The Alchemists

The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire by Neil Irwin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book may be a little dated now, but it is still a great introduction to size, scope, and function of central banks and bankers. I am embarrassingly ignorant of all these things so for me it was enlightening and educational. Irwin starts with the first central bank in Sweden in the 1660s and outlines the basic history and roles of central banks in everything from the Great Depression to the inflation of the Nixon years. Most of the bank focuses on the years from 2007-2012, during the bank bailouts, Greece's struggle, and the subsequent actions to normalize the economies since. I realize how entangled all the economies in the world are, and sometimes felt like it is good and right that these technocrats can figure out what needs to happen to keep the economies at an even keel. Other times I was amazed (and a little horrified) to realize how much power these few men hold. Holding the purse strings carries a lot of power--and the wrong decisions can cause economic disaster, depressions, war. Irwin definitely sides with the bankers, his portrayal shows them making the best decision they could at the time, and entrusts that they will learn by their mistakes. He points out that despite criticism, these three men (Berneke, King, and Trichet), averted the worst pitfalls of what could have happened. Although the book ends 10 years ago, (it was published in 2013), I still feel like I learned a lot and can understand the Fed's role and the different strategies it uses.

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Bobcat and Other Stories

Bobcat and Other Stories by Rebecca Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I loved this collection of short stories. Every one of them felt like a little novel. The writing was fantastic and the characters deeply satisfying. Most of these stories explore the idea that we know things before we know them, about love and betrayal, about marriage and parenting. Deeply engrossing and thoughtful, there are too few stories in this collection, and I hope to see another collection soon.

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The bird, which was a bronze talismanic centerpiece, golden and thriving, is revealed as a collection of crazy bones.

“This is the power of the sentence,” he said. “It acts out this drama of control and subversion. The noun always stands for what is, the status quo, and the verb for what might be, the ideal.”

I had read that the ability to use language and the ability to tame fire arose from the same warm, shimmering pool of genes, since in nature they did not appear one without the other.

The line people draw between the things they consider this and the things they consider that is the perimeter of their sphere of intimacy. You see? Everything inside is this; everything inside is close, is intimate. Since you pointed at the cream and it is farther from you than I am, ‘this’ suggests that I am among the things you consider close to you. I’m flattered,” he said, and handed me the creamer, which was, like him, sweating. What an idea—that with a few words you could catch another person in a little grammatical clutch, arrange the objects of the world such that they bordered the two of you.

language did not describe events, it handled them, as a hand handles an object, and that in this way language made the world happen under its supervision.

These were extremely wealthy people, and money moved through the room as if it were oxygen, or time—in such abundance it was no longer visible.

“Only a man who hates his privilege can be trusted with it.”

"Well, I guess I mean romantic in the large sense, you know.The threshold is the moment one steps inside, out of the cold, and feels oneself treasured on a human scale.”

where women are frequently turned into heifers when the men can no longer live with them, or without them.”

Another cow shuddered awake beside me and looked up at me, half in sympathy, half in resignation to all my shortcomings, which is the very look cows always give, which is their whole take on the world.

Somehow Lesley had found the rabbit hole into real life, while I had continued on this other precarious path—single and free and mostly what I wanted, but still, there wasn’t any real food, it seemed, no soups or stews or casseroles, except for the two or three nights a month when I came to dinner here.

Far From the Tree

 

Far from the Tree by Robin Benway
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is one of the better YA books I've read. Although it all centers on three siblings who were put up for adoption and end up in different families with alll of its itinerations (foster care, adoption, teen pregnancy, divorce), the characters felt real and their problems felt authentic and I cried and laughed several times. It's a heartwarming book about family, well-written, and thoroughly enjoyable.

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Final Meal

love begins 

with the eyes

hate sets in 

the jaw

monitoring the procession

from fork to mouth

mastication without gustation

you saw your knife

lift it bloody to slick lips

with smacks and slurps

crunch of bones

tearing of flesh

shredded between your teeth
like you consume all your lusts

like your bovine eyes leered

like your voice bellowed

like you’ve nibbled at my brain

and sat on my lungs

and poked out my eyes

you mean to grind me down

until you void me out

I have cradled 

anger  humiliation  guilt

in my gut 

until I birthed it on a plate

that you ate up

it may not be this sun

this moon

but soon

there will be a leaving

Chasing Utopia

Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid by Nikki Giovanni
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"when the girl became
a poet
she was so happy

now she could sing her own song
tell tales of her people

be a truth giver
contribute
something beautiful and useful to the world" (from "When the Girl Became a Poet")

I feel like this sums up Giovanni's poetry. She is either celebrating life or making us pause for reflection on events and history. Like most poetry I think it is better read aloud. Some of her poetry about the Civil War and current events are particularly memorable.

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Voyager

 

Voyager by Diana Gabaldon
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I started this series some years ago and bought vol. 1-3 all together. Outlander was O.K. although I found the sadism a bit much. Dragonfly in Amber was interesting, but a bit boring. Now, coming back after a couple of years, I find the Jamie-worship a bit much--by the time he "has" to have sex with a young virgin to save his family, she changes her mind at the last minute and tells him no, and he says, too bad, (basically raping her) and then she thanks him, I had had enough. DNF at 19%.

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Flaubert's Parrot

Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Yes, this isn't a biography of Flaubert, yet it is. Yes, it's a novel of a character trying to discern which parrot is the parrot Flaubert rented while he wrote A Simple Heart , but it's not. What it is is a study into how lives are defined, how art is made, and how truth can be an elusive and changeable thing. Having read Flaubert in grad school, and written a paper on Madame Bovary, I know how easily one can make even dust in Flaubert's novels meaningful. The parrot is no exception, and Barnes does a good job showing how our prejudices, first impressions, and our own desires can shape what we perceive as the truth as his character contemplates Flaubert in light of his literature, documents left by him and those around him, and the historical artifacts that he comes across. One of my favorite chapters is three chronologies of Flaubert--one of all his accomplishments and accolades, one of all his disappointments and trials, and one of quotes Flaubert himself said at the time. They are all true, but yet add up to three completely different men. What Braithewaite (the character looking for the parrot) discovers is that there is no way of ascertaining for sure which parrot is Flaubert's parrot, and a great likelihood that the parrot he used doesn't even exist anymore. Likewise, what we can truly know about a person, who he really was, is also ambiguous at best, and may not even be definable.

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You could say that the parrot, representing clever vocalisation without much brain power, was Pure Word.

Is the writer much more than a sophisticated parrot?

‘Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.’

for them Loulou’s inability to do more than repeat at second hand the phrases he hears is an indirect confession of the novelist’s own failure.

You want to prune the tree. Its unruly branches, thick with leaves, push out in all directions to sniff the air and the sun. But you want to make me into a charming espalier, stretched against a wall, bearing fine fruit that a child could pick without even using a ladder.

Buffon observes that it [the parrot] is prone to epilepsy.

Gustave complains in this letter to Bouilhet about the dangers of planning a project too thoroughly: ‘It seems to me, alas, that if you can so thoroughly dissect your children who are still to be born, you don’t get horny enough actually to father them.’

I’d like to show a civilised man who turns barbarian, and a barbarian who becomes a civilised man–to develop that contrast between two worlds that end up merging … But it’s too late.’

the possibilities of the not-life will always change tormentingly to fit the particular embarrassments of the lived life.

If you participate in life, you don’t see it clearly: you suffer from it too much or enjoy it too much.’

Flaubert occupied a half-and-half position. ‘It isn’t the drunkard who writes the drinking song’: he knew that. On the other hand, it isn’t the teetotaller either. He put it best, perhaps, when he said that the writer must wade into life as into the sea, but only up to the navel.

But women scheme when they are weak, they lie out of fear. Men scheme when they are strong, they lie out of arrogance.

He liked the idea of travel, and the memory of travel, but not travel itself.

But she was honourable: she only ever lied to me about her secret life.

The despairing are always being urged to abstain from selfishness, to think of others first. This seems unfair. Why load them with responsibility for the welfare of others, when their own already weighs them down?

The old times were good because then we were young, and ignorant of how ignorant the young can be.

Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren’t. I’m not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people’s lives, never your own.