Friday Book Club: The Other Wes Moore

"Life and death, freedom and bondage, hang in the balance of every action we take." ~The Other Wes Moore

One of my goals for 2012 was to read at least 2 books a month. (Check out my book lists on Goodreads.)

I recently found a great link up with Blonde...Undercover Blonde (how cute is that for a blog name, right?), so I figured why not share my books with you all! Here is Book #1 for February.

The Other Wes Moore

I first heard about this book from Christin's blog and knew I had to read it. I'm a total non-fiction fan...it's just about all I read. I could describe the book to you, but I can't do any better than the first paragraph of the book. So here ya go:

This is the story of two boys living in Baltimore with similar histories and an identical name: Wes Moore. One of us is free and has experienced things that he never even knew to dream about as a kid. The other will spend every day until his death behind bars for an armed robbery that left a police officer and father of five dead. The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his. Our stories are obviously specific to our two lives, but I hope they will illuminate the crucial inflection points in every life, the sudden moments of decision where our paths diverge and our fates are sealed. It's unsettling to know how little separates each of us from another life altogether.

I loved this book from the get-go and could not put it down. I read it in 5 days and I am a slow, slow reader. It was fascinating to read about the obstacles both of these boys faced growing up in the inner city and the small choices that they made that turned their lives down totally different paths. It's amazing how the smallest decisions that we make can have huge impacts on the rest of our lives. This book was a great reminder of that for me.

In addition to the quote at the beginning of this blog, here are a couple of my favorite quotes from the book:

"But even the worst decisions we make don't necessarilly remove us from the circle of humanity."

"When it is time for you to leave this school, leave your job, or even leave this earth, make sure you have worked hard to maek sure it mattered you were ever here."

"Pray that when the evening comes and the night falls, I will have done something during the day for others that I can present to the Lord so that I might not feel so ashamed."

"Small interactions and effortless acts of kindness can mean the difference between failure and success, pain and pleasure--or becoming the people we loathe or love to become."