Three Good Books: Happy, Romantic, and Quirky

During May and June at the library our patrons begin to ask about this year’s popular beach and vacation books, so we try to keep ahead of that demand. The local schools send us their summer reading assignments in early June so those titles need to be ordered and organized for the library before school lets out. Sometimes it is difficult to find something good to read in this transitional reading season when we are preoccupied with preparing for summer reading. This year, however, I have hit the reading Triple Crown of three good books in a row. In no particular order, they are:

10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-help That Actually Works by Dan Harris.  While reading this book I could imagine Dan Harris sitting over a cup of coffee and talking to me about his journey to manageable enlightenment.  He starts with the same doubts as many of us and a certain wariness of the spiritual overtones frequently associated with meditation.  Conversations with Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra are just stops along his road.  After finishing this book I started recommending it to various family members – so much more polite than suggesting psychological counseling.  I recommend this book to everyone who thinks being 10% calmer would be a good, attainable goal.  Plus, I like this book so much that I bought it – something I rarely do.

The second book on my list is, strictly speaking, a trilogy by Jill Shalvis.  Shalvis is well known for contemporary romance and the Animal Magnetism series is wonderful fun. Each book features a really attractive (sensitive, but troubled) man, a really lovely (strong with baggage from her past) woman, a collection of rescue kittens and puppies, and mountains found far, far away from New Jersey.  In addition to the rescue animals, a duck, lamb and parrot frequently appear.

My third title, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin, is about a bookstore owner on Alice Island.  The main character, A.J. Fikry, is just eccentric and quirky enough that he reminded me of the Richard Brautigan book about the librarian who only accepted books into his library but never allowed anything to leave.  The two books have nothing in common except a certain degree of likeable quirkiness.  Back to Alice Island, however, each chapter starts with Fikry’s take on a classic short story.  I am not a fan of short stories, but I am tempted to try again with his suggestions.  The book is short and sweet, the characters are likeable, and the ending is equal parts sad and hopeful.

Springtime by Claude Monet

Related links:

Amazon's 2014 Best Summer Reads Lists - Use the library's Amazon Smile account when ordering through Amazon.

Our past blog posts about beach reads

Our Pinterest Summer Reading Board

Link to the Berkeley Heights Schools Summer Reading Lists

Monet's Springtime at the Walter's Art Museum

NEH Summer Reading List for college-bound students
'Two Quirky Books' including another about a bookstore

- S.Bakos

New Self-help books at the library

Self-help books, sometimes called self-improvement, are very popular at the library. A few on our new non-fiction shelf are:
One Simple Idea, how positive thinking reshaped modern life by Mitch Horowitz (150.1988 HOR)

Optimal Living 360, smart decision making for a balanced life by Sanjay Jain, MD, MBA (158.1 JAI)

I Can See Clearly Now by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer (158.1 DYER)

Mr. Horowitz traces the history of the power of positive thinking and explores its efficacy.

Dr. Jain devises methods to improve decision-making abilities.

Dr. Dyer, a well-known inspirational and self-help author writes a memoir with lessons for self-enlightenment.

Browse the 150's on the library new non-fiction shelves or in the stacks for more self-improvement books. Or click on the tag 'self help' in our blog tag cloud for other posts which list self-improvement books the library owns.

For more reading ideas, be sure to sign up for Wowbrary which will send an email to you every Wednesday morning listing the past week's acquisitions at the Berkeley Heights Public Library. http://www.wowbrary.org/signup.aspx

Deer in Berkeley Heights: living in the moment

Studies I Wish I'd Thought Of: Tweets Reveal Mood of Nation

This morning's award for best headline summary of the scientific news release of the day goes to Britain's the Telegraph: "Twitter shows we get up happy but get grumpier as day wears on" .
The Telegraph gets bonus points for including a photo of a nubile young lady in bed waking up very happy. My morning paper, USA Today, brought this Cornell University study to my attention while I drank my coffee. USA Today presented the news with this headline: Twitter used to study happiness patterns - factual, succinct, but not riveting.

My own mini-scientific survey was to "Google" the phrase "Cornell Twitter study" to see who covered this news release and how did they headline it? The Cornell study was widely reported this morning. The abstract of the Twitter study can be found in the journal Science, released today.

Abstract: "We identified individual-level diurnal and seasonal mood rhythms in cultures across the globe, using data from millions of public Twitter messages. We found that individuals awaken in a good mood that deteriorates as the day progresses—which is consistent with the effects of sleep and circadian rhythm—and that seasonal change in baseline positive affect varies with change in day length. People are happier on weekends, but the morning peak in positive affect is delayed by 2 hours, which suggests that people awaken later on weekends."

The abstract sounds much more scientifically legitimate than the news coverage which dumbs down the topic considerably. My initial reaction was that this study was one of those dumb, "wow, ya think?" academic exercises, but because we can't read the whole article, it's hard to say. The library does get Science online through EBSCO, but not full text or in hard copy. In any case, the reports of this study got my attention, even though the study results seem obvious and here I am joining all the newspapers, tweeters, bloggers, emailers, Facebookers and so on passing this news on to you, but few of us will really read the whole report or understand its significance. I find that makes me feel that my head is full of tons of useless tidbits of information and that surely leads to a grumpy start to the day.