Non-fiction – Page 5 – Carol's Notebook

The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky

April 15, 2020May 15, 2020 by CarolNo Comments

I've been doing The Science of Well-Being class on Coursera, and one of the books the professor, Laurie Santos, mentioned was The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubormirsky, so being the person that I am, I picked it up. According to Lyubomirsky, 50% of your happiness level is genetic, you can't change it. By nature, you have a set happiness point that may be higher or lower or right on track with the average. 10% of your happiness is based on life circumstances, like being married or divorced, rich or poor, healthy or ill. That leaves 40% that we can directly effect. She gives research to back up these numbers. The remainder of the book is about ways to improve that 40% of our happiness we have control over, activities we can do to become happier. There are several "quizzes" in the book to help you find your current happiness level, and find which happiness strategies will play to your strengths....

The Radium Girls by Kate Moore

March 10, 2020March 10, 2020 by Carol10 Comments

Generally, I don't read emotionally heavy books, and I don't know if I would have picked up The Radium Girls if I had known that it would have me in tears on almost every page. That being said, it was an excellent book, one I would definitely recommend. At the beginning of the 20th century, dozens of healthy, young, working-class women (some as young as 14) were employed in a newly-born business: painting watch, clock, and other instrument dials with a luminescent paint containing radium, both for consumers and the military. At the time, this fluorescent wonder was believed so beneficial for the body, that medications, aesthetic treatments, and even toiletry items had started to employ it. Everyone who came in contact with this miracle of science was amazed by its property to make everything it touched glow, even the skin, teeth and clothes of the girls who worked with it. Painting with radium was a highly desired job, as it offered...

Becoming by Michelle Obama

January 31, 2020January 31, 2020 by Carol6 Comments

In Becoming, Michelle Obama tells her story. She talks about growing up poor in Southside Chicago. She talks about the love of her family, the value they placed on hard work and education. She discusses her career, the right path she started on and the twists and turns it took. She talks about meeting Barack, their early marriage, and how they function as a couple. Of course, she eventually gets around to the presidential campaign and their time in the White House, but she (mostly) stays with her point of view, her difficulties, and her initiatives. She also touches on her difficulties with putting her career on hold to support her husband's career and how unfair things could feel. She talks about the difficulties of raising two girls, the tightrope of keeping them safe but allowing them to have "normal" childhoods and teen years, of appreciating the luxuries they have but still being grounded in "regular" life. Michelle Obama is...

Why We Can’t Sleep by Ada Calhoun

January 13, 2020January 13, 2020 by Carol1 Comment

This summer was the first time someone referred to me as "middle-aged." I'll be honest, it threw me for a bit of a loop. Usually, people tend to think I'm younger than I am, but this person has known me since I was a kid and knows exactly how old I am. He's also not the most tactful of people. Apparently, Gen X-ers are hitting middle-age. Why We Can't Sleep is for and about us - middle-class Generation X women in America. Calhoun has done a lot of research, historical and social, and spent a lot of time interviewing women from across the country. If you're one of us, at least parts of the book will strike a chord. She talks about watching the Challenger explosion at school, about Oregon Trail, about being new to the workforce during the early-2000s recession and about buying our houses right before the housing crisis. She looked into housing costs, HR trends, credit card...

Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell

November 19, 2019November 19, 2019 by Carol4 Comments

The above track is the theme song for the book. The production of the Talking to Strangers audiobook is well-done. We hear the actual voices of people he interviews, it includes reenactments of court scenes and the audio from actual videos of events. I am glad I chose the audio instead of print version. Gladwell present some really interesting ideas. Strangers are more complicated and harder to truly understand than we imagine. Liars can seem honest, spies can seem loyal, nervous people can seem guilty. People’s facial expressions are not a reliable guide to what they are thinking. And a lot of it is really interesting. We tend to default to truth, believing that people are being honest unless there are a lot of red flags that lead us to believe they're not. I know I do, and I'm okay with that. I think Gladwell has a point when he says that's what makes society work. We can't all always suspect...

The Last Castle by Denise Kiernan

November 12, 2019November 12, 2019 by Carol2 Comments

David and I spent a day at Biltmore on vacation a couple of weeks ago. It's a gorgeous house and estate and we happened to be there when it was mostly decorated for Christmas inside; the big tree hadn't arrived yet though. I just wish it hadn't been raining. At that time I was over halfway through The Last Castle. I had picked it up to read before we left and had hoped to have it finished by our trip, but time doesn't always work like I want it to. I had finished the most important parts about the building of the house, the life George and Edith Vanderbilt had there as newlyweds, the early growth of the village around Biltmore and Asheville itself, and the loss of important people in the couples' lives. The Last Castle is thoroughly researched and reading it definitely added to my enjoyment of my visit to the estate. I loved seeing the rooms and views...