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She never wavered in her conviction that books are the most powerful tool in the human arsenal, that reading all kinds of books, in whatever format you choose--electronic (even though that wasn't for her) or printed, or audio--is the grandest entertainment, and also is how you take part in the human conversation.
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Will Schwalbe |
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1. You have nothing to fear. Remember that your vote is secret. Only you and your God know how you vote. 2.
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Will Schwalbe |
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2. People who promise things that they never give are like clouds and wind that bring no rain: do not be misled by promises. 3. Your vote is your power: use it to make a difference to your life and your country.
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Will Schwalbe |
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a pamphlet that she'd been handed when she was visiting an African country where people were able to vote freely for the first time. The pamphlet was called The Ten Commandments for Voters,
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Will Schwalbe |
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How can you be lonely, Mom said, when there are always people who want to share their stories with you, to tell you about their lives and families and dreams and plans?
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Will Schwalbe |
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The Price of Salt, by Patricia Highsmith
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Will Schwalbe |
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But I do want you to look after each other. I'll be very cross if I hear that any of you are fighting. And if anyone causes trouble, I'll come back from the grave and get 'em.
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Will Schwalbe |
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The latter therapy has its roots in a philosophy called Naikan, developed by Ishin Yoshimoto. Naikan reminds people to be grateful for everything. If you are sitting in a chair, you need to realize that someone made that chair, and someone sold it, and someone delivered it--and you are the beneficiary of all that. Just because they didn't do it especially for you doesn't mean you aren't blessed to be using it and enjoying it.
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Will Schwalbe |
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Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, which had won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005,
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Will Schwalbe |
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When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation?
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Will Schwalbe |
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Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking
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Will Schwalbe |
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There are certain books that I mean to read and keep stacked by my bedside. I even take them on trips. Some of my books should be awarded their own frequent-flier miles, they've traveled so much.
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Will Schwalbe |
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In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin, had just been published. The other was a Pulitzer Prize-winner, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout,
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Will Schwalbe |
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The Bolter
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Will Schwalbe |
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Girls Like Us by the journalist Sheila Weller,
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Will Schwalbe |
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We all owe everyone for everything that happens in our lives. But it's not owing like a debt to one person--it's really that we owe everyone for everything. Our whole lives can change in an instant--so each person that keeps that from happening, no matter how small a role they play, is also responsible for all of it. Just by giving friendship and love, you keep the people around you from giving up--and each expression of friendship or love ..
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Will Schwalbe |
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Of course," said the Queen, "but briefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting"
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Will Schwalbe |
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Freedom can still depend on ink, just as it always has.
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Will Schwalbe |
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The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch,
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Will Schwalbe |
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The Painted Veil
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Will Schwalbe |
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1. You have nothing to fear. Remember that your vote is secret. Only you and your God know how you vote. 2. People who promise things that they never give are like clouds and wind that bring no rain: do not be misled by promises. 3. Your vote is your power: use it to make a difference to your life and your country.
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Will Schwalbe |
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Reading isn't the opposite of doing; it's the opposite of dying
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Will Schwalbe |
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He remains for my family the perfect model of how you can be gone but ever present in the lives of people who loved you, in the same way that your favorite books stay with you for your entire life, no matter how long it's been since you turned the last page.
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Will Schwalbe |
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On this particular day, there was a woman in line right in front of us. She was in her thirties, smartly but not expensively dressed, wearing dark glasses. When she took them off, you could see she'd been weeping. She was shaking her head. Mom talked to her in a soft voice. Not unusual--Mom talked to everyone and had no hesitation approaching people who were crying, in pain, or in distress. ("If they don't want to talk, they'll tell you so,..
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Will Schwalbe |
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Why didn't this one say this, or tell someone that, or let anyone know she or he was so unhappy, so lonely, so scared? Lahiri's characters, just like people all around us, are constantly telling each other important things, but not necessarily in words. WHEN
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Will Schwalbe |
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Connelly writes, "As long as there is paper, people will write, secretly, in small rooms, in the hidden chambers of their minds, just as people whisper the words they're forbidden to speak aloud." In"
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Will Schwalbe |
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He starts to whisper a prayer. "Whatever beings there are, may they be free from suffering. Whatever beings there are, may they be free from enmity. Whatever beings there are, may they be free from hurtfulness. Whatever beings there are, may they be free from ill health. Whatever beings there are, may they be able to protect their own happiness."
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Will Schwalbe |
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MOM LIKED THE Ritalin. And she found it had a terrific and unexpected side effect--it helped her read. The day she first tried it, she was tired and uncomfortable and having trouble concentrating. She popped the Ritalin right before she sat down with Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers, a fifteen-hundred-page book that she'd been attempting to read after a friend gave it to her.
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Will Schwalbe |
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Kabat-Zinn writes, "You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf." OBAMA"
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Will Schwalbe |
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I was thinking a lot about loneliness, because we were now reading Kokoro, a remarkable novel by Natsume Soseki, which was published in 1914 and was one of fourteen novels Soseki wrote after retiring from a professorship at Tokyo's Imperial University. It was a book I'd read once before, in college, when I'd taken a course from its translator, Edwin McClellan. I'd been struck by Soseki's exploration of the complex nature of friendship, espe..
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Will Schwalbe |
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John Irving reading A Prayer for Owen Meany,
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Will Schwalbe |
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The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a novel by a thirty-seven-year-old author, Mohsin Hamid,
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Will Schwalbe |
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at about page twenty or so, the magical thing occurred that happens only with the very best books: I became absorbed and obsessed and entered the "Can't you see I'm reading?" mode."
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Will Schwalbe |
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And when people would say to Mom, "I'll include you in my prayers," it gave her great solace. It wasn't a platitude for her--when she knew people were praying for her, it was something concrete and immense."
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Will Schwalbe |
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books are the most powerful tool in the human arsenal, that reading all kinds of books, in whatever format you choose--electronic (even though that wasn't for her) or printed, or audio--is the grandest entertainment, and also is how you take part in the human conversation. Mom
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Will Schwalbe |
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One of Mom's favorite passages from Gilead was: "This is an important thing, which I have told many people, and which my father told me, and which his father told him. When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation?"
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Will Schwalbe |
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Halpern wants the reader to think about the difference between asking "How are you feeling?" and "Do you want me to ask how you're feeling?" Even if it's your mother whom you're questioning, the first approach is more intrusive, insistent, demanding. The second is much gentler and allows the person simply to say no on those days when she's doing well and doesn't want to be the "sick person," or is doing badly but wants a distraction, or has..
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Will Schwalbe |
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You can die now, with three healthy children, your husband of almost fifty years alive and well, and five grandchildren whom you love and who love you, all well, all happy'--well, I think Mom would have thought that wasn't a bad deal.
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Will Schwalbe |
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Hidden away, the people of the streets drift into sleep induced by alcohol or agitated by despair, into dreams that carry them back to the lives that once were theirs.
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Will Schwalbe |
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Felicia's Journey by the Irish short-story writer and novelist William Trevor.
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Will Schwalbe |
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The Uncommon Reader, a novella by Alan Bennett
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Will Schwalbe |
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life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death." I"
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Will Schwalbe |
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That's one of the things books do. They help us talk. But they also give us something we all can talk about when we don't want to talk about ourselves." Mom"
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Will Schwalbe |
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they would soon be old enough to read The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit and Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome, and eventually Iris Murdoch and Alan Bennett. They could all be readers, and maybe even uncommon ones.
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Will Schwalbe |