<a href="http://www.happiness-project.com/"><i>The Happiness Project</i></a> by Gretchen Rubin

This book chronicles Gretchen's year-long attempt to try out happiness ideas, to see if they do, in fact, make her happier. Each month of her project has a theme (for example: Boost Energy, Remember Love, Be Serious About Play...), and she selects three to five resolutions related to that theme to add to her chart where she daily keeps track of how well she has stuck to each resolution.

It sounds like it could be really dull, but I actually enjoyed reading this book, and have tried to take on a few of Gretchen's resolutions. One thing she suggests is making your bed each morning, so that first thing you will have accomplished something (also, it's nice to go to bed in a made bed). Another is to tackle nagging tasks - I cleaned out my email inboxes yesterday and feel lighter. She also resolved to exercise more, which I am also attempting to do, but that's not really a direct result of having read this book.

Overall, this is a book I feel comfortable recommending to almost anyone - it's a quick, informative read, that I think I will probably read again with a notepad next to me. I liked a lot of the ideas she has, as well as am interested in looking up some of her sources.

7/10

<i>The Brothers Karamazov</i> by Fyodor Dostoevsky

p>Two items of note about this book---it is the first book I read on my Kindle and Sedina had recommended it.

The only other Dostoevsky book I know well enough to compare it to is Crime and Punishment, which I last read about 3.5 years ago. The biggest similarity is the presence of a mystery and some sort of forensic investigation. In both cases, the police spend a lot of time asking questions, finding clues and doing the 19th century equivalent of modern police work.

Crime and Punishment was written 5 years after The Brothers Karamazov. It appears in that time Dostoevsky changed his assessment fo police work a bit, as the detectives are a bit bungling in The Brothers Karamazov, following only material leads and making only the simplest psychological guesses, where as in Crime and Punishment the detective's focus is primarily on the psychology of the crime. This also may be seen as a contrast between city and country police forces, as Crime and Punishment was set in St. Petersburg, where The Brothers Karamazov was set in a small town. But the representatives of the big city---the doctors and lawyer---do not fair well in The Brothers Karamazov, so this seems to speak more in a change of Dostoevsky's thinking, rather than a consistent evaluation of the innate competence of city versus country folk.

As far as the characters go, the most interesting to me was Ivan. Mitya was a bit over-the-top in terms of his passion and behavior. While believable especially in his reaction to being arrested, I found his inability to stay focused one goal infuriating. That he couldn't bring himself to go to Katya and have her take mercy on him despite the fact that he did trust her was more proof that he had, through his own short-sightedness, put himself in a position he did not and could not understand.

Alyosha, while the most sincere and patient of the brothers, was in no way a participant in the story. His actions were most involved when he was a messenger. His reason for being in the story seemed to be mostly as the observer and as a point of comparison---the purest and most confident in the belief of his brother's innocence.

Ivan, on-the-other-hand, seemed caught between the two brothers (quite literally as teh middle brother as well...). He wrestled most openly with his brother's arrest and possible guilt. He did the footwork to try to understand what had happened and the role Smerdyakov played in the death of his father. he was the only one who was able to put together all the pieces and arrive at the true conclusion.

The way Dostoevsky plotted the mystery was very good. I liked how we didn't quite know the whole truth until Ivan did. Though the reader could put much of it together as the plot advanced,t he entire story wasn't clear until Ivan arrived at the same conclusions the reader had reached.

A good read.

9/10

<i>Not Without Peril</i> by Nicholas Howe

I have trouble with some books like this where the author inserts himself to hike in an area or otherwise give their own opinion on the topic when the rest of the work is focused on retelling the stories from a more historical perspective. Here Howe describes a death or near death experience on Mount Washington then in many cases describes where you can find traces of the incident or describes his own experience going there.

Generally the stories of trouble on the mountain are very interesting. Especially the early ones when there were fewer people in the area and the hikers did not have modern equipment. Reading about how they hiked through fluke summer storms and missed buildings by 50 feet was very engaging and remind me why we carry all that extra gear in our bags.

I could have generally done without Howe's interjections. Particular on the story about Jesse and her fall while ice climbing. That was a compelling enough story on its own. I did not need the author's memories of her to get there.

Overall, an okay read. Good for camping and other times when you are pitted---even slightly---against nature.

6/10

<i>Living to Tell the Tale</i> by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I generally liked this book Marquez tells the story of his early life in the same style that he uses in 100 Years of Solitude. I was expecting fantastic things to happen at every turn. Generally, though since this is a story of real life, there were few fantastic occurrences. Despite that, I enjoyed the adventures he told of his early years and the stories that had grown into his family's legends about how both his parents and maternal grandparents had met, courted and married.

Marquez's father is a bit of an enigma. He would leave the family for large amounts of time, then call for them when he had secured a location to open a pharmacy or had otherwise arranged a place for them to live.

As much as a I enjoyed Marquez's stories of living with his grandparents, going to school and otherwise growing up, I struggled to make it through the sections where he was talking about the newspaper industry in Columbia. The stories outside the paper would good---finding a new place to live, the riots, etc., but much of the rest seemed merely like name dropping. He gave lists of people who were important in the industry and who he spent time with, serving little other purpose other than just to list the names.

Overall, I learned a bit about the history of Columbia and enjoyed the stories of Marquez's childhood and personal struggles.

<i>The Bell Jar</i> by Sylvia Plath

I am glad I didn't read this during high school. I think the main character's personal crisis about her education might have been a little unnerving at the time (though probably more so if I had read it after I had graduated from college and not yet found work), since as I read I identified in many respects with the main character and how she performed in high school and college.

I wonder if the "bell jar" she experienced was what we would think of today as a quarter-life crisis---a realization that all this stuff you've spent learning up to now is not how the real world works and much of the stuff you've learned you really can't apply in any meaningful way. I suppose, though that the quarter-life crisis rarely results (though could) in as extreme an action as a suicide attempt and a need to be committed.

Part of the main character's crisis may have been due to the limited opportunities for women as well. She seemed to have two options in her head: be a great writer or be a stay-at-home wife and only one was at all attractive. Once her confidence as a writer was broken there was only the wife option---to a boy she didn't much like, making the option even more unattractive. The bell jar may have been due more the loss of any other option rather than to any real "craziness" on her part.

From the post matter, much of this story was based on Plath's own experience as a young adult. She says in the book that she dreads the return of "the bell jar," which in real-life seemed to return for Plath based on her later suicide.

The narrative is very tight and believable resulting probably from Plath's intimate similarity to the main character. I like how it is told in first person, as it gives insight to why she is acting as she is. That is always fascinating to me, to see the rational side of an outwardly "crazy" person's behavior.

A very enjoyable read.

<i>Torchwood's Another Life</i>

I grabbed this out of the library in the hope that it would keep my Torchwood high going after watching Children of Earth a couple weeks ago. I overestimated the quality of TV adaptations. It wasn't absolutely horrible---the other Torchwood book I grabbed at the same time was---but it really didn't do much in terms of giving the same complex sense of wonder and fear the show does.

Maybe the key is that if a character or a set of characters developed for a TV show and therefor defied more by the actor's interpretations of them, it is difficult to convey their actions entirely as you would see the actors do on the show. Everyone in the audience sees each of the characters differently, so putting down out particular description will not satisfy every reader's interpretation. As a result, there is probably little hope of any adaptations being much good and i should stick primarily to the show and maybe the radio dramas.

Or, I guess I could write my own fan fiction...

<i>The Futurological Conference</i> by Stanislaw Lem

This is very different from Solaris in tone and topic. Solaris was brooding and rather lonely, whereas this book was frenetic and very crowded. The title---The Futurological Conference---is used as only a device to get us to a dystopia based on hallucinations.

The idea of mind control---very specific mind control---using aerosol drugs is pretty frightening. One section where the main characters were discussing the reason for over population, they noted that everyone thought progress was going well on the space bases because the information they were told included an aerosol for naivety. With no way---and with the drugs no desire---to check, the bases on Jupiter never did, and were never going to, exist.

So, instead of just the standard government pulling the wool over the eyes of the citizens, you have the corporations pulling the the wool over the eyes of the government. Not even the people in charge---or who you think are in charge---know the truth. I guess it is the ultimate in lobbying.

I enjoyed the book, especially the dystopian section, which was quite different from the others I have read. The style was tough to get into at first, but as the story started out so outlandish, I couldn't stop because I wanted to find out just where it would end up.