Stopping to Think

  Anxious People by Fredrik Backman My rating: 4 of 5 stars 4.5ish. Backman's writing is worth five stars, his ability to take you inside the skin of each of the characters and laugh and cry and feel queasy under the skin right with each of them is simply brilliant. This story wasn't as strong as the others I've read from him, which is why I bring it back down to a four. That said, I couldn't put it down (almost literally) for the final 120 pages. "It just hurts so much at times, being human." (98) "Limes seemed to be such a popular adornment at apartment viewings that it's tempting to think that if real estate agents were banned, the surface of the earth would become covered with such a thick layer of limes that only young people with very small knives and an inexplicable fondness for Mexican beer would survive." (129) "When snow arrives autumn has already done all the work, taking care of all the leaves and carefully sweeping summer awa...

Psalm 42 (ESV) As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants  my soul for you, O God.   My soul thirsts for God, for  the living God. When shall I come and  appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”   These things I remember, as I  pour out my soul: how I would go  with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you  in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation   6  and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I  remember you from the land of Jordan and of  Hermon, from Mount Mizar.   Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your  waves have gone over me.   By day the  Lor...