The Happiness Project - Gretchen Rubin

I've been reading Gretchen Rubin's blog for years now, and this is the book that came of it. Unlike the many books that result from blogs, I think this one was the other way around. Rubin spent a year trying out different bits of folk wisdom in an attempt to make herself happier. Not because she was unhappy - but because she thought that she could make herself quite a bit happier without dramatically changing her life - and she was right.

Strangely enough, given that I spent at least a year reading her blog, and that I would happily recommend this book to anyone and everyone, I don't actually like Rubin's writing all that much, and I don't think that many of the specific things that she tried in order to make herself happier would make me happier. While her writing is just fine, and actually very easy to read, her voice reminds me just a little too much of my mother. And she is quite repetitive, which is a very good general strategy when you're trying to get a point across...but makes me completely crazy. Also...with the lists. Just like my mother.

But all these are points she actually makes herself - not everyone's happiness project is necessarily the same, but that personal anecdotes are both interesting and potentially useful. And while I don't find any of her specific examples to be at all personally inspiring, the general concepts are great. Figuring out how you can have more energy - by getting more sleep or more exercise. Doing things that you enjoy, with people that you like - she started a kids-lit book club, and while I also love kids books I am just not able to start a book club. I'm really good at participating, but I'm a bad leader - it would take me so much energy to organize something like that, that I just wouldn't be able to get anything out of it. And yet, this is an example of something she points out in her book - recognize that things which other people find fun, aren't necessarily things that you enjoy.

I've been frustrated for years by people who say "You can just decide to be happy!" and then glare at me for not being as happy as they would like me to be. I don't agree with that - sometimes I can't just decide to be happy. But Gretchen makes the wonderful point that you can decide to be happier - by putting in the effort. And sometimes by just pretending to be happy (honestly it is shocking what a difference just pretending to be in a good mood can make when dealing with a little kid who just wants you to play hide and seek with them one last time before they submit to being put to bed - grumble at them and it will be another 30 minutes of frustration for both of you, but put on a cheerful face, play along for just a minute...and presto - cooperation).

Anyway, it is a wonderful book, and I think the world is a better place for its having been written.

Material World - Peter Menzel & Faith D'Aluisio

Material World is a beautiful book - Peter Mezel and Faith D'Aluisio, along with many other photographers and translators, went around the world convincing statistically average families in 36 different countries to empty all their possessions out of their houses, arrange them artistically on the street out front, and have their pictures taken. The results are stunning and quite beautiful. Included with each photo is an inventory - which was really useful because the pictures are so full of things that it is very easy to miss what you are looking at. Having a list really helped to realize what it was I was actually seeing.

They really did go all over the world, to rich countries and very poor countries, cultures that looked very familiar to me, and cultures that were radically different. They also asked what people's most prized possessions were, and what things they most wanted to acquire. Reading it and looking at everyone's stuff, I couldn't help but imagine what my stuff would look like all in a pile. It was a bit of a shock honestly, because compared with a lot of people I know, we don't actually have all that much stuff (as long as you overlook the books), but until I saw these photos I hadn't really included "washer and dryer" in the list of things that are "mine", mostly because they are things that came with our condo, and that I would leave behind if we were to sell it. One family had even arranged their photo so that their toilet was in the picture! It was a prized possession! Many of them included sheep or goats. Large plastic tubs used mainly for washing clothes. Carpets. (Does wall-to-wall carpeting count as a possession? It probably should). It really made me appreciate how fantastically wealthy we are here, and how easy it is to take for granted.

Something else I tended to do when looking at the pictures was to count the people, and then count the beds (you have to be careful and check in the end notes for the list of things which were not taken out of the houses - often at least one bed was attached to a wall). In Canada most children have their own bedrooms. In a lot of these pictures, the kids didn't even have their own beds! Many of these families were living together in a single room. Often meals get cooked over an open fire.

The story which struck me the most was the Bosnian family. Parents, daughter, son-in-law, and grand-daughter were all living together in a one bedroom apartment. In the photo were several UN soldiers with guns. Their apartment had bullet holes in the walls. The daughter and her husband used to live in a suburb, but had moved back with her parents when the fighting started. The mattresses in the photo weren't used for sleeping on, but as protection from stray bullets. These people used to lead lives very much like my own, but were now living like refuges. They had recently replaced their gas stove with a wood-burning stove (in a 3rd floor apartment!) because gas was no longer available.

Women in the Material World is its own separate book, but is separate interviews with many of the women from the Material World book. It is a much more detailed look at their lives and hopes. It really emphasized just how lucky I am. Many of these women spend their time washing clothes by hand, often in water they have carried home from the well. Sometimes in a nearby river or drainage ditch - which didn't look nearly clean enough to be washing anything in. Most of them didn't have access to supermarkets fully stocked with convenience food - often they had to harvest the grain themselves. All of them had dreams of better and brighter futures for their daughters - most of the children were in school and working hard, but in some of the poorer families the daughters were at home helping because they were needed - and the money to send them to school just wasn't available.

There isn't a single country with total equality between men and women. We're getting closer here, and there is lots of evidence of just how far we have come in these stories. Most of these women lead better lives than their mothers did, with more freedom, fewer children, more choices. It helps me understand how amazingly lucky I am, to be where I am, with the choices I have. To still be in school at age 34, with a husband who does almost all of the work around the house. Until I got to university and was in a class with almost no women, did I realize that most women don't pursue mathematics. And it is a testament to the people who brought me up that I didn't consider it a problem in the slightest. I'm now starting to see that things are often harder for women, and that things may be harder for me in the future...but I have so many wonderful female role models.

There is a huge difference between knowing that most of the world doesn't live the way we do, and actually seeing it. These photos brought these families to life. They are all supposedly "statistically average" families - I guess they have the average number of children, and an average income, but the focus of the stories and the interviews was on these people as individuals rather than asking them to describe what their countries are like. I'm not sure that the "average" person actually exists. Seeing these little glimpses of the lives of people all over the world, seeing their personalities shining through, was really wonderful.

Spindle's End - Robin McKinley

Another re-telling of the Sleeping Beauty story. I love fairy tales re-told, I find it deeply satisfying when the author manages to explain some of the crazy things which happen in a way that makes sense. There's also something lovely about already being familiar with the overall shape of a story without knowing any of the details yet.

Robin McKinley also doesn't gloss over the difficulties. Katriona winds up with baby Rosie in her charge following the evil fairy's curse, needing to spirit her away so that she will be safe. Katriona is a long way from home, Rosie is very young, obviously Rosie will need milk to drink and Katriona can't provide it - but Katriona is a fairy, and happens to be unusually good at speaking with animals, and the animals happen to feel very protective of their princess, so Rosie winds up with a different animal nurse every day. This could easily wind up seeming very contrived, but this ability to speak with animals (which Katriona has accidentally gifted Rosie with), winds up being very central to the story, and the way in which they communicate is very different than people.

My favorite thing about Spindle's End is the way it talks about raising children. Possibly because I'm in the middle of dealing with a difficult 3-year-old, the tales of trials and tribulations that Katriona and Aunt endure while raising Rosie (and their whole village looks on bemused) feels very familiar. Rosie is a difficult, but not outrageously difficult child. Just on the harder end of normal. When Katriona's baby is born, Rosie is shocked that he seems to take up all the available time and energy of all the adults in the house - Katriona's response is "of course he does, he's a baby" which isn't the way children are usually depicted in fairy tales.

My next favorite thing is "baby magic". There is very little plot reason at all for this, it is just part of the way the world works. Children around the age of 3 go through a few months of wild and uncontrolled magic that isn't entirely harmless, and needs to be dispelled. The solution is to send them to stay with the local fairy (generally a single woman as fairy's don't often marry) for a month or so until the baby magic passes. As the mother of a 3-year-old, I can say that being obligated to send your child to stay elsewhere for a month or so because you are unable to deal with their behaviour seems like the most wonderful thing imaginable. My parenting book about this particular age is called "Your 3-year-old: Friend or Enemy?" and suggests that often during this stage, your best bet is to ship your child out to daycare or hire a babysitter, and spend as little time with them as possible. Of course in our day and age of over-involved parenting the thought of having the little darlings out of our sight for even a moment is supposed to be anathema... So Katriona and Aunt often have a bevy of "baby-magic boarders" around making their lives more difficult, which entertained me immensely.

I'm not entirely happy about the ending. Once Rosie's 21st birthday is approaching, and the evil fairy Pernicia starts actually getting involved in the story, I had a lot more trouble making sense of things. I think it boils down to the fact that I love Robin McKinley's world-building, and the little details of every-day life. I'm not as crazy about her descriptions, especially of magical castles and things that are not-quite-real. I had to work really hard to understand what was going on at various points towards the end of the story. I didn't get a picture in my head the way I did with "The Children's Book", and often had to re-read parts to make sense of what was going on. But the ending itself was quite satisfying. Especially the way in which Pernicia is finally defeated. The Rosie/Peony situation at the very end felt a bit contrived...but made the ending much much nicer. There's just a little bit of me that keeps thinking "should they really be allowed to do that?", but when everyone winds up much happier...it does seem entirely right.

I'm really looking forward to reading this one to Elli once she's old enough to appreciate it. Sleeping Beauty is one of her absolute favorite Disney fairy tales, and this story has quite a few elements in common - as well as having a very strong princess character who does most of the rescuing herself.

Dairy Queen - Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Catherine Gilbert Murdock is Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) 's sister. This book was mentioned in Committed (I can't remember if it was in the acknowledgements section or actually part of the book - but Elizabeth Gilbert suggested checking out her sister's writing and since I am very fond of young adult novels it seemed like a wonderful suggestion).

Dairy Queen is the story of D.J. figuring out who she is and what she wants from life - which boils down to not wanting to be a cow. Probably a wise decision. Her family is very non-communicative which has resulted in two brothers who have moved away and are no longer on speaking terms with the rest of the family - the reasons behind this are cloaked in mystery - a father who was a farmer until an injury and subsequent refusal to get an operation has left him in charge of the kitchen, a mother working 2 jobs to try and make ends meet, and teen-age D.J. doing all the work on the farm with the assistance of her younger brother (when he can be spared from baseball practice and games and driving his father to physical therapy) who has completely stopped communicating with anyone - and now with the rather reluctant assistance of Brian Nelson, stuck-up rich kid who has been sent to help by his football coach in the hopes that he will learn how to actually work at something. Brian points out that when you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that winds up not getting said.

D.J. decides that the time has come to change her life, and in typical Schwenk family fashion proceeds to do this without actually discussing it with anyone for as long as she can get away with it. The book turns out to be her English writing assignment - sort of a "What I did on my summer vacation" essay - which is a style that I think works very well for this sort of story. You get to see inside the main character's head, but from her own point of view rather than an omniscient narrator. It is a lovely story. The ending is very satisfying without wrapping up all the loose ends so tightly that they can't possibly ever come unraveled again. D.J. has made a lot of progress over the course of the summer, but it is clear that while she is on the right track, things aren't going to actually be easy. On the other hand, if she continues on the way she is going, she stands a really good chance at actual happiness.

The Children's Book - A.S. Byatt

This book caught my eye in a bookstore one day. The cover was intriguing, the title sounded interesting, and the blurb made me want to read it. Impressively the dragonfly pin on the cover actually does appear in the book - too often cover art is either generic or wrong - this one is perfect.

Set near the beginning of the 20th century, this is a coming-of-age story about a large group of people - not all of them children - living through times of great change. Women are starting to be accepted as people in their own rights, but they must still struggle for it. The structure of society is beginning to shift, and yet change isn't always going to be a good thing. Some of the people who embrace the changes most enthusiastically wind up destroyed by it, and yet refusing to interact with the world is also not the right choice.

The most fascinating thing for me was the uniqueness of all the characters. They were all individuals, and it was obvious that they all saw themselves as the main character in their own narratives, which I found quite unusual. Fantasy novels too often have only one character with different names, and conflict between characters is generated by a lack of communication - but if you could only force people to sit down and actually talk to one another everything would be ok. That is not at all the case here. Many of these people have such conflicting world-views that attempting to communicate is almost futile. This is the best portrayal I have ever see of the difference between someone's mental image of a person, and the reality of that person. Olive (mother of a very large family) has a favorite child - Tom - who she writes stories for and about, and who she feels very close to. But as Tom grows up, he diverges from her mental image of him, and her refusal to acknowledge that he is a person in his own right, not just some aspect of herself, winds up destroying both of them. Her daughter Dorothy, on the other hand, has never been her mother's favorite, has always had a strong sense of herself, and copes quite well even though her path is not easy.

The thing which struck me most is that Olive's family, with its seven children, gorgeous house in the country, mother with an income, parents still obviously in love with one another, totally falls apart in the end. Olive's brother-in-law Basil on the other hand is very straight-laced. Their children are best seen and not heard. It is inconceivable that his son Charles/Karl actually tell his parents about what is going on in his life - and yet in the end, they seem to be doing much better - even adapting to the changing world in a way that seemed unlikely in the beginning. I'm looking for a lesson here - probably something along the lines of the early adopters of cultural revolution wind up being most damaged by it, while those who sit back and let other people take the risks but allow themselves to be flexible when change is forced on them cope much better in the long run.

The final thing which struck me is the ending with World War 1. Initially when the boys go off to war you can't imagine anything more horrible than that they might get killed. But very rapidly you see that dying isn't the worst thing that can happen. And neither is coming home again. It depends very much on the individual, their own experiences, and the home they return to.

I absolutely loved this book. It was even better on re-reading as I had attention to focus on the gorgeous picture Byatt is painting with her words (there are just too many characters to keep track of to possibly focus on the setting the first time around). This is one I think I would like to own, and I suspect I'm going to get my mother a copy for her birthday.

Committed - Elizabeth Gilbert

I read "Eat, Pray, Love" back when it was the thing to do, and totally loved it. There was no question in my mind, when I saw that she had a new book out, but that I was going to read it, and I'm really glad I did.

Committed is a story of how, having totally failed at marriage once, it is possible to decide to try it again. I know this isn't going to resonate with everyone, but it sure resonated with me. So much of the emotional turmoil she describes is exactly what I went through. The feeling that getting married is somehow going to ruin a totally reasonable relationship, that it is going to turn you and your partner into strangers. That things will inevitably go wrong and then you're going to get dragged through the morass of divorce once again.

I learned a lot about marriage that I didn't know. Turns out that divorce used to be quite a common practice back before the Christian Church got involved in solemnizing marriages. Marriage is society's way of acknowledging that you are now a partnership, that you are taking joint responsibility for children and property. It lets you relax and know that the other person isn't going to just walk out the door on a whim. But I think that the possibility of divorce should always be there. Honestly, promising to love and be faithful to one person for the rest of your life just doesn't make any sense. People change. Situations change. Often divorce is better for everyone involved. Acknowledging this from the beginning - either formally with pre-nuptual agreements, or just informally as something that might happen but will be dealt with gracefully - goes a long way towards removing the incredible pile of guilt that often accompanies divorce.

I wish I'd had this book back when I was deciding to get married again. It would have made things easier. On the other hand, it is very reassuring that we both came to very similar conclusions and seem to have wound up in similar second relationships is both interesting and reassuring. The different cultural perspectives on marriage were totally fascinating. Having your whole community come together to do whatever it can to try and save your marriage is pretty crazy. It seems like such a fantastic idea, and yet I wouldn't want it to happen to me. And Elizabeth explained why: when women can earn enough money to support themselves, and when they can decide whether or not to have babies, they can hold out for better things in a partnership.

My favorite bit was when she interviewed a young man in a small town about their marriage customs. Everyone they know is invited, and people will often bring friends as well. This couple had over 700 people at their wedding. Each guest gave money in a small labelled envelope, and the new bride very carefully wrote down the precise sum given by each guest. This part was very important because when someone else gets married, the couple is expected to give back exactly the amount originally give them, plus interest! This means that every new couple essentially gets a loan from the community to help get them started. And the community has a vested interest in making sure the couple survives so that they can return the favor down the road.

I absolutely loved Committed, but I'm quite curious to know how other people react to it, specifically people who haven't been divorced.

It Sucked and then I cried - Heather B. Armstrong

I've been reading dooce.com for years now. I think I first started reading it regularly when I found out I was pregnant. At the time she was writing about life with a small child and I was totally entranced by the story, the photography, and her voice. She just doesn't seem to have the boundaries that most people do, which got her fired way back when she first started writing this blog, but it means that what you get to see here is a little more genuine than what you get everywhere else.

She just recently published this book about the first year of Leta's life, and her own struggle with depression, including checking into a hospital to deal with it post-partum. This is the book I wish I had read when Elli was just a few weeks old and I felt like I was drowning. She is so open and honest about exactly how hard it can be to cope with a tiny and demanding little person, while simultaneously showing you how amazing it can be. But mostly it is that she is so funny than you just can't help but laugh out loud. Most people can't pull of the juxtaposition of seriousness and hilarity, but she manages almost every day on her blog. The book is a lot more than just reading through what she has written online. You get a really coherent narrative, and a lot of the details that just had to get left out as she was coping with a new baby, serious depression, and severals days in the hospital. You do miss out on all the gorgeous photos from the blog. There are a few colour plates included in the centre of the book, but she and her husband are both amazing photographers, and the pictures that appear daily on her website are totally stunning.

This isn't a how-to parenting manual by any means. But it is a very open and honest account of the downward spiral into post-partum depression, and the struggle to recover from that, told in a wonderfully entertaining voice that is a real pleasure to read. I know this sounds like something that shouldn't work at all, but that's only because no one else writes quite the way Dooce does.