Friday, March 30, 2012

Live Smarter, Live Harder

I am back from my vacation and read the three beach vacation reads that I had bought with me.  They were all great beach (as well as plane) reads - the books went by quickly and maintained a positive message.

In addition to my beach reads, I also read Glamour Magazine, which profiled e a successful woman DJ who lost her parents and raised her younger sibling.

Antigua...
She keeps three quotes by her desk, one of which is: Work smarter, not harder.

While reading this, I modified this mantra to fit my state of mind at the time:

Live Smarter, Live Harder

This is a reminder for me:

1) To enjoy life even if it does not go as planned (message from The Fixer Upper by Mary Kay Andrews)

2) Be confident (Act Like a Lady, Think Like A Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment by Steve Harvey and Denene Milner) 

3) Enjoy my youth (29 by Adena Halpern)


The two other quotes that the DJ maintains by her desk are:
* Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.
* Everything is easy if you know what you're doing.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Beach Vacation Reads

I am heading to Antigua, part of the Leeward Islands in the Carribean, in a few days.  Antigua means "ancient" in Spanish and was christened by Christopher Columbus.

I have been feeling antigua of late, so am more than ready to rejuvenate with soft sand, soothing weather and gorgeous waters!

That said, I plan to spend the majority of my six-day vacation on the beach.

I am packing three books for my trip:

1. The Fixer Upper by Mary Kay Andrews.  I read my first Andrews book, Summer Rental, last year and enjoyed it.

Her novels are in the chick-lit genre with a bit more suspense and plots outside of the (surprise, surprise) love story at the center of the novel. 

Also, the protagonist starts off in Washington, DC, which I have an affinity for having lived there for a decade.

2. Act Like a Lady, Think Like A Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment by Steve Harvey and Denene Milner.

While sick at home recovering from the nasty Norovirus stomach bug, I was watching the Ellen show and Harvey was a guest.

He was promoting this book, which is being made into a movie, and was hilarious!  I hope to get a few laughs, and with such a long subtitle, figure that I will also get some self-help takeaways about relationships.

Cool cover, right?
3. 29 by Adena Halpern.  I randomly picked this book up from the library because I liked the cover.

The plot is a Freaky Friday type of situation where a grandmother switches places with her granddaughter.

The book seems like it will provide a perspective on youth, and perhaps I will take the carpe diem
message that will surely be in the book to heart.














Friday, March 16, 2012

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, 2009

Abraham Verghese is a physician who is a chair and professor at Standford University Medical School and a writer who completed the Masters Program at the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Possessing such a high caliber of intellect and talent at two such different fields is astoundingly impressive and the results is an amazing novel that will transport the reader to many different worlds.

While reading Cutting for Stone, I felt like I was transported to Ethiopia and the world of medicine despite the fact that I have never been to Ethiopia or studied medicine.

Verghese is able to fluidly weave highly clinical terms and Ethiopian culture into this story of twin sons growing up in Ethiopia to physician parents working at one of the few hospitals in the capital of Addis Ababa.

The novel is so well written and revolves around universal themes such as love and family, that it was easy to imagine the characters, locale and the events that unfolded without cumbersome paragraphs of explanation.

I teared up and could not put the book down during many sections of the book, especially at the end.

Photo of an Addis Ababa hospital, 2012.
I can imagine the story unfolding here...

Wanting
 A powerful theme running throughout the novel is the theme of wanting - either chasing or running away from what you want.

In Africa, there is a common childhood tale about a miserly Baghdad merchant named Abu Kassem.  Kassem possesses a pair of slippers that he wears down to the seems.

He is finally ready to part with his slippers, but when he tries to dispose of them, it always end in misfortune.

For example, he throws his slippers out of his window and they hit a pregnant woman who ends up miscarrying.

(Apparently, Africans don't mess around when it comes to bad things...) 

Commenting on the story, the central father-figure character Ghosh says:

"The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family,  own the talents you have, and own the ones you don't.  If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die searching, you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more.  Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny."

Other Quotes
While reading Cutting for Stone, I jotted down a few other quotes and passages that resonated.

"Wasn't that the definition of home?  Not where you are from, but where you are wanted?"

"So often we never truly see our own family and it is for others to tell us that they've grown taller or older?"

"It was often the second mistake that came in the haste to correct the first mistake that did the patient in."

"It is an axiom of motorcycling that you must always look in the direction you want to go and never at what you are trying to avoid."

"At school, I knew girls who were neither ugly nor beautiful but who saw themselves one way or the other, and that convectoin made it come true."

"Call me old-fashioned," Deepak said, "but I've always believed that hard work pays off.  Do the right thing, put up with unfairness, selfishness, stay true to yourself...one day it all works out."