Kate's Point of View

1. The Dressmaker of Khair Khana by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
2. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
3. The Visible Man Chuck Klosterman
4. Empire of the Sun J.G. Ballard
5. The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
6. Incendiary by Chris Cleave
7. The Litigators by John Grisham
8. The Water Is Wide: A Memoir by Pat Conroy
9. The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe
10. Untouchable by Scott O’Connor
11. Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3) by Tana French
12. Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World by Rita Golden Gelman
13. Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness by Pete Earley
14. Yes, Chef: A Memoir by Marcus Samuelsson
15. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
16. Winter of the World (The Century Trilogy #2) by Ken Follett
17. World Without End (The Pillars of the Earth, #2) by Ken Follett
18. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
19. Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon
20. Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks
21. Fifty Shades Freed (Fifty Shades, #3) by E.L. James
22. The Second Empress: A Novel of Napoleon’s Court by Michelle Moran
23. Fifty Shades Darker (Fifty Shades, #2) by E.L. James 24.
24. Fifty Shades of Grey (Fifty Shades, #1) by E.L. James
25. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
26. Nemesis by Philip Roth
27. Stealing Home (The Sweet Magnolias #1) by Sherryl Woods
28. The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran
29. Nefertiti by Michelle Moran
30. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
31. The Position by Meg Wolitzer
32. The Healing by Jonathan Odell
33. Insurgent (Divergent, #2) by Veronica Roth
34. The Clothes On Their Backs by Linda Grant
35. Snow by Orhan Pamuk
36. The Wedding by Dorothy West
37. The Queen’s Fool (The Tudor Court, #4) by Phillippa Gregory
38. Divergent (Divergent, #1) by Veronica Roth
39. Breaking the Food Seduction: The Hidden Reasons Behind Food Cravings—And 7 Steps to End Them Naturally by Neal D. Barnard
40. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
41. All Fall Down by Megan Hart
42. Best Friends by Martha Moody
43. Every Time I Talk To Liston: A Novel by Brian DeVido
44. A Secret Kept by Tatiana de Rosnay
45. Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron
46. Sarmada by Fadi Azzam
47. The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
48. Saving Max by Antoinette van Heugten
49. Look Again by Lisa Scottoline
50. My Lady of Cleves: A Novel of Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves by Margaret Campbell Barnes
51. Awake by Elizabeth Graver
52. StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath
53. The Boleyn Inheritance (The Tudor Court, #3) by Phillippa Gregory

It’s a section where Kabat-Zinn points out that we all know it’s wrong to interrupt each other. And yet we constantly interrupt ourselves. We do it when we check our emails incessantly – or won’t simply let a phone go to voicemil when we’re doing something we enjoy – or when we don’t think a thought through, but allow our minds to fix on temporary concerns or desires.

From The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe, quoting Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness by Kabat-Zinn.

I want to be able to say that the above passage does not apply to me. Of course, it completely does. But my goal is to make it apply less.

What I suddenly understood is that a thank-you note isn’t the price you pay for receiving a gift, as so many children think it is, a kind of minimum tribute or toll, but an opportunity to count your blessings. And gratitude isn’t what you give in exchange for something; it’s what you feel when you are blessed – blessed to have family and friends who care about you, and who want to see you happy. Hence the joy from thanking.

From The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe.

One of the many things I love about bound books is their sheer physicality. Electronic books live out of sight and out of mind. But printed books have body, presence. Sure, sometimes they’ll elude you by hiding in improbably places: in a box full of old picture frames, say or in the laundry basket, wrapped in a sweatshirt. But at other times they’ll confront you, and you’ll literally stumble over tomes you hadn’t thought about in weeks or years. I often seek electronic books, but they never come after me. They make me feel, but I can’t feel them. They are all soul with no flesh, no texture, and no weight. They can get in your head but can’t whack you upside it.

From The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe

I love this description about the physicality of books. Last week I sat poolside and listened to the ocean roaring behind me while I tore through six books. Watching them physically pile up as a sort of tangible recounting of my accomplishment made me happy. The books were practically shouting at me, “This is what vacation is all about!”