Review of Art Matters, by Neil Gaiman

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Art Matters

Because Your Imagination Can Change the World

by Neil Gaiman
illustrated by Chris Riddell

Review written March 25, 2019, from a library book
William Morrow (HarperCollins), 2018.
Starred Review

This little book consists of four essays by Neil Gaiman, with illustrations on every page by Chris Riddell. I’m pretty sure I’d read my two favorites before, “Why Our Future Depends on Libraries, Reading and Daydreaming” and “Make Good Art.” They are wonderful, and I was eager to read them again, in illustrated form. In fact, I so much wanted to hear these ideas again, I checked out and listened to the short audiobook, narrated by Neil Gaiman. I love his accent and can listen to him forever, so it was all the more wonderful to hear his inspiring thoughts read with his own voice.

Then after listening, I checked out the print book so I could catch some quotes for Sonderquotes.

This book contains inspirational thoughts about the power of ideas, about reading and libraries, about procrastinating, and about becoming an artist who makes good art. It doesn’t take long to read, but it will leave you inspired.

@neilhimself
@chrisriddell50
hc.com

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Almost Everything, by Anne Lamott

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Almost Everything

Notes on Hope

by Anne Lamott

Riverhead Books, 2018. 189 pages.
Starred Review

Here’s another short book by Anne Lamott, musing about life and grace and hope. And there’s no one whose musings I enjoy as much.

What is this one about? Well, she frames it with the writing advice she gives to classes of adults and classes of six-year-olds. It’s things she’s learned about life – and she has learned many wise things by now.

I love the realistic humor Anne Lamott brings to things. She tells stories about being imperfect, about being impatient, and about others being imperfect and impatient.

But she comes back to the idea that we are, as she puts it, “preapproved.” “This is a come-as-you-are party.”

Anne Lamott helps me delight in being human. She helps me take joy and delight in life. She helps me do more laughing – especially at myself.

My recommendation is check the quotes from this book I’ve posted on Sonderquotes. (Little by little I’ll get them posted. If there aren’t many when you check, here are my other Anne Lamott quotes.) If you like these small tastes of her writing, get the book to enjoy the whole banquet.

riverheadbooks.com
penguin.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Gratitude, by Oliver Sacks

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Gratitude

by Oliver Sacks

Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2015. 45 pages.
Starred Review

This tiny book is short, but lovely. It contains four essays Oliver Sacks wrote in the last two years of his life.

When he wrote the first one, “Mercury,” about turning eighty, he didn’t know that cancer was soon to come back into his life and limit that life. But it fits beautifully with the others, about what’s important in life, and aging, and facing the end of life with gratitude.

In the second essay, “My Own Life,” written after receiving the diagnosis, he wrote:

Over the last few days, I have been able to see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts. This does not mean I am finished with life. On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight.

This will involve audacity, clarity, and plain speaking; trying to straighten my accounts with the world. But there will be time, too, for some fun (and even some silliness, as well).

Here’s where the title of the book comes from:

I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.

The final essay, “Sabbath,” was written at the end of his life. He concludes:

And now, weak, short of breath, my once-firm muscles melted away by cancer, I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life – achieving a sense of peace within oneself. I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one’s life as well, when one can feel that one’s work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest.

This book won’t take much of your time, but it will lift your spirits and perhaps get you thinking about what it means to live life well.

oliversacks.com
billhayes.com
www.aaknopf.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of The Book of Joy, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, with Douglas Abrams

Christian, Musings, Nonfiction Review, Personal Growth, Starred Review 0

The Book of Joy

Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu
with Douglas Abrams

Avery (Penguin Random House), 2016. 354 pages.
Starred Review

The authors speak at the front of the book to explain what this project is about:

To celebrate one of our special birthdays, we met for a week in Dharamsala to enjoy our friendship and to create something that we hope will be a birthday gift for others. There is perhaps nothing more joyous than birth, and yet so much of life is spent in sadness, stress, and suffering. We hope this small book will be an invitation to more joy and more happiness….

Our cowriter, Douglas Abrams, has kindly agreed to assist us in this project and interviewed us over the course of a week in Dharamsala. We have asked him to weave our voices together and offer his own as our narrator so that we can share not only our views and our experience but also what scientists and others have found to be the wellsprings of joy.

You don’t need to believe us. Indeed, nothing we say should be taken as an article of faith. We are sharing what two friends, from very different worlds, have witnessed and learned in our long lives. We hope you will discover whether what is included here is true by applying it in your own life.

The rest of the book is told from Douglas Abrams’ perspective, telling about the joyful meeting between the Dalai Lama and the Archbishop, and their discussions about Joy.

The book is beautiful, reflecting the Joy and Love and Compassion between these two men, but also reflecting thoughts on Joy both the Christian and Buddhist perspectives. It’s lovely how complementary those perspectives are.

The two men met over five days, and the book follows their discussions through those five days. They covered “The Nature of True Joy,” “The Obstacles to Joy” (Fear, Stress, and Anxiety; Frustration and Anger; Sadness and Grief; Despair; Loneliness; Envy; Suffering and Adversity; and Illness and Fear of Death), and “The Eight Pillars of Joy” (Perspective, Humility, Humor, Acceptance, Forgiveness, Gratitude, Compassion, and Generosity).

There’s much wisdom in these pages, as well as a bit of a story of these two men from very different backgrounds and their friendship. I like the way, by using words from leaders of two religions, it has something for people of many different faiths.

Be sure to check some quotations I pulled from this book.

bookofjoy.org
penguin.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of When Strangers Meet, by Kio Stark

Musings, Nonfiction Review 0

When Strangers Meet

How People You Don’t Know Can Transform You

by Kio Stark

TED Books, Simon & Schuster, 2016. 107 pages.

This is a short little book, based on this TED Talk, “Why You Should Talk to Strangers.”

She didn’t actually convince me. I’m an introvert; I’m not going to do her exercises.

However, she said things that were fun to think about. Connection is good for us. I was happy I read this before I went to ALA Midwinter Meeting and planned to ask strangers to vote for me to be on the 2019 Newbery committee. Those encounters were all very positive. I do think it helped to think about the dynamics of talking to strangers first.

For that matter, my job at the library involves talking with strangers — and helping them — every single day. So to think a little more deeply about what’s going on when that happens was good.

From the Introduction:

In these pages we’ll explore why talking to strangers is good for you. We’ll investigate how it’s possible for people to open themselves to even the briefest conversations with strangers and the fascinating dynamics of how they do it. What does it take to say a simple hello to a stranger you pass on the street? How might that interaction continue? What are the places in which you are more likely to interact with people you don’t know? How do you get out of a conversation? These sound like easy questions. As you’ll see, they are not….

This is a book about talking, and it’s also a book about seeing, listening, and being alert to the world. I want to show you how lyrical and profound our most momentary connections can be, to broaden your understanding and deepen your perception of people who are strangers to you. I want you to see the invisible mechanics and meanings of street interactions. I want to give you a new way to be in love with the world.

This book is fun reading, and a great option for those who prefer books to video (like me).

TED.com
SimonandSchuster.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of On Living, by Kerry Egan

Musings, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

On Living

by Kerry Egan

Riverhead Books, 2016. 208 pages.
Starred Review

On Living is such a lovely little book! Kerry Egan was a hospice chaplain who listened to dying people tell about their lives and their stories.

This book tells many of the stories of the people she met. But along the way, it weaves in plenty of wisdom about living.

In the beginning of the book, she explains what chaplains do:

Hospice chaplains are sort of the opposite of storytellers. We’re story holders.

We listen to the stories that people believe have shaped their lives. We listen to the stories people choose to tell, and the meaning they make of those stories.

While religion plays a central role in spiritual care for many patients, it doesn’t for many others. Spiritual care, faith, and religion are not the same thing. Some chaplains might also be priests and pastors, but in their roles as chaplains, they don’t preach or teach.

Instead, they create a space – a sacred time and place – in which people can look at the lives they’ve led and try to figure out what it all means to them.

When you talk to hundreds of people who are dying and looking back over their lives, you come to realize something startling: Every single person out there has a crazy story. Every single person has some bizarre, life-shattering, pull-the-rug-out-from-under-you story in their past, or will experience one in the future. Every shopper in the grocery store, every telemarketer on the phone, every mother at school pickup, every banker striding down the sidewalk. Money, faith, popularity, beauty, power – nothing prevents it.

Every one of us will go through things that destroy our inner compass and pull meaning out from under us. Everyone who does not die young will go through some sort of spiritual crisis, where we have lost our sense of what is right and wrong, possible and impossible, real and not real. Never underestimate how frightening, angering, confusing, devastating it is to be in that place. Making meaning of what is meaningless is hard work. Soul-searching is painful. This process of making or finding meaning at the end of life is what the chaplain facilitates. The chaplain doesn’t do the work. The patient does. The chaplain isn’t wrestling with the events of a life that don’t match up with everything you were taught was true, but she won’t turn away in fear, either. She won’t try to give you pat answers to get you to stop talking about pain, or shut you down with platitudes that make her feel better but do nothing to resolve the confusion and yearning you feel. A chaplain is not the one laboring to make meaning, but she’s been with other people who have. She knows what tends to be helpful, and what doesn’t. She might ask questions you would never have considered, or that help you remember other times you survived something hard and other ways you made sense of what seemed senseless. She can reframe the story, and can offer a different interpretation to consider, accept, or reject. She can remind you of the larger story of your life, or the wisdom of your faith tradition. She can hold open a space of prayer or meditation or reflection when you don’t have the energy or strength to keep the walls from collapsing. She will not leave you. And maybe most important: She knows the work can be done. She knows you can do it and not crumble into dust.

She wrote this book when a patient named Gloria revealed that she’d been praying for someone to write her story. When she found out that Kerry was a writer, Gloria made her promise.

While a few patients before Gloria had told me that they wished other people could learn from their life stories – had even given me permission to share their stories with others – it was Gloria and the promise I made to her that led to this little book. I had been holding on to patients’ stories for many years by then, the stories that patients had poured out and puzzled over, the stories they turned over in their minds like the rosary beads and worn Bibles they turned over in their hands. I hoarded them, locked them away in my heart.

Often, but not always, my patients found some measure of peace as we talked. Often, but not always, their faith in something good and greater than themselves was affirmed. Often, but not always, they found strength they didn’t know they had to make amends with the people in their lives, and courage to move forward without fear toward their deaths. Always, they taught me something.

She goes on to say:

I don’t know if listening to other people’s life stories as they die can make you wise, but I do know that it can heal your soul. I know this because those stories healed mine.

Just as was true for every one of my patients, something had happened to me, too. What I thought of as the story that had shaped my life up to that point was one I was ashamed of. I thought I was broken and cracked and could not be put back together again, that I was destroyed at the very deepest part of me, and that this was something that could never be made better. When I started working in hospice, I didn’t yet understand that everyone – everyone – is broken and cracked.

I’m not sure if reading a book full of stories told by the dying can make you wise. But I am sure that there is lots of wisdom in this book. Reading it provoked my thinking and uplifted my spirit.

penguin.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Knitting Pearls, edited by Ann Hood

Creativity, Musings, Nonfiction Review 0

Knitting Pearls

Writers Writing About Knitting

edited by Ann Hood

W. W. Norton & Company, 2016. 260 pages.

This is a book of essays about knitting, and the essays are written by twenty-seven distinguished writers. Not all of the writers are knitters, but all of the writers do have something interesting to say about knitting. Maybe they had a relative who knitted for them. Maybe there’s a particular knitted object that starts their musings.

I took a long time to read this book. But that’s the beauty of essays – you can read one at a time and come away smiling. Or just musing about life.

Here’s a paragraph from the introduction, with the editor telling us what to expect. (There are several more paragraphs, so this is just a taste.)

And speaking of swooning, here’s what you have to look forward to when you read Knitting Pearls. Like me, some of the contributors knit their way through adversity. Caroline Leavitt’s first husband asked her to make him a sweater with brontosauruses on it, but as she knit the marriage began to crumble. Lily King’s daughter knit a hat during their year living in Italy, which eased her homesickness. Cynthia Chinelly knits to help her escape the worry she has for her son. Melissa Coleman hoped that knitting a sweater for everyone in her family would remove the curse of divorce. An on-again, off-again knitter, Robin Romm returned to it when her mother was dying, and now knits as she waits for a baby. Back at Ithaca College in the 1970s, Bill Roorbach joined the knitting club to get over his broken heart – and to meet girls.

If you love knitting, you’re going to enjoy this book.

wwnorton.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Steal Like an Artist, by Austin Kleon

Creativity, Musings, Nonfiction Review, Writing 0

Steal Like an Artist

10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

by Austin Kleon

Workman Publishing Company, 2012. 152 pages.

This is a little book of excellent suggestions for young adults who want to pursue creative work. I say young adults, because as an adult who’s more set in my ways, I’ve already developed my own versions of some of these suggestions, like “Get yourself a calendar,” “Keep a log book,” and “Keep your day job.” (And those are all under the Ninth Thing: “Be Boring. (It’s the only way to get work done.”)

I do love the title Thing: “Steal like an artist.” Here are some good lines from the section explaining it:

What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.

If we’re free from the burden of trying to be completely original, we can stop trying to make something out of nothing, and we can embrace influence instead of running away from it.

The artist is a collector. Not a hoarder, mind you, there’s a difference: Hoarders collect indiscriminately, artists collect selectively. They only collect things that they really love.

As much as I love collecting quotations and writing book reviews, it’s not a surprise I love this idea.

Of course, this was my favorite bit:

Always be reading. Go to the library. There’s magic in being surrounded by books. Get lost in the stacks. Read bibliographies. It’s not the book you start with, it’s the book that book leads you to.

Collect books, even if you don’t plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library.

Partly why I say this is for young adults is Thing Two: “Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started.” It’s still good advice at age 53, but I have more of an idea than I did in my twenties.

The format of the book is such that it’s a great book to pull out and read a bit each morning to start your day with some inspiration. I tend to get such books read much more quickly than books that need a significant stretch of time in order to absorb them.

There are lots more good ideas for being creative for people of any age and place in their journey. I will probably give this book to my young adult children, who each have a creative side. And I’m storing away some of the advice to appropriate into my own life.

austinkleon.com
workman.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Current Issues, Musings, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Dear Ijeawele,

or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Alfred A. Knopf, 2017. 63 pages.
Starred Review

This book is short – which makes it perfect for reading a little bit at a time, one suggestion per day. This would make a lovely gift for mothers of young girls.

Here’s the background of this little book, from the Introduction:

When a couple of years ago a friend of mine from childhood, who’d grown into a brilliant, strong, kind woman, asked me to tell her how to raise her baby girl a feminist, my first thought was that I did not know.

It felt like too huge a task.

But I had spoken publicly about feminism and perhaps that made her feel I was an expert on the subject. I had over the years also helped care for many babies of loved ones; I had worked as a babysitter and helped raise my nephews and nieces. I had done a lot of watching and listening, and I had done even more thinking.

In response to my friend’s request, I decided to write her a letter, which I hoped would be honest and practical, while also serving as a map of sorts for my own feminist thinking. This book is a version of that letter, with some details changed.

Now that I, too, am the mother of a delightful baby girl, I realize how easy it is to dispense advice about raising a child when you are not facing the enormously complex reality of it yourself.

Still, I think it is morally urgent to have honest conversations about raising children differently, about trying to create a fairer world for women and men.

My friend sent me a reply saying she would “try” to follow my suggestions.

And in rereading these as a mother, I, too, am determined to try.

And the fifteen suggestions she gives are good ones. Her style is personal and friendly, since the letter was written to a friend. Above all, it’s inspiring – and makes me think about my own interactions with people.

I’ll give some examples. The first suggestion:

Be a full person. Motherhood is a glorious gift, but do not define yourself solely by motherhood.

There is much elaboration on each suggestion, thoughtful, illuminating and inspiring. Here’s another one I loved:

Teach Chizalum to read. Teach her to love books. The best way is by casual example. If she sees you reading, she will understand that reading is valuable…. Books will help her understand and question the world, help her express herself, and help her in whatever she wants to become – a chef, a scientist, a singer, all benefit from the skills that reading brings.

This one was interesting, because I hadn’t thought of it this way before:

Never speak of marriage as an achievement. Find ways to make clear to her that marriage is not an achievement, nor is it what she should aspire to. A marriage can be happy or unhappy, but it is not an achievement.

We condition girls to aspire to marriage and we do not condition boys to aspire to marriage, and so there is already a terrible imbalance at the start. The girls will grow up to be women preoccupied with marriage. The boys will grow up to be men who are not preoccupied with marriage. The women marry those men. The relationship is automatically uneven because the institution matters more to one than the other.

The Eighth Suggestion:

Teach her to reject likeability. Her job is not to make herself likeable, her job is to be her full self, a self that is honest and aware of the equal humanity of other people…. We have a world full of women who are unable to exhale fully because they have for so long been conditioned to fold themselves into shapes to make themselves likeable….

Show her that she does not need to be liked by everyone. Tell her that if someone does not like her, there will be someone else who will. Teach her that she is not merely an object to be liked or disliked, she is also a subject who can like or dislike. In her teenage years, if she comes home crying about some boys who don’t like her, let her know she can choose not to like those boys – yes, it’s hard, I know, just remembering my crush on Nnamdi in secondary school.

But still I wish somebody had told me this.

I like this paragraph in a suggestion about romance (“Romance will happen, so be on board.”):

Teach her that to love is not only to give but also to take. This is important because we give girls subtle cues about their lives – we teach girls that a large component of their ability to love is their ability to sacrifice their selves. We do not teach this to boys. Teach her that to love she must give of herself emotionally but she must also expect to be given.

And the final suggestion:

Teach her about difference. Make difference ordinary. Make difference normal. Teach her not to attach value to difference. And the reason for this is not to be fair or to be nice, but merely to be human and practical. Because difference is the reality of our world. And by teaching her about difference, you are equipping her to survive in a diverse world.

She must know and understand that people walk different paths in the world, and that as long as those paths do no harm to others, they are valid paths that she must respect. Teach her that we do not know – we cannot know – everything about life. Both religion and science have spaces for things we do not know, and it is enough to make peace with that.

Teach her never to universalize her own standards or experiences. Teach her that her standards are for her alone, and not for other people. This is the only necessary form of humility: the realization that difference is normal.

Come to think of it – this book is great reading even if you aren’t the mother of a young girl. It’s inspiring, encouraging, and thought-provoking.

aaknopf.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Hallelujah Anyway, by Anne Lamott

Christian, Musings, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Hallelujah Anyway

Rediscovering Mercy

by Anne Lamott

Riverhead Books, 2017. 176 pages.
Starred Review

I do love Anne Lamott. She’s down-to-earth and real. She admits to all kinds of uncharitable thoughts – and then shows us that they can be overcome with mercy. She does away with pretense and helps me stop trying to do the same.

In this book, she focuses on Mercy. Here’s a paragraph from the beginning. I opened the book at random and found something wonderfully quotable:

Just to hear the words “mercy” or “merciful” can transform the whole day, because as the old saying goes, the soul rejoices in hearing what it already knows. Something lights up in me. We know mercy is always our salvation – as we age, as our grandchildren go down the same dark streets that called to their parents, as the ice caps melt. But I wish it was something else. I wish it was being able to figure things out, at which I am very good, or to assign blame, at which I am better, or to convince people of the rightness of my ideas. I wish it was a political savior who believes the same things I believe, who possesses the force of great moral strength that (of course) agrees with my own deepest values. But no, hope of renewal and restoration is found in the merciful fibrillating heart of the world.

Anne Lamott will make you smile and make you think and make you look at the world with a little more mercy.

penguin.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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