Average Girl Reads

One of the podcasts that I listen to regularly is the NY Times Book Review. Most of the time it is a bit too high-brow for me; as soon as someone mentions Nietzsche, I'm lost. However, I keep the show on my playlist because of a short segment they do during the last few minutes called Bestseller News. Jennifer Schuessler, the presenter, is warm and engaging. I can always hear the smile or smirk in her voice. Even when she is talking about a book I would never read, she draws me in. I would love to hear Schuessler on one of the pop-culture podcasts I listen to, like Slate's Culture Gabfest or NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour.

Q: Do any of you listen to book review podcasts? Do you have a favorite presenter?

TBR LIST: Time to check the status of my TBR list! Yes, I know everyone else did it in their first post of the year, but I'm always late :-).

I currently have 227 titles on my TBR list. Only three of the titles are ones I added in 2008, so I guess I did OK in my effort to either read or purge the oldest books from my list. There are still 50-odd titles left that were added to the list in 2009, but I don't think I will be addressing that right away. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I've developed a desire to read more current books. If you know me, this isn't exactly out of character. My tastes are decidedly retro, but every few months I dip my foot into the pop culture pool to gauge the temperature. Once I've familiarized myself with the current Top 40 charts and the latest TV shows and movies, I crawl back into my cave. I'm actually a little surprised that it took me this long to do the same with books.

ON MY BEDSIDE TABLE: Besides the new Keith Richard memoir, I have a couple books by Larry Winget, People Are Idiots and I Can Prove It! and Your Kids Are Your Own Fault. I read one of his books on finance a while back and while I didn't think anything he wrote applied to me, I found his writing good for a laugh.

UPCOMING: We are approaching February and I've already gotten my first seed catalog. This means that most of the books I'll be checking out for the next few months will be about gardening and home improvement. My husband got me a sewing machine for Christmas, so there will be a lot of sewing books in my stack, as well. If I do reviews of any of those books, I will probably post them on my personal blog which is more about my home life. Of course, I'll put up links to those posts here just in case anyone is interested.

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

Genre: non-fiction, stunt memoir
On my TBR list?: yes, since Dec 2009

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I picked up this book after reading an article by Gretchen Rubin in the Huffington Post. It is a stunt memoir where the author attempts to live by several different happiness principles for an entire year. Rubin's project involved tackling a different area of her life each month and applying several different principles to making it better. One month it would be marriage, another month parenting, another month friendships, and so on. In preparation for this, Rubin read a lot of books on happiness as well as interviewing people who seemed to be successful in certain areas.

My one takeaway from reading this book didn't come from the author herself but from a person she interviewed who had a long successful marriage. The advice was that a married couple should always have one indoor game and one outdoor game that they like to play together. Simple things like this resonate with me, and this sounds like something that my husband and I could manage.

Overall, The Happiness Project was just OK to me. A lot of the book had a "See? All you have to do is this" tone to it that works in a crafting book, but was somewhat off-putting in this case. I wouldn't dissuade anyone from reading it, but I don't think I'd recommend it.



View all my reviews

My first Sunday Salon for 2011! Woo-hoo! Yeah, it's not the exciting, but at least I'm getting back in the routine of writing.

In case you couldn't tell from the cryptic title of this post, I'm finding myself attracted to memoirs and biographies lately. Usually, I avoid that genre because it brings out the melancholy in me. It may sound crazy, but my heart aches when I read about the abuse an artist has suffered or the bad choices she made. It makes me especially sad when I read the biography of a singer or actor who died tragically. I've been known to throw a book down when I get to the part where the singer takes that fatal drink or leaves the party with the wrong person.

So, even though I often have a bad reaction to true stories, there have been a few books in the public eye over the past few months that I am tempted to pick up. "Just Kids" by Patti Smith, "Life" by Keith Richards, and "Decoded" by Jay-Z are among the books I'm considering. Since all these people are still alive, perhaps I can avoid the blue mood that life stories usually put me in.