The Nix by Nathan Hill
I read this on the recommendation of my brother-in-law via my sister (not his wife, one of the other sisters). This book is one of the reasons I started writing this blog...because I absorb books like oxygen and sometimes I don't take the time to stop and ponder them before I move on. As with anything I read more than a week ago, I start to forget...and this one I read sometime last spring I think so that's a while ago...and at the time, I remember really liking it. Now? Can hardly remember. Another nice thing about the Nook...I took some notes and noted some quotes as I was reading and that made doing a current writeup on a previously read book a little easier. I did manage to scribble out a note about how much I liked this book. And going back through refreshed my memory. Recommend? Yes-go for it. Its on the longer side (approx. 700 pages) but worth it.
Wanna read something that will kick you in the gut? This guy's mother left his family when he was a small child. He thinks: Seeing others express exactly what's in his own heart makes him think he's unoriginal and ordinary and not the astounding man he needs to be to prove to his mother she shouldn't have left him. Ouch-that's quite a standard to set for oneself.
Relationships are hard. They are even harder when the principles don't even know why they are there: "People love each other for many reasons, not all of them good," she said. "They love each other because its easy. Or because they're used to it. Or because they've given up. Or because they're scared. People can be a Nix for each other."
On love, and on being loved: Such were the spoils of love, he realized, that her success was also, by some odd refraction, his.
There is this one scene where the girls in home-ec are being taught how to properly clean toilets. Toilets! In a school! Its off putting and horrifying not in a Holocaust or pre-vaccine iron lung way, but in a how did the women in generations before us ever even dream of getting HERE to 2020 and NO WONDER! its so hard to make strides! "your husband" the girls are told "will expect a certain level of household cleanliness". Thank God my husband wasn't in that class!
Again on relationships, and the impact these can have on the self: And this moment, right now, this is why. It's like taking all your fallibility and doubling down.
And truth on the human condition: You'd be amazed at the facts people are willing to set aside to believe that life is, indeed, great.
On the nature of male platonic love: ...they keep calling him Chucky, which is a nickname that maybe to an outsider sounds cruel for the way it ribs someone for his greatest personal flaw, but what it actually does is acknowledge that they accept this person and love this person despite that flaw. Its a very male way of expressing unconditional love. All of this goes unsaid, naturally.
And a lesson we could all use at some point in life: Sometimes we're so wrapped up in our own story that we don't see how we're supporting characters in someone else's.
Rating: #3 Enjoyed It Very Much
Wanna read something that will kick you in the gut? This guy's mother left his family when he was a small child. He thinks: Seeing others express exactly what's in his own heart makes him think he's unoriginal and ordinary and not the astounding man he needs to be to prove to his mother she shouldn't have left him. Ouch-that's quite a standard to set for oneself.
Relationships are hard. They are even harder when the principles don't even know why they are there: "People love each other for many reasons, not all of them good," she said. "They love each other because its easy. Or because they're used to it. Or because they've given up. Or because they're scared. People can be a Nix for each other."
On love, and on being loved: Such were the spoils of love, he realized, that her success was also, by some odd refraction, his.
There is this one scene where the girls in home-ec are being taught how to properly clean toilets. Toilets! In a school! Its off putting and horrifying not in a Holocaust or pre-vaccine iron lung way, but in a how did the women in generations before us ever even dream of getting HERE to 2020 and NO WONDER! its so hard to make strides! "your husband" the girls are told "will expect a certain level of household cleanliness". Thank God my husband wasn't in that class!
Again on relationships, and the impact these can have on the self: And this moment, right now, this is why. It's like taking all your fallibility and doubling down.
And truth on the human condition: You'd be amazed at the facts people are willing to set aside to believe that life is, indeed, great.
On the nature of male platonic love: ...they keep calling him Chucky, which is a nickname that maybe to an outsider sounds cruel for the way it ribs someone for his greatest personal flaw, but what it actually does is acknowledge that they accept this person and love this person despite that flaw. Its a very male way of expressing unconditional love. All of this goes unsaid, naturally.
And a lesson we could all use at some point in life: Sometimes we're so wrapped up in our own story that we don't see how we're supporting characters in someone else's.
Rating: #3 Enjoyed It Very Much
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