Category: Book Talks
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Anxious People & Deep Kindness: Everyone’s Doing Their Best…Aren’t We?
“We can’t change the world, and a lot of the time we can’t even change people. No more than one bit at a time. So we do what we can to help whenever we get the chance, sweetheart. We save those we can. We do our best. Then we try to find a way to…
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People in A Story: How Book Characters Teach Us to Love Well
“I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.” ― G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America Loving characters…
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The Giver: Choosing to Live In Color
“Sometimes I wish they’d ask for my wisdom more often–there are so many things I could tell them; things I wish they would change. But they don’t want change. Life here is so orderly, so predictable–so painless. It’s what they’ve chosen.“–The Giver, Lois Lowry (pp. 130). If given the choice between a life that’s painless…
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Learning to Empathize with Hedda Gabler
“It’s a liberation to know that an act of spontaneous courage is yet possible in this world. An act that has something of unconditional beauty.”― Henrik Ibsen, Hedda Gabler Reading a play produces a very different experience than seeing it performed before your eyes. In a play, every detail adds layers to the words–the subtleties of tone,…
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The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: When Society Trades Truth for Lies
“I think there’s a natural goodness built into human beings. You know when you’ve stepped across the line into evil, and it’s your life’s challenge to try and stay on the right side of the line,” (Lucy Gray, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, pp. 493). *** “‘If even the most innocent among us turn…
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3 Life Lessons From Jane Eyre
One of the strongest female characters I’ve found in literature is Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. In Jane, the reader finds courage and wisdom, an appreciation for the natural world, and a loving spirit. She’s an excellent example for readers to learn from, and there’s far more I can say about her than I fit in…
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The Awakening: The Freedom of Self
“In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman. . . . [mother-women] were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels.” The Awakening by kate chopin, pp. 10 Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, first published in 1899, met with…
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Pygmalion: Fairness and Kindness
“The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me…
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East of Eden: Choice and Responsibility
“We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil.” –East of Eden, John Steinbeck A friend and I decided to read East of Eden by John Steinbeck together. When we finished, she commented on how she felt she had lived a whole life…
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The Making of Us, Part 2: Unraveling Calling and Identity
“The Celtic idea of pilgrimage was different. . .They set out directionless into the wild or let their coracles drift wherever the currents took them. Pilgrimage for the Celt was an act of voluntary exile, leaving the comfort and security of home to be in complete abandonment to God. Any benefit to them wasn’t waiting…