recently read: sula by toni morrison
30: plus - real americans and wouldn't take nothing for my journey now
Knowing what book someone is reading and what parts they resonate with most can be so intimate. It reveals their interests, where their head is at, and what excerpts are so significant that they will mark up a page because they think it’s worth revisiting at a later time. I’m fascinated by what books others gravitate towards and I find that it helps me get to know them better and gives me a small glimpse into who they are at their core. No one asked for these book reviews, but maybe it’s my way of showing who I am and what I’m interested in – beyond the clothes, the products, and my career. Or at the very least, encourage some to look up from their phones and instead towards the pages of a good book.
Book no. 10 of 2024
Toni Morrison has a way with words. Beautiful and eerie, this story follows two friends on divergent paths of womanhood — one taking on traditional roles and one taking a path of rebellion and unconventionality. An American classic and must read that reflects on friendship, gendered expectations and regret.
Underlined quotes:
“He knew the smell of death and was terrified of it, for he could not anticipate it. It was not death or dying that frightened him, but the unexpectedness of both.”
“I don’t want to make somebody else. I want to make myself.”
“And the fury she created in the women of the town was incredible — for she would lay their husbands once and then no more… So the women, to justify their own judgment, cherished their men more, soothed the pride and vanity Sula had bruised.”
“She lived out her days exploring her own thoughts and emotions, giving them full reign, feeling no obligation to please anybody unless their pleasure pleased her. As willing to feel pain as to give pain, to feel pleasure as to give pleasure, hers was an experimental life—”
“Had she paint, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings; had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous.”
“He seemed to expect brilliance from her, and she delivered. And in all of it, he listened more than he spoke. His clear comfort at being in her presence… his refusal to baby or protect her, his assumption that she was both tough and wise — all of that coupled with a wide generosity of spirit only occasionally erupting into vengeance sustained Sula’s interest and enthusiasm.”
“But my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else’s. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain’t that something? A secondhand lonely.”
“Maybe it hadn’t been a community, but it had been a place. Now there weren’t any places left, just separate houses with separate televisions and separate telephones and less and less dropping by.”
Book no. 11 of 2024
Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now - Maya Angelou
A small, digestible book with nuggets of wisdom — on forging new paths, living well and the importance of generosity and compassion. I was given this book along with handwritten letters by friends who knew I was having a difficult time. It was like a balm and reminded me what really matters in life.
Underlined quotes:
“She will need to prize her tenderness and be able to display it at appropriate times in order to prevent toughness from gaining total authority and to avoid becoming a mirror image of those men who value power above life, and control over love.”
“The elderly whose pillows we plump or whose water pitchers we refill may or may not thank us for our gift, but the gift is upholding the foundation of the universe. The children to whom we read simple stories may or may not show gratitude, but each boon we give strengthens the pillars of the world.”
“I looked up the road I was going and back the way I come, and since I wasn’t satisfied, I decided to step off the road and cut me a new path… If the new choice is also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change that as well.”
“Living well is an art which can be developed… You will need the basic talents to build upon: They are the love of life and ability to take great pleasure from small offerings, an assurance that the world owes you nothing and that every gift is exactly that, a gift.”
“Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to bring all our energies to each encounter, to remain flexible enough to notice and admit when what we expected to happen did not happen. We need to remember that we are created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed.”
“Money and power can liberate only if they are used to do so. They can imprison and inhibit more finally than barred windows and iron chains.”
Book no. 12 of 2024
I wanted to like this so much more than I did. It was still an interesting read and one I found hard to put down, but often times I felt like it had more style than substance. I found the relationships and character development not very convincing and lacking in depth and layers.
Multigenerational story, mother-daughter relationship, reflections on privilege, class and accessibility, and obsession with productivity and progress — it sounded like something that that would be an easy 5 stars for me. It just felt disjointed and I had a hard time connecting with and really getting to know the characters. I think Mei’s portion was the most rich and actually showed us how she came to be of the three characters, it just still fell flat somehow.
Underlined quotes:
“I remembered so clearly the disappointment on her face, the fear that I would never amount to anything — anything significant, anyway… She had always longed for more. She had always wanted more than one life could contain.”
“I love you, that foreign phrase she’d adopted — that would never be native, or natural, to her.”
“In the act of giving I conceded that I had more than I needed, and someone had far less than they did. It was for no real reason, it wasn’t fair. It shattered my illusion of my own free will — that I had made choices, and those choices had resulted in my life. To look away was easier.”
“In English they were milder mannered, polite. My mother had always spoken English to me. Now I wondered if, in doing so, she had not fully been herself.”
“What if I’d been born somewhere else, a place where, whoever you were, you could make your own choices? That was all I wanted. Not a grand desire, just a fair one.”
“The way I loved her was different from the way she wanted to be loved.”
“We were free. But were we? When we were made to value certain lives more than others; when we were made, relentlessly, to want more? What if I had seen through it? What if I had understood that I already had enough?”