Conviction (Denise Mina)

 

Well, after reading The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, this book was a nice change. I read it in a weekend....and I don't regret all the time at all. I quite enjoyed it. It was nice to have some candyesque to read. The premise of the story was entertaining. I don't think I've ever read a book where a podcast tells part of the story.

Both main characters, Anna and Fin, who are the ones whose spouses are cheating, have things they do to avoid life. I can see the negativity with anorexia, but reading? Hmmm...

• p. 132 I told him that I read to self-medicate. That I find the world a bit much sometimes. Podcasts are like reading when you need to use your eyes and hands, and he said, yeah, yeah, that's kind of what his eating was lie. Self-medicating. But then it took over and he couldn't stop. "It's a chemical spiral. It gets so that it feels like the only thing that matters. Controlling it. Eating isn't like a book though, you can't just put it down'. I didn't say so, but I've read books I couldn't put down, not always because they were good either, I just couldn't stop reading. Once I was reading a book and finished it by mistake (I hadn't noticed the last 140 pages were an index) and then had nothing to read. In a blind panic, I went back to the start and read it again.

Not sure the page number of this one...but it's interesting to think about/discuss:

• It's primal, the need to tell. It's not about the listener but the storyteller. In some cultures, not telling your story is regarded as a sign of mental illness.

Goodreads says:
It’s just a normal morning when Anna's husband announces that he's leaving her for her best friend and taking their two daughters with him.

With her safe, comfortable world shattered, Anna distracts herself with someone else's story: a true-crime podcast. That is until she recognises the name of one of the victims and becomes convinced that only she knows what really happened.

With nothing left to lose, she throws herself into investigating the case. But little does she know, Anna's past and present lives are about to collide, sending everything she has worked so hard to achieve into freefall.

Conviction is the compelling and unique new thriller from multiple award-winner, Denise Mina.

The Girl and the Mermaid (Hollie Hughes)

 

This is a "turning the hearts of the children to their fathers" kind of book. Storytelling through generations is beautiful.

Goodreads says:
**"An instant classic" - Lancashire Post**
**"Magical" - Inis**

Alina and her granny live in a lighthouse by the a home filled with the warmth of Granny's magical stories.

But Alina is worried. Granny's memories and stories are starting to fade away, and she doesn't know how to bring them back. Then one day, she meets a mermaid on the rocks near the lighthouse – and she's swept into a magical deep-sea adventure that will change everything.

A modern classic from the bestselling creators of The Girl and the Dinosaur.

The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot (Marianne Cronin)

 

This book just got better and better as I read. The author is a great writer. Her metaphors and literacy connections she makes side by side as she puts the character's lives' stories together are brilliant. 

It isn't often that I actually cry when reading....but parts of this book left me in a puddle.

I was left with so many questions. This book touched on our society's inability to stand by people to the end and to think that disease and disability make someone disposable. 

Although the family connections were sad, the community that came together to support each other was beautiful. The lessons in having a purpose or project in your dying days was profound.

Re: The Title: The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

p. 44 In honor of my own vanity, at the bottom of my painted star, in yellow and using the thinnest brush I could find, I wrote Lenni, aged 17. Seeing this, Margot did the same. Margot, she wrote, 83, And then we put them side by side, the two stars against the dark.
Numbers don't mean a lot to me. I don't care about long division or percentages. I don't know my height or my weight and I can't remember my dad's phone number, though I know I used to know it. I prefer words. Delicious, glorious words. 
But there were two numbers in front of me that matters, and would matter for the rest of my numbered days. 
"Between us," I said quietly, "We're a hundred years old."

Characters: 

Linnea Pettersson (age 17)

Margot (age 83)

Dawn (counselor)

Father Arthur (minister)
Jacky -head nurse)

The Temp

Pippa (art teacher)

New Nurse - not sure why she was always referred to as New Nurse?

Lenni's mother (in Sweden most of the book)
Lenni's father

Paul (porter)

Walter and Elise and various old people in the art room

Johnny (Margot's first husband)

Meena (Catherine Amelia Houghton)
Humphrey James (Margot's second husband)

Jeremy David Star (Meena's son)

The professor Meena worked for

Words of the Wiser

p. 38 Father Arthur: Those who ask questions and return to God are better than they who never ask questions and only pay lip service to their religion.

Re: Lenni and Margot dying [see Memory Moment p. 42] Margot and I both watched her try to explain. "Your heart is beating and your eyes are seeing and your ears are hearing. You're sitting in this room completely alive. And so you're not dying. You're living. She took in Margot.  "You both are."

It simultaneously made perfect sense and no sense at all.

    (people really are uncomfortable with the idea of death, it seems!)

p. 152 "Meena was right...about not giving chase...what she said to you when you were looking for Johnny about waving someone off into their new life but not feeling the need to follow. Letting the people who need to leave, leave. Allowing them to be free."

Contrasts and Contradictions

p. 41 "What are you doing here?" she asked, and I knew she meant the Rose Room, but I think it's best to be honest, so I told her the truth.
"They say I'm doing to die."
There was a moment of silence between us as Margot studied my face. She looked like she didn't believe me.
"It's a life-limiting thing," I said.
"But you're so..."
"Young, I know."
"No, you're so..."
"Unlucky?"
"No," she said, till looking at me like she didn't believe it. "You're so alive."

p. 134 My body was taking a stand, and I sometimes had to stand with it. We were a team. Sometimes.

p. 169 We have practiced for death every night. Lying down in the dark and slipping into that place of nothingness between rest and dreams where we have no consciousness, no self, and anything could befall our vulnerable bodies. We have died each night. Or at least, we have laid down to die, and let go of everything in this world, hoping for dreams and morning. Maybe that's why my mother could never sleep - it's too much like death and she wasn't ready. So she was always walking, chasing awareness, clinging to life. Too afraid to let go, and then, years later, unable to do anything else.

Again and Again

Margo about Meena: P. 269 She always called me "Mrs. James". It was her way of reminding me of the permanence of my decisions, of reminding me she'd never change her name for a man. But my taking Humphrey's name had been very unconscious. Accidental, almost.

Tough Questions

Lenni and Father Arthur: p. 12 "...the Bible teaches us that Christ can guide you to the answer to every question."
"But can it answer an actually question? Honestly? Can you answer me a question without telling that life is a mystery, or that everything is God's plan, or that the answers I seek will come with time?"
"Why don't you tell me your question, and we will work together to see how God can help us find an answer?"
I leaned back into the pew and it creaked. The echo reverberated around the room.
"Why am I dying?"

A ha Moment

p. 64...we will have told our story, scratching out one hundred pictures intended to say, "Lenni and Margot were here."

Memory Moment
p. 42 Margot saying, "But you look so alive." [see contrasts and contradictions] triggers a memory moment for Lenni about getting in trouble at school for tearing the cover off of a book:
I think because I didn't look contrite enough, she sent me to the head teacher's office. It felt like I was being sent to the police. I was already sure that my parents would be told and that I would be in trouble forever. My palms started sweating. Even walking along the corridor to the teacher's office while everyone was in class felt wrong, like I was somewhere I ought not to be. 
There's a boy there who is also in trouble and he doesn't seem bothered at all. Suddenly, Lenni's memory moment stops:
p. 43: And that's exactly how I felt when Margot chose to break the silence by leaning toward me and whispering, "I'm dying too."
For a moment, I met Margot's bright blue eyes and I felt that we were perhaps going to be cellmates.

Notes/Quotes

p. 31 The hospital is a cruel mistress. The International Date Line run somewhere between the end of the May Ward and the nurses' station. The only way to fight Hospital Time is to never fight it. If New Nurse wanted to claim that she had been gone for only tow and a half hours, then I would let her. People start to worry if you fight Hospital Time. They ask you what year you think it is and if you remember the name of the prime minister.

p. 46 I promised Jackie I'd stop wandering around. Or wondering around. Nobody was specific about the spelling.

p. 50 Lenni: I have an urgency to have fun.

P. 132 ...they (the nurses) are the wardens and we are the prisoners, and if they get too close, the lines might become blurred as to who is captive and who is free.

p. 133 the octopus? time spent with the octopus? all the lines and poles?

p. 264 Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light. I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night. (old astronomer to his pupil, Sarah Williams)

p. 206 His shelves of books lined both sides of the living room. Most of them hadn't been touched since I first met him but they were all, as he insisted, essential. They'd been there so long that they seemed to be part of the walls rather than objects for use, like additional beams holding up the timber structure of his little cottage. With each book I took from the shelf, it felt like I was removing a brick from the walls of the house. Without him and his books, surely it would all fall down. 

p. 264 "Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light. I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night,"  I said.

p. 265

"Do you know," she said slowly, "that the stars that we see the dlearest are already dead?:
"Well, that's depressing." I took my hand from hers.
"No," she said gently, linking her arm through mine, "It's not depressing, it's beautiful. They've been gone for who knows how long, but we can still see them. They live on."
They live on.

Goodreads says:

An extraordinary friendship. A lifetime of stories.
Their last one begins here.

Life is short. No-one knows that better than seventeen year old Lenni living on the terminal ward. But as she is about to learn, it's not only what you make of life that matters, but who you share it with.

Dodging doctor's orders, she joins an art class where she bumps into fellow patient Margot, a rebel-hearted eighty three year old from the next ward. Their bond is instant as they realize that together they have lived an astonishing one hundred years.

To celebrate their shared century, they decide to paint their life stories: of growing old and staying young, of giving joy, of receiving kindness, of losing love, of finding the person who is everything.

As their extraordinary friendship deepens, it becomes vividly clear that life is not done with Lenni and Margot yet.

Fiercely alive, disarmingly funny and brimming with tenderness, THE ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF LENNI AND MARGOT unwraps the extraordinary gift of life even when it is about to be taken away, and revels in our infinite capacity for friendship and love when we need them most.

Watercress (Andrea Wang)

 

The author's note at the back of this book makes the book even more meaningful. My class totally got it. We all have stories and some we are leery to share...but we really should share them.

Goodreads says:

Gathering watercress by the side of the road brings a girl closer to her family's Chinese Heritage.

Driving through Ohio in an old Pontiac, a young girl's parents stop suddenly when they spot watercress growing wild in a ditch by the side of the road. Grabbing an old paper bag and some rusty scissors, the whole family wades into the muck to collect as much of the muddy, snail covered watercress as they can.

At first, she's embarrassed. Why can't her family get food from the grocery store? But when her mother shares a story of her family's time in China, the girl learns to appreciate the fresh food they foraged. Together, they make a new memory of watercress.

Andrea Wang tells a moving autobiographical story of a child of immigrants discovering and connecting with her heritage, illustrated by award winning author and artist Jason Chin, working in an entirely new style, inspired by Chinese painting techniques. An author's note in the back shares Andrea's childhood experience with her parents.

The Storyteller (Jodi Picoult)

It took me a while to get into this book. Actually, I started it, then left it for a while, which caused me to not make some connections - but luckily this was a book club book so my book club friends cleared that up for me!

I seem to read a Jodi Picoult book every summer. This was a lot like the other ones I've read - some big topic (this one was forgiveness), multiple narratives and a twist at the end.

Last year, I read Small Great Things, which is about a white supremacist and a black nurse in a hospital. I was reading it at the same time as the stuff was happening in the USA in Charlottesville. It was surreal. There's a story in the news right now about a holocaust denier. The holocaust was terrible and this book has some incredibly descriptive accounts of it. You can't make that stuff up.

Goodreads says:

Some stories live forever . . .

Sage Singer is a baker. She works through the night, preparing the day’s breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother’s death. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship. Despite their differences, they see in each other the hidden scars that others can’t, and they become companions.

Everything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried and shameful secret—one that nobody else in town would ever suspect—and asks Sage for an extraordinary favor. If she says yes, she faces not only moral repercussions, but potentially legal ones as well. With her own identity suddenly challenged, and the integrity of the closest friend she’s ever had clouded, Sage begins to question the assumptions and expectations she’s made about her life and her family. When does a moral choice become a moral imperative? And where does one draw the line between punishment and justice, forgiveness and mercy?

In this searingly honest novel, Jodi Picoult gracefully explores the lengths we will go in order to protect our families and to keep the past from dictating the future

Experiential Storytelling (Mark Miller)

I think the author makes a lot of really good points in this book when it comes to being familiar with scriptures. I was especially interested in using the ideas in here for teaching LDS seminary. I want to be a good story teller! There is great power that comes from a story that can relate to scripture.

Goodreads says:

The 'Been there, done that' culture is starving for reality. Hardly satisfied with the modern conventions of citing facts and figures and pushing propositions, emerging churches are jumping into the narrative form of communication with both feet. But not all emerging church leaders have an inherent handle on the craft and skill of using narrative as a sermon form. Experiential Storytelling zeros in on the hows and whys of narrative, as well as the importance of sharing personal experience to double your storytelling ammunition. In addition, author Mark Miller goes several steps further, giving examples of real-time, hands-on experiences for church members as innovative extensions of traditional teaching and preaching that offer them greater scriptural understanding and ownership of the gospel story.Chapters include: * The Dawning of the Age of Experience* Once Upon a Story* Awakening the Sleeping Giant in the Church---C*R*E*A*T*I*V*T*Y* Reimagining the 'Sermon'* Elements of Experiential Storytelling* Killer Apps