UNSINKABLE: MY UNTOLD STORY
Author: Silken Laumann
Yes, I am reading my own book. Unsinkable, my untold story, which is a book of the trials and tribulations, the joys and insights, of my life thus far. There are tough parts about my family life, especially my mom who loved us, but didn’t have the tools to parent us. The rages, the smashing plates, the hyper vigilance I developed around her, is painful to reread. In balance of this is my absolute knowing that she loved us and did her best; she has her own demons, and her own very difficult story. She also gave me much of my creativity, love for life, and unconventional thinking. Reading it tonight, I ponder how I am going to speak to this book because there are so many themes. The Olympics and the mind set needed to be the best in the world, falling in and out of love, the love and resilience of family, divorce, anorexia, raising children, one of whom has profound autism. As I read I recognize that this is what a fully lived life is, beautiful moments, crushing hardships, moments of doubt and despair and unstoppable joy.
So on my reading list this month is my own book, Unsinkable. One thing about reading your own book again that is not so fun—instantly noticing tiny mistakes you hadn’t noticed before in the dozen edits that were done of the book!
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA
Author – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
My favorite author in the world Gabriel Garcia Marquez. If you haven’t read him, you must. Author of one of the most celebrated books of our time One Hundred Years of Solitude.
I am reading Love in the Time of Cholera for the third time. The first lines stop my breath. “it was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.” In a single sentence I am transported, not quite grasping the words, but grasping the feelings. This is how it is with Marquez, sometimes I am not sure what he is referring to, but I get the feeling of what he means. Maybe this is just as important. Marquez takes you through a love story that spans fifty years, begins in the backwaters of Colombia, and takes place over a hundred years ago. As always, Marquez creates his own fantastical reality that soon seems more real than the reality you meet when you finally tear yourself away from the page.
THE LOST MASSEY LECTURES
Recovered Classics from Five Great Thinkers
Since 1961 The Massey Lectures have hosted some of the greatest thinkers of our generation. The lost lectures have been out of print for ages, and to these lectures which featured Martin Luther King , John Kenneth Galbraith and others, is to go back to a time of a war in Vietnam, and a time of social unrest in America. So many of the ideas and words from these great thinkers are timeless as they speak about the danger of allowing oneself to feel powerless, that the conditions of life are beyond influence and that social justice will just happen. When Martin Luther King says “we’ve got to sit down together at the table of brotherhood,” he could be talking about any number of countries today, he could be talking about what is happening in our own cities here in Canada, where too often we are separated by race and class. A wonderful read that can be read one lecture at a time, or even one thought at a time. At one point I thought I was reading a profoundly insightful self help book when I read, “ I've seen too much hate to want to the myself, and I've seen hate on the faces of too many sheriffs, too many white citizens councils, and too many Klansmen of the South to want to hate myself; and every time I see it, I say to myself, that is too great a burden to bear.”