Books + Quotes (December 2023)

I am so “behind” on posting about the books I have been reading! So here is a big book/quote dump from the last month or so of my reading life. I’ve been coming to this blog post draft and adding quotes I liked along the way. But…oops…I really should have posted this when I had half the number of books. Feel free to skim and just look at specific books you might be interested in; or, read some of the quotes that strike your fancy 🙂

All That Is Mine I Carry With Me by William Landy. 3.75 stars? No matter how many times I try I can’t get that title right in my mind. This book! Where to start. I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN FOR THE FIRST 150 PAGES. It was gripping, but in a subtle way, and I told John: I hope this stays as good to the end because it would make a perfect movie. A wife/mother goes missing, her husband is the prime suspect, but there is no body and no concrete evidence he actually had anything to do with the crime. Is she still alive? Did she run away? Will she show up? As her children get older they have to navigate life without their mother while, potentially, living alongside her killer. By the middle, the book started to get heavy with so. much. dialogue (without quotation marks I will add – can’t remember who listed this as their pet peeve in my latest reading post, but to you I will say: avoid this book at all costs). And then the ending. Sigh. It was one of those books where I turned the page and thought: You have got to be kidding me. Did I like the ending? No. Was it satisfying? No.

Tired As F*ck by Caroline Dooner. 4/5 stars. Before I start talking about this book, I need to mention that her previous book – The F*ck It Diet – dramatically changed my relationship with food. There is a clear before and after in my eating habits that coincides directly with the content in that book. So I was excited to read her newest offering. I didn’t love this book, but it had redeeming qualities as there is just something about her writing that is like a needed slap in the face. It stings, but it gets my attention (if that makes sense?). I will say this book reads a lot like a memoir and not an overly pleasant one to read. It felt like a monotonous and plodding list of dental emergencies and extreme dieting. Some of those parts I skimmed. But there were pockets of real self-care gold. I see this book being extremely hit-or-miss for readers. Personally, it landed somewhere in between. But I do think it gave me a giant kick in the butt and inspired me to make some big changes in my life…hence the 4 stars.

• My internal thermostat is always set to the “mildly anxious” setting, and sometimes it breaks and overheats into the “very anxious” setting, and I need to open the windows and let the air in and call the electrician.

• …we live in a culture that demonizes eating. Eating!!!! Survival 101! And we are afraid of it. We’re all walking around frustrated with ourselves for being hungry or for eating a snack…We also live in a culture that demonizes rest and relaxing! We feel guilty for eating and resting, two of the most basic, fundamental building blocks of life. And then we wonder why we’re all unsettled and anxious and burnt out and obsessed with food. We deserve better than this. We deserve naps and snacks.
• Work extremely hard, but make it look easy and effortless. Work nonstop on your body, on your career, on your relationships, with your kids if you’re a parent, but make it look easy. Work hard and then work hard making it not look hard. Which is, of course, actually making you work harder. [Relatable, no?]
• Trauma is the result of an incomplete fight-or-flight process and unprocessed energy stuck in your nervous system.
• I’ve been trying to become skinny or stay skinny or become skinnier for ten years, and it’s done nothing but make me exhausted, hungry, obsessed with food, and hate myself. And it has almost certainly made me more unhealthy.
• It’s OK to not be impressive.
• [Talking about Marie Kondo’s The Lifechanging Joy of Tidying Up] The big takeaway from the book is that the things we are holding on to that don’t spark joy anymore already sparked their joy. They already brought you the joy they were meant to bring. Now, it’s time for them to go.
• Whether you think you deserve to be or not, you’re burnt out.
• Exhaustion isn’t a *issing content. We can all be exhausted for different reasons. And most of us are exhausted, for one reason or another. Life is exhausting. And we do not live in a culture that supports and allows for healing from that exhaustion.
• I deserve rest. I deserve to recharge. I deserve to take little moments of peace. My worth does not come from constant productivity.
• If you are tired or feel burnt out, I recommend you write out all the reasons why. Write your Declaration of Exhaustion. And then use it as a way to start identifying the cultural beliefs that may be perpetuating your exhaustion.

Life Inside My Mind (edited by Jessica Burkhart)

This book was a series of essays by three authors that centers on mental health struggles. Some essays were more relevant to me and my own experiences, but overall I really enjoyed this book. (I do love a book a essays!) 4/5 stars.

• The day is long; you can get out of this. Do your morning routine and then get out of the house and into the world. Don’t camp out in these thoughts; pack up your tent and find a better view.
• [About depression:] Even if it’s just once in a while, it feels so terrible that it can become a shadow over every moment that I feel good.
• Self-care is not just bubble baths and me time. Self-care is about working (and it is work) to deeply understand myself, my issues (inherited and otherwise), and what I need to do in order to survive and thrive, and then actually doing those things.

The Emotional Lives of Teenagers by Lisa Damour

This felt like a bit of a slog at times, but I think it’s a VERY valuable resource and was a reassuring read that just because my tween rolls their eyes and huffs and sometimes makes me feel like the most incompetent, horrible mother (and human) on the planet, this is basically their JOB right now. 4/5 stars.

• “I take it that it is normal for an adolescent to behave for a considerable length of time in an inconsistent and unpredictable manner; to fight [their] impulses and accept them; to love [their] parents and to hate them; to revolt against them and be dependent on them; to be deeply ashamed to acknowledge [their] mother before others and, unexpectedly, to desire heart-to-heart talks with her; to thrive on imitation of others while searching unceasingly for [their] own identity; to be more idealistic, artistic, generous, and unselfish than [they] will ever be again, but also the opposite: self-centered, egoistic, calculating. Such fluctuations and extreme opposites would be deemed highly abnormal at any other time of life. At this time they may signify no more than that an adult structure of personality takes a long time to emerge, that the individual in question does not cease to experiment and is in no hurry to close down on possibilities.” Anna Freud
• It is a deep comfort to children to discover that their feelings are a normal part of the human experience. Haim Ginott
• Rather than working to prevent or chase away [your child’s] discomfort, focus your attention on helping [them] find ways to manage the distress [they’re] feeling.
• For teenagers, powerful emotions are a feature, not a bug.
• …when it comes to decision making, we ought to view our emotions are occupying one seat on our personal board of directors. Other spots on the board might be held by ethical considerations, our personal ambitions, our obligations to others, financial or logistical constraints, and so on. Ideally, these board members will work together to help us make careful, informed decisions about how we conduct our lives. In this metaphor, emotions have a vote, though it’s rarely a deciding one. And they definitely don’t chair the board.
• First and foremost, we want our teenagers to regard their feelings in this important way: as data. Whether painful or pleasant, emotions are fundamentally informational.
• …”trauma” refers to the overwhelming emotional impact of a horrible event, never to the event itself.
• [Re. externalization; communicating issues in ways that make parents feel lousy]: …externalization is actually a form of communication. Instead of telling us how they feel, externalizing teenagers help us understand their emotional lives by making us feel what they do.
• [Anxiety is an issue when:]…it’s ringing the alarm when there’s nothing to worry about, or the scale of anxiety is way out of proportion to the threat.
• Our daughters’ capacity for derision can be impressive to behold, though it’s probably easier for us parents to admire when it’s not aimed our way.
• No self-respecting adolescent will reply to…guidance with “I’m so glad that you brought this up and I really appreciate your suggestions.” [WHY NOT! This is my dream!]
• …it’s hard to be sad and useful at the same time.

Maybe You Should Talk To Someone by Lori Gottlieb

This was a re-read for me and I mostly skimmed it this time. The first time I read it I loved it (4.5/5 stars); this time it felt more Meh to me, but it’s an interesting book and has some great writing. I’d wager it’s about 75 pages too long?

• [Trying to find the “perfect” something/someone by saying If only…]: If the queen had balls, she’d be the king.
• The only way to get to the other side of the tunnel is to go through it, not around it. But I can’t even picture the entrance right now.
• …if I’m clinging to the suffering so tightly, I must be getting something out of it. It must be serving some purpose for me.
• He let me tell my story in whatever way I needed today. [Love this!]
• “I’m reminded,” he begins, “of a famous cartoon. It’s of a prisoner, shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out – but to his right and left, it’s open, no bars.” He pauses, allowing the image to sink in. “All the prisoner has to do is walk around. But still, he frantically shakes the bars. That’s most of us. We feel completely stuck, trapped in our emotional cells, but there’s a way out – as long as we’re willing to see it.” …the realization hits me: You are your own jailer.
• Why do we keep our radios tuned to the same static-ridden stations (the everyone’s-life-is-better-than-mine station, the I-can’t-trust-people station, the nothing-works-out-for-me-station) instead of moving the dial up or down? Change the station. Walk around the bars. Who’s stopping us but ourselves.

The Wellness Trap by Christy Harrison. 3/5 stars

Harrison’s book Anti-Diet was great. This was not. I’d skip it if I were you…

• …feelings aren’t facts (though they can have valuable things to teach us). I can’t predict the future (even if a current situation reminds me of one from my past). And just because I’m worried about something – or, conversely, just because I really want something – doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.
• Social connection is essential for well-being, but so is solitude.

Simple Matters by Erin Boyle. 3/5 stars

A very Meh book about minimalism and design, but I wrote down two quotes.

• Get rid of anything that isn’t doing work. The things in our home should earn their keep. They should do the work of being beautiful, or bringing us joy, or helping us out in our daily lives.
• My advice is this: Surround yourself with things of beauty, so that even in its messiest moments, your life still feels beautiful.

Big Girl: How I Gave Up Dieting and Got A Life by Kelsey Miller. This was okay for me. 3.5/5 but I thought this whole page – reckoning with the impacts of childhood abuse – featured incredible writing.

Mic drop.

All My Knotted-Up Life by Beth Moore.

I didn’t rate this book because it’s a memoir. I didn’t love how it was organized and I felt like there was a lot of repetition in places. But I had no context for her story. I’ve never done a Beth Moore Bible study and while I’m a Baptist, I am not a Southern Baptist which I get the sense is a whole other level of Baptists! I think this would be an eye-opening read to so many of her followers and it took tremendous courage to share her story.

It reminded me a bit of Viola Davis’ memoir, especially the part about how she was abused by her father but never got any justice. And while forgiveness is a beautiful and necessary thing, there also needs to be consequences for horrible actions. I walked away from both memoirs feeling saddened there wasn’t more justice for these women for the impacts of childhood abuse on their adult lives.

• From where I sit, where I stand, where I walk, where I run, where I rest, where I pray, play, and weep, my story looks like a shirt too long left in the bottom of a clothes hamper. Were I to bleach and launder it, starch and iron it to stand up properly, crisp and straight, it would look a whole lot better, but I am certain of this – it would no longer fit.
• You want to know how to love me? Love my children. You want to be good to me? Be good to my children.
• The downside of human closeness is that, to the degree you have loved their presence, you grieve their loss.
• That may be one of the worst parts of being a religious person with a dark past. The temptation to view persistent hardship as punishment is almost too much to resist.

The Gospel of Wellness by Rina Raphael. 4.5/5. I thought this was a great, entertaining, and insightful book. Each chapter was basically an essay about a different “trend” in wellness. As much as I enjoyed reading it…I didn’t really write down many quotes!

• Marketing has a far stronger power than scientific proof.
• Modern life, for all its comforts and priviledges, can feel wildly overwhelming. To be a woman today is to be stuck in a loop of unrelenting maintenance.
• Stress exists for a reason: it’s a mental state informing us that something is wrong. And yet we’re constantly told this is something we should bury away. When women furiously pedal away on a Peloton to “silence their mind,” you begin to ask: Why should we silence our mind? Maybe my mind has legitimate complaints.

What’s Eating Us by Cole Kazdin.

I forget everything about this book. I rated it 3/5 on Goodreads. I can’t tell you a single thing about it, and I didn’t write down any quotes. So I’m guessing very forgettable? Or maybe I had just reached my ceiling for food/wellness books.

Your turn. Have you read any of the books I’ve listed above? If so, what did you think? What books are in your current reading pile? Have you written down any good quotes lately? Have you read any books in 2023 that have changed your perspective on a topic or inspired a dramatic change?