Book #75 - The Sound of Gravel

The Sound of Gravel by Ruth Wariner

Book #74 - The Witness Wore Red

The Witness Wore Red by Rebecca Musser

Book #73 - The Handmaid's Tale

"Don't let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves."

"The more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and 
total.  We were waiting, always, for the incarnation. That word, made flesh."

The Handmaid's Tale

Book #72 - Celia, A Slave

Celia, A Slave by Melton A. McLaurin

Book #71 - Educated

Educated by Tara Westover

On the one hand I am annoyed because she does not OWN her education - it is her parents'
fault, her professor's fault - she is not learning, not understanding.
On the other hand I am amazed that she is able to overcome such abuse to be
able to learn at all.

"I could only imagine the school as I was experiencing it now, as a kind of museum,
a relic from someone else's life." (P. 276)

"I had a thousand dollars in my bank account.  It felt strange just to think that, let alone say it.  A thousand dollars.  Extra.  That I did not immediately need.  It took weeks for me to come to terms with this fact, but as I did, I began to experience the most powerful advantage of money: the ability to think of things besides money." (P. 207)

Book #70 - The Birth of God

The Birth of God by Jean Bottero

"It is enough to know ...that, as His name indicates, 'He exists'...  One must honor Him, not only with a portion of one's time, but in the knowledge that He insists on being served above all else by respect for other people, for their lives, for their honor and their goods, as though the practice of justice and fraternity...were indeed what He demanded above all!" (p.26)



"...at the moment when the Creator has accomplished his work, 'all'
the content of this work 'was good', 'every thing' was 'a good thing'
...and finally in verse 31, where 'all was very good!'.  But in the
ancient Semitic languages, unlike our own, the term 'knowledge' never
designates a purely objective operation of the mind; the heart is
always involved, and knowledge always implies both participation
in its object and power over it. ...'knowing evil' is,... becoming
conscious of vicious instincts that imerge in him [man]and, under
their influence, being inclined to do evil....not only the ability
to do evil but having a weakness for misconduct and finding oneself
leaning toward it." ( page 168)


"Hence, a myth, at least at the moment of its birth, is not a gratuitious
story, pure fantasy meant just for the sake of pleaseure or art or
entertainment: it is the response to a question, the solution to a problem;
it is always an explanation - in short, it depends upon 'philosophy', if that
is understood as the proceedings our mind follows...when it 'seeks to know'
and to unravel the great interrogations that rise up in us before the world
and ourselves.

(to the extent that in order to ask and answer, we do not place ourselves
in the orbit of 'science')" (page 172)