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books

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

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I have a confession: I love reading books that make me feel happy. As soon as I picked up Gretchen Rubin’s highly publicized The Happiness Project, I knew this was one that would fit the bill.

The premise is remarkably simple but utterly engaging. Rubin, now a full-time writer with a couple other titles under her belt, chose to spend a full year working on things that would make her happier. Each month, she chose a concept and from that concept, she developed a small list of goals and resolutions (something she defines as markedly different things). So, for January, her big concept was “vitality” and from that, she hoped to boost her energy. In March, her concept was “work,” and she hoped to aim higher. This was the month she began her very popular happiness project blog.

In each month, Rubin practiced wisdom she picked up from others who had shared their views on happiness, from philosophers to writers. She likewise developed a set of twelve commandments for herself to follow while testing out and practicing these nuggets of wisdom, and these included “Be Gretchen” (a recurring theme), “Do what ought to be done,” and “Act the way I want to feel.”

Everything that Rubin does in this book is entirely practical, but it’s her writing and her ability to laugh at herself and enjoy the moment that makes this such an enjoyable book. Right now – and to give some spoilerage to a future post – I’m also listening to Eric Weiner’s book The Geography of Bliss, and something he mentions is that too often, we relegate solving our problems to self-help gurus who have nothing but profit in mind. Rather than try to understand our place and our feelings, we think we’re wrong and therefore jump to getting help. The self-help industry is just that: an industry.

Instead, Rubin is entirely relatable, and she has a sense of humor about everything she does. One of her goals one month is to not nag or to criticize when others try their best to help her. As readers, we see exactly what would have irritated her and how we would have responded in the situation, but Rubin responds appropriately according to her happiness project goals. Pffft, how perfect, right? Well, no. Rubin then tells us EXACTLY what was going on in her mind and how she normally would react….and sometimes, despite her best efforts, she still responds in her old ways. You have to like a fallible character, especially one embarking on a project like this.

This is a highly readable book, and one which you can pick up and put down at any time. I found it quite a motivating title, as it made goal making easy, straightforward, and attainable. Rubin is the kind of person I would love to meet and hang out with. She’s funny, insightful, and totally human. She even gets a kick out of becoming “one of those writers” — you know, the ones who do something for a year, write a book, and make a profit.

I think The Happiness Project stands out from that crowd, as it’s a manual any of us can pick up and develop our own projects. It’s hard not to read this and come a way with a bit more insight into happiness or even feel happy reading it.

AudioSynched: I’d Tell You I Love You, But…I’d Be Lying

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After a pair of good audiobooks, I listened to one this past week that left me questioning every car ride whether I really wanted to continue listening to it or just give up.

I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You by Ally Carter is a wildly popular first title in “The Gallagher Girls” series that tween and teen girls (and their adult parents!) are in love with. The series follows Cammie Morgan, who is a student at the all-girls Gallagher Academy — a super secret spy school in Virginia — as she effortlessly converses in many foreign languages and has mastered the classroom aspects of spying and espionage. But Cammie is hopeless when it comes to boys and when it comes to putting her spy training into real action.

When Cammie meets Josh in this book, she goes from star student to near failing after trying to see him and keep her lies straight about who she is. You see, no one but the students and staff know what the Gallagher Academy is, and Josh believes it’s just a private school for rich snooty students. When Cammie introduces herself to Josh, she doesn’t want to be seen as one of those girls and instead, she weaves an intricate web of lies about who she is and what she does all day. Of course the results are disastrous.

This is a very clean story, with a fast-paced story line and intriguing characters. I thought all of the spy elements were fun, and I thought that Cammie was a true-to-age character. With the audiobook rendition, I found the semi-voiced style effective, especially with the British accents throughout. I thought that the implementation of the foreign languages was also well done and added to the overall atmosphere of the spy/private school story. Although I’m not clamoring for the next titles in the series, I see why they are so appealing.

What this audiobook didn’t do, was deliver with a believable narrator. Renee Raudman was the reader, but she never once sounded like a high school sophomore to me, nor did she deliver a true voice for Cammie, a Virginian. More irritating that that, though, was the echo-chamber effect this book had. When I began listening, I thought that Cammie was sharing her story in secret, where the echo effect would have been spot-on and added a lot to the book. However, I came to realize that the entire story was being told with this effect, and I was very turned off as a listener. It was tough enough buying the character’s voice, but having it with the echo was even more difficult.

Throughout the audiobook, there were very noticeable production issues. I found that the editing was not seamless, and the sound volumes shifted frequently, leaving me as a reader constantly changing the volume of the audio in my car. Perhaps had the echo effect been removed, the sound could have been better controlled and stabilized.

The use of music and sound the indicate the end of disc was spot on. I thought those were all well-done and added another element to the story. The editing on disc changes was well-timed, leaving enough of a cliffhanger for the listener to want to pop in the next disc (despite the issues mentioned above). I found the pace of the audio was good, too. I had enough room to space out mentally and could still come back to the story without issue.

Unfortunately, there were too many times I wanted to just give it up, but because this one came recommended me to over and over at work from patrons, I gave it a listen. This is a great choice for families listening to a story together. The length is just right at 6 discs (in the Brilliance Audio production) and the tracks move quickly.

I’d love to hear this one redone, perhaps with a different reader. This is not a knock against Raudman, who herself was a fantastic reader, never once giving us any vocal issues with her voice, her sound, breaths, wet/dry mouth sounds, but she wasn’t the right reader for this title. It happens in the same way that our favorite books-turned-movies are often cast with actors/actresses who just don’t fit the book or our image of the book.

This World We Live In by Susan Beth Pfeffer

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I’ll go out on a limb here, but come with me: I believe Susan Beth Pfeffer’s series (now dubbed “The Last Survivors”) is probably one of the most inventive, creative, and utterly terrifying sets of books available right now across all age groups.

This World We Live In picks up where Life as We Knew It and The Dead and the Gone left off. But as readers, we don’t know that entirely from the start of the book. We enter into Miranda’s life in rural Pennsylvania, with her living at home with her mother and two brothers one year after the moon has caused mass destruction. Miranda and her brothers have been spending free time (which there is a lot of) house hunting, which involves breaking into the homes of those no longer there and taking the items which their family so desperately needs. Finding scraps of toilet paper becomes a “good day.” But when Miranda’s brothers decide to go fishing at a river miles away, one returns back a completely changed person. When they leave to fish, Miranda becomes a changed person when she stumbles upon a pile of bodies on her way home from house hunting.

Because the book hasn’t been published quite yet, I’m dancing around one of the biggest events that happens in the book. But as readers have come to anticipate, Miranda and Alex Morales — who left New York City with his sister to escape imminent death in the big city by the water — finally meet face to face. And the way they meet is completely unexpected but fits so well into the story. Likewise, the development of their relationship is an important one, as it is a nice parallel to the greater story overall.

Some of the missing from the first two books will also reappear in this title. I don’t want to give anything away, of course, but I was pleasantly surprised to see who arrived and whose dreams (and nightmares) were met because of those encounters.

But don’t get me wrong: this is NOT a happy book. In fact, there is a major event that happens with the earth in this book that changes the entire course of what I was hoping for. And while it made me sad, I was impressed with Pfeffer’s relentless energy in writing such a story. In This World We Live In, the themes of environmentalism, religion, love, and relationships are explored and tested, and things don’t end up pretty or perfect. This is reality, and this is exactly why there is no comparison of this series to so many others being published now.

One of the biggest negative issues I had with this book were some of the new plot lines that never became fully fleshed. I felt that the new character we met following the brothers’ fishing trip never had a good fit into the story, and I never felt this character was necessary. A number of discussions of the safety camps were brought up, as well, and I was never once convinced about their whereabouts, their existence, or their promise, and this character was one of those reasons precisely. I felt like the character could have been better woven into the fabric of the story and made to become stronger and more believable.

That said, I hope this is the last installment in the series. There is resolution in the story, as uncomfortable as it is.

If you haven’t read the first two books, do NOT read this one. You need to read the others before diving into this one, and I would recommend picking up Life as We Knew It first, though the order of the first two aren’t set in stone.

Look for this one to published April 1, 2010 by Harcourt Children’s Books. If you can’t wait to get your hands on it, there is a free galley available through NetGalley, as well.

Have you read this one yet? I’m dying to discuss it. This is one series that begs to be discussed, as individual novels and as a collective. If you have read it, leave your comments and thoughts in the comments. I’d love to hear your impressions.

Non-Fiction: Written in Bone – The Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland

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Once in a while you open a book that really surprises you. For me, this was Sally Walker’s absolutely absorbing non-fiction Written in Bone – Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland.

Written in Bone follows a team of archaeologists conducting a couple of digs. First, they dig into an area of Fort James, Virginia, followed by digs in Maryland. The team discusses in detail how the process of choosing sites to dig at works, followed by the methods they employ while preparing for and actually conducting a dig. In addition to the text explaining it, there are multiple pictures on each page to illustrate the processed exactly. At one point, the team unearths a few iron caskets that were sealed shut and it was their goal to try to extract some of the air sealed inside. This air, they believed, would give them an idea of what the air quality was in the 17th century. Besides being really interesting historically, Walker has included a number of photos of the process of identifying where the remains were within the casket, the drilling of the casket, and the extraction of air.

In addition to explaining the processes of a dig, Walker goes into great detail about identifying remains. We learn how scientists can take bones, as well as how they figure out what sort of work they may have done in their lives, whether or not they were wealthy, what their gender was, and even what ethnicity they may have been. Again, the use of illustrations and images illuminate the text. Walker makes a large point in emphasizing that all of these details are put together not only through science, but also through the historical record (which makes the geek in me so excited). I spent more time looking at the photos than reading, making this book one that may be short on words but long on memory and on reading experience.

When I first had heard about this book, I didn’t quite know what to expect. I am pleased with this and found myself really fascinated with what archaeologists do with human remains. I think that this book has a huge appeal, both to those interested in history and science, as well as those interested in the all-too-common “something different.” Oh, and boys will eat this one up! This is a book about people doing something and it gives boys tools to learn with (I mean, there’s also really cool images of skulls and bones, too).

The text is highly readable and the use of images enhanced it. An index, a historical time line of events, and a sizable list of further resources that include both print and web sources also make this a book that can be read and referred to again and again for reports. But what makes this one special is that it’s not just a report book — this is a strong, stand alone non-fiction for teens and adults.

My Soul to Save by Rachel Vincent

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I like a good book in a series when I know I don’t have to read the books in order and the back story is loose enough that I get it within a few pages. Rachel Vincent’s My Soul to Save is book #2 in her “Soul Screamers” series and falls into that category.

Kaylee is a bean sidhe (banshee), as is the boy she has a serious crush on, Nash. The story opens with them attending an Eden concert, a well-known pop star, whose show was opened by a local rising talent, Addison Page. When Eden collapses on the stage and Kaylee realizes that her screaming talents didn’t foresee the death, she knows there’s something deeper going on.

You see, Kaylee’s talent as a bean sidhe is screaming when someone is nearing their death. Well, she does when the person who is dying has a soul. It is the soul being released that causes the scream.

Things go from bad to worse when she gets signs that Addison Page will be nearing the end of her short life, as well, and it’s up to Kaylee, Nash, and Tod — Nash’s dead brother who also happens to have paranormal attributes — to figure out what is going on and how they can stall the inevitable death of Addison and her younger sister Regan.

My Soul to Save is way outside my normal reading habits, and I didn’t find myself hating it as much as I’d expect. I think that Vincent does a good job of world building and she shares enough back story of each character to make them make sense to someone who doesn’t read much of this genre. There is a nice mix of adventure, mystery, and romance to make the story move along quickly, and the scenario is pretty interesting, given what Kaylee and company come to learn about why Eden died and why Addison and Regan are about to die, as well. There’s actually quite a bit of reality to this.

What I didn’t like, though, was the sudden game change in the last couple of chapters in the book. New rules were introduced and it really killed the action that had been going on throughout, and it also made me question if Vincent didn’t know how to tie up the story. Again, reading with eyes of a person unfamiliar with the paranormal genre, I felt teased and ripped off a bit by the end. It could have been stronger, more consistent with the text, and left me feeling excited to read the other titles in this series. Instead, I felt cheated and am not entirely compelled to read more.

My Soul to Save is published by Harlequin, so you can expect some of their trademark embedded in the book. I thought it was tastefully done, and I thought it was woven well into the story line. Two teens have a realistic crush relationship, where it is part of their lives and not the entirety of their lives (I mean, tracking down the reason pop stars are dying DOES take up a little time in one’s day).

Overall, it’s a nice addition to the genre. For fans of the new Harlequin Teen line, this is a good one, and for those who read the prior title in this series, My Soul to Take, this will be a natural choice. I thought the standalone qualities made this a book that stands out just a little more from others. But, don’t expect great writing and prepare to feel fleeced at the end.