Great Expecations

I've read this book twice. Once when I was a little girl and all I remembered was the pretty Estella. Now I read the book again to remember what was the story of this pretty girl and I can see that there's much more to remeber.

“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.” 

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.” 

“In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.” 

“There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth.” 

“So throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.” 

“Spring is the time of year when it is summer in the sun and winter in the shade.” 

“I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.” 

“I am what you designed me to be.I am your blade. You cannot now complain if you also feel the hurt” 

“Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies.” 

The Wisdom of the Crowds

The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, published in 2004, is a book written by James Surowiecki about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group. The book presents numerous case studies and anecdotes to illustrate its argument, and touches on several fields, primarily economics and psychology.

Types of crowd wisdom

Surowiecki breaks down the advantages he sees in disorganized decisions into three main types, which he classifies as

• Cognition

Thinking and information Processing

Market judgment, which he argues can be much faster, more reliable, and less subject to political forces than the deliberations of experts or expert committees.

• Coordination

Coordination of behavior includes optimizing the utilization of a popular bar and not colliding in moving traffic flows. The book is replete with examples from experimental economics, but this section relies more on naturally occurring experiments such as pedestrians optimizing the pavement flow or the extent of crowding in popular restaurants. He examines how common understanding within a culture allows remarkably accurate judgments about specific reactions of other members of the culture.

• Cooperation

How groups of people can form networks of trust without a central system controlling their behavior or directly enforcing their compliance. This section is especially pro free market.

Not all crowds (groups) are wise. Consider, for example, mobs or crazed investors in a stock market bubble. According to Surowiecki, these key criteria separate wise crowds from irrational ones:

Criteria	Description
Diversity of opinion	Each person should have private information even if it's just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts.
Independence	People's opinions aren't determined by the opinions of those around them.
Decentralization	People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge.
Aggregation	Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision.

Based on Surowiecki’s book, Oinas-Kukkonen captures the wisdom of crowds approach with the following eight conjectures:

1. It is possible to describe how people in a group think as a whole.
2. In some cases, groups are remarkably intelligent and are often smarter than the smartest people in them.
3. The three conditions for a group to be intelligent are diversity, independence, and decentralization.
4. The best decisions are a product of disagreement and contest.
5. Too much communication can make the group as a whole less intelligent.
6. Information aggregation functionality is needed.
7. The right information needs to be delivered to the right people in the right place, at the right time, and in the right way.
8. There is no need to chase the expert.

Failures of crowd intelligence

Surowiecki studies situations (such as rational bubbles) in which the crowd produces very bad judgment, and argues that in these types of situations their cognition or cooperation failed because (in one way or another) the members of the crowd were too conscious of the opinions of others and began to emulate each other and conform rather than think differently. Although he gives experimental details of crowds collectively swayed by a persuasive speaker, he says that the main reason that groups of people intellectually conform is that the system for making decisions has a systematic flaw.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds

"The Thorn Birds"

I like this book and I read all of the 550 pages before I know it. It's an interesting story about the passions everyone has, those passions that we know they will kill us. Choices we make and pay for them for a lifetime, but we're never sorry about it, because it was our only way.

Here are some memorable quotes:

- There's a story... a legend, about a bird that sings just once in its life. From the moment it leaves its nest, it searches for a thorn tree... and never rests until it's found one. And then it sings... more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. And singing, it impales itself on the longest, sharpest thorn. But, as it dies, it rises above its own agony, to outsing the lark and the nightingale. The thorn bird pays its life for just one song, but the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles.
-What does it mean, Father?
- That the best... is bought only at the cost of great pain.

-What kind of man is this Luke O'Neill, who roams about and doesn't even make a home for Meggie?
- The ambitious kind.

Our God has given us freewill. And with that freewill comes the burden of choice. It is time, far past time that you took up that burden, because until you do, you cannot go on.

And there's nothing I can do to change it. Do you know how terrifying it is, that power you have over me?

Don't do to Meggie what you did to Mary Carson. Don't destroy her with love!

"Committed"

After the book and the movie "Eat Pray Love", I like the book much better, I decided to read the next Elizabeth Gilbert' book.
I have no idea what marriage and divorce are, so don't feel what she says, but I think I understand most of it.
How do I feel about marriage? Well... when I was a young schoolgirl I was afraid of the idea that some day I would have to find a job and work whole day long every day from Monday to Friday. In the same time I felt enchanted by the stylish business ladies walking around on their high heels like they rule the world with their skills. I hoped to become one of them some day. I guess in my mind marriage is something like that... I'm afraid to take responsibilities, but I crave for happiness.

Here are some quotes from the book:

"I'd learned enough from life's experience to understand that destiny's interventions can sometimes be read as invitation for us to address and even surmount our biggest fears."

"It had always been my experience in the past that the more I learned about something, the less it frightened me. Some fears can be vanquished, Rumpelstitltskin-like, only by uncovering their hidden, secret names."

"The problem, simply put, is that we cannot choose everything simultaneously. So we live in danger of becoming paralyzed by indecision, terrified that every choice might be the wrong choice."

"Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of you life's expectation for happiness in the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work."

"The only thing marriage has ever done, historically and definitionally speaking, is to change. Marriage in the Western world changes with every century, adjusting itself constantly around new social standards and new notions of fairness. The "Silly Putty-like" malleability of the institution, in fact, is the only reason we still have the thing at all. Marriage survives, in other words, precisely because it evolves."

"As a friend's grandfather once put it, 'Sometimes life is too hard to be alone, and sometimes life is too good to be alone.'"

"Maybe the only difference between first marriage and second marriage is that the second time at least you know you are gambling."

"Infatuation is not quite the same thing as love; it's more like love's shady second cousin who's always borrowing money and can't hold down a job."

"I mean, once the initial madness of desire has passed and we are faced with each other as dimwitted mortal fools, how is it that any of us find the ability to love and forgive each other at all, much less enduringly?"

"There is hardly a more gracious gift that we can offer somebody than to accept them fully, to love them almost despite themselves."

"Money brings its own problems, of course - but money also brings options. Money can buy child care, a separate bathroom, a vacation, the freedom from arguments over bills - all sorts of things that help stabilize a marriage."

"Marriage is not prayer. That's why you have to do it in front of others. It's a paradox, but marriage actually reconciles a lot of paradoxes: freedom with commitment, strength with subordination, wisdom with utter nincompoopery, etc. And... you have to hold your wedding guests to their end of the deal. They have to help you with your marriage; they have to support you if you falter."

What "Eat Pray Love" Says

I've read the book and I liked it a lot. This author writes in a very easy and interesting way. Yesterday I saw the movie. Honestly I prefer the book as it is not an action story, but I enjoyed it. The part about Rome brought me back amazing memories. I was about to scream "I wanna be back there".
Here are some quotes from the book I like:

“Some time after I’d left my husband, I was at a party and a guy I barely knew said to me, ‘You know you seem like a completely different person, now that you’re with this new boyfriend. You used to look like your husband, but now you look like David [her new boyfriend]. You even dress like him and talk like him. You know how some people look like their dogs? I think maybe you always look like your men."

“The former Catholic nun who oughtta know about guilt, after all wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Guilt’s just your ego’s way of tricking you into thinking that you’re making moral progress.’”

"People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave. A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master..."

"I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism."

"Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it."

"This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something. "

"When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings."

"Tis' better to live your own life imperfectly than to imitate someone else's perfectly."

"To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life."

"Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions."

"There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under the jurisdiction. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I can read and eat and study. I can choose how I'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life-whether I will see them as curses or opportunities. I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts."

"Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it's what you want before you commit."

"In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place."

"We search for happiness everywhere, but we are like Tolstoy's fabled beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, under him the whole time. Your treasure--your perfection--is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the buy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart."

"The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving."

"I am a better person when I have less on my plate."

"You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control."

"I crossed the street to walk in the sunshine."

"To find the balance you want, this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have 4 legs instead of 2. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God."

"Do not apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots."

"There's no trouble in this world so serious that it can't be cured with a hot bath, a glass of whiskey, and the Book of Common Prayer."

Now I'm reading "Committed" and I'll see how much more I can learn from this author. I'm grateful to the people who recommended those books to me.

Book - Instrctions on How to Save the World

I was tired of reading books for the old times, I really needed something contemporary, a book to impose the problems we all face every day in our lives! I think this book covered my expectation- it's very realistic view of the society today.
It's about lives of different people who have to deal with their problems and anguish. Very popular problems are imposed like alienation, indifference, solitude, lack of love and happiness. And as the last sentence in the book says "It's all because humans can be separated into two group- ones who are capable of love and others who are not".

The Great Gatsby

I don't really know what exactly to say about this book, that's why I'll let it speak for itself. All I'll say is that I like it very much:

Quotes from the book:

• "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one...just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

• "In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year... Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it."

• "Civilization's going to pieces. I've gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things... The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be--will be utterly submerged... It's up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things."

• "All right... I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool--that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."

• "a single green light, minute and faraway, that might have been the end of a dock."

• "He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He's so dumb he doesn't know he's alive."

• "I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited--they went there."

• "I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library."

• "It takes two to make an accident."

• "Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known."

• "If it wasn't for the mist we could see your home across the bay... You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock."

• "One thing's sure and nothing's surer/ The rich get richer and the poor get - children./ In the meantime,/ In between time--"

• "There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams--not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion."

• "He wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was."

• "Can't repeat the past?... Why of course you can!"

• "the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age..."

• "It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy--it increased her value in his eyes."

• "God knows what you've been doing, everything you've been doing. You may fool me, but you can't fool God!"

• "He must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream."

• "He had reached an age where death no longer has the quality of ghastly surprise, and when he looked around him now for the first time and saw the height and splendor of the hall... his grief began to be mixed with an awed pride."

• "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money of their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."

• "And as I sat there, brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out Daisy's light at the end of his dock. He had come such a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close he could hardly fail to grasp it. But what he did not know was that it was already behind him, somewhere in the vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night."

• "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning-- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Tender is the Night

Another book I read soon. It was an interesting story of two who couldn't keep their happiness.

The protagonists lost his values and forgot to follow his dreams and he lost all he had. Once a preson stops chasing his dreams, he becomes a lost one.

Dick and Nicole Diver are a very glamorous couple who take a villa in the South of France and surround themselves with a circle of friends, mainly Americans. Also staying at the resort is Rosemary Hoyt, a young actress, with her mother. Rosemary gets sucked into the circle of the Divers, and falls in love with Dick and also becomes adopted as a close friend by Nicole. Dick first toys with the idea of an affair with Rosemary at this point, which he finally acts upon years later.

However, Rosemary senses something is wrong with the couple, which is brought to light when one of the guests at a party reports having seen something strange in the bathroom. Tommy Barban, another guest, comes loyally to the defense of the Divers. The action involves various other friends, including the Norths, where a frequent occurrence is the drunken behavior of Abe North. The story becomes complicated when Jules Peterson,a black man is murdered and ends up in Rosemary's bed, in a situation which could destroy Roesmary's career. Dick moves the blood soaked body to cover up any implied relationship between Rosemary and Peterson.

Once into the book, the history of the Divers emerges. Dick Diver was a doctor and psychoanalyst and had taken on a complicated case of neuroses. This was Nicole, whose complicated, incestuous relationship with her father is suggested as the cause of breakdown. As she becomes infatuated with Dick, Dick is almost driven to marry her as part of the cure. But strong objections are raised, as Nicole is an heiress and her sister thinks Dick is marrying her for her money. However they do marry, and Nicole’s money pays for Dick's partnership in a Swiss clinic and for their extravagant lifestyle. However Dick gradually develops a drinking problem. He gets into fights and trouble with the police in various incidents and is bought out of the clinic by his partner. The opening episode almost marks the cross over point whereby Dick becomes the weaker partner, progressively failing in what he attempts while Nicole becomes stronger. Dick's behaviour becomes embarrassing as he mishandles situations with the children and friends. Eventually Nicole has an affair with Tommy Barban, and divorces Dick to marry Barban. Nicole survives, while Dick drifts into ever diminishing circumstances. The underlying theme is then how one person has become strong by destroying another—a point emphasized cynically by Nicole's sister, who having seen Dick originally as the parasite, finally remarks that "That was what he was educated for."

Source: Wikipedia

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

This book is so sad that after I read it I said "I don't like it". But after some time of thinking I realized that there are many lessons a person can take of it!

I want to feel things, really feel them,” explains Frank Wheeler in Richard Yates’s 1961 novel Revolutionary Road. This novel is for those who want to “really feel things,” too. Frank and April Wheeler are trapped—in the suburbs, in their marriage, and in an existence that leaves them feeling worse than unhappy. They feel nothing, except the desperate urge to escape the trap.

As a solution to their ailing marriage and the dull society they reluctantly belong to, April proposes that they pack up the kids and move to Paris. That way, Frank can “find himself” while April earns their living, giving them both a second chance at happiness in life. Despite early hesitation that the plan is “a bit unrealistic,” Frank soon agrees. The Paris plan serves as a nice distraction for a while, until reality steps in and complicates the scheme. As with any true tragedy, the Wheelers inevitably prove themselves unequal to the challenges they face, regardless of their romantic intentions to rise above it all.

Besides being able to identify with the characters’ flaws (both Frank and April are somehow equally detestable and sympathetic at the same time), readers, if being honest with themselves, will be able to recognize the doubt and regret that can result from making major life decisions. Frank, who is frustrated with his boring job and angered by April’s insistence that he isn’t a real “man,” finds himself seeking comfort and attention from another woman. This only leads to guilt and a deeper felling of loneliness for Frank.

April, fed up with being a housewife (who never wanted children in the first place), and unsatisfied with her marriage, desperately searches for a way to make a change. Both Frank and April struggle with selfishness, anger, and fluctuating passions, which ultimately complicate their Paris plan and their relationship.

Yates tackles all of the big issues, from financial trouble to mental instability, and he is not afraid to show the thoughts and feelings of his characters, even if it means showing those characters in an unfavorable light. Yates’s characters tell the truth, and so does Yates; the realism of Yates’s writing is jarring and powerful.

Revolutionary Road is a novel that readers are likely to think about long after they have finished reading

Original link to the book review:
http://classic-american-fiction.suite101.com/article.cfm/book_review_of_revolutionary_road

Book Review: Narcissus and Goldmund

A book I found randomly, so I didn't expect much of it. But no matter it's about different time and life is so different that it is now, in this book everyone can find parts of himself in the protagonists.

This book tells the story of two men who are at the complete opposite ends of the spectrum of life. Goldmund is a curious and always searching soul. Narcissus is an intellectual, reserved and accepting man.

With the help of Narcissus, Goldmund learns to accept his suppressed childhood and his personality - of being a wanderer and a lover.

Although Narcissus helps Goldmund gain the understanding of his childhood and the memories of his mother, Goldmund fails to be "productive." He simply wanders in search of her, sinning along the way. He does, at one point, learn to sculpt and draw, yet abandons this as easily as he abandons all of his lovers. Eventually, Goldmund returns to Narcissus. In his death bed, he asks Narcissus the ultimate question: "But how will you die when your time comes, Narcissus, since you have no mother? Without a mother, one cannot love. Without a mother, one cannot die." I believe that in saying this, Goldmund does not literally mean that Narcissus has no mother. Instead, I think he is trying to say that he has no passion. Without passion for something, anything at all, none of us can truly live. Narcissus was a thinker, but he seemed not to have felt anything. Therefore, if he never really lived how can he truly die?

This is an extremely important and relevant theme. Although we do not know whether either Goldmund or Narcissus had the "right" idea about life, we do know that we can learn from both. We also know that passion is within each and every one of us. This novel shows us the importance of following that passion while also having a steady balance in our lives. We can not be like Goldmund and wander aimlessly with no real responsibility or attachment. We also cannot live the life of Narcissus, being completely detached from emotional human contact and our own feelings. In his novel, "Narcissus and Goldmund", Herman Hesse shows us the great significance of following our passions, while also showing us the possible outcomes of an unbalanced lifestyle.

Original Link to the book review:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/981444/book_review_narcissus_and_goldmund.html?singlepage=true&cat=38