November 2018

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
Is God Anti-Gay? by Sam Allberry
Waking the Dead by John Eldridge
How We Love by Milan and Kay Yerkovich
Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg

Favorite Quotes:

How We Love


"Anger may be the only emotion you feel safe to express because it is."

"..so marriage has to be a safe place to show emotions, especially the ones you were discouraged from showing as a child."

"Have you ever noticed how hard it is to have an emotional connection when no emotions are apparent?"


"INFP, the most sensitive, idealistic, insightful, and conflicted of all the types..."

11.18.2018 🎧 Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

Eilis is described as "hesitant and slow" (as a customer shopping).
She seems to usually feel like others know what to do and she doesn't.
She pretends to be sick to miss a dance.

In a sense, she's doing exciting things and making new connections and learning a lot. In another sense, she's just letting life happen to her, doing what she must, and not sparing a thought for more. I've come to see her as a wonderful example of an unhealthy enneagram 9.

Here are a couple more quotes I pulled out. I notice now that all of them are 9ish things to which I relate.

"For each day, she thought, she needed a whole other day to contemplate what had happened and store it away, get it out of her system, so that it did not keep her awake at night, or fill her dreams with flashes of what had actually happened, and other flashes that had nothing to do with anything familiar, but were full of rushes of color, or crowds of people, everything frenzied and fast." 

"She would not try to postpone any further what she had to do, but the prospect of [telling others what she had decided to do] still filled her with fear, enough for her once more to put both ideas out of her mind. She would think about them soon, she thought, but not now."

"But she realized that it would be best to do nothing."

Was there ever a truer summation of my numbed out, void of all intention, tendencies than that second to last on?! Oh, the thought of making anyone else unhappy is just too scary, so "I think I'll just think about that later."

I was really, really  hoping that we would see some growth in her by the end. I mean, even if it had to be the decision between 2 love interests, pick boldly, and pick for yourself! But until the very end, we never knew what she wanted. Did she even know what she wanted? I felt defeated along with her. Such behavior in another is so obvious. Lord, have mercy.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

“This was an all too familiar social scenario for me: standing alone, staring into the middle distance. It was absolutely fine. It was absolutely normal...I tried so hard, but something about me just didn’t fit. There was, it seemed, no Eleanor-shaped social hole for me to slot into. I wasn’t good at pretending, that was the thing.” For Eleanor, “After what had happened in that burning house, given what went on there, I could see no point in being anything other than truthful with the world. I had, literally, nothing left to lose. But by careful observation from the sidelines, I’d worked out that social success is often built on pretending just a little.” (chapter 71)

“...obviously, in principle and reality, libraries are life-enhancing palaces of wonder.” (chapter 94)

“Social interaction, it appeared, was surprisingly expensive. The travel, clothes, the drinks, the lunches, the gifts…” (Chatper 67).

When the sales clerk tries to persuade Eleanor to buy heels: “Why are these people so incredibly keen on crippling their female customers? I began to wonder if cobblers and chiropractors had established some fiendish cartel.” (67)

“He wasn’t using a knife, but was holding a fork in his right hand like a child or an American.” (61)