What I Just Read

I always feel a little bit sheepish reading self-help books, particularly ones with titles seemingly as grandiose as Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment. It seemed silly that I could learn how to be happier just by reading a book. I couldn't have been more wrong. This book was profoundly helpful--it may even be life-altering. It's part self-help book, part workbook, and part psychology textbook all rolled into one, and it's full of straightforward, cogent advice. And, interestingly enough, it's not a grandiose book at all. In fact it's a rather humble look at the activities, habits, and patterns of our daily lives and how they can be rethought and restructured to bring us more fulfillment. Author Tal Ben-Shahar describes two typical personality archetypes: the hedonist, who seizes current pleasure with little concern for the future; and the rat-racer, who defers pleasure until some point in the future. He then shows how you can increase ...

If you read a lot of books like we do, perhaps you share our problem: Our home is gradually getting overrun by books. Piles of them. Sure, we've made resolutions to control the spread of our collection, like "no more buying books!" and "only get books out of the library!" We've tried these approaches, but unfortunately, not only do rules like these suck the fun out of life, they're also ineffective. The thing is, even though we do get most of our books out of the library, and we don't really make a practice of buying books, we somehow still seem to have more books than we know what to do with. And the piles seem to grow, slowly but surely, with every month and year. Earlier this year, however, we adopted a simple strategy to control our book creep, and it has worked so well for us that I decided to share it with you in this blog: For every new book you bring into your home, you must immediately remove two. It doesn't matter whether you donate th...

The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One by Margaret Lobenstine is a book for those of us out there who believe a traditional, focused and specialized career isn't always the best route to a passionate and successful life.  Lobenstine borrows and updates the term Renaissance Man into the more gender-neutral term Renaissance Soul : someone with too many interests to be tied down to only one career or only one job. She systematically identifies and conquers the common doubts that Renaissance Souls have about their own careers (Why can't I stick to just one thing? What do I say when somebody asks me what I do for a living? and so forth) and she breaks down the common excuses and societal pressures (What do I do about money? If I keep changing jobs, people will think I'm a flake or a failure! etc.) that often drive Renaissance Souls to live in an unhappily focused career that simply doesn't suit them. If you have this type of p...

Tony Hillerman brings out his franchise characters, Navajo officers Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, to spin an interesting and readable story on drug smugglers operating through a derelict oil pipeline from Mexico to Southern New Mexico. The Sinister Pig was a light read, perfect for the beach or the airplane, and it contains plenty of what draws me to Hillerman stories: his evocations of the American southwest and the Navajo peoples who live there. However, Hillerman has written better books. Coyote Waits and A Thief of Time are titles that I'd recommend long before this one. Nevertheless, this was still a diverting story, and there's a place in everyone's summer reading list for an easy-to-read book that you can blast through in a couple of days.

It's 19th century England, and you're the beautiful daughter of a man deeply in debt. The man's moneylender, an old and repulsive man, offers a deal: Let me marry your daughter and I'll forgive all the debt. You'll be spared going to prison, and your daughter won't starve. The man and his daughter were horrified. To convince them, the moneylender proposed letting fate decide the matter. He told them he would put a black pebble and a white pebble in a bag, and the girl would pick one of the pebbles at random. If she chose the white pebble, the debt would be cancelled and she could stay with her father. If she chose the black pebble, she would become the moneylender's wife and the debt would be cancelled. Seeing no alternative, they reluctantly agreed. As they were standing on a path strewn with pebbles, the moneylender bent to pick up two to put into the bag. Unfortunately, the alert girl saw to her horror that he selected two black pebbles to put into the ba...

A survey of the development and modernization of China and India. Written by a reporter for Forbes with a disappointingly light grasp of economics and trade. The numbers, data and statistics will be interesting, even shocking, to anyone new to reading about these emerging economies. Unfortunately, if you're already conversant in what's going on over there, the book may read like an unstructured collection of obligatory factoids. The Elephant and the Dragon would make a solid "first book" to a reader new to the issues on China and India, but I'm casting about for a book on the topic that is more predictive and insightful. Does anyone have any good suggestions? The author argues that the US has a lot to fear from China or India. I'm sure the same fear-based mentality raged in England in the 1800s when the US passed England as the world's largest economy. Last I checked, however, England is still there and wealthier than ever. Further, Meredith uses so ...

What follows is a list of all of the books reviewed so far in this reading blog. The titles contain links to each individual post; the links that say "Amazon Link" will take you to that specific title on Amazon.com. 1) The Elephant and the Dragon by Robyn Meredith [Amazon Link] 2) New Think - The Use of Lateral Thinking in the Generation of New Ideas by Edward de Bono [Amazon Link] 3) The Sinister Pig by Tony Hillerman [Amazon Link] 4) The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One by Margaret Lobenstine [Amazon Link] A Simple Rule for Getting Rid of Your Excess Books 5) Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment by Tal Ben-Shahar [Amazon Link] 6) The Fords: An American Epic by Peter Collier and David Horowitz [Amazon Link] 7) The Overspent American by Juliet Schor [Amazon Link] Full Disclosure: if you purchase any items from Amazon by following the links provided, I will receive a small commission. Please th...

What follows is my current book queue. As always, I would be grateful for additional title suggestions from any readers out there! Please leave a comment in any of the posts in this blog. You can also reach me at dan1529[at]yahoo[dot]com. Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America by Thomas Friedman Find More Time: How to Get Things Done at Home, Organize Your Life, and Feel Great About It by Laura Stack Psycho-Cybernetics, A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life by Maxwell Maltz Undaunted Courage : Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen Ambrose Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives by Richard A. Swenson The Great 401 (K) Hoax: Why Your Family's Financial Security is at Risk, and What You Can Do about It by William Wolman and Anne Colamosca Note: What I Just Read reserves the right to read these books out of order.