#26 for 2011:

I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced; by Nujood Ali with Delphine Minoui. 

Nujood was the first child bride in Yemen to win a divorce- and that was in 2008!  The tradition of marrying small children to grown men (who proceed to abuse them physically and sexually) is not a geographically or culturally isolated phenomenon, and it is not changing without a fight.

May there be enough fight inside us all.

No, I didn’t understand, and I couldn’t understand.  Not only was he hurting me, but my family, my own family, was defending him.  All that for a question of- what was it?  Honor.  But this word everyone kept using, exactly what did it mean?  I was dumbfounded.  (p. 97)

Honor?  How can there be talk of honor here?

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.  /Inigo Montoya

The defiant child bride is not the one who has broken the code of honor.  The rapists and pedophiles, the abusers and abandoners- they themselves have brought the dishonor upon their families.  The child only brings this dishonor to light.

Always the victims are blamed.

[A] girl of nine married to a Saudi man died three days after her wedding.  Instead of demanding an investigation of this scandalous situation, her parents hastened to apologize to the husband, as if trying to make amends for defective merchandise, and even offered him, in exchange, the dead child’s seven-year-old sister.  

This is the world we live in…  Dune really isn’t so far-fetched at all…

#25 for 2011:

Dune, by Frank Herbert

“I must not fear.  Fear is the mind-killer.  Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.  I will face my fear.  I will permit it to pass over me and through me.  And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.  Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.  Only I will remain.” (p. 8)

Presently, she said, “I’ll pay for my own mistake.”
“And your son will pay with you.”
“I’ll shield him as well as I’m able.”
“Shield!”  the old woman snapped.  “You well know the weakness there!  Shield your son too much, Jessica, and he’ll not grow strong enough to fulfill any destiny.” 

The old woman’s voice softened.  “Jessica, girl, I wish I could stand in your place and take your sufferings.  But each of us must make her own path.”

In a low voice, she said, “I’ve been so lonely.”
“It should be one of the tests,” the old woman said.  “Humans are almost always lonely.”

(How many truths can you cover on one page?  This is all from page 24.)

“I think she got mad.  She said the mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve but a reality to experience.  So I quoted the first law of Mentat at her:  ‘A process cannot be understood by stopping it.  Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.’  That seemed to satisfy her.”  (pp 31-32)

“Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere.  Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it’s a mountain.  From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.”  (Bene Gesserit proverb, p. 69)

Seeing all the chattering faces, Paul was suddenly repelled by them.  They were cheap masks locked on festering thoughts- voices gabbling to drown out the loud silence in every breast.  (p. 129)

The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called “spannungsbogen”-  which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.  (p. 288)

The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.  (p. 321, and taken with the admonition the Reverend Mother gave to Jessica about shielding on page 24, it is especially true.)

She was the mote, yet not the mote.  (p. 354)

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense.  But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.  (p. 373)

You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion.  This power struggle permeates the training, educating, and disciplining of the orthodox community.  Because of this pressure, the leaders of such a community inevitably face that ultimate internal question:  to succumb to complete opportunism as the price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic.  (p. 401)

“Hadn’t we best be getting to a place of safety?”
“There is no such place,” Paul said.  (p. 449)

“Use the first moments in study.  You may miss many an opportunity for quick victory this way, but the moments of study are insurance of success.  Take your time and be sure.”  (p. 484)

The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.  (p. 493)

“Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, ‘I am not the kind of person I want to be.’  It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied.”  (p. 506)

Oh, and this is interesting:  an online Azhar book.

#24b for 2011:

It Came From Ohio:  My Life  As A Writer, by R. L. Stine/ as told to Joe Arthur.

#24 for 2011:

The Murder of Tutankhamen, by Bob Brier

The above is the cover on my edition.  The newer cover is pretty awesome in comparison!

#23 for 2011: 

The Brain Has a Mind of Its Own, by Richard Restak

Wow, when I picked this up at first I didn’t think to check the date.  It’s twenty years old now.  (I’m not used to thinking of 1991 as being twenty years ago; I feel ancient!)  The book still stands as far as I can see, although of course our understanding of the brain (and its mutually influencing interactions with the body) has grown ever so much more complicated. 

#22 for 2011:

 
We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin.  The granddaddy of all dystopian novels, written in 1920-1, precursor to 1984 and Brave New World.  Must read.  (I read the Mirra Ginsburg translation in the cover pictured above.)

As in Flowers for Algernon, We is written as a kind of journal/series of personal notes; that made for some interesting correlations between the two, as their main characters both undergo a rather profound psychological/mental transformation that is dangerous, emancipating, and ultimately unpredictable (with potential for complete disaster and an unknown possibility for redemption).  I do very much recommend reading these two one after the other!


Knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith.  (p. 59)


You, who read these notes, whoever you may be- you have a sun over your heads.  And if you have ever been as ill as I am now, you know what the sun is like- what it can be like- in the morning.  You know that pink, transparent, warm gold, when the very air is faintly rosy and everything is suffused with the delicate blood of the sun, everything is alive:  the stones are alive and soft; iron is alive and soft; people are alive, and everyone is smiling.  In an hour, all this may vanish, in an hour the rosy blood may trickle out, but for the moment everything lives.  (p. 81)
Is it just me, or isn’t that incredibly Russian?  


“[W]e shall break down the Wall- all walls- to let the green wind blow free from end to end- across the earth.”  (p. 157)-  Sounds good to me!

“Their mistake was the mistake of Galileo:  he was right that the earth revolves around the sun, but he did not know that the whole solar system also revolves- around some other center; he did not know that the real, not the relative, orbit of the earth is not some naive circle…”  (p. 175)


And I learned from my own experience that laughter was the most potent weapon:  laughter can kill everything- even murder.  (p. 210)  I had never known this before, but now I know it, and you know it:  laughter can be of different colors.  It is only an echo of a distant explosion within you.  (p. 220)


“Remember:  those in paradise no longer know desires, no longer know pity or love.  There are only the blessed (with their imaginations excised- this is the only reason why they are blessed) angels, obedient slaves of God…”  (p. 214)

#21 for 2011:

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes is definitely one of the best books I have ever read.  It vies with Watership Down to claim the top spot in my affections…  If you haven’t, do read it, and keep in mind when it was actually written, and how far ahead of its time it was, to not feel outmoded or dated at all.  Simply amazing and quite powerful.

I think this definitely wins the award for Best Title Ever, too.

Irony:  I read this first about fifteen to twenty years ago, and was very profoundly moved by it; it seared itself into my brain.  Yet recently I found myself unable to remember what happened exactly; and when I reread it, it almost felt like I was reading it again for the first time.  It’s not as if this were a casual memory— It’s as if I’d forgotten how the Bible ended or something similar…  I worry for my mind. 

I see now that the path I choose through that maze makes me what I am.  I am not only a thing, but also a way of being- one of many ways- and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming.  (p. 154) (!)

“But I’ve learned that intelligence alone doesn’t mean a damned thing.  Here in your university, intelligence, education, knowledge, have all become great idols.  But I know now there’s one thing you’ve all overlooked:  intelligence and education that hasn’t been tempered by human affection isn’t worth a damn.”  (p. 173)

How strange that light should blind!  (p. 204)

#20 for 2011:

Life with Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse- An omnibus containing The Inimitable Jeeves, Very Good, Jeeves, and Right Ho, Jeeves.  (Yes, this is where the name Jeeves is so popular from.)

Quite wonderful!

#19 for 2011:

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Intricate plots woven together to form a mesmerizing storyline, amazing and realistic world development, great character development- except for the women, who were one and all blithering idiots too wrapped up in themselves to care about anybody else and too stupid and insecure to do anything but have dramatically emotional meltdowns.  (Don’t even go into the “but I maybe I wanted him to rape me” bit- you will never see this in a work by a female author; it is only males who project this onto women as a means to justify rape, which is unjustifiable.) The men, too, seemed amoral and apathetic and too caught up in their own egos and games of war…   But unfortunately both these are a sign of the times, and a product of the society, and therefore too believable (except for the rape bit!).

Ah, Rorshach, it wasn’t the dog’s fault.  And yet you were probably the sanest of all.  At least you cared, and meant to do something to make things better (and not just for your own ego).