Books I have read

Books I’ve Read: The Untethered Soul Offers Secret To Happiness

Posted on August 26, 2014 by CharlieClaywell

Once you decide you want to be unconditionally happy, something inevitably will happen that challenges you…You just have to decide whether or not you will break your vow (to be happy) — Michael A. Singer

UntetheredSoulMech-#1.inddMichel A. Singer’s author of The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself is one of several spiritual thinkers featured on Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul Sunday in the past few years. His book, a New York Times bestseller, is a thought-provoking look at what makes us happy — or unhappy.

Although Singer relies heavily on the Buddhist concept of detachment for dealing with life — it is in his explanation of how ‘you’ are not your thoughts, where he grinds out some very simple, down-to-earth concepts.

First, like the quote above states, you have to decide if you want to be happy. Once you make that decision, he says you can start seeing the events of life as just events. Things that pass through you, but do not need to define you or even trouble you.

Secondly, Singer promotes the ideas of ‘getting behind your mind’. In other words, stepping back and watching the jumbled thoughts that continuously race through our minds and realize you can observe those thoughts without being controlled by them. He spends quite a bit of time in the book, explaining why we focus on some thoughts, resist other ones and in general let thoughts dictate our lives and our level of happiness.

He also offers some practical ideas on how to calm the mind.

One of the most entertaining passages in the book are two ‘make-believe’ conversations — both involving God. In the first, God is talking with a human and asks what he thinks of his creation. The first person complaints about the bugs that bite, the animals that howls and even their own personal appearance. The second individual is simply ecstatic at literally everything in creation. Singer poses the simple question, “Who do you think God wants to hang out with?”

The question, like others in the book, is what the book is really good at accomplishing — forcing you to pause and think — even if it is just for a moment.

Categories: Books I have read

Books I’ve Read: ‘Bold Spirit’ Delves Into a Woman’s Role As Mother, Provider in 1896

Posted on July 15, 2014 by CharlieClaywell

Bold SpiritThis is another one of my thrift store finds and it was the subtitle that caught my eye. Bold Spirit: Helga Estby’s Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America by Linda Lawrence Hunt is a story about grit, hope, despair, betrayal and loss. It is a story that would be forever lost if a 8th grade student had not written an essay about his great-great-grandmother’s walk across the United States. When historian Linda Hunt read the boy’s essay, she tracks down articles and pieces the story together.

Helga Estby, a 36-year-old mother of nine, and her 19-year-old daughter, Clara, leave Spokane, Washington on a quest to be in New York City by December in exchange for $10,000. Helga leaves behind her seven children (a 12-year-old son died just five months earlier) and her injured husband in an effort to save the family farm.

As a reader, the money — offered by an unnamed sponsor (who required a contract be signed)  — seems sketchy from the outset, but it also gives a hint of the desperation Helga must have felt after the death of her son and her husband’s inability to work combined with unpaid taxes and a looming foreclosure. So even though the wager has the feel of a lottery (albeit one that requires a 3,500 mile walk) it is understandable why she would undertake the journey.

Some of the rules stipulated by the contract included:

  • the type of dress to wear (a bicycle skirt)
  • earn enough money along the way to pay for food and board (they left Washington with $5 a piece)
  • visit state capitals in the West
  • acquire signature of governors and other ‘important’ people along the way.

Helga and Clara keep their end of the deal and overcome wild animals, hunger, harsh weather, thugs and miscreants — protecting themselves with a small revolver and a pepper spray mechanism. Along the way, they become famous and well known as newspapers report their progress. They even spend the night at the home of president-elect William McKinley and eat dinner with the wife of president hopeful William Jennings Bryan (he was out of town campaigning).

But, the journey alienates Helga from her family.

The alienation begins when she arrives in New York and the sponsor does not honor the contract, leaving Helga and Clara broke and stranded. While in New York, one of Helga’s children contracts diphtheria and dies. Shortly after she finally secures train passage home a second child dies.

By the time she reaches Spokane, Helga is more of a villain than a heroine and so her story is silenced. So much so, that when she dies more than 40 years later, her children burn the manuscript she had written.

Rated 5 out of 5. The book is about so much more than the walk. Hunt successfully captures the mood and mores of the late 1800’s in the United States. She does an excellent job recreating the hardships of daily life faced by immigrants like Helga as they try to create a better life for their children.

Categories: American History, Books I have read

Books I’ve Read: What’s The Matter With Kansas?

Posted on June 24, 2014 by CharlieClaywell
City's downtown area photographed south to north on the corner of U.S. 127 and U.S. 35.

City’s downtown area photographed south to north on the corner of U.S. 127 and U.S. 35.

What struck me the most about Thomas Frank’s New York Times bestseller What’s the Matter With Kansas? were the descriptions of the downtown areas of the various Kansas towns he describes.

These towns bear a striking resemblance to the downtowns in the city and villages of Preble County, Ohio. Sparsely-filled storefronts, abandoned and bank-owned buildings and an abundance of second-hand stores and ‘antique’ shops. Frank could have just as easily written about my hometown.

Despite having been written almost a decade ago, the book is still a relevant look at the political machinery that runs the United States. Frank makes no bones about where he stands on the issue of liberal vs. conservative, but despite his well-written and well-argued prose, I doubt many minds have been changed by reading the book, because politics, like religion, tend to be about an emotional connection and not so much an intellectual one.

But Frank dives in deep anyway trying to figure out how people get duped into voting against their economic interests.

Frank points out how the platform issues of the Republican party — anti-abortion and anti-gun control — and the always present, but vague and ill-defined moral decline successfully captivates and motivates a segment of society who are willing to do whatever it takes to keep people in power who holds those same beliefs. This same segment, he argues, fails to examine the policies behind these agenda-makers and how it is affecting middle America.

One moment in history he discusses that resonated with me as an Ohioan was the 2004 presidential election when a proposed gay marriage amendment was placed on the ballot in Ohio (and other states). As an Ohioan, it seemed to me that the amendment had as much of a chance passing as one legalizing prostitution — but did it ever bring out the vote. People concerned with the moral decline of the state came out in droves to ensure the amendment failed — while also casting their vote for George W. Bush, the ’68 Yale graduate who avoided the Vietnam draft and ‘man of the people’ whose moral compass they agreed with.

Franks interviews and quotes a wide-range of interesting characters in the book — from the self-proclaimed pope to the female politician who believed it was a step back for American society when women were granted the right to vote. The book is worth reading for these characters alone.

But since, Franks’ writing style is confrontational and unflinching if may be offensive to conservative individuals comfortable with their beliefs. If, however, you wonder how ‘moral’ leaders leave your towns gutted and reduce your economic opportunities, then its worth the read.

Rated 5 out of 5. Extremely well-written and an insightful look at the uniquely American political system.

Categories: Books I have read | Tags: