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The Spinoff
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
‘It's about a man who turns into a shark': Georgia Lines on the book that made her cry
Welcome to The Spinoff Books Confessional, in which we get to know the reading habits of Aotearoa writers, and guests. This week: Aotearoa musician, Georgia Lines, headline act at the Auckland Live Cabaret Festival. The book I wish I'd written The books that have moved me the most have often come from places I'd never want to have been. I find it's the same with music. I've wished I'd written certain songs, but the circumstances that led to them aren't ones I'd want to have lived through. That said, one of my favourite books is The Choice by Dr Edith Eger. It's her story of surviving the Holocaust and her journey to becoming a psychologist. I don't wish I'd written that book because that would mean having to walk in her shoes. But I do hope to live my life in a way that carries the essence of it: recognising that no matter what, we always have a choice. And more than that, I hope I can live a life that carries meaning and that the hard things I walk through can become some kind of offering to those who choose to listen to what I create. Everyone should read This might be a slightly unconventional answer, but Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara is one of those books I started recommending to every second person just a few chapters in. It reminded me that hospitality and care can be an art form and that small, thoughtful gestures can become moments people carry with them for years. It shifted how I think about running a business, leading a team, and ultimately, how I create. It's a beautiful invitation to be more generous, more present, and more human in the spaces we shape. The book I want to be buried with This is probably the hardest question to answer. To be honest, I'm not sure what book I'd want to be buried with. It reminds me of the panic I felt at the start of high school when I had to create a career pathway plan for Year 9 Social Studies. The pressure of making a 'final' decision and mapping out every move for my career felt so huge and overwhelming that I lost sleep and clearly created a core panic-filled memory for me. Maybe it's the same with this question – the idea of choosing just one book feels way too big, and maybe a little impossible. If I ever decide on one book, I'll let you know. The book that made me cry Earlier this year, I was up north for a week with some friends when I read Shark Heart by Emily Habeck. One of them had insisted I read it, but when she described the plot – a man slowly turning into a great white shark – I wasn't convinced it was my kind of book. But I've never cried reading a book like I did with this one. And I don't mean a tear or two, I mean full-on ugly crying. I had to put the book down just to catch my breath and debrief with friends over a glass of wine and a very large handful of cheese and crackers. I've been raving about it to anyone who'll listen ever since. The premise might sound strange on paper, but once you embrace the world it builds, it's absolutely devastating in the most beautiful, tender way. The first book I remember reading by myself I'm not sure if it was the very first book I read on my own, but I vividly remember winning a reading prize pack from What Now, filled with Jacqueline Wilson novels. I spent the entire day hiding away in my wardrobe, which I'd turned into a secret hut/journaling spot/reading nook, completely absorbed in Tracy Beaker. (Side note: how impossible was it to get through to the Telly Ops on a Sunday morning? IYKYK.) The book I wish I'd never read I vividly remember reading Ripley's Believe It or Not in primary school and becoming both fascinated and completely terrified by a section about ghosts and it stuck with me in the worst and weirdest way. My friends and I somehow decided the library was the only safe haven from these ghosts, and it turned into this odd little game. We'd rush back there at break times, hunting for more 'ammunition' to defeat them. Looking back, I kind of wish I'd never read it – it probably would've saved me a few night terrors, but then again, those irrational fears sparked some of the most bizarre, and oddly brilliant memories. The book that haunts me Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad has stayed with me in a way few books do. It's not just about her journey with cancer, it's about what it means to live when everything you thought defined you has been stripped away. The book I pretend I've read Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown. It's one of those books that's lived on my bedside table forever, and I keep meaning to actually read it. I've flicked through it enough to fake my way through a conversation, but I haven't properly read it cover to cover. I think I feel a bit behind for not having read it yet. If I could only have three books to read for the rest of my life they would be Prayer in the Night by Tish Harrison Warren, The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, and The Choice by Edith Eger (even though I've already mentioned it, it's still a favourite). What I'm reading right now I'm one of those people who always has a few books on the go at once which definitely makes it harder to actually finish them. It's usually a mix of fiction, nonfiction, a self-help book I've read three chapters of, and a laryngeal biomechanics textbook I keep telling myself I'll get through. But there's usually one novel that trumps all the others and currently that's Prima Facie by Suzie Miller. I'm down to the final few pages and haven't been able to put it down. It's confronting and heavy, and dives into themes of power, justice and consent in a way that feels deeply important.
Hindustan Times
09-05-2025
- General
- Hindustan Times
Review: Embracing Hope by Viktor E Frankl
Embracing Hope claims to reveal 'how to turn tragedy into triumph and lead a fulfilled, purposeful life.' For a fraught time such as this, with pandemics, raging wild fires, full-blown wars and killings and the shenanigans of authoritarian regimes assailing us, offline and online, every day, it sounds like an enticing proposition. For me, having lived through two years of great unrest with no peace in sight, this book, a compilation of the writings and speeches of Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor E Frankl, spanning the period from 1946 to 1984, feels like exactly what the doctor ordered. The pieces in this volume include Collective Neuroses (first published in 1955), an interview of Frankl for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1977, the text of a lecture titled Existential Analysis and the Problems of Our Times given at the Franco-Austrian University in December 1946, and Conquering Transience, the text of another lecture delivered at Dornbirn, Austria, in October, 1984. Forewords by Edith Eger, a fellow holocaust survivor, and Tobias Esch, an eminent neuroscientist, further enrich the book by providing context. An Austrian Jew who survived Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps but lost his brother, wife and parents to the holocaust, Frankl was not beaten down by his experiences. Instead, they spurred him to a second life filled with meaning and success. A recipient of 29 honorary doctorates from universities across the world, he obtained his pilot's license at age 67 and lived a full life until he died aged 92 in 1997. He wrote 39 books including the acclaimed Man's Search for Meaning and pioneered the field of logotherapy, a sub-field within psychotherapy, which aims to help people find meaning in their lives. This book is anchored in a belief in human ingenuity and boundless resilience. Frankl agrees entirely with Dostoevsky's definition of man 'as a creature who can get used to anything' and celebrates the inalienable freedom and choice with which humankind is endowed. Perhaps you cannot help what happened to you, or what bad people or totalitarian regimes did to you. However, how you choose to respond is entirely up to you. No one can take that freedom away. As Frankl famously wrote in Man's Search for Meaning: 'Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.' Frankl chose to respond to the deadened and insufferable conditions of the camp with mental images of his smiling wife. He talked to her and imagined what good times awaited them. He looked for and found humour amidst the dead and dying. These were his survival tools. For Edith Eger, freedom lay in choosing to live instead of just giving up and dying like others around her. She realized that she could still choose which blade of grass to eat as she lay in the mud, numbed with pain and unable to move. For both, Frankl and Eger, the concentration camp experience turned from being a curse to a well of treasure from which they gained perspective, meaning, strength and purpose. Their external pain did not dim their internal light, but rather strengthened it. Unlike Man's Search for Meaning, which was Frankl's account of his concentration camp experiences and the insights gained from it (he claims it was written in nine consecutive days), Embracing Hope is less personal and more about those who have been impacted by his story, and have benefited from logotherapy. It draws less from extreme examples of the holocaust and more from the mundane, daily challenges of people living in a 'leisure society'. The unifying theme is how to find meaning in everyday life and work. It speaks to the present moment where we, glued to the screen, feel harried and exhausted yet vacuous and unproductive all the time. Frankl's central message is that we are born with the urge to find meaning in our lives. A meaningful life is one endowed with love, forbearance and fulfilment; it is one lived in accord with the better angels of human nature. It has nothing to do with riches or material success and is not about chasing happiness either. Happiness will ensue if meaning is found. People can find it in all sorts of ways and at all stages of life. Frankl identified the three main avenues through which the individual can find meaning: work, love and suffering. Those who experience involuntary suffering, like a debilitating medical condition or the holocaust, often experience higher mental clarity and illumination. They find reasons to be grateful about things that ordinary folk take for granted. Many re-emerge having discovered faith, hope, compassion and common human decency rather than hatred and anger. As the writer Pico Iyer reported in The Value of Suffering: 'I once met a Zen-trained painter in Japan, in his 90s, who told me that suffering is a privilege, it moves us toward thinking about essential things and shakes us out of short sighted complacency; when he was a boy, he said, it was believed you should pay for suffering, it proves such a hidden blessing.' Secondly, to experience love, to have someone to love, or have someone love us, is, according to Frankl, one of the surest ways to find meaning. His own love for his wife and his fond memories of her equipped him with the will to live and sustained him through his camp life. As for work, Frankl approvingly quotes the American neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing: 'The only way to endure life is always to have a task to complete.' Much of the book is about the need to engage in meaningful work. Work doesn't just earn us money, but also accords us dignity and a sense of fulfilment. It is well recognized that there is a close correlation between levels of unemployment and the degree of criminality in any given area or community. Frankl states that people love to be challenged. Indeed, it is more dangerous to make too few demands of them than to make too many. When a person's will to meaning is not fulfilled, he tries to take solace in his will to pleasure, which leads to a life of sexual depravity, criminality and substance abuse. In Frankl's reckoning, meaning represents higher instincts while unhindered pleasure represents man's baser ones. But Embracing Hope is more than your average motivational book. What lends it weight and depth is that it melds insights and lessons wrenched out of the author's extreme physical experience at concentration camps with his lifelong study of the human mind. Those receptive to its message will find enough resources here to answer the pressing questions of existence. I have no doubt that the lessons from this book can lead one to a more fulfilling and meaningful life, whatever one's circumstances. Thangkhanlal Ngaihte is assistant professor of Political Science at Churachandpur College, Manipur and PhD candidate at Mizoram University, Aizawl.
