Friday, January 15, 2016

Learning from Failure


Big Magic Elizabeth Gilbert
One of the books on my list of titles read was Big Magic: Creative living beyond fear by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love. In the book is a section called "Hungry Ghosts" about failure.

A key sentence at the beginning of the section says: "...I have come to understand what part of me is suffering when I fail: It's just my ego."

Later she says: "Some version of that hunger dwells within all of us. We all have that lunatic presence, living deep within our guts, that refuses to ever be satisfied with anything. I have it, you have it, we all have it. My saving grace is this, though: I know that I am not only an ego; I am also a soul. And I know that my soul doesn't care a whit about reward or failure. ... "

I commend the whole book.

The web site for the book (the author's site) is: http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/books/

Books Read 2015

Here is my list of the books I read during 2015. I read a total of 26 books during the year. Almost all were books which arrived as Advance Readers Copies. That has helped to broaden the choices of what I read. They will stay on the Currently Reading page for most of January.They are listed in reverse chronological order (i.e., the last book I read is at the top of the list).
    Choosing Hope: Moving Forward from Life's Darkest Hours by Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis with Robin Gaby Fisher ARC
    Magna Carta: the Birth of Liberty by Dan Jones ARC
    Expatriates: A Novel by Janice Y.K. Lee ARC
    Clementine: The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchill by Sonia Purnell ARC
    The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
    Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell ARC
    Mrs. Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters ARC
    Seeds of Grace: A Nun's Reflections on the Spirituality of Alcoholics Anonymous by Sister Molly Monahan
    The Rocks: A Novel by Peter Nichols ARC
    Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert ARC
    Robert's Rules of Order, Newly Revised, in Brief (2nd edition) by Henry M. Robert III, Daniel H. Honeman, and Thomas J. Balch with the assistance of Daniel E. Seabold and Shmuel Gerber
    Church of Marvels: A Novel by Leslie Parry ARC
    The Gates of Evangeline: A Novel by Hester Young ARC
    X by Sue Grafton ARC
    The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley: A Novel by Jeremy Massey ARC
    A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
    So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson ARC
    Listen to Your Mother: What She Said Then, What We're Saying Now edited by Ann Imig ARC
    Stepdog: A Memoir by Mireya Navarro ARC
    Discontent and Its Civilizations: Dispatches from Lahore, New York, and London by Mohsin Hamid ARC
    Hall of Small Mammals: Stories by Thomas Pierce ARC
    The Girl on the Train: A novel by Paula Hawkins ARC My review
    Watch Me Go: A novel by Mark Wisniewski ARC
    If I Knew You Were Going to Be This Beautiful I Never Would Have Let You Go by Judy Chicurel ARC
    Living Abroad in Panama by Miriam Butterman
    Dorothy Parker Drank Here by Ellen Meister ARC