books and quotes

It just occurred to me that I've been remiss about keeping up with this blog.  I've read a lot of quotes lately that I think are quite profound but I don't post them. I'm keeping apace with the tall stack of books that is growing in the corner, yet no reviews appear on the blog. I haven't expressed an opinion in ages.  I wonder. My enthusiasm has gone AWOL and my curiosity wanders down the garden path. Is it old age? I fear the synapses in my brain are getting frayed around the edges and no longer fire off snappily like in days of yore.

While I talk myself out of this fog let me leave you with these tidbits:

Game Change: We all got odds and ends of this book before it even hit the bookstores. It details the campaigns, personal scandals, and political mistakes made by the major contenders for the presidency  during the 2008 presidential campaign. John Heileman and Mark Helprin put together an informative and entertaining account of one of the most interesting campaigns in history.

"Do something instead of killing time, because time is killing you." ----Paulo Coelho

Chocolate Days Popsicle Weeks: I read this book in 1970 when it was first published. I liked it then and reread it  recently and gained as much insight this time around as at the first. Edward Hannibal tells the story of a young couple finding success in New York City during the 60's and all the trappings that go with it. The author paints the life like portrait of a marriage that struggles and succeeds to flourish amidst the turbulence of the age.

"You can't leave footprints in the sands of time if you're sitting on your butt--and who wants to leave butt prints in the sands of time?" ----Bob Moawad

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger:   I read The Catcher in the Rye in 1966 while I was in the Army. I've read it twice since then. I'm just now getting around to reading Franny and Zooey. it's actually two interrelated short stories. Franny and Zooey are sister and brother and very bright lights in a world of dim bulbs. Franny undergoes a nervous break down while trying to cope with the world by "unceasing prayer" and Zooey attempts to talk her back to safe metaphysical ground using his own understanding of philosophy and religion.

Life....punishes those who try to compartmentalize it.  Thus if, for any reason whatsoever, moral standards are conspicuously and unprecedentely breached in one area of society, such as the political, it will follow as the night the day that those standards will start collapsing all down the line--in sports, entertainment, education, the armed forces, business, and government.------Margaret Halsey