The Order of Odd-Fish (James Kennedy)

This book is weird and awesome.

---

Quotes:

A giant cockroach had walked into the room,

Ken Kiang started an ambitious program to ensure that all underprivileged schoolchildren had “postmodern yet easy-to-manage” hairstyles.

A phone call from Ken Kiang had summoned his “Fleet of Fury.” Ken Kiang had engineered the planes himself—sleek, terrifying machines, bristling with spikes and weaponry, the kind of planes that left no doubt about how evil their commander was.

“HERE’S to villainy!” cried Ken Kiang, lifting his glass. “Here’s to wicked work well wrought! Here’s to outrage, injustice! Violence and venom! Marvelous murderers and cutthroat criminals! I embrace you all, brothers! I’m one of you now!”

“It’s a very honorable and pointless tradition,”

“Puttering, Muddling, and Mucking About: An Inquiry into Idleness. Quite well known in the field.”

Actually, the Belgian Prankster hung out at the Country Kitchen in Muscatine, Iowa.

ZZZ, a massive-headed Brazilian physicist.

“‘She is the Ichthala,’

“What you recognize, Jo, are just your little corners of the world. The real world, the total reality of the world, is a thousand times larger than that. What you had thought of as your world—and what people in Eldritch City think of as their world—are just small, disconnected bits of the actual entire world. According to my theory, there are thousands of these regions, all hidden from each other. Most of the world is still unexplored!”

“As an Odd-Fish, it is not my job to be right,” said Sir Oort. “It is my job to be wrong in new and exciting ways.”

Ken Kiang wasn’t a hero in the sense that he would, say, save a child from a fire—the very notion nauseated him—but he was a hero in that he was willing to stake everything on a hopeless gamble.

Fortunately, most people are not exposed to the temptations that destroy souls, and so they muddle through their small lives harmlessly, a little frustrated but more or less content, enjoying the humdrum happiness that is the lot of the common man.

Any idiot can fire a gun and kill someone. It takes real evil to ruin a soul.

“Having an enemy is a delicate art. It demands dedication and a certain style. If you handle it right, it can even be good for you.

“Your words are as empty as your sting, Sleeping Bee!” retorted Zam-Zam. “Your feast shall be of the ashes of defeat, and on those, you shall feast heartily! Your corpse shall be torn to bits by my thousand children, who shall raise each morsel to their mouths, chew your disgraced innards with contemptuous joy, and excrete them with a smirk! I have spoken!”

For Ken Kiang, it was never enough to win. It was the verve, the showmanship, above all the arrogant stunt that mattered—the crucial cherry on top that said, “Not only have I won, but I won with enough leisure to toss in this final, outrageous flourish.”

One of his languages was based on tasting patterns of spices, so that books were read by eating them, page by page;

The Belgian Prankster lounged in a booth, surrounded by fawning psychoanalysts.

Jo stopped. She didn’t know what she was feeling. It wasn’t fear or hatred or even disgust. It was a horrible tingle of joy.

“I’m Aznath, the Silver Kitten of Deceit.”

“Outstanding Schwenkmanship, old boy!” roared Colonel Korsakov, slapping Ken Kiang on the back. “Never knew you had it in you! A top-drawer Schwenkrider, eh? You must tell me your secret!”

Although a disgrace to Eldritch City in general, and the Order of Odd-Fish in particular, it will be noted the butlers all wore irreproachable ascots.”

Many times, Ken Kiang had heard the saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” It would be too tidy to say that for Ken Kiang, the road to heaven was paved with bad intentions. Still, his intentions had always been the worst; yet now he was as close to happiness as he was ever likely to get.

The Geography of Bliss (Eric Weiner)

I liked this. It could have easily devolved into a series of national clichés (the British are glum, the Swiss are precise like their watches, etc). But Eric Weiner is a much better writer than that, he has extensive international pedigree, and genuinely cares about the people he meets in these different places. I recommend this one.

---

Quotes:

I’ve always believed that happiness is just around the corner. The trick is finding the right corner.

I had no marketable skills, a stunted sense of morality, and a gloomy disposition. I decided to become a journalist.

We humans are creatures of the last five minutes. In one study, people who found a dime on the pavement a few minutes before being queried on the happiness question reported higher levels of satisfaction with their overall lives than those who did not find a dime.

“When Americans say it was great, I know it was good. When they say it was good, I know it was okay. When they say it was okay, I know it was bad.”

Believe it or not, most people in the world say they are happy. Virtually every country in the world scores somewhere between five and eight on a ten-point scale.

Worst of all was Freud. While not technically a brooding philosopher, Freud did much to shape our views on happiness. He once said: “The intention that Man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation.” That is a remarkable statement, especially coming from a man whose ideas forged the foundation of our mental-health system.

Rusty handled a bong the way Yo-Yo Ma handles a cello.

A sense of calm sneaks up on me, a feeling so unusual that, at first, I am startled by it. I don’t recognize it. But there’s no denying its presence. I am at peace.

A lot of Switzerland works on the honor system, like the little rest huts that dot the Alps. There’s food inside. You eat the food and leave some money behind.

Or consider this statement: “In general, people can be trusted.” Studies have found that people who agree with this are happier than those who do not.

One study found that, of all the factors that affect the crime rate for a given area, the one that made the biggest difference was not the number of police patrols or anything like that but, rather, how many people you know within a fifteen-minute walk of your house.

Choice translates into happiness only when choice is about something that matters.

Karma pauses one of his pauses and then answers with a suggestion, a prescription. “You need to think about death for five minutes every day. It will cure you, sanitize you.”

Compromise is a skill, and like all skills it atrophies from lack of use.

All of the moments in my life, everyone I have met, every trip I have taken, every success I have enjoyed, every blunder I have made, every loss I have endured has been just right. I’m not saying they were all good or that they happened for a reason—I don’t buy that brand of pap fatalism—but they have been right. They have been . . . okay. As far as revelations go, it’s pretty lame, I know. Okay is not bliss, or even happiness. Okay is not the basis for a new religion or self-help movement. Okay won’t get me on Oprah. But okay is a start, and for that I am grateful.

When Ambition is your God, the office is your temple, the employee handbook your holy book. The sacred drink, coffee, is imbibed five times a day. When you worship Ambition, there is no Sabbath, no day of rest. Every day, you rise early and kneel before the God Ambition, facing in the direction of your PC. You pray alone, always alone, even though others may be present. Ambition is a vengeful God. He will smite those who fail to worship faithfully, but that is nothing compared to what He has in store for the faithful. They suffer the worst fate of all. For it is only when they are old and tired, entombed in the corner office, that the realization hits like a Biblical thunderclap. The God Ambition is a false God and always has been.

France’s most famous epicure, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, believed that food is the mirror to our souls: “Tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you what you are.”

I don’t believe in such miracles, but others do, and my life is richer as a result.

happiness is a choice. Not an easy choice, not always a desirable one, but a choice nonetheless.

As a rule of thumb, the more fucked-up a country, the more said country insists on crisp bills.

And what are the cultural ingredients needed for democracy to take root? Trust and tolerance. Not only trust of those inside your group—family, for instance—but external trust. Trust of strangers. Trust of your opponents, your enemies, even.

The Soviets denied God’s existence yet tried to improvize a spirituality.

“Not my problem” is not a philosophy. It’s a mental illness.

In Britain, finding out someone’s name isn’t pro forma. It’s an accomplishment.

dogs and gardens, the two pillars of English happiness. Especially dogs.

Maybe this is how enlightenment happens. Not with a thunderclap or a bolt of lightning but as a steady drip, drip, drip until one day you realize your bucket is full.

There it is again: that Hindu belief that all of life is maya, illusion. Once we see life as a game, no more consequential than a game of chess, then the world seems a lot lighter, a lot happier.

Paradise is a moving target.

only a fool or a philosopher would make sweeping generalizations about the nature of happiness. I am no philosopher, so here goes: Money matters, but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.

I wonder if happiness is really the highest good, as Aristotle believed. Maybe Guru-ji, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, is right. Maybe love is more important than happiness. Certainly, there are times when happiness seems beside the point. Ask a single, working mother if she is happy, and she’s likely to reply, “You’re not asking the right question.”

Karma Ura, the Bhutanese scholar and cancer survivor. “There is no such thing as personal happiness,” he told me. “Happiness is one hundred percent relational.”

Blue Shoes and Happiness (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency) (Alexander Mccall Smith)

Between sips of tea and meditations on morality, fleeting happiness is achieved via a pair of blue shoes.

---

Quotes:

It was better, she thought, to be a little bit bad in this life, and not too perfect.

“Keep your mouth shut,” he had written in The Principles of Private Detection. “Keep your mouth shut at all times, but at the same time encourage others to do precisely the opposite.”

Most problems could be diminished by the drinking of tea and the thinking through of things that could be done while tea was being drunk. And even if that did not solve problems, at least it could put them off for a little while, which we sometimes needed to do, we really did.

“Anybody can lose,” cautioned Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “You need to remember that every time you win.” He thought of adding, and anybody can cry, even a man, but knew that this would be wasted on the apprentices.

I am a girl from Bobonong, she said to herself. I am a girl from Bobonong, with glasses. There was a man who was going to marry me, a kind man, but I frightened him away through my foolish talk. Now I am alone again. That is the story of my life; that is the story of Grace Makutsi.

Of course one could judge others, and Mma Ramotswe used the standards of the old Botswana morality to make these judgements. But there was nothing in the old Botswana morality which said that one could not forgive those who were weak; indeed, there was much in the old Botswana morality that was very specifically about forgiveness. One should not hold a grudge against another, it said, because to harbour grudges was to disturb the social peace, the bond between people.

And of course it was always difficult for Mma Ramotswe not to feel sympathy for another, however objectionable his conduct might be, however flawed his character, simply because she understood, at the most intuitive, profound level what it was to be a human being, which is not easy. Everybody, she felt, could do evil, so easily; could be weak, so easily; could be selfish, so easily.

The problem was that she had not been to the Botswana Secretarial College, where the motto, proudly displayed above the front entrance to the college, was Be Accurate. Unfortunately, there was a spelling mistake, and the motto read Be Acurate. Mma Makutsi had spotted this and had pointed it out to the college, but nothing had been done about it so far.

If I ever see God, she thought, I am sure that he will not be thin.

Evil, she thought. That is what I see. Evil. She had seen it only once or twice in her life, and on each occasion she had known it. Most human failings were no more than that—failings—but evil went beyond that.

Mma Ramotswe sat back in her chair. She put the pencil down. And she thought, How might I think if I were in this woman’s shoes? How do you think if you are so heartless as to blackmail those who are frightened and guilty? And the answer that came back to her was this: hate. Somewhere some wrong had been done, a wrong connected with who she was perhaps, a wrong which turned her to despair and to hate. And hate had made it possible for her to do all this.

The Book of Craw: A Hobo's Testament (Companion Volume to "The Dirty Parts of the Bible") (Sam Torode)

Not much to say about this one. I got it from the author for free, which was nice. It's a collection of poems (some original) that might have inspired one of the characters of the book The Dirty Parts of the Bible.

---

In the Company of Cheerful Ladies (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency) (Alexander Mccall Smith)

---

Quotes:

But after a few minutes, as they watched Charlie walking quickly away in the direction of the town, they realised that something serious and potentially irremediable had happened. They saw before them the ruins of a career; the wrecking of a life.

Now he has decided that he can give everything up just because his rich lady is running after him in her Mercedes-Benz. Oh dear! Those cars have a lot to answer for.”

We are all human, all creatures of water and salt, all human.

People did not spend enough time sitting and talking, she thought, and it was important that sitting and talking time be preserved.

She had been too young then to stand up to him, and now, when she could do so, when she had the facts of her success with which to confront him, she felt only the same ancient fear, the fear which had made women through the ages cower before such men.

There was a way of walking in Johannesburg, a way of holding oneself, that was different from the way in which people did these things in Botswana. Johannesburg was a city of swagger, and that was something which people in Botswana would never do.

One might have all the things which the modern world offered, but what was the use of these if they destroyed all that which gave you strength and courage and pride in yourself and your country?

Mma Ramotswe was horrified when she read of people being described in the newspapers as consumers. That was a horrible, horrible word, which sounded rather too like cucumber, a vegetable for which she had little time. People were not just greedy consumers, grabbing everything that came their way, nor were they cucumbers for that matter; they were Batswana, they were people!

that is what redeems us, that is what makes our pain and sorrow bearable—this giving of love to others, this sharing of the heart.

The Song of Songs -- A New Version (Sam Torode)

Sam Torode's verion of the Song of Songs, which was the inspiration for his book The Dirty Parts of the Bible is not a scholarly version, whatever that means, but it's pleasant to read and a document of the author's engagement with the ancient poem.

---

Quotes:

Love is an eternal fire— one spark will set you ablaze. Oceans can’t extinguish it, rivers can’t wash it away. If a man tried to buy love— even with all of his family’s wealth— he would be scorned, ridiculed.

The Full Cupboard of Life (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency) (Alexander McCall Smith)

Number 5 in the series, continues the development of the remarkable characters and their setting. By now I'm firmly addicted to this series, and i will miss it when i finish.

---

Quotes:

Why, she asked herself, why keep a wound open when forgiveness can close it?

He was a good man, which, when all is said and done, is the finest thing that you can say about any man. He was a good man.

“They will ruin cars left, right, and centre,” he said. “That is what will happen to them. There will be great sadness among the cars of Botswana.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni stood back respectfully. The revealing of an engine of this nature—an engine which was older than the Republic of Botswana itself—was a special moment, and he did not want to show unseemly curiosity as the beautiful piece of engineering was exposed to view.

“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We all know that it is women who take the decisions, but we have to let men think that the decisions are theirs. It is an act of kindness on the part of women.”

She approached him carefully, as one always should when coming across somebody reading the Bible,

But there was a great deal that people did not understand and would only learn through bitter experience. In her view, one of these things was the truth of the old African saying that it takes an entire village to raise a child. Of course it does; of course it does. Everybody in a village had a role to play in bringing up a child—and cherishing it—and in return that child would in due course feel responsible for everybody in that village. That is what makes life in society possible. We must love one another and help one another in our daily lives.

“Nkosi Sikeleli Afrika,” God Bless Africa, give her life, watch over her children.

The Way of a Pilgrim; The Pilgrim Continues His Way (Russian)

It's my second reading of this book. I like it, not only for the strange (to my tradition) Orthodox prayer tradition, but by the captivating way it's exposed through Russian peasant stories.

---

Quotes:

By the grace of God I am a Christian, by my actions a great sinner, and by calling a homeless wanderer of the humblest birth who roams from place to place. My worldly goods are a knapsack with some dried bread in it on my back, and in my breast pocket a Bible. And that is all.

He was silent for a while and looked at me closely. Then he said, “Ceaseless interior prayer is a continual yearning of the human spirit towards God. To succeed in this consoling exercise, we must pray more often to God to teach us to pray without ceasing. Pray more, and pray more fervently. It is prayer itself which will reveal to you how it can be achieved unceasingly; but it will take some time.” So saying, he had food brought to me, gave me money for my journey and let me go. He did not explain the matter.

“The continuous interior Prayer of Jesus is a constant uninterrupted calling upon the divine Name of Jesus with the lips, in the spirit, in the heart while forming a mental picture of his constant presence and imploring his grace during every occupation, at all times, in all places, even during sleep. The appeal is couched in these terms, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.’

“Now I give you my permission to say your Prayer as often as you wish and as often as you can. Try to devote every moment you are awake to the Prayer, call on the Name of Jesus Christ without counting the number of times, and submit yourself humbly to the will of God, looking to him for help. I am sure

I gave up saying the Prayer with my lips. I simply listened carefully to what my heart was saying.

“If you do not understand the Word of God, the devils understand what you are reading and tremble,”

“The holy book is full of profound wisdom,” he was saying. “It is a secret treasury of the meaning of the hidden judgments of God. It is not everywhere and to everyone that it is accessible, but it does give to each such guidance as they need, to the wise, wise guidance, to the simple-minded, simple guidance.

Lord! what mysterious things humans are!

“Everyone has their own gift from God,” I answered. “There have been many preachers, Father, but there have also been many hermits.

a secret prayer lies hidden within the human heart. The individuals themselves do not know it, yet working mysteriously within their souls it urges them to prayer according to each one’s knowledge and power.

The Apostle says, “Pray without ceasing.” That is, he teaches us to have the remembrance of God in all times and places and circumstances. If you are making something you must call to mind the Creator of all things, if you see the light, remember the Giver of it, if you see the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, wonder and praise the Maker of them. If you put on your clothes, recall whose gift they are and thank the one who provides for your life. In short, let every action be a cause of your remembering and praising God, and lo! you will be praying without ceasing and therein your soul will always rejoice.’

“The trouble is that we live far from ourselves and have but little wish to get any nearer to ourselves. Indeed we are running away all the time to avoid coming face to face with our real selves and we barter the truth for trifles.

“The one who has attained to true prayer and love has no sense of the differences between things: they do not distinguish the righteous person from the sinner but love them all equally and judge nobody, as God causes the sun to shine and the rains to fall on the just and the unjust.”

“You have no right, friend,” said the starets, “to abuse and curse the Jews like this. God made them just as God made us. You should be sorry for them and pray for them not curse them. Believe me, the disgust you feel for them comes from the fact that you are not grounded in the love of God and have no interior prayer as a security and, therefore, no inward peace.

“Why, of course I know that Prayer. I used to say it sometimes to keep my courage up when I was going to do a robbery.”

Everything seems particularly desirable to us from a distance. But we all find out by experience that every place, though it may have its advantages, has its drawbacks too.

Therefore, when one happens to remember one's neighbor, or at the time appointed for doing so, it is well to bring a mental view of the neighbor into the Presence of God, and to offer a prayer in the following form: “Most merciful God, Thy will be done, which will have all persons to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth, save and help thy servant N. Take this desire of mine as a cry of love which thou has commanded.”

The Kalahari Typing School for Men: A No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Novel (4) (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency) (Alexander McCall Smith)

I love this series.

---

Quotes:

Sins, thought Mma Ramotswe, are darker and more powerful when contemplated within confining walls. Out in the open, under such a sky as this, misdeeds were reduced to their natural proportions—small, mean things that could be faced quite openly, sorted, and folded away.

He felt weary. Life was a battle against wear; the wear of machinery and the wear of the soul. Oil. Grease. Wear.

He closed the door behind him, taking one last look at the pump. It was an old friend, in a way. No modern pump would look like that, with its wheel and its beautiful heavy casing; no modern pump would make a noise like the trumpeting of an elephant. This pump had come from far away and could be given back to the British now. Here is your pump, which you left in Africa. It is finished now.

“You don’t have to read a book to understand how the world works,” Mma Potokwani continued. “You just have to keep your eyes open.”

No, this was not a lie; it was an interpretation.

“That is somebody who comes to stay with us from time to time,” said Mrs. Moffat. “He writes books.”

Morality for Beautiful Girls: A No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Novel (3) (Morality for Beautiful Girls (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency) (Alexander Mccall Smith)

By now, I'm hopelessly addicted to this series!

---

Quotes:

It was a good thing to be an African. There were terrible things that happened in Africa, things that brought shame and despair when one thought about them, but that was not all there was in Africa. However great the suffering of the people of Africa, however harrowing the cruelty and chaos brought about by soldiers—small boys with guns, really—there was still so much in Africa from which one could take real pride. There was the kindness, for example, and the ability to smile, and the art and the music.

In her experience, when people began to behave out of character it was a sign that something was very wrong.

NOT EVERYBODY had a maid, of course, but if you were in a well-paid job and had a house of the size which Mma Ramotswe did, then not to employ a maid—or indeed not to support several domestic servants—would have been seen as selfishness.

That understanding, thought Mma Ramotswe, was the beginning of all morality. If you knew how a person was feeling, if you could imagine yourself in her position, then surely it would be impossible to inflict further pain. Inflicting pain in such circumstances would be like hurting oneself.

I am lucky, thought Mma Ramotswe. I am lucky that I can make somebody so happy just by saying something.

There were eight main tribes in Botswana—and some smaller ones—and although most younger people did not think these things should be too important, for the older generation they counted a great deal.

You can cultivate your mind, or you can cultivate your hairstyle. But you cannot do both.

Motlamedi was, quite simply, a bad girl. This description was very specific; it had nothing to do with bad women or bad ladies—they were quite different categories. Bad women were prostitutes; bad ladies were manipulative older ladies, usually married to older men, who interfered in the affairs of others for their own selfish ends. The expression bad girl, by contrast, referred to somebody who was usually rather younger (certainly under thirty) and whose interest was in having a good time.

“Do not be ashamed to cry, Rra,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is the way that things begin to get better. It is the first step.”