If I were stranded in a hammock on a nice island for 13 weeks. These are the 13 books I’d want to have with me. They’re in alphabetical order to keep me from having to rank them – I love them all.
Why 13 weeks? 13 days didn’t sound like a long time and 13 months sounded too long for just 13 books. Anyway, here’s the list. It’ll tell you a lot about me. BTW, as penance for missing last week – I’m including 13 inspirational quotes, one from each book.
- fiction …
Linden Hills
“She thought her marriage would set her free, and it should have. It should have. She massaged her throbbing forehead. There must have been some law in this country that made that so. He was just being cruel and trying to frighten her. And she was so happy about that wedding. Finally free.”
Middle Passage
“She was as cunning as a Byzantine merchant – that was clear – but I couldn’t rightly fault her. She’d known her share of grief, had Isadora. Her mother Viola, she’d told me, died when she was three, which meant that she and her sisters had no one to teach them to think like independent, menless Modern Women – it was something you learned, she implied, like learning how to ride a bicycle, or do the backstroke.”
Naked in Death
“His breath was coming faster. It stunned him how much he could want her still, baffled him that she could be blind to how helpless he was under the clawing need for her. It infuriated him that she could, simply by existing, be his weakness.”
Song of Solomon
- “Neither Pilate nor Reba knew that Hagar was not like them. Not strong enough, like Pilate, nor simple enough, like Reba, to make up her life as they had. She needed what most colored girls needed: a chorus of mamas, grandmamas, aunts, cousins, sisters, neighbors Sunday school teachers, best girl friends, and what all to give her the strength life demanded of her – and the humor with which to live it.”
Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush
- “Tree felt comfortable with Silversmith and M’Vy. She could imagine the three of them together for all time, the way they say it in fairy tales. She smiled wryly to herself at the thought, for she knew better than to dream. And yet she could not help herself as her mind slid easily away until she no longer understood what they were saying.”
Wild Seed
- “When she realized the years had ceased to mark her body, she experimented and learned to age herself as her husband aged. She learned quickly that it was not good to be too different. Great differences caused envy, suspicion, fear, charges of witchcraft. But while her first husband lived, she never entirely gave up her beauty.”
nonfiction …
A Course In Miracles
“No one who has a single purpose, unified and sure, can be afraid.”
Artist’s Way
“Shifts in taste and perception frequently accompany shifts in identity. One of the clearest signals that something healthy is afoot is the impulse to weed out, sort through, and discard old clothes, papers, and belongings.”
Getting Things Done
- “It’s possible for a person to have an overwhelming number of things to do and still function productively with a clear head and a positive sense of relaxed control.”
Life’s Companion
“Religion is the story of how an identified group of people relates to the sacred, and how they perceive the sacred relating back to them.”
Organizing from the Inside Out
“Being organized has less to do with the way an environment <i>looks</i> than how effectively it <i>functions</i>.”
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia
“We’re searching for the answers so we can destroy them and dream up better questions.”
Wishcraft
“…’who you are’ isn’t passive or static or unchanging. It is a vital design, as one philosopher put it, that needs to unfold and express itself through the medium of your whole life.”
