STACKED

books

Another masked fat girl

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You’ve already read this post, but let me add another book to the list of books that feature fat girls and don’t picture them on the cover:


I mean, a major plot point has to do with her being overweight. Why the skinny girl on the cover? It’d be hard to pretend she’s overweight in the position she’s sitting, too. If you’ve read the book, you know that the point Daelyn’s at in the book, she’s not fat. Page 111 she makes it clear, though, she’s not skinny. She’s been bullied for her weight forever, and she says (likely warped in her sense of perception) she’s not attractive at all.

I REALLY don’t think it’s asking for a whole lot to be a little more realistic about this.

AudioSynced: The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner

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Every once in a while, you get lucky and everything — EVERYTHING — about an audiobook works. There’s the perfect narrator, the perfect story, and just the right amount of pacing, musical interlude, length, and breadth to the audio that you wish it could go on forever. The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Place on Earth by Eric Weiner (pronounced “whiner”) was that book for me.

Weiner is a correspondent for NPR, and he is the reader on the audio. It’s what you would expect — the intonation is even, the emphasis on certain words and phrases are spot on, and the pacing is even and intentional. There are a lot of people who don’t like when authors read their own works, but in this particular title, I don’t think it could have been done better by another reader.

The premise of this is quite simple: Weiner wanted to go in search of the happiest places in the world and figure out what makes these places so happy. He begins his journey in Holland, and he goes from there onward to Bhutan, then on to Qatar. Within each of these countries, he interviews locals by drawing upon his journalism experience, and with incredible wit and utter respect for the people and customs, he shares what he learns. In addition to sharing the insights into happiness, he offers bits of wisdom from philosophers historical and contemporary.

But this isn’t just a book about happiness. Weiner goes to unhappy places too, including Moldova (the unhappiest place in the world) and India. His insights are at times laugh-out-loud funny, precisely because he is spot on in his observation and utter love for people. Weiner devotes time on this adventure, too, to Iceland, to Thailand, and to Great Britain.

I found it quite interesting that the bulk of his travel was in southeast Asia, particularly given a comment he makes near the end of the book about people in Latin America consistently ranking high on the happiness scale. I wish we could have gotten his take on a Central or South American country, too.

Lest you think Weiner is just interested in telling us about how other places are better than America, the last chapter of his book, along with the epilogue, bring us back to America. What he does in the end of the book is perfect: he brings together all the bits of wisdom collected from both the happy and unhappy corners of the world, and he offers those nuggets. He makes no judgement about who is living better or why they’re living better. Instead, the central premise boils down to the fact that happiness comes down to love and relationships. This point is so cleverly woven into the whole of the story with his own humorous vignettes.

This is a heartwarming but funny, insightful, adventure-filled, and straight up fun read. I love travel narratives like this — almost in the style of Bill Bryson — and listening to it was the ideal way to go. If you like reading about adventures, the notion of happiness, travel, other cultures, or even a book that’s just “different,” this is a winner. If you haven’t tried an audiobook yet, this would be a great place to start. There are no quality issues and no editing issues, and the sound is smooth and crisp through all 11 discs. Weiner maintains a steady narrative, and he speaks clearly, thanks in part to his career with NPR.

The Geography of Bliss would be a perfect go-to for those looking for something after finishing The Happiness Project. Reading them simultaneously was a great experience for me, as I didn’t find myself tired of the topic, but instead, I felt Weiner’s book really informed my reading of Rubin’s personal story.

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.

Check out this paperback

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Although this one doesn’t bother me in the way that this hardcover-paperback cover change did, I’m really not feeling this one.


I love the somewhat cold feeling this cover has. It absolutely fits with the story. It’s eye-catching, as well.

But then they needed to go and do this for the paperback:

Now, I saw this in an advertisement for Penguin paperbacks in the latest VOYA, so it might not be 100%. I really, really hope not. Covers with people are overdone, and I really enjoyed this particular title because the readers make up their mind about Mia in so many ways. The paperback gives us an image of her, and frankly, it reminds me a lot of 13 Reasons Why, and by doing that, I have a different image of what the book will be about. It sounds like suicide, doesn’t it, with that image and the title?

Here’s the Australian cover, too. Another one I’m not a huge fan of, but this one I don’t care for because it seems too childish:


Do you have a preference? I think the face-on-the-cover has been overdone, and I found the hardcover of this title so refreshing and different.

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.