First Reads of 2010

1. The Happiness Project, Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin

I’ve been waiting and waiting for this book to be published. I first heard about it when I kept getting snippets in the wonderful Google e-mail I receive every day about items of interest about happiness. I love happiness. I’m fascinated with happiness. I suppose you could say that just thinking about happiness makes me happy. So I couldn’t wait to read this book.

It was not a disappointment. I’ve been reading the author’s blog about the project on an almost daily basis, so the book felt, well, a little short. But that is okay. It was a good book. It gives readers lots of lovely ideas about how to be happier. Even if you just try one idea and it works for you, I’d say that would be worth the price of the book.

I resolve to use these ideas and try them myself. I’m going to read through the book one more time and this time I’ll write down a few notes.

2. No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process by Colin Beavan

The title says it all. Beavan decides to stop talking about living a greener life and do something. He challenges himself to try to put nothing in the trash can, to use no electricity, to drive nowhere, and to buy locally for a year. What he learns is surprising and useful.

3. Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

If they keep writing such long titles, someday we’ll be able to read the cover and we won’t need to even open the book. A little book of fascinating essays for the over-50 crowd who grew up on Guiness Book of World Records.

4. This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

Completely outside my comfort zone. (Seemingly) endless references to sex and (seemingly) endless profanity. Nevertheless, a brilliant depiction of a young man in 2009. I want to wash out the narrator’s mouth and put him (and most of the other characters in the book) in timeout while simultaneously thanking the author for showing me this world. Though I really never want to go there again.

So how do I rate this book? It’s brilliant, I know. Just not the kind of brilliant that I like. Guy brilliant. Especially young-ish guy brilliant.
5. Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places by Bill Streever

I had to put on my Snuggie while I read this book; we may have global warming, but the places Streever visits in this book are darn cold. This book is just the right mix of travel narrative and armchair philosopher.

6. A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

Chapter One did not impress me. I set it aside for several days only to pick it back up after seeing it on fifty recommended reads lists of 2009. Okay, let me give it another chance.

Glad I did. The story is a thoughtful one. Parenting. Caring for others. Coming of age. Atonement. Loss. Carelessness. Lots to think about here.

I loved the story, but I loved, more than that even, how much Moore enjoyed word play. All her characters, even the most dour, can’t seem to help themselves, throwing a pun or a crazy story about words in their conversations. I must have read some paragraphs three or four times, loving the way Moore decorates her tale.

7. The Ten Golden Rules: Ancient Wisdom from the Greek Philosophers on Living the Good Life by M.A. Soupios and Panos Mourdoukoutas

For future reference, here are the ten golden rules:

1. Examine life.
2. Worry only about the things you can control.
3. Treasure friendship.
4. Experience true pleasure.
5. Master yourself.
6. Avoid excess.
7. Be a responsible human being.
8. Don’t be a prosperous fool.
9. Don’t do evil to other people.
10. Kindness toward others tends to be rewarded.

8. Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle by Chris Hedges

It’s end times for academics. Hedges bewails the plethora of in-your-face-ness in America: wrestling, tv, even government and universities. Thoughtful discourse is found tedious, he moans. “We are chained to the flickering shadows of celebrity culture….”

No one who spent an hour in our country could deny this. It’s obvious. Hedges spends two hundred pages visiting all the most worrisome spots in American culture, pleading his case that America is in trouble. Bread and circuses everywhere, but more: bread tainted with toxins and circuses of the depraved.

Yes, America is definitely the land of spectacle these days. But does that mean doom for the country?

Like most books of this sort, Empire is long on problems and short on solutions. A careful look at the stats that prop up Hedges’ treatise shows the author is prone to the very thing he is ranting against; Hedges’ book is filled with, well, illusion and spectacle.

10. Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro

Munro’s new book of short stories is filled with human beings. Just when you think you’ve found a character above reproach, though, Munro says to look again, and you find the ice has melted in your hands. You get the sense that Munro is very, very good at seeing into the hearts of people and finding we all come up short. The title is a cruel twist on the stories inside; an objective observer of these lives doesn’t find much happiness at all here. But is that really the case? It’s something—a little glimmer of happiness, maybe, perhaps some small happiness that comes from making it through troubles—that keeps these people moving along through their difficult lives.

11. Home Repair by Liz Rosenberg It was suggested to me that I read this book. A friend of the author had read my blog and told me this book might be one I’d like. I’ve been wary of books offered up to me. Lately I’ve had nothing but disappointments.

Not this book. Not sure how the friend of the author knew this, but this book was an absolutely perfect match for me…a main character, Eve, who has been widowed and now abandoned by a second husband, leaving his family during a garage sale, no less. Left with two kids to raise. A shaky job. Odd and unstable friends. A cranky mother.

Doesn’t sound like we’re going to see a happily-ever-after ending here. But strangely we do, though not in ways we’d ever expect. The author has that wonderful ability to take life seriously while also laughing it off. A lovely read.

12. Same Kind of Different as Me: A Modern-Day Slave, An International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together by Ron Hall and Denver Moore with Lynn Vincent

I’ve had this book on my wishlist for a long time but it was my daughter-in-law who finally got me to read this book. She suggested we go to a face-to-face book group and this book was the book to be discussed. She read it first and raved about it. I finally got to it this week and I agreed with her. Wonderful story. Can’t wait to talk about it on Monday night.
13. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

I know a lot about Henry VIII. I know quite a bit about his first wife, Katherine. I’d say I know an enormous amount about his second wife, Anne Boleyn. I’d even say I know tons about Thomas More. But what did I really know about Thomas Cromwell? Not much.

So, this book. All about Thomas Cromwell. And Henry. And Katherine. And Anne and More. Even though I generally knew the story, every page, every sentence felt new. An excellent book. I honestly cannot imagine anyone who would not be enthralled with this one.

14. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin

Add this to your list of wonderful don’t-miss-them books. This is a collection of short stories that are loosely linked together and that all take place in Pakistan. Brilliant, all.

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