Thoughts: The Happiness Project

I’m currently reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. Rubin wrote the book after a year of self-reflection, improvement, and dedication to appreciating life more fully. Although she is an NYC inhabitant and lawyer-turned-writer, Rubin is easy to relate to and is humorous about her struggles to remove clutter from the house, not snap at her husband and children, and go to bed earlier. Her creation of her personal Twelve Commandments and list of adult truths made me realize some things I’ve noticed about life and adulthood, which I’ve compiled into the following list (and yes, I realize many of these have been said before, but I think they’re important to remember):

1. Wearing sunscreen on a daily basis may be a pain but it’ll pay off in the long run.
2. It’s never too early for a good anti-wrinkle cream. This is even more applicable if you have children.
3. There’s nothing soap and water can’t clean, so don’t stress if the kids/pets/spouse make a mess.
4. Drinking a glass or two of water when you have a headache can really work wonders.
5. If you’re not enjoying what you do for a living, it’s time to look for something else. Life’s too short to be miserable at work.
6. Go ahead and eat that dessert.
7. If you clean your closets (or bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, basement, etc.) on a regular basis, you’ll be happier than just thinking about cleaning.
8. Adopt a pet. Studies show that we need animals just as much as they need us. If you can give an animal a loving home, why shouldn’t you?
9. Volunteer. Do something good for someone/animals/the planet.
10. Recycle. Turn off the lights when you leave a room. Don’t leave the water running when you brush your teeth. Little habits can have a profound effect and make our planet a little nicer for future generations.
11. Read a book. You never know what you’ll learn.
12. Travel. Explore different countries, cultures, and do things that make you uncomfortable. You’ve got to get out and take advantage of everything there is to see.
13. You can learn a lot from your children if you pay attention. Kids are resilient and learn so much from the world around them. Take time to enjoy your food, revel in your favorite movie or television show, try new things, and if you fall down, get up again.
14. Smiling, even if it’s fake, can make your whole attitude change. 
15. Always buy lemonade from a kid’s lemonade stand. 

Summer Reading List

I read a lot. Even when life gets hectic, I set aside time to read; it’s nice to decompress with a good book. Every May I compile my summer reading list. I usually scan magazines, websites, and look around the library for ideas of what to read. Undoubtedly, the list I create is far longer than what I expect it to be and there’s usually no way I’ll be able to read everything. This is even truer now that I don’t have summers free and can no longer lounge around reading on my days off. It’s really disappointing to have a “to read” list that’s in the triple digits. It makes me feel like I’m racing against time but I’m destined to fail because 1. I’ll never read all the books on my list and 2. The list keeps growing because I add to it on a daily basis! I am a very fast reader so that does help a bit. Last week I read three books, which is quite the feat considering I’m a working wife and mother who is also in graduate school. Reading three books sure put a dent in my reading list, right? Not really, since I added nine other books to the list. Oh well.

My new favorite thing is GoodReads.com. You can create reading lists, read reviews, find books similar to what you have read in the past, and interact with other readers. I’ve found it very helpful to keep my reading list on GoodReads rather than scribbled on a piece of paper in my purse, where it usually gets misplaced.

Here’s a brief portion of my current summer reading list:

·         Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

·         Call Me Zelda by Erika Robuck

·         The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

·         The Shoemaker’s Wife by Adriana Trigiani

·         The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld by Christine Wiltz

·         The Good Thief’s Guide to Berlin by Chris Ewan (I LOVE this series and can’t wait for this novel to be released in August!)

·         Inferno by Dan Brown

·         Man Up!: Tales of My Delusional Self-Confidence by Ross Matthews

·         Who Cooked the Last Supper?: The Women’s History of the World by Rosalind Miles

·         Rogues’ Gallery: The Secret Story of the Lust, Lies, Greed and Betrayals that Made the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Michael Gross

·         After Auschwitz: A Story of Heartbreak and Survival by the Stepsister of Anne Frank by Eva Schloss

·         Chocolat by Joanne Harris (and the other books in this series if I like Chocolat)

·         Blackberry Wine by Joanne Harris

I’m excited to tackle these and more this summer. Do you make a summer reading list? 

Book Review: The Paris Wife by Paula McClain

In one of my high school honors English classes, we had to read The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. I'm a very studious person and have always taken academics very seriously. I absolutely could not get into Hemingway's writing style. The book was assigned during spring break and I tried several times throughout that week to read it, but just couldn't. I used SparkNotes to get the basic story line and dreaded going to English class. Turns out I wasn't the only one who couldn't stand Hemingway's style, and we all got in trouble for not reading the book. Because of this, my only experience with Hemingway, I've vehemently avoided his works.

I just finished The Paris Wife by Paula McClain. This is an excellent book and while it is categorized as historical fiction, McClain drew on primary and secondary sources and accurately portrays the turbulent relationship between Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley Richardson, who narrates the story. The two married young and struggled from the beginning while Hemingway launched his career, jumped between jobs, and the couple moved to Paris. Paris in the 1920s was the playground for anyone who was someone. Painters, writers, and intellects lived, worked, loved, drank and gambled in the City of Light. Many of them produced some of the most famous artwork (Picasso, Matisse, Man Ray, Dali) and literature (Fitzgerald, Pound, Stein, Hemingway) history has seen. Among fellow members of the Lost Generation, Hemingway flourished and his career exploded. He and Hadley had their only child, Bumby. The couple traveled throughout Europe, spending exorbitant amounts of time in Spain, where Hemingway loved watching bullfights and recording what he witnessed. Although they seemed to be very much in love and the best partners among their friends, the couple's marriage deteriorated and the two eventually divorced.

This novel reminded me of Nancy Horan's 2007 book Loving Frank, about Frank Lloyd Wright and his affair with his mistress Mamah Borthwick. If you're in the mood for a historical read, I highly recommend both of these novels. Loving Frank has a twist at the end that I still think about--five years after I read the book. 

Book Review: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Wow. It took me a while to get on the bandwagon and check this book out from the library, but I'm so glad I did. It was very suspenseful, dark, and full of twists. It only took me a day to read, and I stayed up way later than I should have doing so. I just had to know what happened though! 

Nick and Amy Dunne have just relocated from New York City to North Carthage, Missouri to take care of Nick's ailing mother. On the morning of their fifth wedding anniversary, the meticulous Amy disappears. Nick is immediately considered a suspect in the small town and is suddenly pitted against the entire population, with the exception of his sister and one very trusting police officer. Fluctuating between Nick's point of view during the investigation and five years of Amy's diary entries, Flynn weaves an elaborate thriller that exposes one seemingly ordinary couple's marital intricacies. I was shocked at the end and wondered "Well now what?" I don't want to give anything away, so I'll stop my little summary there. 

If you've read it, what did you think? 

Book Review: The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise by Julia Stuart

I’m a very visual person so when I saw the cover art for this book by Julia Stuart I had to get it from the library. I’m disappointed when a book has good cover art but the story fails to capture my attention; however, this definitely wasn’t the case with Stuart’s novel. I read The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise in two days, which is quite the feat when you’ve got other priorities. It was so enchanting and whimsical and full of little-known (or little-known to me, anyway) facts about the Tower of London.

Balthazar Jones is a Beefeater at the Tower of London and lives there with his wife Hebe and their 120-year-old tortoise Mrs. Cook. The Jones’ son Milo died three years before the story begins, so the couple is still reeling from the shock of losing their only child; they’ve handled their grief differently and have grown apart following Milo’s death. There are a wide array of interesting characters that also live and work at the Tower, and Stuart does a great job of incorporating the Tower’s history into the story. Because of his penchant for animal care, the Queen wants Balthazar to oversee her royal menagerie, which is being transferred to the Tower for a new display. Comprised of numerous animals including escape-artist penguins, giraffes, a Komodo dragon, and an Etruscan shrew that suffers from debilitating shyness and anxiety, Balthazar has his work cut out for him. When Hebe leaves and Mrs. Cook apparently “runs” away, Balthazar is forced to reevaluate his life choices and face his deepest, darkest secret.

I was sad when I finished The Tower,The Zoo, and The Tortoise. Stuart is also the author of two other works, neither of which I’ve enjoyed as much as this one. This book makes me want to go back to London and visit the Tower. I learned more about Tower history from Stuart’s novel than I did when I visited the site a few years ago!If you’re in need of a fast, different read, I’d give this one a try.