doing. Years pass, and he is recruited by British Intelligence to review wartime files. He learns of war atrocities.

The details of what his mother was doing when she left, the war and his mother’s past seem to connect. We know it connects because his mother, Rose, predicts that things will come together in her journal.  For the reader it is questionable that the second half of this book really brings anything together.

The Author tells us that “No one really understands another’s life or even death,” This seems to be the real message of the book and that Nathaniel learns.

The first half of this book gave us a picture of two young people growing up without help from their parents at a difficult time, but the last half seemed to confirm that the book wasn’t about what happened in the first half. A confusing book.

The Outsider, a Novel, by Stephen King

See Review of End Of Watch (Holly Gibney character in this book comes from there) click here

Terry Maitland is a pillar of the community in Flint City, Oklahoma, and a very popular Little League coach. His DNA is found at the scene of a brutal murder and eyewitness identify him at the scene. He is also documented being in another town at the exact same time of the murder. 

Detective Ralph Anderson feels the case against Maitland is solid, based on the local witnesses and physical evidence, and he is ready to send Maitland to death row for his crimes. His wife Jeannie helps him see why his case may have problems and that he needs to look deeper. It’s Jeannie who first sees the truth lying at the center of this seemingly unsolvable mystery, and her questions eventually help Ralph to believe in the one woman, Holly Gibney, who can help him catch a child killer.

Much of the first half of this book deals with looking close at the forensics evidence. Some of that evidence leads to another town earlier that same year where a very similar crime takes place. Holly Gibney is a very qualified investigator who lives in Ohio near the other town and Anderson hires her to help find what might connect the two crimes. King has brought Holly’s character to this plot from the Bill Hodges Mr. Mercedes trilogy, and she drives much of the movement of the plot in the last half of this book. 

It becomes clear that an Outsider is involved in both murders. As brutal as the murders were, the mystery of the Outsider becomes scarier than the murders and is the strongest presence of evil in the story. 

Holly Gibney’s insight brings the twist that makes the second half of this book come together with supernatural elements worthy of King. Both halves work well together.

As with many of King’s novels it becomes clear that “there were monsters in the world, and their greatest advantage was the unwillingness of rational people to believe” in them. Once the supernatural is acceptance King makes that knowledge have its own terror. The first half of the book puts all the pieces in order and lead quickly to a confrontation with evil and to conclusion.

Quotes

“Doesn’t look like a monster, does he?” “They rarely do.”

"Adults are the real Monsters"

 “People had the mistaken idea that Poe wrote fantastic stories about the supernatural, when in fact he wrote realistic stories about abnormal psychology.” 

“Strange, the things you noticed when your day—your life—suddenly went over a cliff you hadn’t even known was there.” 

More

Stephen King has written over 50 Novels and 200 short stories. His books have sold more than 350 million copies. King was born September 21, 1947

In an article in Rolling Stone King said, "Hemingway sucks. If I set out to write that way, it would have been been hollow and lifeless because it wasn't me." (Good for you Stephen King. Hemingway was certainly self absorbed)

In the same article he was asked: "Do you see yourself doing this into your eighties and maybe even beyond?" (Loved his answer)He said,"Yeah. What else am I going to do? I mean, shit, you've got to do something to fill up your day. And I can only play so much guitar and watch so many TV shows. It fulfills me. There are two things about it I like: It makes me happy, and it makes other people happy."

Genius A Mosaic o One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds, by Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom’s book gives us a list of one hundred creative minds. The book is worth reading just to see who he picked for the list. He said, “I base this book, ‘Genius’ upon my belief that appreciation is a better mode for the understanding of achievement than are all the analytical kinds of accounting for the emergence of exceptional individuals.”

Since Bloom is one of the most well read in Western literature, as anyone alive today, his list matters. His conclusions seem to be based more on what influenced each person than the person themselves. 

One person on the list, Shakespeare, seems to be the one Bloom values for more than his influences. He treats Falstaff and Hamlet as models for people to choose between even though neither ever walked the earth.  They are both examples of literary personalities with power that is beyond themselves.   

Bloom likely would have said what William Blake said, “that that the history of religion consisted in ‘Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales’.” He added that “Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all emerge from that process, and all of them are endlessly far away from the exuberant beauty of the Yahwist.”

Bloom has taken the storyteller of Genesis, Exodus and Numbers, and calling it the Yahwist turning it into a literary character. The creation of this myth gives Bloom several options. By calling the Yahwist a woman he pushes the feminists who see little female influence in those literary giants Bloom favors, and likewise other scholars are left objecting to the divinity claimed by the myth but with nothing substantial to justify themselves, either.

The book "Genius" defines literature as what exists between the lines. Bloom told us that his choice for these 100 people was “wholly arbitrary and idiosyncratic.” We should take him at his word and understand that what is important to him is the connections and who each is influenced by.

See Harold Blooms list of recommended books click here

See Review of Shakespeare by Harold Bloom click here or on the book

See Literary Favorites section for more on Harold Bloom. Click here

Quotes

“Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.” 

“Real reading is a lonely activity.” 

“We read to find ourselves, more fully and more strangely than otherwise we could hope to find.”

"Everyone wants a prodigy to fail; it makes our mediocrity more bearable.” 

“We read, frequently if not unknowingly, in search of a mind more original than our own.” 

“We all fear loneliness, madness, dying. Shakespeare and Walt Whitman, Leopardi and Hart Crane will not cure those fears. And yet these poets bring us fire and light.” 

What the Dog Saw and other adventures by Malcolm Gladwell

“What the Dog Saw” is a collection of Malcolm Gladwell’s favorite articles that were published in the New Yorker magazine, where he has been a staff writer since 1996. He tells us in the preface that the book is divided into three categories of articles. The first deals with what he calls obsessives and minor geniuses; the second is devoted to theories to ways of organizing experience. The third focuses on how we make predictions about people. 

Gladwell says the question he gets asked the most is “Where do you get your ideas?” He tells us that in this book he was going to try to figure out the answer, once and for all. Referring to one of the articles in the book on why no one has ever come up with a ketchup to rival Heinz, he said that he got the idea from a friend who was in the grocery business. He adds that “The trick is finding ideas to convince yourself that everyone and everything has a story to tell.” The 19 diverse articles he includes in this book do confirm that he draws from everywhere. 

The book helps us change the way we look at the world and the method used to do this doing has been labeled as “Gladwellian”. This refers to a counter-intuitive type of thinking where more than one source is explored and used in formulating conclusions. 

The article, “What the Dog Saw” shows this approach. It tells the story of Cesar Millan, a professional Dog Whisperer, and his work with Sugar, the bad dog, and her owners. Sugar's behavior is changed almost with the touch of Millan’s hand, and the owners are stunned. Gladwell is more interested in what is going on in the dog’s head than what is going on in Millan head, but the story is really about both Millan and Sugar. When we see the world from both their eyes we understand.

The story of “The Talent Myth” examines in detail the idea that the better the talent pool the better the results. Enron embraced this idea with an obsession and we see the experience from their eyes. In the end we are told that yes, they were looking for people who could look outside the box, but the problem turned out to be that it was the box that needed to be fixed or better said: “The talent myth assumes that people make organizations smart. More often than not, it’s the other way around.” 

Gladwell continues to add enough of a twist to ideas that you thought you understood to be well worth reading.

Quotes

“Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head.” 

“You don't manage a social wrong. You should be ending it.”

 “What does it say about a society that it devotes more care and patience to the selection of those who handle its money than of those who handle its children?” 

The Woman In Cabin 10 a novel by Ruth Ware

Lo Blacklock is a travel journalist who is given the biggest assignment of her career to cover the maiden voyage of Aurora, a new super luxury ship. A few days before the cruise leaves her small apartment is broken into in the middle of the night, and she comes face to face with the bugler and is locked in her room for several hours. When she finally boards the ship see is still suffering from trauma and sleep deprivation. 

Lo’s first impression is positive. The ship is like a first-class hotel, but in miniature. The guest cabins are plush, those on board are important media contacts, and the dinner parties are elegant. Getting ready for the welcome party she knocks on cabin 10, next door, and borrows some make up from the young women who comes to the door. Lo hasn’t eaten much since her own break-in and she drinks a lot at the party and stays up late. 

That night in her room she hears “the kind of splash made by a body hitting water”.  She looks down from the deck outside her room and thinks she sees a body sinking into the dark waters, and then looks to the deck space next door through some cracks in the divider and sees blood smeared on the glass. She calls security but when they go to the cabin 10 it is completely empty and there is no blood. Security listens and even help by checking everyone on board to see if they can find the young women Lo saw  earlier in the cabin, but no one on board is missing.

Lo had confided details of her own break-in with Ben who is also on board, and whom she had been married to years ago. He shares the event, and that she had been drinking excessively, with security and that castes more doubt on her story. Security wonders if she was imagining everything but they try to help.

She continues, on her own to dig deeper, even searching below the guest decks. Things become more dangerous for her. She reaches a point where she can’t go back and may not make it out alive. The plot is filled with a constant feeling of danger and the reader will find themselves wondering what the next chapter will bring. 

Copies of social media posts from back home are inserted after some of the later chapters but they only add more questions to what is really happening on the ship. The book might be best described as a “claustrophobic whodunit”.

Quotes

"There’s a reason why we keep thoughts inside our heads for the most part—they’re not safe to be let out in public. “Other” 

“Maybe that was closer to the truth--we weren't captor and captive, but two animals in different compartments of the same cage. Hers was just slightly larger.” 

“We all have demons inside us, voices that whisper we’re no good, that if we don’t make this promotion or ace that exam we’ll reveal to the world exactly what kind of worthless sacks of skin and sinew we really are.” 

I Never Promised You A Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg

Joanne Greenberg said when questioned about the book, I Never Promised You A Rose Garden, that she fictionalized it as a hedge.  She explained that she didn’t want to go back to that time and place, so she gave the character, Deborah Blau, different parents and different symptoms, that were more organized than her own had been. Her own story included her time at the Chestnut Lodge Hospital in Rockville Maryland from 1948 to 1951. She did recover completely from her own struggle.

In this novel the young girl Deborah seemed to have withdrawn into a deep depression. It could have been schizophrenia, but in those days this was often just a vague diagnosis. She also  had a traumatic experience in surgery she needed that involved a great deal of physical pain. She also felt a lot of abuse from anti-Semitic neighbors. She withdrew into an alternate world called ‘Yr”, which was a place of escape and comfort, but eventually those in charge of that world ruled over her every word and deed.  The world had its own language and laws, woven from the laws of the real world. 

After an attempt at suicide at 16 years old her parents take Deborah to an insane asylum  hoping that they can make her normal. As her mother and father drive her to the hospital her father tells her, looking at her in the rear-view mirror, “I was a fool when I married- a damn young fool who didn’t know about bring up children.” She spends three years at the hospital as she seeks treatment for, what in those days, was diagnosed as schizophrenia. (Every mental hospital in America was filled with schizophrenics in the late 1940s) She finally worked herself up to the disturbed ward. One of the questions this story raises is what does it mean to be normal and what is it to be mentally ill? 

Her doctor used psychotherapy to allow Deborah to face her own Gods as demons and be able to chose between them and the Gods of the real world.  Learning that the “Yri” language words had roots in the English language and were not original helped her start to understand.  When logic entered her thinking it helped her. 

Her doctors made slow progress and their goal was to give Deborah the ability to choose between the reality of the real world over the fantasy of her “Yr” world. Earning her GED degree is a help in her struggle over her illness as it draws her back into the real world. 

Deborah's progress is slow.  The reader will likely get caught up with the other patients and their stories and interaction. Their craziness starts to make some sense as we learn more about them. Their lives have some logic and rules that they live by and reveal a hidden culture. 

The step by step approach at building trust with Deborah helps her connect to reality and replace fantasy. Deborah’s personal resolution to have it work is the clearest indicator of the success that comes.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

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Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

Lessons from Blink suggest that we can learn how to understand the process of decision-making and how we can trust our instincts and intuition to make decisions quickly.  We learn that our first impressions often are correct, but these intuitive judgments are developed by experience, training, and knowledge

To show this, Gladwell introduces the concept and power of what he calls “thin-slicing,” which is "the ability of our unconscious to find patterns, in situations and behavior, based on very narrow slices of experience."

An example of this is a test that was done by John Gottman, where in less than fifteen minutes, he could predict with 90% accuracy whether a couple would still be together fifteen years later. This was done by listening to a couple sitting alone in a room for fifteen minutes to talk about whatever they wanted and measuring the conversation. 

The researchers assigned values to defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, and contempt. Contempt and disgust were given higher values in this group.  The man and woman used in a test had a new dog, and when left alone, it became the subject of their conversation. They had very different feelings about the new dog but never seemed to seem to get mad as they discussed the dog. 

The woman wanted to keep their new dog and was inflexible in her opinions. She showed contempt for the man’s thoughts, often with eye rolls, and her position never changed. The man did not like the new dog but often started out saying, he was fine with the dog, but then followed up with why he didn’t like the dog. 

The points assigned to the various aspects of the conversation were such that the conclusion was that this couple wouldn't be together in 15 years. A quick subjective decision may have suggested the same thing, but then that was the point. Subjectively we can, and do, measure the same points quickly. 

Another example of "thin sliced" moments in time where big decisions were made was how much a person learns by a quick glance at another person’s private space. Even a bookshelf, cabinet or bedroom can communicate a lot by how they are organized, or not organized. The subconscious recognizes patterns and connections and we often just assume they are gut reactions. 

Snap judgements were discussed and an obvious example was the process of speed-dating.  It was clear that a mountain of data was gathered in the blink of an eye. This conclusion seems at odds with the conclusion that snap judgments work best when they're informed by careful thought beforehand? Gladwell is saying that if you have studied the data and have a criteria in mind you can make the decision quickly, but he is also saying decesions are not just a coin toss.

We intuitively attempt to use this concept on ourselves by "priming" our own behavior. We have stereotypes that we label other people with. For example, we may feel certain ways about what being a professor or someone in a certain profession is and this belief defines many things we do. We change our own behavior to become what we feel we want to be, as seen in the actions of other.

Too much information can distract from making good intuitive decisions. “We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We’re a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don’t really have an explanation for.”  Gladwell writes that “The first task of Blink is to convince you of a simple fact, that decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately."

The key according to Gladwell is that "truly successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking". Blink will be worth reading and give you more confidence in your own intuition.

Quotes

"There can be as much value in the blink of the eye as in months of Rational Analysis"

"Success has to do with deliberate practice. Practice must be focused, determined, and in an environment where there's feedback." 

"It takes ten thousand hours to truly master anything. Time spent leads to experience; experience leads to proficiency; and the more proficient you are the more valuable you'll be."  

"The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world." 

“The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.” 

“We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for.”