Category: book
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What’s reasonable?
I’ve noticed that other people often think they are reasonable even when I don’t think they are the least bit sensible. George Eliot in her book Middlemarch reminded me that some people may think that my opinions are not as reasonable as I think they are. Sir James, Eliot wrote, “did not usually find it…
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Finding and giving kindness
Boris says: “None of us ever finds enough kindness in the world, do we?” And, Theo finally realizes: “It didn’t occur to me then, though it certainly does now, that it was years since I’d roused myself from my stupor of misery and self-absorption, (that) there were a lot of small, easy, everyday kindnesses I’d…
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Pure good or pure bad?
I just finished reading all 771 pages of Donna Tartt’s book The Goldfinch, and I’ve been thinking about something Boris said: “Maybe this is one instance where you can’t boil down to pure ‘good’ or pure ‘bad’ like you always want to do. Like, your two different piles? Bad over there, good over here? Maybe…
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The soft war on women
Gender discrimination, conclude Rosalind Barnett and Caryl Rivers, has gone underground, where it is more subtle, harder to spot and often more dangerous than the old in-your-face bias. Today, women are judged on what they have actually accomplished. But promising men, research shows, are judged on their potential. In business, the male member of a…
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Don’t take it personally
When I was confiding to my sister-in-law Jeany about something a friend did that hurt my feelings, she reminded me of something very important. “Don’t take things personally,” she said. And, then, Jeany told me about an interesting book she re-reads periodically. It’s the The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. “Personal importance, or taking…
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A woman inventor in 1715
Sybilla Masters invented a power-driven method for grinding corn in 1715. According to Catherine Thimmeah in Girls Think of Everything—Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women, this was the first documented invention by an American woman. “Because America was still a British colony, Sybilla went to England to obtain a patent for her invention,” Thimmeah writes.…
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The struggles of a lifetime
Sometimes when I need inspiration, I find it. Why do I keep fighting the same battles? Why do I have to constantly remind myself that I really do want to eat vegetables instead of chocolate, that sometimes I talk too much, that feeling depressed doesn’t solve my problems? When I flipped through a book by…
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An adult in disguise
Just when I’m thinking that I am the only one with issues, my good friend Susan sends me a quote that reminds me to lighten up a little bit. “Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.” Those words are from Margaret Atwood’s book Cat’s…
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Continuing to begin
Rachel, finally, realizes how her marriage has been colored by the hurt and disappointment of her parents’ marriage. She had merged her husband with the image of her father—“that image of abandonment and betrayal,” explains Barbara Scheiber in her novel We’ll Go to Coney Island. At last, however, Rachel’s insight helped her to get unstuck,…
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Nedotepa?
Rachel studies Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” in a college class in Barbara Scheiber’s book We’ll Go to Coney Island. The characters are “all so pitiful,” she tells her professor. “As if they—as if they’re asking to be hurt. They all seem to want to be happy, but they act, well, totally without any sense.” “But…