Thursday, January 26, 2017

Book #5: Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

I almost always love modern re-tellings of old stories. I am a sucker for every Jane Austen retelling I come across, and this Shakespeare retelling was similar. This is a retelling of The Taming of the Shrew, and I probably wouldn't have picked it up without knowing that. The book follows Kate, a "shrewish" twenty-nine-year-old who dropped out of college, lives at home taking care of her younger sister and father, and is generally really grumpy and cross. She works at a preschool as an assistant teacher, and is on probation for saying things that consistently offend parents or teachers. One day her father, an absent-minded professor-type, asks her to marry his assistant to get him a green card before he gets sent back to Russia. And eventually she goes along with it, after some initial resistance--and she eventually gets more and more interested in Pyotr, and he begins to break down her walls just through his directness and straightforwardness.

I read this book in one short naptime--so it was a VERY quick read. It was a fun read, but not super-amazing or anything. It was hard to relate to Kate, although I did feel so sad for her at points, looking at how lonely and depressing her life must be. I was glad to see how everything worked out for her, even though it's hard to see how it could have done it in real life. I gave this one three stars on Goodreads--I liked it, but not that it was amazing or anything.

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Book #4: This Is Where You Belong: The Art and Science of Loving the Place You Live by Melody Warnick

Warnick writes about ten specific, concrete ways that you can work to improve your connection to the place that you live. She writes from experience, having moved to five different states as an adult, and each time experiencing some disappointment that each city wasn't the perfect place she wanted it to be. So instead of being disappointed with Blacksburg, VA, where they ended up moving, she decided to take some active steps to increase her attachment to her new adopted city. Each chapter is dedicated to a different aspect of place attachment, and Warnick's research and investigation into that specific aspect and how it increases your happiness level and love of your town. She interviews people who do interesting things with each of these elements, and has some interesting stories from other people, in addition to her own "experiments" of doing things with her town.

The aspects that stood out to me were: Walking more (walking increases your attachment because you become more familiar with an area--try to run more errands on foot), spend more time outside (create a map of places to be outdoors around your hometown), eat local and become familiar with the food around the area, become more politically invested in your town.

I feel like this book would have been better to read than to listen to (which was how I got around to it)--it was very much in line with the Happiness Project of giving you concrete ideas of things to do, and the author describing her experiences with doing them, and I would have liked to see them instead of just hearing them. But otherwise, it was a fun read, and I feel like I want to apply some more of her ideas, particularly walking more and becoming more involved in knowing what is going on in our city. I don't feel like I have a great solid attachment to Frisco--I felt much more connected to Durham, even though Frisco is objectively "better" than Durham in almost every quality-of-life way--and I think I could do some specific things to improve that if I wanted to. I may have to wait a few months or a year until I actually accomplish any of these things (with baby coming soon) but maybe eventually.

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Book #3: Daring Greatly by Brene Brown

Already I'm reading (listening to) more audiobooks than actual books this year. I have a feeling that audiobooks are going to be the way for me to go this year--I'm even thinking of splurging on an Audible membership once the baby comes, since I won't be able to read as easily but listening to things comes easily while nursing. I listened to this one while at the gym this week and I feel very accomplished having finished it. I tried reading this a few years ago and got a few pages in and was COMPLETELY not interested. Like, couldn't bother to finish the paragraph. I kept trying to skim and find the point but it just seemed super psycho-babble-y. But I think listening to it was a good format because it forced me to listen to every word instead of getting bored with a paragraph and skimming to get ahead.

Brown writes about vulnerability and how being vulnerable allows us to connect with other and create relationships, and how if we refuse to be vulnerable we don't allow ourselves to progress or move forward. She ends up also talking a lot about shame (since she is a shame researcher) and how shame stunts our growth and keeps us from accepting vulnerability. I can see that there are some places where I could/should be more vulnerable, and I definitely accept her thesis that being vulnerable is GOOD for our relationships and our growth as individuals, even though it is so uncomfortable. I liked a few of the points she made about things we do to protect us from our vulnerability--like "foreboding joy", or literally imagining every bad thing that could happen to our loved ones or to prevent us from being happy (I'm glad I'm not the only one who has that problem)--and the things she warns us to be careful of, like making sure that your words and actions match up. I wish that her book actually had more tips or strategies to actually help us change the way we "live, love, parent, and lead" like it says in the subtitle--it wasn't totally obvious what she wants us to change if we want to become more shame-resilient, like she talks about. Obviously, I want to avoid using shame in parenting (guilt has good outcomes, helping people to make positive changes, but shame has negative outcomes; guilt = you're a good person making bad choices, shame = you're a bad person) but I don't feel like she was very clear about how to do that.

The best part of this book, I think, is the quote that the title comes from, by Teddy Roosevelt: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." This quote was also in a recent other book I read and I love it. I'm going to put it on our bulletin board, I think.

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Book #2: 10% Happier by Dan Harris

I don't have any idea where I first heard of this book or why it was on my "to-read" list on Goodreads. But it was an easily available audiobook through the hoopla app our library uses and I listened to it today and yesterday while sewing something. I was surprised by what it ended up being about. I feel like the title and the cover led me to believe it would be more of a self-help book, something with specific things that the reader could do to make their own lives 10% happier. I mean, the cup on the cover made me think he was going to talk about drinking more water, etc. But this book was basically Harris's memoir about his discovery of meditation and Buddhism and how he overcame his natural cynicism towards the idea and actually got into the habit of meditating, and how it makes his life 10% better. He makes the compelling case about how meditation works for him, and why he is evangelizing about it now, even though he has always been a decidedly un-spiritual person.

Incidentally, Harris is an ABC news anchor (never heard of him, and he doesn't look familiar to me from his picture), but I think one of the most interesting parts of the book was learning about the television news industry and what it's like to work in it--even though that is decidedly not the point of the book. The majority of the first half of the book is going through his life and career, and his mental state as he went through these stages of life. Since he is talking about "the voice in his head," he spends a lot of time talking about what that voice was saying at different stages, like all the ways he struggled with self-doubt as a news anchor and his competitiveness towards his coworkers, all of which make him sound like an annoying and not-so-nice guy. However, I think that was a specific choice of his as the author, because he was trying to prove how meditation has helped him to become a better person in all of those categories and made him nicer and less angsty about all of his issues.

Overall, I think the thing that makes meditating sound compelling to me is the idea that it helps you to respond to things, not to react (as Harris says a few times). This is something I have thought about a lot before with parenting--if I could be mentally prepared before getting worked up about something, then I could respond more calmly and not just be immediately acting on my emotions. From Harris's description, I can definitely see why meditation would help you to do that better. I would love that benefit. However, I honestly don't think it's going to be a habit I am going to start any time soon. I would need to find a set time to work it into my routine, and there are already so many other things I am trying to work in and remember to do regularly (aka scripture reading, prayer) that meditating is not going to be a top priority. But maybe someday.

Sunday, January 8, 2017

Book #1: Teaching Your Children Values by Richard and Linda Eyre

I checked this book out before and had the idea that this year, I wanted to maybe actually use the lessons and the values talked about in here this year. I've been thinking a lot the last year about how we are actively TEACHING Dane things, because we've only just gotten to the point that he can really understand a lot of concepts. It's a lot of fun having him be old enough to have conversations with, and I love seeing lightbulbs go off in his head while we have discussions. This book could be a good resource (if I want it to be) with specific ways/activities to teach specific values to your kids, like honesty, loyalty, courage, etc. It's the sort of thing I want to be talking with Dane about, but which we probably don't usually get around to with our regular everyday lives, which aren't very structured and end up passing quickly. I really liked how hands-on the ideas in this book were, and I think it could be really valuable for many years to come (there are ideas for kids in preschool, elementary school, and adolescent ages). We are going to start this month talking about honesty for FHE and doing some activities/games. I fully anticipate falling off the wagon of doing this when the baby comes, but anything is better than nothing!