books

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book is delightful. The characters are charming. I've been on a bit of a WWII slant lately, and this book is a lighter account of life under German occupation, without being fluffy in the slightest. Details of life on Guernsey - one of the Channel Islands - during the war are revealed through letters primarily between the protagonist, Juliet (an author) and various inhabitants of the island.



Like 'The Book Thief,' this is also a work about the power of words and books. I am inspired to hit some of the classics again, and perhaps even some Wordsworth - and I am rarely into poetry. THAT is an accomplishment in itself!



My only complaint is that the book ended far too quickly. I wanted to keep hearing more and more about each of the main characters.


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The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I originally saw mention of this book on Kari's blog. A book rated so highly on various 'best mystery of all time' lists intrigued me. And I actually enjoy British history, although the use of a few more names would make it easier for me to follow.



It took me a bit to get into, but then I was hooked. In part by the mystery: a hospital and bed-ridden police inspector starts researching the real life of Richard III after seeing his portrait and deciding that the face did not match the purported life of the man. When I first read Richard III in the text I immediately thought 'Isn't that the one that murdered his nephews in the Tower?'



My mind became much more occupied with the instances in history - the book gives a couple - where gossip and hearsay become the accepted history because they were PRINTED. History has always fascinated me because of the inherent bias in written accounts - so unlike science which is completely objective. :) Histories seem to often be written some time after an event has taken place - a good idea to gain perspective, overview, see how events played out, but this also allows distortions of time to color what 'really happened.' Just as writing an account of 'what happened' is colored by who is doing the writing, however objective the author may try to be.



This book got me thinking again about the power of the printed word - on paper or now the internet - and how it is then taken as TRUTH because it is written down. I am generally too trusting of something simply because it's published - there's a presumption of fact-checking and accuracy that allows me to turn off the 'picky' part of my brain, if only for a moment. Accepted dogma doesn't not inherently make something true. I also need to read more British history!


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Also, someone please teach me how to leave my bangs alone!

quotes from Gilead

Gilead: A Novel, by Marilynne Robinson. 2005 Pulitzer Prize. It took me a while to get into, but then I really enjoyed it. This book actually made me think, which hasn't happened in a while. I guess that shows what kind of fluff I've been reading lately! It's essentially a letter or journal written by a dying, elderly man to his young son, whom he knows he won't see grow to adulthood. The man is a Methodist preacher, as his father was before him, and his grandfather as well. While it is primarily a discussion of relationships, faith and forgiveness, a belief in God is not necessary to appreciate many of the ideas. I thought the review from the San Francisco Chronicle summed it up nicely: 'Gilead is a refuge for readers longing for the increasingly rare work of fiction, one that explores big ideas while telling a good story.'

Here are some quotes that struck me:

There is reality in blessing, which I take baptism to be, primarily. It doesn't enhance sacredness but acknowledges it, and there is a power in that.

A good sermon is one side of a passionate conversation . . . There are three parties to it, of course, but so are there even to the most private thought - the self that yields the thought, the self that acknowledges and in some way responds to the thought, and the Lord.

Strange are the ways of adversity . . . My point here is that you never do know the actual nature even of your own experience. Or perhaps it has no fixed and certain nature.

Those people who can see right through you never quite do you justice, because they never give you credit for the effort you're making to be better than you actually are. Which is difficult and well meant and deserving of some little notice.

When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So, you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation? If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me . . . you are free to act otherwise than as circumstances would seem to dictate. You are free to act by your own lights.

(talking of a sermon on Abraham and Isaac, and Hagar and Ishmael) Abraham's extreme old age is an important element in both stories, not only because he can hardly hope for more children, not only because the children of old age are unspeakably precious, but also, I think, because any father, particularly an old father, must finally give his child to the wilderness and trust to the providence of God.

I am well aware that people find fault, but it seems to be presumptuous to judge the authenticity of any one's religion except one's own. And that is also presumptuous.

It was Coleridge who said Christianity is a life, not a doctrine, words to that effect. I'm not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so you would make honest use of it. I'm saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own, not, so to speak, the mustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion of any particular moment.

I don't know exactly what covetise is, but in my experience it is not so much desiring someone else's virtue or happiness as rejecting it, taking offense at the beauty of it.

And the fact is, it is seldom indeed that any wrong one suffers is not thoroughly foreshadowed by wrongs one has done.

(talking of the Depression and the way in affected people)
. . . it taught them there is more to life than security and the material comforts, but I know a lot of older people around here who can hardly bear to part with a nickel, remembering those hard times.
"There is that scattereth, and increaseth yet more, and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth only to want." - proverb

influence

Roger has a goal to read 24 books this year. His kind of books - mostly real estate, finance, tax strategies - are not usually what I would consider real page-turners; HOWEVER, this one was seriously fascinating. It's a study of the 'tricks' people - particularly sales people and advertisers - use to get you to follow their lead and do what they want you to do, often against your own better judgment.

For example: Have you ever wondered why restaurants hit you with little mints when they bring you your bill? Is it because you had the garlic bread appetizer? Has your breath been sending patrons out the door before they've even been seated? Perhaps. (My breath has certainly warranted mintification at times.) But studies have shown that the giving of this 'gift' increases the amount of tip a patron will leave. More moolah, simply because of a cheap peppermint presented on the little brown check tray!

I know I have poo-pooed the 'soft science' of psychology for many years. In recent years, however, I have been coming around. There are actually many studies done with reasonably-sized groups which don't reach completely outlandish conclusions. (One of my favorite psych studies from the undergrad years was on the effects of sugar and learning. 4 students drank a glass of lemonade before being tested, 4 drank water. The lemonade students performed better on some memory test than the control group that drank water, therefore sugar makes people smarter. HELLO!) Now that I have a small group of test subjects under my own supposed control (n=2 so far), I have become more interested in the field.

This entire book is great. Pertaining to children, I found two studies of particular interest. Do these hold true for REAL children, or more importantly, how do they work in practice?

1. We accept inner responsibility for a behavior when we think we have chosen to perform it in the absence of strong outside pressure. Basically, if you want your child to believe in the correctness of an act, threats and bribes aren't going to cut it. They need to continue the desired behavior when we aren't there. Somehow they need to accept inner responsibility for the actions we want them to take.

Briefly, 2nd-4th-grade boys were forbidden to play with a fancy, expensive robot (1 out of 5 toys in an array). One group was threatened with stiff punishment, while the second group was simply told 'it is wrong to play with the robot.' In both samples, 1 out of 22 boys played with the forbidden toy initially. The interesting result comes next. 6 weeks later an assistant was sent to check up on the affects of the different instructions. Out of the 'punishment' group, 77% chose to play with the robot, while only 33% of the second group chose that toy. The author suggests that the children didn't play with the toy because they decided that they somehow decided they didn't want to play with it.

2) People fight against restrictions of their freedom. If something is scarce, we tend to want it more.

24-month old boys were brought into a room with two equally-attractive toys, separated by a plexi-glass wall. In one case, the barrier was 1 foot high; i.e., it presented no obstacle to them, as they could easily reach over it. In the second group, the barrier was 2 feet high; i.e., the boys had to walk around to access the second toy. With unrestricted access, they boys showed no preference to either toy. In the presence of an obstacle, however, the boys went directly to the obstructed toy, contacting it 3x faster than the unobstructed toy.

The author describes this behavior as the need for the 2-year old to determine 'vital questions of choice, rights, and control.' They are testing where in their worlds they can expect to be controlled and where they can be IN control. Naturally, consistency will help everyone. This would suggest that the more times you can provide choices - so that the child is making their own decision, even while YOU are controlling (at least some of the time) the choices they are choosing from - the better off everyone will be.

Just how naive am I?