> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://log.desipundit.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Rules of Civility ★★★★☆ - URL: https://log.desipundit.com/rules-of-civility/ - Published: 2026-10-26T13:33:58.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-26T13:33:58.000Z - Author: PM - Tags: Books There’s something about Amor Towles’s writing that I could read forever. Like Jhumpa Lahiri’s prose, it comes closest to poetry I can understand. I’m a big fan of *A Gentleman in Moscow*, and that book clearly shows Towles’ evolving skill. *Rules of Civility* has little plot, yet it has so much or as the book says at one point, *that’s a Grand Canyon of a tale, she said. A mile deep and two miles wide*. New York in the late 30s sits in the background and is present in every moment, ignorant of the war looming across the pond. Towles makes the distance concrete. In December 1940, with France fallen and London under bombardment, Irving Berlin was still singing about glistening treetops. That’s how far away the war felt. At the center is a kickass heroine who befriends people as easily as anyone could hope. She takes us through the city’s socialite circles, and the book becomes an intricate tale of shifting relationships. Her narrator calls a fine dinner the height of civilization, something that can revive the spirits even when everything else has gone rotten. Underneath runs a subtle unrequited love, interrupted by circumstances. One character has a dry theory for the fuss: if we only loved people who were perfect for us, “there wouldn’t be so much fuss about love in the first place.” What I liked is that the book doesn’t stay still and wallow in missed opportunities. Indecision is a feature of this character-driven tale, and Towles has a good image for it. Life is less a journey than a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties we draw a card and must decide on the spot whether to keep it or discard it. Before we know it, the deck is played out and those choices shape decades. He is blunt about the price: “I know that right choices by definition are the means by which life crystallizes loss.” It’s a great lazy read, meant for enjoying good writing. Come for the sentences. The plot can keep up. One rule worth stealing: *in a moment of high emotion, if what you’re about to say makes you feel better, it’s probably the wrong thing to say*. --- ## Edition Read - **Edition Type:** Hardcover - **Number of Pages:** 335 pages - **Date First Published:** July 26, 2011 - **Publisher:** Viking Adult - **Language:** English ## Description > This sophisticated and entertaining first novel presents the story of a young woman whose life is on the brink of transformation. On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit down at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a year-long journey into the upper echelons of New York society—where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve. With its sparkling depiction of New York’s social strata, its intricate imagery and themes, and its immensely appealing characters, Rules of Civility won the hearts of readers and critics alike. *Source:* [GoodReads](https://www.goodreads.com/book/title?ref=log.desipundit.com) --- ## Notable Highlights > How the WASPs loved to nickname their children after the workaday trades: Tinker. Cooper. Smithy. Maybe it was to hearken back to their seventeenth-century New England bootstraps—the manual trades that had made them stalwart and humble and virtuous in the eyes of their Lord. Or maybe it was just a way of politely understating their predestination to having it all. *\[loc. 358\]* > be careful when choosing what you’re proud of—because the world has every intention of using it against you. *\[loc. 620\]* > The one thing for certain at Belmont was that on Wednesday at 5:00 A.M. there was no place for the common man. This was like the circles of Dante’s Inferno—populated with men of varied sins, but also with the shrewdness and devotion of the damned. *\[loc. 1588\]* > The stamps on the envelope were English. One was the head of a statesman engraved in purple and the others were motorcars engraved in blue. It seemed like every country in the world had stamps of statesmen and motorcars. Where were the stamps of the elevator boys and hapless housewives? *\[loc. 1859\]* > Whatever setbacks he had faced in his life, he said, however daunting or dispiriting the unfolding of events, he always knew that he would make it through, as long as when he woke in the morning he was looking forward to his first cup of coffee. *\[loc. 1879\]* > One must be prepared to fight for one’s simple pleasures and to defend them against elegance and erudition and all manner of glamorous enticements. *\[loc. 1884\]* > She had changed into high heels and a tangerine-colored blouse that clashed with all her best intentions. *\[loc. 1895\]* > But for me, dinner at a fine restaurant was the ultimate luxury. It was the very height of civilization. For what was civilization but the intellect’s ascendancy out of the doldrums of necessity (shelter, sustenance and survival) into the ether of the finely superfluous (poetry, handbags and haute cuisine)? So removed from daily life was the whole experience that when all was rotten to the core, a fine dinner could revive the spirits. *\[loc. 2014\]* > —When shall we two meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain? I leaned back into the roadster and laid my lips against the whorls of his ear. —When the hurlyburly’s done. When the battle’s lost and won. *\[loc. 2514\]* > —That’s a Grand Canyon of a tale, she said. A mile deep and two miles wide. *\[loc. 3512\]* > —Most people have more needs than wants. That’s why they live the lives they do. But the world is run by those whose wants outstrip their needs. *\[loc. 3751\]* > As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion—whether they’re triggered by anger or envy, humiliation or resentment—if the next thing you’re going to say makes you feel better, then it’s probably the wrong thing to say. *\[loc. 3762\]* > Because when some incident sheds a favorable light on an old and absent friend, that’s about as good a gift as chance intends to offer. *\[loc. 4027\]* > The first wind of the New York winter was sharp and heartless. Whenever it blew, it always made my father a little nostalgic for Russia. He’d break out the samovar and boil black tea and recall some December when there was a lull in conscription and the well wasn’t frozen and the harvest hadn’t failed. It wouldn’t be such a bad place to be born, he’d say, if you never had to live there. *\[loc. 4093\]* > —If we only fell in love with people who were perfect for us, he said, then there wouldn’t be so much fuss about love in the first place. *\[loc. 4303\]* > Butchers on break dressed in blood-spattered aprons smoked in the cold December air under the great steer-shaped neon sign that Hank had stylized in his painting. They watched me navigate the cobblestones in high-heel shoes with the same indifference that they watched the meat coming off the trucks. *\[loc. 4312\]* > In December 1940, with France already fallen and the Luftwaffe bombarding London, back in America Irving Berlin was observing how the treetops glistened and children listened to hear those sleigh bells in the snow. That’s how far away we were from the Second World War. *\[loc. 4538\]* > In that sense, life is less like a journey than it is a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions—we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come. *\[loc. 4655\]* > I know that right choices by definition are the means by which life crystallizes loss. *\[loc. 4663\]*