Transformations: Characters Who "Turned Good"

When my sister-in-law, Ruth Ann, was in first grade she had an argument with a neighbor child. She ran home and told her mother she was never going to play with Susan again. A few days went by, and my mother-in-law saw Ruth Ann and Susan playing happily together in the yard. What happened? my mother-in-law asked her daughter. She turned good, Ruth Ann told her mom.

Here are some books in which one of the characters has a less than stellar start, but who eventually shines, finding meaning and purpose later in life, especially after having an epiphany or a transformative experience of some sort. If I had to choose one genre of literature that I love best, I would say that I love to read about Transformations. 

I hope these won't be spoilers for you. If you have not read these, I highly recommend all of these. 

John Ames Boynton in Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Louis Zamperani in Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Nora Seed in The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Jean Valjean in Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

The title character in The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Stanley Yelnats and Zero in Holes by Louis Sachar

The title characters in The Tale of Despereaux and Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo

Meg Murry in A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

The Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

I would love to hear about any Transformations you have read about.

Thank you to  Deanna @ A Novel Glimpse for suggesting the prompt this week.

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.   

Off to Waco to Visit My Sister

 

    

I'm happy you joined us here at the Sunday Salon. Welcome!

What is the Sunday Salon? The Sunday Salon is a place to link up and share what we have been doing during the week plus it's a great way to visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

My sister and her husband retired and moved to Waco, Texas last year. I miss so much having her just down the road. We are delighted to spend next week with Cathy and her husband in their new home there!

What I Read Last Week:

Ben & Me: In Search of a Founder's Formula for a Long and Useful Life by Eric Weiner (Adult Nonfiction)

Ben and Me: An Astonishing Life of Benjamin Franklin by His Good Mouse Amos written and illustrated by Robert Lawson (Children's Historical Fiction)

What I'm Reading Now:

The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde (Fiction)

That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America by Amanda Jones (Memoir)

The Algebra of Happiness: Notes on the pursuit of Success, Love, and Meaning by Scott Galloway (Happiness)

What I Posted Last Week Here at Readerbuzz:

Books That Provide a Much-Needed Escape

The Sunday Salon: I Mow the Yard for the First Time!

Tell Me Everything: A Novel by Elizabeth Strout: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

Comfy, Cozy Cinema: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

I've been reading about and thinking about and writing about happiness for a long time. I enjoy hearing the speakers on various topics about happiness who are featured on Action for Happiness. It was Arthur C. Brooks who spoke last week on happiness. Brooks is the author of a book, Love Your Enemies (my review), that really got me thinking about happiness about five years ago. I've shared this video here, and you might like to look at other Action for Happiness videos here. 

I began to list 3 Good Things every day during the pandemic. Now I've established a regular routine of writing down my 3 Good Things. Here are 3 Good Things from last week:

Good Thing #1:

How I feel when I read.

Good Thing #2:

A retired librarian friend's fortune this week.

Good Thing #3:

Baby Jack, my newest great-nephew!

Weekend linkup spots are listed below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

        

I hope you will join the linkup for Sunday Salon below.

Tell Me Everything: A Novel by Elizabeth Strout

 

Today's Featured Book: 

Tell Me Everything

by Elizabeth Strout

Genre: Fiction

Published: September 10, 2024

Page Count: 327 pages

Summary: 

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known—“unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them—reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY is hosted by Rose City Reader. What book are you happy about reading this week? Please share the opening sentence (or so) on BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY! Add the link to your blog or social media post and visit other blogs to see what others are reading.

Happy Friday and welcome to the FIRST LINE FRIDAY, hosted by Reading is My Superpower! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line.

This is the story of Bob Burgess, a tall, heavyset man who lives in the town of Crosby, Maine, and he is sixty-five years old at the time that we are speaking of him. Bob has a big heart, but he does not know that about himself; like many of us, he does not know himself as well as he assumes to, and he would never believe he had anything worthy in his life to document. But he does; we all do.

THE FRIDAY 56 is hosted by Anne of Head Full of Books. To play, open a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% on your e-reader). Find a sentence or two and post them, along with the book title and author. Then link up on Head Full of Books and visit others in the linky. 

They walked along for a few minutes and then Lucy said, "I've been thinking about my mother a lot for some reason, I don't know why. But I remembered this: One day when I was about eight years old, I asked her, Why does Row, row, row your boat end with the phrase Life is but a dream, what does that mean? I asked her. And it was funny because she said, quietly, It means life isn't real. And I said, how can it not be real? And what I remember is that she stopped doing the dishes and stared out the tiny window above the sink, and she said---again, quietly---It means that it isn't real. And I always remembered that...Bob, I was too young, I didn't get it."

"No one gets anything when they're young," Bob said. 

I have not read anything more than the summary and these two passages, but I have loved the other books of Elizabeth Strout I have read (Oops! I loved most of the other books), and I can't wait to read this one.

Olive Kitteridge (5 Stars)

The Burgess Boys (3 Stars)

My Name is Lucy Barton (3 Stars)

Anything is Possible (4 Stars)

Olive, Again (4 Stars)

Oh, William (4 Stars)

Lucy By the Sea (5 Stars)

The purpose of THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, and befriend other bloggers. THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.    

It's back-to-school time. What book would you recommend to students, whether it's an educational read or an enjoyable diversion from textbooks? (submitted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer)

What book would I recommend to students? Whew, students is a broad term. The students at my school library were four to eight years old, so I will choose them. What would I recommend to them? I'd recommend something (1) in a series, (2) that they could read on their own, and (3) that they could not resist reading. 

Elephant & Piggie series (25 books)

by Mo Willems

Comfy, Cozy Cinema: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

 

I suggested to my husband that we try to do a few Comfy, Cozy Cinema choices this fall, and he agreed. 

Movie Title: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Original Release Date: 2012

Streaming Free: Nowhere I could find, but I did locate a DVD at my public library

Rating: PG-13

Time: 2 hrs. 4 min.

Amazon Rating: 4.7 / 5 with 17,609 ratings

Cast: Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Dev Patel, Tom Wilkinson, Maggie Smith

We thought we had seen this movie, but we were wrong; The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, we discovered, was entirely new to us. 

Seven elderly people from English come to stay at The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. They quickly discover that the hotel is not exactly as it was described in the brochure. A young man, Sonny, is trying to make a go of the wreck of a hotel left to him by his dreamy-eyed father, and he's crazy about a young woman who works at a local call center, but both the hotel and the young woman are not what Sonny's mother has in mind for his future. Each of the pensioners has his own very personal reason for coming to India: Evelyn has just lost her husband and must sell her house to cover her husband's debts; Graham, a judge, retires to India where he lived as a boy; Jean and Douglas are forced to find an inexpensive place to live after losing all their money investing in their daughter's business; Muriel, a housekeeper, comes to India to have her hip replaced quickly; Madge and Normal are both on the search for new love.

What a delight this movie is, with a marvelous cast, a marvelous script, and a marvelous setting in India. My husband and I are of an age that we could happily move right in to the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Perhaps we will.

We were happy to discover that there is a sequel, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and that my library has a copy of this film, too. We will be watching it soon, I think.

My Comfy Cozy Rating: High

Comfy Cozy Qualities: Humor, moving-and-starting-over, friendship, setting

This trailer should give you a taste of the movie.

This is year two of Comfy Cozy Cinema, hosted by Erin at Still Life, with Cracker Crumbs and Lisa at Boondock Ramblings. Erin and Lisa invite us all to join in by watching the movie, posting about it, and linking up within a week of the day listed on the chart below.

Books That Provide a Much-Needed Escape

We all need it right now, I think.

Here are some of my suggestions.

I can't wait to hear your ideas.

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome (Classic)

Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park by Conor Knighton (Nonfiction)

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (Classic)

Favorite Folktales from Around the World collected by Jane Yolen (Folktales)

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (Mystery)

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (Fantasy)

A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz (Nonfiction)

Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz (Nonfiction)

Ben and Me: In Search of a Founder's Formula by Eric Weiner (Nonfiction)

The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett (Fantasy)

...and about a million kids' books like Potato Pants and the Hank the Cowdog series and Winnie-the-Pooh and Little Pea and Diary of a Worm and Chancy and the Grand Rascal and Counting to Bananas...

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.  

I Mow the Yard for the First Time!

     

Welcome! I'm happy you joined us here at the Sunday Salon. What is the Sunday Salon? The Sunday Salon is a place to link up and share what we have been doing during the week plus it's a great way to visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

I encourage you to link up with us, and then visit as many of the other participants as you can.

What I Read Last Week:

Census by Jesse Ball (Novel)

Rinkitink in Oz by L. Frank Baum (Ozathon)

Daily Rituals: Women at Work by Mason Currey (Writing)

I had a great reading week last week. Census is a novel about a dying man and his handicapped son who set out to take the census. The two walk from Town A to Town Z, talking to many different people along the way. The author wrote the book as a tribute to his own handicapped brother.

Rinkitink in Oz is the tenth book in the Oz series, though very little of the book takes place in Oz. It's one of my favorites in the series so far, with a young prince setting off with a few companions to look for his parents who were captured by bad guys.

In Daily Rituals: Women at Work author Mason Currey continues the study he began in Daily Rituals: How Artists Work of how creatives work. This time he looks at women creatives. 

What I'm Reading Now:

Jack Spratt Investigates the Big Over Easy: A Nursery Tales Crime by Jasper Fforde (Fiction)

Ben & Me: In Search of a Founder's Formula for a Long and Useful Life by Eric Weiner (Nonfiction)

A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella L. Bird (Nonfiction)

Internet Archive Loses Its Appeal of a Major Copyright Case (Wired)

The only place I've been able to find a lot of the books on the 1001 Children's Book You Must Read list is at Internet Archive. I'm not sure what losing this copyright case will mean for Internet Archive.

What I Posted Last Week Here at Readerbuzz:

The Sunday Salon: A Week in Which I Finally Finish (Happily) Madame Bovary in French

Armchair Foodie Travel Books

Ben and Me: In Search of a Founder's Formula for a Long and Useful Life by Eric Weiner: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

I began to list 3 Good Things every day during the pandemic. 

Now I've established a regular routine of writing down my 3 Good Things. 

Here are 3 Good Things from last week:

Good Thing #1:

I mowed our yard for the first time!*

It only took me six hours to

mow the little yard we have around our house.

Good Thing #2:

A "cold front" is arriving Saturday!

Temperatures may be in the 60s at night.

Good Thing #3:

My husband's cast was removed

and he can again use his hand normally.

Hurray!

No more mowing for me...

*This is not an actual photo of me mowing our yard. 

Weekend linkup spots are listed below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

        

I hope you will join the linkup for Sunday Salon below.

Ben and Me: In Search of a Founder's Formula for a Long and Useful Life by Eric Weiner

 

Today's Featured Book: 

Ben and Me: In Search of a Founder's Formula for a Long and Useful Life

by Eric Weiner

Genre: Nonfiction

Published: June 11, 2024

Page Count: 328 pages

Summary: 

Ben Franklin lingers in our lives and in our imaginations. One of only two non-presidents to appear on US currency, Franklin was a founder, statesman, scientist, inventor, diplomat, publisher, humorist, and philosopher. He believed in the American experiment, but Ben Franklin’s greatest experiment was…Ben Franklin. In that spirit of betterment, Eric Weiner embarks on an ambitious quest to live the way Ben lived.

Not a conventional biography, Ben & Me is a guide to living and thinking well, as Ben Franklin did. It is also about curiosity, diligence, and, most of all, the elusive goal of self-improvement. As Weiner follows Franklin from Philadelphia to Paris, Boston to London, he attempts to uncover Ben’s life lessons, large and small. We learn how to improve a relationship with someone by inducing them to do a favor for you—a psychological phenomenon now known as The Ben Franklin Effect. We learn about the printing press (the Internet of its day), early medicine, diplomatic intrigue and, of course, electricity. And we learn about ethics, persuasion, humor, regret, appetite, and so much more.

At a time when history is either neglected or contested, Weiner argues we have much to learn from the past and that we’d all be better off if we acted and thought a bit more like Ben did, even if he didn’t always live up to his own high ideals. Engaging, smart, moving, quirky, Ben & Me distills the essence of Franklin’s ideas into grounded, practical wisdom for all of us.

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY is hosted by Rose City Reader. What book are you happy about reading this week? Please share the opening sentence (or so) on BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY! Add the link to your blog or social media post and visit other blogs to see what others are reading.

Happy Friday and welcome to the FIRST LINE FRIDAY, hosted by Reading is My Superpower! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line.

The more I learned about Ben Franklin, the more I suspected he just might be the mentor, the guide to ageing and to living, I’ve been seeking. The last third of his life was by far the most interesting, and the first two-thirds were downright fascinating. It was in his closing act, a time when he could have been doing the colonial equivalent of golfing in Florida, that he accomplished the most and changed the most. This was when Franklin the Loyalist became Franklin the Rebel and, later, when Franklin the Enslaver became Franklin the Abolitionist. This was when he charmed the French into supporting the American cause. It was also, paradoxically, when Franklin found the almost Buddha-like serenity that had long eluded him.

Weiner, Eric. Ben & Me: In Search of a Founder's Formula for a Long and Useful Life (pp. XV-XVI). Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. 

THE FRIDAY 56 is hosted by Anne of Head Full of Books. To play, open a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% on your e-reader). Find a sentence or two and post them, along with the book title and author. Then link up on Head Full of Books and visit others in the linky. 

What would Ben make of the young man I see on Market Street, wearing a red T-shirt and sneakers, cradling a Styrofoam cup and a cardboard sign that reads, “Homeless and Hungry. Please help?” Franklin would feel sympathy for the man and might offer to help him find work, but he would not drop any coins in the cup. Franklin was opposed to handouts, fearing they create dependency and “encourage idleness and prodigality… thus multiplying beggars, instead of diminishing them.” He fell in the teach-a-man-to-fish camp. “I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.” 

If you’re thinking this stance makes Franklin a Reagan Republican, not so fast. He also held views that would tickle a modern liberal’s bleeding heart. He opposed private ownership of “superfluous property.” He thought taxation (with representation, of course) was a good idea and a civil obligation. “He can have no right to the benefits of society who will not pay his club towards the support of it.” He thought elected officials should work for free, and prisons should be humane. There’s something for every political persuasion in Franklin’s words and life.

Weiner, Eric. Ben & Me: In Search of a Founder's Formula for a Long and Useful Life (pp. 54-55). Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. 

Thoughtful. And light. I'm sure I'll have more to say when I finish this book...

The purpose of THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, and befriend other bloggers. THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.    

September is Library Card Sign-Up Month. What role have libraries played in your reading journey? Do you have any recommendations for books or fond recollections involving libraries? (submitted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer)

As self-appointed Queen of the Library, I serve as a cheerleader for libraries. Libraries change lives. Libraries serve as guardians of public access to knowledge. In 2016, Americans visited the public library 1.35 billion times, about 4 million visits each day. That year, 113 million people attended 5.2 million programs at the library, more than all Major League Baseball, National Football League and National Basketball Association games combined. Students in high-poverty schools are almost twice as likely to graduate when the school library is staffed with a certified school librarian....I could go on and on...