I had so much time to study and ponder during the isolation of Covid. Because of existing health challenges, I had to be especially cautious. I learned many things about myself during this period of self-containment. My love of reading and exploring the world through books has been a blessing in my life. The following is a list of what I read last year.
2020
JANUARY
*DEAR EDWARD, Ann Napolitano
*BETTER THAN BEFORE, Gretchen Rubin
*HAPPIER AT HOME, Gretchen Rubin
*THE OVERSTORY, Richard Powers
FEBRUARY
*THE DUTCH HOUSE, Ann Patchett
MARCH
*FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, Tolkien
*THE TWO TOWERS, Tolkien
APRIL
*THE RETURN OF THE KING, Tolkien - loved!
Happy memories. Timely. Epic. My favorite.
Frodo:”I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.” Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time given to us.”
“I will help you bear this burden, Frodo Baggins, as long as it is yours to bear.”
*THE LION THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE, C. S. Lewis
*THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW, C. S. Lewis
“What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are.”
*THE DEARLY BELOVED, Cara Wall *****an all time favorite
MAY
*BEAR TOWN, Fredrick Blackman -sad, dark, but a lot to discuss
*THE READING LIFE OF C. S. LEWIS -insightful, easy read.
*THE SUN DOES SHINE, Anthony Ray Hinton
JUNE
*PLANT DREAMING DEEP, May Sarton
“I have brought all that I am and all that I came from here- which gives the life here its quality for me.”
“..struggle, occasional triumph over adversity, above all the power to endure and to be renewed. For here the roses grow beside the granite.”
“But when the hummingbird comes back in early summer all the conflict does away and I remember only joy.”
*PRINCE CASPIAN, C. S. Lewis * favorite Narnia so far
*THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER, C. S. Lewis
- I hope it will never be told in Narnia that a company of noble and royal persons in the flower of their age turned tail because they were afraid of the dark.
- Alslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us, send help now.
- Courage Dear Heart
- you shall meet me dear one said Aslan. Are you there too Sir?, said Edmund.
I am said Aslan but there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. That is the reason you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.
JULY
*THE WEIGHT OF INK, Rachel Kadish
“Our life is a walk in the night, we know not how great the distance to the dawn that awaits. And our path is strewn with stumbling blocks ...yet we lift our feet. We lift our feet. With the help of God.”
“He does not accept the life I offer him. I must trust him to the hands of the Almighty.”
“The saving of a life is equal in merit to the saving of the world. So it is said, he who saves one life saves a world
Were there worlds of different size and merit?”
“He’d once believed in a plain patent world in which whatever was noteworthy cried out proudly for attention. Now he saw how readily the most essential things went unseen”
*THE SILVER CHAIR - C. S. Lewis
They could think of nothing but beds and baths and hot meals and how lovely it would be to get indoors. They never talked about Aslan or even about the Lost Prince, now. And Jill gave up her habit of repeating the Signs over to herself every night and morning. She said to herself at first that she was too tired, but soon forgot all about it.
Their quest had been with all the pains it cost.
You have done the work for which I sent you to Narnia.
*DELAY DON’T DENY, Gin Stephens
*THE OBESITY CODE, Jason Fung
*SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF HUMAN RELATIONS, Stephen Covey
“ You teach what you are”
SEPTEMBER
*HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE, Dale Carnegie
Don’t criticize, condemn or complain
Everyone wants to feel important
*AFTERLIFE, Julia Alvarez
Dar a la luz - to give a light - birth in Spanish
Tolstoys 3 questions-
What is the best time to do things?
Who is the most important one?
What is the right thing to do?
*****Let’s see what love can do.
Antonia hopes that with time she could shed those smaller selves - instead she’s going to have to live with the disappointment of not being as grand as she would like to be. If I try to be like you, who will be like me?
Shantih. Shantih Shantih
The peace that passeth all understanding
*THE RULES OF CIVILITY, Amor Towles
There is an oft quoted passage in Walden in which Thoreau exhorts us to find our pole star and follow it unwaveringly as would a sailor or a fugitive slave. It’s a thrilling sentiment - one so obviously worthy of our aspirations. But even if you had the discipline to maintain the true course, the real problem is how to know in which part of the heavens your star resides.
But there is another passage in Walden that has stayed with me as well. In it, Thoreau says men mistakenly think of truth as being remote - behind the furthest star, before Adam and after the reckoning. When in fact, all these times and places and occasions are now and here. In a way, this celebration of the now and here seems to contradict the exhortation. To follow one’s star. But it is equally pervasive. And oh so much more attainable.
To have even one year when you are presented with choices that can alter your circumstances, your character , your course - that’s by the grace of God alone and it should come without a price. I love Val. I love my job and my New York. I have no doubt that they were the right choices for me. And at the same time, I know that right choices by definition. Are the means by which life crystallizes loss.
*7 HABITS OF HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE, Stephen Covey
“It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses. Dang HammarskjoldBe
-Be proactive
-Make your own weather
-Begin with the end in mind
-Put first things first
-Win-win
-Seek first to understand then be understood
-Synergize - combined action mutually advantageous conjunction - all nature is synergistic - Ecology
-Take time to sharpen the saw
*ALL ADULTS HERE, Emma Straub
“for my parents who did their best and for my children, for whom I’m doing mine”
”If she’d known that in three years her father would be dead she would have enjoyed it more. Porters biggest pet peeve was when people complained about having to do things with their families - Thanksgiving at their in-laws, a birthday party, a formal baby shower for their mothers friends. Did those people not understand that death was marching toward everyone every single day? Porter thought about making a line of greeting cards that just said, Surprise! You’re dying and so is everyone else. Get over yourself. They’d be good for any occasion.”
*THE BOY AND HIS HORSE, C. S. Lewis
-Even a traitor may mend.
-Was it all a dream?
- It was from the lion that the light came. No one ever saw anything more terrible or beautiful...the High King above all Kings stooped towards him...then instantly the pale brightness of the mist and the fiery brightness of the Lion rolled themselves together into a swirling glory and gathered themselves up and disappeared. He was alone with the horse in a grassy hillside under a blue sky. And there were birds singing.
- It wasn’t luck at all really, it was Him. - but it suddenly came into his head “if you funk this, you’ll funk every battle of your life. Now or never. -Forget your pride - what have you to be proud of - and your anger - who has done you wrong? And accept the mercy of these good kings.
*THE LAST BATTLE, C. S. Lewis
-I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now.
-And for this is the end of all stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
*STONES FOR IBARRA, Harriet Doerr
Why are these stones piled around?
When people pass and remember, they bring stones.
Don Ricardo Everton has left footprints in the soil that neither rain nor wind can sweep away.
It makes no difference what a man believes, if he is a good person.
Stop, she wanted to call out. Stop for a minute. Look through these gates and see the lighted house. An accident happened here. Remember the place. Bring stones.
*SOMEONE, Alice McDermott
Rescue me from my enemies my God. Deliver me from evildoers. I’m sorry this happened to you Marie. There is a lot of cruelty in the world. You’ll be lucky if this is your worst taste of it.
I didn’t believe him. Didn’t believe there could be a worst taste of it. I didn’t consider then that my brother too might have longed to step out of his skin. Might have carried in those days his own blasted vision of an impossible future.
Who’s going to love me? Someone, someone will.
And now my heart fell to think that the holy mystery of who my brother was might be made flesh, ordinary flesh, by the notion that he was simply a certain kind of man.
Who can know the heart of a man, especially a man like your brother.
*CONSIDER THIS SENORA, Harriet Doerr
Our lives are brief, beyond our comprehension or our desire. We drop like cottonwood leaves from trees after a single frost. The interval between birth and death is scarcely more than a breathing space. Tonight in her house on a Mexican hill, Ursula Bowles listened to the five assembled in her sala and thought she heard the faint rustle of their days slipping by. She could see now that an individual life is, in the end, nothing more than a stirring of air, a shifting of light. No one of us is ever more than that. Even Einstein. Even Brahms. The widow slept.
*ALL THE PRETTY HORSES, Cormac McCarthy
You think God looks out for people? said Rawlins. Yeah, I guess I do. You?
Yeah, I do. Way the world is, somebody can wake up and sneeze somewhere in Arkansas or some damn place and before you’re done there’s wars and ruination and all hell. You don’t know what’s goin to happen. I’d say he’s just about got to. I don’t believe we’d make it a day otherwise.
OCTOBER
*LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND, Rumaan Alam
Home was just where you were, in the end. It was just the place you found yourself...they were together.
If they didn’t know how it would end - with night with more terrible noise, with bombs, with disease, with blood, with happiness, with deer or something else watching them from the darkened woods - well, wasn’t that true of every day?
*THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, Oscar Wilde
Was it really true that one could never change? He felt a wild longing for the I stained purity of his boyhood he knew he had tarnished himself, filled his mind with corruption and given horror to his fancy, that he had been an evil influence on others, and had experienced a terrible joy in being so; and that of the lives that had crossed his own had been the fairway and most full of promise that he had brought to shame. But was it all irretrievable? Was there no hope for him?
Ah! I. What monstrous moment of pride and passion he had prayed that the portrait should bear the burden of his days, and he keep the unsullied splendor of eternal youth! All his failure has been due to that. Better for him that each sin of his life had brought it’s sure, swift penalty along with it. There was purification in punishment. Not “forgive us our sins” but “smite us for our iniquities” should be the prayer of a man to a most just God.
*THE GIVER OF STARS, Jojo Moyes
You know what’s really wonderful about those fireflies? They only live for a few weeks. Not much in the grand scheme of things. But while they’re there, the beauty of them, well , it takes your breath away you get to see the world in a whole new way. And then you have that beautiful picture burned o to the inside of your head. To carry it wherever you go. And never forget it.
*MRS. DALLOWAY, Virginia Woolf
“What does the brain matter”, said Lady Rosseter, getting up, “compared with the heart?”
DECEMBER
*THE LITTLE PRINCE, Antoine de Saint-Expuery
*A CHRISTMAS MEMORY, Truman Capote
* THE THANKSGIVING VISITOR, Truman Capote
*WINNIE THE POOH, A. A. Milne
*HOUSE AT POOH CORNER, A. A. Milne
*WHEN WE WERE VERY YOUNG, A. A. Milne
*BOOK OF MORMON
*OUT OF DOORS IN THE HOLY LAND, Henry Van Dyke
*THE OTHER WISEMAN, Henry Van Dyke
*AUTUMN - Ali Smith
