This week, as I do most weeks, I've read four books. The theme of this week might be thought of as triumph of the human spirit. All the tomes are works of non-fiction, which is my personal preference.
Today, I completed Goldie Hawn's enlightening spiritual memoir, A Lotus Grows in the Mud. Hawn proves to be an adept writer in addition to possessing skills as a dancer, actress, poet, and producer. The well-traveled Hawn takes readers on an emotional journey serving up accounts from her life growing up in Maryland, her early acting days in Hollywood, and her search for peace in India, Peru, and Tibet. Hawn comes across as equal parts guru, parent, and mentor, encouraging us all to stop and smell the flowers, forgive, and seek enlightenment.
Yesterday I read Carole Radziwill's What Remains, her heart-breaking account of losing her husband, Anthony Radziwill, to cancer just weeks after losing her best friend Carolyn Bessett Kennedy, and Carolyn's husband and Radziwill's husband's first cousin, John F. Kennedy, Jr. in a plane crash. Radziwill's grief is palpable. Her steely resolve to overcome these tragedies is just as evident. The way she casually tosses off names of incredibly famous friends and relatives, such as Lee Radziwill and Jackie Onassis, seems a bit pretentious at first, but one quickly realizes that to her these icons are exactly that - family and friends.
On Tuesday night, I finished Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, for the second time. I have read 3 of Gladwell's books, The Tipping Point, David and Goliath and Blink. Gladwell has a unique style which I find highly appealing. Like a deft comedian he often loops the content back around to an earlier point in his presentation, a tactic I quite enjoy. In Blink, Gladwell explores those insights that seem to come to us out of nowhere, but which may actually be the end result of hours or study, reflection or both. Gladwell is not so much a writer as a tour guide pointing out the highlights to his readers and leading them to discover his carefully crafted conclusions.
Over the weekend, I had read, and very much enjoyed, The Lost German Slave Girl by Australian author, John Bailey. Bailey's account of a trial to determine the true identity of a slave girl claiming to be a German immigrant opened my eyes even further to the horrors of slavery, in particular his descriptions of slave laws designed to keep children of slaves in bondage even after their parents had been freed. Bailey's work is detailed and totally compelling. It was like reading a true account of To Kill a Mockingbird. I was so enamored with the book that I tried to find out how one might recommend a book be made into a movie and was pleased to discover that the story had already been optioned for one.
Of great interest to me is the idea that "when the pupil is ready, the teacher appears" and so it would seem that currently I am on a spiritual quest of my own and each of the books I read this week contributed to my burgeoning sense of personal triumph. If a slave girl can free herself, if a Princess can overcome the loss of the three people closest to her, if a gangly young girl who was once on welfare can become an Oscar winning actress, then there is no reason why I can't also rise above any circumstance life throws at me.