"We Need to Talk about Kevin" By Lionel Shriver

This book was recommended to me by an acquaintance who I hoped would become a friend.  Although it's about a boy who commits an act of violence at school, I found it to be more of a love story to the narrators husband.  It's incredibly sad, yet somehow not.  

"I was destined to settle down with a string cerebral type whose skittering metabolism burns chickpea concoctions at a feocious rate...A strict vegetarian.  An anguished sort who read Nietzsche and wears spectacles, alienated from his time and contemptuous of the automobile.  An avid cyclist and hill walker.  Professional marginalia- perhaps a potter, with a love of hardwoods and herb gardens, whose aspirations to an unpretentious life of physical toil and lingering sunsets on a a porch are somewhat belied by a steely, repressed rage with which he pitches disappointing vases into an oil drum...Back massages.  Recycling.  Sitar music and a flirtation with Buddhism that is mercifully behind him.  Vitamins and cribbage, water filters and French films.  A pacifistic with three guitars but no tv, and unpleasant associations with team sports from a picked on childhood....An over-educated man, my fantasy partner would still root about the soil of our idyll for seed for his own discontent [of course in a foreign land].

Are you chuckling yet?  Because then you came along.  A big, broad meat eater with brash blond hair and ruddy skin that burns at the beach.  A bundle of appetites.  A full, boisterous guffaw; a man who tells knock-knock jokes.  Hot Dogs- not even East 86th Street bratwurst, but mealy, greasy pig guys of that terrifying pink.  Baseball.  Gimme caps.  Puns and blockbuster movies, raw tap water and six packs.  A fearless, trusting consumer who only reads labels to make sure there are plenty of additives.  A fan of the open road with a passion for his pickup who thinks bicycles are for nerds.  Fucks hard and talks dirty...Barbecues on the Fourth of July and intentions, in the fullness of time, to take up golf.  Delights in crappy snack foods of every description....And, my lord, a Republican. A belief in a strong defense but otherwise small government and low taxes...

But the biggest surprise of all was that I married an American."

"Talking to the Dead" Harry Bingham

"Good night Fiona."  The gun is still on the kitchen table, and he pushes it toward me.  He knows that I'll be sleeping with it.  "If you get into a situation, remember you have trauma.  Your instinct will tell you to do too much or too little.  Both are bad.  Use your head, not this."  He points to his heart.
I nod.  I know what he means.  I've got a slogan for it.  "Fuck feelings, trust reason," I say."

"Raising Boys without Men" Peggy Drexler

"We live in a culture where we want mothers to do everything and whenever something goes wrong, it's the mother's fault," Mary Becker told the NYT."

"The maverick mother's sons I studied, clearly showed that a boy's morality and masculinity could be cultivated without a live-in father.  I found there were no differences in the boys in terms of their conceptions about what they considered fair or their reasoning about moral issues."

"I have come to take a stand against the recent tide of opinion and the rash of books asserting that boys must have a father in the home to in order to to grow to full manhood.  Instead, I have found that loving, growth-encouraging parenting is what boys need.  A good parent, whether mother or father, will enable a boy to develop to his full potential as a young man, as long as his individuality, his manliness, his courage, and his developing conscience are respectfully and and fully supported."

"Listening for Madeleine" Leonard Marcus

Despite sometimes long narratives by friends, it her own words that spoke to me in this book:
"My books are not bad books to die with...What I mean is that when you read a book, if it makes me feel more alive, then it's a good book to die with."

Also, this description:  "For most of her adult life, Madeleine L'Engle enjoyed a stage actor's fine powers of recall and too casual pride in the manner of well-read men and women of own and earlier generations, in seasoning her writing and conversation with lines from the immortals."

"The Viper" Hakan Ostlund

"He lived some kind of pretend life steered if not by lies, then at least a stubborn refusal to look life right in the eyes.  It was easily done, it was comfortable and human, she knew that, but if you make a habit out of always directing your gaze a little to the side, life starts to become a little fuzzy around the edges.  And she didn't want to see him like that, meekly, carving out a shapeless life."

"The Blood Sugar Solution" Mark Hyman

Heard Hyman on the radio & picked up the book. Good reminders: 
At a mealtime- "Take 'Five' before a meal...Just take five breaths in through your nose and breathe out through your mouth. Slowly count to five on each in-breath and again on each out breath...Offer gratitude before the meal...Just offering thanks is a powerful activity that will change your relationship to food...Bring your attention fully to the food." 

"After every meal or snack, do the following: 
-Write down what you ate in as much detail as possible. 
-Think about how this meal or snack made you feel. 
-Every evening think about how your experience with food impacted your day"

"The Keeper of Lost Causes" Jussi Alder-Olsen

"She'd been lying on the floor thinking about books.  That was something she often did in order not to think about the life she might have had if only she'd made different choices.  When she thought about books, she could move into a whole different world.  Just remembering the feeling of the dry surface and inexplicable roughness of the paper could ignite a blaze of yearning inside of her.  The scent of evaporated cellulose and printer's ink.  Thousands of time now she'd sent her thoughts into her imaginary library and selected the only book in the world that she knew she could recall without embellishing it.  It was not the one she wanted to remember, not even the one that had made the greatest impression on her.  But it was the only book that had remained completely intact in her tortured memory because of the liberating bursts of laughter she associated with it."