Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most by Cassie Holmes

I really loved this time management book as well. I thought she gave some really good, scientifically based information. Everything she talked about was based in social science studies, most of which she conducted herself, and about what makes people happier. Very well done. Shocker: it's about relationships and not about getting stuff done. 

Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters by Laura Vanderkam

I like that Vanderkam is a mom of five kids, spread out over a wider spread of ages than our kids are. She isn't writing about time management from her white tower. She's super busy and gets how hard it is to implement things. But I really liked this book and the 9 techniques she talks about. I especially want to implement having a bedtime and doing one big adventure and one little adventure each week. 

Passionate Marriage: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships by David Schnarch

Dr. JFF recommended this book and talks about this author all the time in her courses. I feel like this could have been about half as long and just as effective, but there were definitely some good, interesting points that I wanted to remember. A lot of it JFF talked about too. 

The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker

This was really what it sounds like--a book about how to have good gatherings. But it goes into way more detail than I expected and honestly, was fairly interesting. I learned a lot of good ideas from it, although let's be honest--right now is not the stage in my life when this book will be that useful. Maybe in a few years I should read it again. 

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande

Atul Gawande wrote one of the most powerful books I've ever read with Being Mortal, so I was interested in this book just because he wrote it. The premise is just that something so basic as a checklist can make a huge difference in our success in doing things right, especially in the field of medicine and surgery. He had a lot of super interesting examples and research to back up his claims. 

The Lazy Genius Way and the Lazy Genius Kitchen by Kendra Adachi

I read these two e-books pretty quickly. They definitely had good tips and I liked how concrete the tips in the Lazy Genius Kitchen were--I'd go back to it just for the general recipe cooking tips. I also loved the permission these books gave me to value what I value. You can't value everything--you have to care about only one or two things (like when it comes to your house--do you want it to be well decorated or welcoming to kids and chaos) and do those well.  

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May

This was okay, nothing too fascinating in it. I don't honestly have anything worth saying about it. 

Laundry Love: Finding Joy in a Common Chore by Patric Richardson

I thought this book would be more metaphorical with more stories and "life lessons" than it ended up being--but it basically is almost completely a book about how to do laundry the right way. Haha! It was pretty short and actually full of new information that I didn't ever know about how to do the laundry. I learned a lot about better ways to do laundry and taking care of your clothes. It seemed like the best thing about this book is all of the specific tips for specific items of clothing, so I feel like this would be a good book to have if you need to look up how to remove a specific type of stain or if you need to wash something really persnickety. He basically says you should never need to dry clean anything and that you don't need to use all the fancy detergents--you can just use soap flakes! I want to try his tips and things at some other time in my life, but right now is not the time for me to overhaul our laundry routine completely with our new baby coming. But this would definitely be a good reference guide. 

That Sounds Fun: The Joys of Being an Amateur, the Power of Falling in Love, and Why You Need a Hobby by Annie F. Downs

This is another one of these unexpectedly Christian authors that I accidentally stumbled across and ended up reading her book. I liked the idea of the title, because I feel like books that are about hobbies and being an amateur sound up my alley, and will be motivating to help me try new things and get out of my ruts. And I thought this was a fine book, with cute essays and stories, but honestly nothing super shocking or brand new. It was only about 6 hours and I got through it super quickly and don't remember anything super concrete about it, even though it was just a few weeks ago. So it was so-so. 

The Home Edit and The Home Edit Life by Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin

I have liked watching The Home Edit on Netflix, and I feel like I could totally be a professional organizer. I basically wanted to check out their two books to get some ideas about getting our house more organized, and this was a quick read with some great images and ideas. I honestly would never implement so many of their ideas, though, because it would be insanely expensive to get all of those matching containers, and because I think they like containers a little too much. I don't need a separate box to put boxes in in the pantry. But they definitely are helpful. 

I also read the sequel which just had more pictures of fancy rooms and not a ton of specifically helpful tips. But super quick and easy to read, so that's great. 

I Guess I Haven't Learned That Yet by Shauna Niequist

I'm discovering that there is a whole genre of Christian self-help authors that I don't know anything about. I think of Jen Hatmaker as the prime example, and there are a whole bunch of women who orbit around her and do very similar things (although maybe they're all orbiting together and I just know of Jen Hatmaker the best, I don't know). Over the years, I keep accidentally reading books that I think are just books of essays or memoirs and then realizing that they belong to this elite club of Christian female speakers who all know each other and do the same thing. This was one of those times. I actually really like it and enjoy their books, but it's always surprising how many of them are basically doing the same thing. I had never heard of Shauna Niequist, but she apparently had some big drama in her family and the church her father ran, which she kept alluding to cryptically in her book, and which I of course had to google. But I'd never heard about it so that wasn't part of the draw for this book. I liked her essays about what she learned from moving to NYC from her hometown after living there all her life, and about parenting boys and learning from mistakes and stuff. The main title of the book is a great reminder. 

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

I actually really enjoyed this audiobook and I almost wish I had read it as a hard copy so I could take notes and mark passages that stood out to me. This seems like it's going to be a time management self help book with tips about how to get more done and be more productive and use your time better, but it actually is kind of giving the opposite message: that there will never be enough time, so you need to decide what you really want to be doing with your time so that you can have a good life now. I have thought a lot about this book and I have found myself telling some of his points to lots of different people over the last few weeks since I read it, and I kind of want to re-read it and take more detailed notes. I do feel like I'm not terrible at what he's talking about--I feel like my life choices reflect my true desires and that I am savoring and enjoying what I'm doing in my day-to-day life--but I think this book has really valuable advice. 

The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict by the Arbinger Institute

When we were visiting our friends the Busbys in Arizona, Devin told us that he used the ideas in this book all the time in his parenting and it helped him so much. So I immediately decided I should check it out, and our library had an audiobook version of it. I honestly think a hard copy instead of an audio copy would have been more helpful, but I still feel like I got some of the major ideas out of it and I liked the main points made in the book. The book felt kind of annoying in its format, however--it was a fictionalized story about a fictional guy trying to illustrate the points of resolving conflict that the Arbinger Institute is trying to teach about, so it felt kind of weird and fake. I did really appreciate the main points being made and I still think those points are valid, even if they were made in fake ways. (Why not try to tell real stories from real people to illustrate these points? I'm not sure why they needed to go this way.) The main point I remember (since it is much later that I am writing this review) is that we need to view people as people and not as objects. I found a lot of ways that I do that to my children--treating them as objects--and ways that I put myself in a box and act like I can't get out of it. I think this would be a really helpful thing to internalize and do better at in all areas of my life. So 5 stars for information, 2 stars for delivery in this book.

Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones by James Clear

I've read several books about habits over the years, mostly including The Power of Habit and Better than Before, and yet I still have habits I'd like to improve. Maybe I should just read all of them at the same time to really make a dent in improving my habits once and for all! But seriously, I think books like this always seem like such a motivator. I really liked this book for how practical and applicable it was. The beginning section was focused on the "why" of improving our habits, and the rest of the book was specific ideas on the "how" to do so. The title "atomic habits" comes from the idea of a tiny atom and how tiny habits can make big changes over time. Some of the quotes and ideas I liked best (that I underlined) in the book were:

• "Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress... If you are having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you, the problem is your system."
• "The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. It's one thing to say I'm the type of person who wants this. It's something very different to say I'm the type of person who is this... Your behaviors are usually a reflection of your identity." 
• "Your habits are how you embody your identity. Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become... The most practical way to change who you are is to change what you do." 

A lot of these ideas really stuck out to me and reminded me of my favorite quote from Elder Scott: "We become who we want to be by consistently being who we want to become each day." Our habits are the way we become who we want to be. I love this idea and I love this reminder to improve my daily habits and choices. I had a lot more thoughts but not enough time to write them all down right now. 

Don't Overthink It: Make Easier Decisions, Stop Second-Guessing, and Bring More Joy to Your Life by Anne Bogel

Annie Dillard said, "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing." And Anne Bogel says that if we spend time stressing and overthinking, that is what we are doing with our lives. We should not be doing that. I really enjoyed this quick and thoughtful book about how to think more clearly and make quicker decisions. I felt like a few of her points seemed to really coincide with advice we are given in General Conference, in a secular way. 

A few things I loved from this book:

• Your thoughts can be your enemy or your ally. Your thoughts are connected to your health and well-being, and paying attention to what you think about is key. 
• Deciding what your major values are can help you with making decisions. Our values can also influence what we choose to keep before our minds (like books, issues, news, etc.).
• "Our lives should reflect who we are and what we care about." "Our lives reflect what we persistently think about. Where we choose to place our attention directly affects the way we experience the world around us and the people we become... Your life is the creation of what you focus on--and what you don't." "It all depends what we choose to focus on."

I felt like this book gave me more motivation to live more true to myself and to not waste mental energy worrying or thinking about things that I shouldn't be. I'm glad I bought a copy to be able to revisit it because that's the sort of book I want to be motivated by again and again. 

HypnoBirthing: The Mongan Method by Marie F. Mongan

I haven't read any birth books since I was pregnant with Dane. I figured once I had done it once I was fine and wouldn't need to change what I was already doing. However, I've been thinking about having this baby naturally, without medication. This is a HUGE shift from where I was even a few years ago, because I've never been interested in trying it or feeling a lot of pain. But I don't know why--I feel like I would like to try having this experience that is a huge part of being a woman. I have been really lucky in that I have hardly had any pain in any of my labors at all--my contractions have never hurt until after my water is broken, and then I've only felt a few contractions before my epidural kicks in, and I have never had any negative side effects from my epidurals. My labors have also gotten faster and faster--it took less than an hour after my water was broken until Lucy was born. So I think I'm a great candidate for a natural birth.

I just wanted to be ready for it and to figure out what I could do to prepare. Several friends who have had babies naturally recommended this book to me. Marie Mongan basically says that everyone can give birth without any pain as long as you stay relaxed and breathe correctly. I was annoyed by her tone in this book for a lot of the time--she basically argues that everything everyone believes about birth is a social construct (like pain, needing to push the baby out, the very idea of birth being hard) and that if we just use our mind to relax our bodies and not feel any fear, then we will have a magical, calm, easy birth. I do think she's probably right about relaxing and that allowing you to give birth more smoothly and easily, and I really appreciate the specific types of breathing and ideas that can help you get through labor. But I feel like she goes way too far in some of her claims, she doesn't provide any actual evidence of her claims (no science here), and the way she writes about birth will definitely make some women feel shamed or guilty if they have a bad experience or if it doesn't go perfectly smoothly like she promises. I definitely plan to try and incorporate the breathing and relaxing, and have been practicing every day for the last week or so, but I also plan to ignore some of her more obnoxious ideas and opinions, and probably go halfway. I also expect it to be pretty painful, but hopefully manageable with these breathing techniques. I am tough, I think I can do this.

Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin

I read this book three years ago, right after it came out, and I remembered it being good. Good enough that I decided to use it as our inaugural book club book for the book club I'm starting in our ward here! I am so excited about it and so hopeful that people will want to join. And I think this was a great choice for a book club pick. I have three pages of quotes and notes and questions of things I want to discuss with the group after reading it through again. You definitely don't need to read the whole thing to get a lot of the benefit of it, but I thought it was really motivating. I don't actually have a lot of habits I want to change right now (off the top of my head), but she gives specific techniques and strategies that we can use to make new habits a part of our lives. I love thinking about how we have control over our habits. I wrote this on my document for discussion in our book club, because I think this is the main point I get out of this book: "Sometimes we talk about habits as though they’re things that we can’t stop or control. Especially bad habits. But I love the perspective in this book that we absolutely can control them. We can deliberately look at our values and our goals and what we want to become, and decide what things we need or want to do each day that will reflect those values or future selves. Richard G. Scott said, “We become who we want to be by consistently being who we want to become each day.” At a very basic level, our daily habits are who we are. It doesn’t mean that it’s easy, but there are specific strategies that we can use to incorporate those specific habits we’ve chosen into our everyday routines. This is the main message of hope that I get out of this book: we get to choose who we are and what we do every day."

I can't wait to get our group together to discuss it. I am crossing my fingers we will get a good showing!

Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis

I feel conflicted about this book. I really enjoyed most of it while I was listening, and I loved hearing the author reading it and feeling like I was getting to know her personality. She seems like she is super funny and awesome and like someone who I'd want to be friends with (but I'd never be able to keep up with, honestly). And I loved how she wasn't so coddling with her advice and opinions like so many articles and things are that we read these days. I feel like most things that are written for moms say things just like, "Mama, you're doing amazing. Just remember how amazing you are," but it's kind of disingenuous because yeah, we are amazing, but everyone can be better, and some people just flat out AREN'T doing amazing so reading stuff like that isn't that helpful. Hollis had much more of a "tough love" approach, like "Sure, you're amazing--so do better. Don't just sit there and watch Netflix in your free time--do something more useful that can help you achieve your dreams that you keep giving up on." etc. I feel like this is pretty awesome and she got me thinking a little bit about what some of my goals and dreams are--which I still haven't really identified, but she at least got me thinking about how to make concrete steps towards my goals.

But, on the other hand, I kind of disagreed with some of the things she was saying. She liked to go on and on and on about how awesome and hardworking and amazingly successful and confident she was in herself--which is really great, but it ended up getting old throughout the book. (I'd never heard of her or her blog or her amazingly successful company that she kept talking about and which she made it sound like she was everywhere.) She said over and over again that she was the hardest working person EVER, and the toughest and strongest and best at XY and Z. I am sure that I was just being influenced by our culture that says that women have to be humble and unassuming and that's why it was bothering me, but it did. One of her chapters was all about how she had the goal to buy a $1000 Louis Vuitton bag, and how she was able to visualize that goal and how that goal motivated her to work as hard as she could until she could achieve it. I liked the message behind it, but I can't get behind that specific example, and I can't help think how different her life must be from mine (or most people's) if that's something she really can buy.

However, it was definitely worth a listen. These issues that I have with it were definitely not as important as I'm making them, because I enjoyed it while I was listening to it. I feel like I'd even buy this book to come back to it later, because there were some really great parts. I just don't want to feel like I have to take advice from someone who's pretty much my own age but who is making her career based off of a lifestyle blog.

Braving the Wilderness by Brene Brown

I have only read one other book by Brene Brown (Daring Greatly), but I have also listened to her TED talks and I feel like I generally have a good grasp on what she is all about. This is her most recent book (I think?) and it seemed like a lot of repetition of her previous works, but also a lot of different stuff. This book seemed like it was very influenced by our current political climate, where everyone is extremely polarized and argumentative and can't get along, and Brown is trying to combat that with giving suggestions on how to communicate with people civilly and how to create real connections with people, but still being true to yourself and feeling strong in your own convictions and values.

I really liked some of the points that she made. She started off with a story about her feeling like she didn't belong as a child, and a story when she didn't make the cheerleading squad in middle school and how alone she felt, even with her family, who didn't seem very supportive when she didn't make it. That story was so heartbreaking to me, and it was really sad to think about the effects of feeling like you don't belong in your own family--and made me think a lot about parenting and how to avoid making your kids feel like that. Her four things that we should do to "brave the wilderness" and make connections with people while staying true to yourself were: 1. People are Hard to Hate Close Up. Move In. 2. Speak Truth to BS, Be Civil. 3. Hold Hands with Strangers and 4. Strong Back, Soft Front, Wild Heart. I especially liked the chapters about 1 and 3, and thought those were really applicable and appropriate. I loved her ideas about "holding hands with strangers," and the benefits of being at gatherings with people that involve strong emotions, like funerals or concerts or rallies, and how those real connections in a real-life setting bring us real joy and strength.

I feel a little bit skeptical about her obsession with "true belonging" and being true to yourself, though. Of course I think self-acceptance is so important. And I imagine I'm probably not great at it, nor are most people. It's a constant work-in-progress for everyone, I'm sure. However, I don't know that that itself is the pinnacle of everything and the only way to true happiness. Of course, everything she says is backed up with data (as she likes to talk about all the time), so I'm probably wrong. But I wonder if there's something different about coming from an LDS background and our views about commitments and covenants that makes me not want to swallow what she's saying wholeheartedly. I think you can definitely take this "being true to yourself" thing too far--because you can't just up and leave all your commitments and obligations and responsibilities just because you think it's not being true to you. Oh well. I am sure she would have a great answer for me, but I don't feel like it was really addressed in this book.

Sometimes her tone in this book bugged me. It was kind of whiny ("I don't fit in anywhere!" "You probably hate me!"). And also, although some of the information was good, I feel like this didn't necessarily need to be a stand-alone book. She probably could have squeezed this all into a TED talk. But otherwise, it was a fine book to read, and it only took about two hours. I think I am going to read her first book, Gifts of Imperfection, soon, since I heard that it was one of her best.

Book #115: 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam

I read this book a few years ago and enjoyed it enough that I bought a copy so that I could revisit it. And I've talked about it enough and mentioned it to enough people that when our book club ended up scrambling for a last-minute book replacement my friend thought this one could be a great one. Ironically, though, I didn't get around to reading it until last minute, so I only read about 2/3 of it and skimmed the rest. Since the message of the book is basically "you have time for anything you want to do, if you choose to make time for it," I was determined not to completely miss reading this, but I didn't get all the way through it.

I love the overall message of this book, and the way she sorts through the number of hours in a week to show that really, you can make time for things if you choose to, really helped to open my mind. However, I was glad we were able to talk about it at book club last night because there were lots of things I didn't love about it. She seems to think you should outsource any chores or jobs around the house you don't love (aka, all of them?) and she also doesn't seem to take into account how long it takes to get ready or personal care in all her accounts of how long it takes to do things. Also, it's easy to make a chart of what you're going to do with your time every day, but when you have kids, there's no way to predict how long some things will take (for example, I'm typing this with Lucy on my lap and being interrupted by Dane every 5 seconds, so it's taken way longer than it should have). But one thing she says in the book totally changed my worldview--she says, it's not that we don't have time to do most things, it's that it's not a priority. I could manage to spend more time getting ready every day and wear make-up and do my hair if I wanted it--but it's just not a priority. But I do manage to read for a chunk of every day, because it's something that rejuvenates me and makes me happier. But I would love to find another goal that I could also make a priority and use some more time in that way too.