Friday Book Club: October Reads!

Another month, another book report from me.  During my trip to Notre Dame, Baby Hepburn gave me one book and I bought another at the Bookstore.  Both were great and I'd totally recommend them both.  Here we go.  Check out the other entries on Friday Book Club.



The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom 

 

Baby Hepburn read this book on the plane to Chicago.  I mean the WHOLE book on the plane.  It took me over a week.  Clearly she had a good tutor in elementary school (cough, ME, cough) or something.  You guys know I love Mitch Albom, and when I watched Baby Hepburn so enthralled in the book, I was super excited to read it next.  It's the story of Father Time who was the first person to learn to track time, and was then condemned to a cave to listen to people lament about time---how it goes to fast, how they need more, how things last too long, how they hate waiting.  Then he get a chance to come to earth and help two people, one who needs more time, and another who wants less.  It was a little strange, but really good.  Here are some of my favorite quotes.

 

"Try to imagine a life without timekeeping.  You probably can't.  You know the month, the year, the day of the week.  There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car.  You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie.  Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored.  Birds are not late.  A dog does not check its watch.  Deer do not fret over passing birthdays.  Man alone measures time.  Man alone chimes the hour.  And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures.  A fear of time running out."

 

"We are, as we die, who we most were in life."

 

"It's never too late or too soon.  It's when it it is supposed to be."

 

"There is a reason God limits our days."  "Why?"  "To make each one precious."

 

Always Looking Up by Michael J. Fox

 

 

This book has been on my list for a while.  As a true 80's child, I love me some Alex P. Keeton (I mean Michael J. Fox).  This book is all about his life, split into four categories:  work, politics, faith and family and discusses how his Parkinson's diagnosis impacts each one.  But he also discusses his remarkable optimism despite everything that he's been through.  I found the chapter on politics especially facsinating.  His foundation supports pro-stem cell research candidates, regardless of party affiliation.  Reading about someone with a political agenda so important to his life (indeed upon which his life depends) was great.  Again, a few of my favorite quotes:

 

If ten years ago, as I set out upon this second-act odyssey, I had compiled a list of everything I'd hoped to accomplish at this point, I would discover that I had sold myself short.

 

The only unavailable choice was whether or not to have Parkinson's.  Everything else was up to me.  I could concentrate on the loss--rush in with whatever stopgap measures my ego could manufacture.  I could rely on my old friend from the nineties, denial.  Or I could just get on with my life and see if maybe those holes started filling in themselves.  Over the last ten years, they ahve, in the most amazing ways.

 

Before a catestrophe, we can't imagine coping with the burdens that might confront us in a dire moment.  Then when that moment arrives, we suddenly find that we have resources inside us that we knew nothing about.  (quoting Christopher Reeve)

 

How ironic is it that sometimes the greatest believers in the possibilities for the future are the very people who have cause to doubt.

 

To characterize hope as some sort of malady or some kind of flaw of character or national weakness is, to me, really counter to what this country is about.

 

(On voting)  Then it's done.  I've dropped my pebble in the ocean, and hopefully, through the course of the day, millions of otherw sill drop theirs in too.  No single one of us knows which pebble causes the wave to crest, but each of us, quite rightly, believes that it might be ours; an act of faith.

 

(On the difference between optimism, hope and faith)  I'm optimistic that I won't be awoken by a phone ringing with bad news.  When the phone does ring, I hope it's a wrong number.  When it's not and the caller has the worst news imaginable, it's time for faith to kick in.