"You must have control of the authorship of your own destiny. The pen that writes your life story must be held in your own hand." ~Irene C. Kassorla

I finished the New York Times Bestseller: "The Hour I First Believed" by author Wally Lamb.

"This portrayal of a couple dealing with the asymetrical effects of trauma is Lamb at his best, wholly sympathetic, deeply moving." - Washington Post Book World

I am glad I read it, though there were moments when I thought to exercise my newly acquired skill of closing the book somewhere enroute with the intention to not finish it. I'm glad I did finish it. I don't feel better ... or smarter ... for having read it, but I did dogear a couple of pages to think about as little points of interest along the way. How 'bout this:

"I teach GED English and creative writing. Mostly, the women want to write about themselves, and it helps them, you know? Gives them wings, so that they can rise above the confounding maze of their lives and, from that perspective, begin to see the patterns and dead ends of their pasts, and a way out. That's the funny thing about mazes: what's baffling on the ground begins to make sense when you can rise above it, the better to understand your history, and fix yourself." - Wally Lamb
- this character works as an educator in a women's correctional facitity.

The idea of a maze is prominent ... somewhere the author talks about a labryinth where outsiders can not get in, but those inside are unable to find their way out. The praying mantis shows up early and often ... bet if I googled it, the symbolism lost on me would make sense ... the book is well written ... no doubt ... he intentionally chooses to express himself with a more vulgar presentation then I am used to ... it's not the language or even the ideas, it's more how crudely they are expressed, and I think that's part of how it has to be for the book to move you ... maybe that's it for me, I was moved a bit, but I'm not sure that I'd rather be here, then the there, where I was before I read the book. All the threads come together in too tight a weave for me as the story ends. As a reader, I don't need every detail worked out.

I have time to read a book authored by someone rather then the FAA, and I really want a good book! And I am open to suggestions!

Next stop for me will be a book I already have in house titled, "The BOOK of GREAT BOOKS A guide to 100 World Classics"
One of the guys I fly with occassionally keeps a copy of a Steinbeck book with him at all times. Sometimes I thumb through them, Mr Steinbeck was depressing, but genius ... and I'll wish (I'm watching these wishes) I had the book at hand to think about a paragraph or two. What's amazing, and very nice, is my buddy almost always goes right to the passage I'm thinking about ... like this note:
Here is that quote you were looking for and some of the things said not immediately preceding it. They're from Sweet Thursday, the sequel to Cannery Row.

"Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wild flowers hidden in the grass."
"And isn't discontent the lever of change?"
"He had not the vanity which makes men try to be smart."
"...for how few men like their work, their lives - how very few men like themselves."
"Now discontent nibbled at him - not painfully, but constantly.
Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the bastard Time. The end of life is now not so terribly far away - you can see it the way you see the finish line when you come into the stretch - and your mind says, 'Have I worked enough? Have I eaten enough? Have I loved enough?' All of these, of course, are the foundation of man's greatest curse, and perhaps his greatest glory. 'What has my life meant so far, and what can it mean in the time left to me' And now we're coming to the wicked, poisoned dart: 'What have I contributed in the Great Ledger? What am I worth?' And this isn't vanity or ambition. Men seem to be born w/ a debt they can never pay, no matter how hard they try. It piles up ahead of them. Man owes something to man. If he ignores the debt it poisons him, and if he tries to make payments the debt only increases, and the quality of his gift is the measure of the man."

and this one from The Grapes of Wrath I think ... "After a while the faces of the watching men lost their bemused perplexity and became hard and angry and resistant. Then the women knew that they were safe and that there was no break. Then they asked, What'll we do? And the men replied, I don't know. But it was all right. The women knew it was all right, and the watching children knew it was all right. Women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole."

I don'tknow why I like those as I do, but ... I do like them.
... the best of Steinbeck (laughing at my goofiness here).

I've been thinking about reading books today. The back cover of the Lamb book say it's so compelling, that I will be unable to put it down ... not true, sometimes I didn't want to pick it back up. I remembered really liking the short stories in a book titled "The Ship Who Sang" ... I'm reading them again now. I like that I liked them when I was 16, but I'm enjoying the nostalgia value more then the stories. Or how about this story: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."~Ernest Hemingway. There is a project called the six word memoir where one is asked to tell their story in a mere six words.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-judith-rich/can-you-tell-your-life-st_b_482721.html

That's how it goes with stories isn't it? Short ... long ... compelling ... depressing ... riveting (lol). Stories. I went looking for that quote and found this one:
"You must have control of the authorship of your own destiny. The pen that writes your life story must be held in your own hand." ~Irene C. Kassorla