Title: 

This is the story of five couples doing group marriage counseling and of one author who sat in on the sessions. I  liked that it became a story that was a little bit about the author too. This could easily have turned into a detached third-person narrative. Instead, it’s clear that the author connected with the couples, so it’s easy for the reader to connect too. That does make this some very unobjective non-fiction though. The author isn’t shy about inserting her own speculations about the couples’ feelings. However, she generally makes it clear when she’s speculating, so I didn’t mind too much. I think a similar fictional story could be a great character driven narrative, but I liked that this was non-fiction. It made the story more interesting that it was true. It made it easy for the author to hold information back without being manipulative because she shared information in the order she found it out. And of course, it made for a very believable story. This is in part due to the author’s ability to convey the personalities of the people involved, but I’m sure the fact that they were real people didn’t hurt either!

Title: The Neighborhood Project
Author: David Sloan Wilson
Source: library
Rating: ★★★★☆

This book describes some incredible examples of applied science. The author had studied a lot of questions relating to evolution before he decided that if an evolutionary approach is truly valuable, it should be possible to use that theory to improve our quality of life. He selected his hometown of Binghamton, NY as a testing ground. In the data collection phase, he discovered enough fun facts for any trivia lover to enjoy. The coolest parts though were those where he actually works to improve his city. This was a very inspiring story and the author does a great job giving people some idea of what being a scientist is like (although in my experience it’s more work and less cycling around the countryside than in his description). You get to see the vast knowledge at our fingertips, learn about great experiments, and hear stories of how many different people were attracted to working in science. I’d love to see this book read in high school or early undergrad science classes.

Title: Tiny Beautiful Things
Author: Cheryl Strayed
Source: library
Rating: ★★★★★

 When I just read a few of these essays in isolation, I thought they were a little strange and over-shared more of the author’s personal life than I ever wanted to know. But from Kim at Sophisticated Dorkiness‘s review it sounded really good and so I decided to give it a try. I’m so glad I did! Something about the introduction putting context around the author’s writing and then reading it all together made me appreciate it in a new and different way. I actually loved that the author shared so much of her personal life. It was a very different approach to giving advice from the typical disintant columnist and, I think, far better. As the author writes more, you get to know her and you have to know someone before you can trust their advice. Occasionally, I was bothered by her advice, such as the essay where she unequivocally suggests that two women get divorced just because they’re not feeling it any more. Most of the time though, I found her encouraging, straight-forward, and insightful. Even when I disagreed with her, I was awed by her way with words and by her ability to speak so personally in a public forum. These short essays really pack an emotional punch. Highly recommended.

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Title: 

I find this book difficult to describe because I disagree with the book cover description. Purportedly, this is a book about how to change your life instead of waiting for your life to change. In reality, it largely focuses on the author’s own challenges throughout her life, from early drug addiction and bulimia to her recent loss of her house in a wildfire. She reframes many of these challenges as ways in which she was waiting for something. She also includes thought-provoking questions that challenge the reader to apply the lessons she’s learned to their own life.

When the author was describing her story, I loved her writing. Her word choices were intelligent, original, and emotive. I felt for her even though her life story was nothing like mine. Some of the challenges she struggled with, particularly within her relationship with her husband, felt universal enough that her advice could be helpful to anyone. Her questions for the reader were thought-provoking and could encourage people to think about their life in a new way. As a memoir, I think this book had great potential.

Unfortunately, when she started to give advice, her writing started to include more cliches. Her attempts to relate each challenge back to the idea of waiting for change felt a bit forced. Often, unless you’d been through her specific situation, I didn’t feel her advice would be helpful. She never gave scientific backing for her advice. It was all based on personal experience, which seems most useful to me if people want to feel less alone in a particular challenge. If your house had just burned down, reading about the ways she deals with it and the ways in which she still struggles with it could provide a much-needed companionship in a difficult time. If you’re looking for an interesting personal story or if, heaven forbid, your house just burnt down, this might be the book for you. If you’re someone who just wants a self-help book about how to better seize the day, I would seize a different book.

Amazon|Goodreads

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Title: 

“There comes a time in every new mother’s life when she finds herself staring at her screaming, smelly “bundle of joy” and wishing someone had told her that her house would reek of vomit, or that she shouldn’t buy the cute onesies with a thousand impossible buttons, or that she might cry more than the baby….Eschewing the adorableness that oozes out of other parenting books, Dais offers real advice from real moms—along with hilarious anecdotes, clever tips, and the genuine encouragement every mom needs in order to survive the first year of parenthood.” (Source)

Obviously as a woman with no plans to have kids, I am not the target audience for this book. However, as a sponsor of the Shirley You Jest Humor awards, I was happy to review this winner of the non-fiction category. And let me tell you, the judges picked a great winner! With short chapters, this book was like a collection of humorous essays. Even though this topic wasn’t one I’d read on my own, I found large portions of it very funny. Some of my favorite jokes were the cartoons and one-liners beginning each chapter, but there were jokes through-out that kept me laughing too. I did have two small complaints about the humor in this book. First there was one joke of exaggerating numbers that got a bit repetitive. And second, I personally prefer that if an author is going to use curse words, they just do it. “F’n” or “farkin” seems a bit juvenile to me.

In addition to the parts that kept me laughing, there were parts that would be far more helpful to people with babies or babies on the way. Each chapter tackled a particular issue new parents might face, discussing tough issues with humor and empathy. At the end of each chapter, the author polled a panel of mothers in diverse life situations for their related advice. I suspect this perspective from experienced mothers could provide some very helpful insights. So, as I began, I am not the intended audience for this book, but I found it quite funny anyway. However, there are enough serious bits and bits about giving birth that you just don’t want to know unless you need to, that I would only recommend this book to parents or parents-to-be. For new mothers in particular, I think the humor, advice, and emotional support in this book would make this great holiday gift.

Goodreads|Amazon

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Title: 

The authors Tom and David Kelley work together at the Stanford design school, where they help both people and companies to think creatively. In Creative Confidence, they share their personal experiences with many clients as well as some of the exercises they use to help students improve their creativity. They are strong believers that everyone is creative and can learn to access their innate creativity.

Given the description, I was hopeful that this book would contain advice that would help me come up with more creative research ideas. I was disappointed to find that much of their advice seemed like it would be more helpful to someone in a business or design position than to someone doing research. While some of their exercises could be modified or extrapolated from, I found little to be applicable directly. For instance, many of their suggestions center on trying something, anything just to get started and then refining. This could potentially work for me during the idea generation phase but is really awful advice for starting a research project (a far better approach would involve a lot of pre-planning).

In addition to not being personally applicable, I had a few other problems with the book. Almost all of the book was centered on personal stories and anecdotes. Research supporting their advice was hardly ever mentioned. Each chapter was supposed to focus on one step on the path to becoming more creative, but there were so many anecdotes that seemed unrelated to the overall theme that I often lost track of the point of a given chapter. They were a bit short on specific advice too. There was one chapter that had perhaps ten ideas for getting started, but many of these required a group to implement them. Finally, at times I felt the authors were simply advertising their design school. The name of the school was mentioned on nearly every page and I felt the authors relied heavily on buzz words to describe their work.

That said, I don’t think I’m the target audience of this book. The specific examples of innovation and design might be more inspiring or even directly useful to people in other fields. The writing was clear and easy to follow. The choice to gather all of their advice into specific activities in one chapter could make this a great reference book. I was incredibly impressed by how well my ARC ebook was formatted already as well, so if you think this could be useful to you, don’t hesitate to buy it in that format. Hopefully someone in business or design will  be better able to use this book.

Amazon|Goodreads

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Title: 

Hardwiring Happiness is all about focusing on the little things. It is not, however, just another one of those books telling you  ”live in the moment” which are so popular these days. Instead, it focuses on events and feelings that you can pay attention to in order to build up the inner strength you need to face specific challenges. By focusing on positive experiences, you help yourself remember positive feelings more strongly, despite our brain naturally remembering negative experiences better.

At times this book reads like a piece of fluff. It’s rooted a lot in the author’s own experience and clearly had the illustrative stories I think are so important in self-help books. It was less clear that the author was going to offer actionable advice or back his claims up with science. Initially, a lot of the advice sounded kind of new-agey and silly to me. Fortunately, the author includes explicit directions for performing exercises that will help you feel better about specific challenges. Even better, for me, they worked! For instance, I sometimes feel stressed about running late, so the other day when I was early, I took a moment to savor being on top of things. When I woke up the next morning feeling like I should be somewhere already, I was able to remember the feeling of being on top of things and relax. It might sound silly, but I really think I’m already feeling happier as a result of this and several other little practices from the book.

In terms of scientific backing, I think the author used a paraphrase of “research has shown” maybe twice in the whole book. He is well credentialed and does eventually get into some of the interesting theories of evolution of the brain underlying his ideas. He also occasionally mentioned other credible sources that influenced his theories. However, I was only really convinced that his work was backed by research when I reached his bibliography. This could easily have been a five star review for me had the author integrated this research into his text. As is, I’d love to give this to friends to read since I’ve found it so helpful, but I don’t think I can. I’d have too hard of a time getting people to look past the insubstantial sounding bits when the text doesn’t make it clear how much research is backing it up. That said, I’d love to talk one of you into reading it and actually trying the exercises, because I think this is a book worth sharing.

Amazon|Goodreads

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Title: 

It’s not often I agree completely with the hyperbole found in book cover blurbs, but Lean In is in fact both “an inspiring call to action and a blueprint for individual growth.” After getting in on the ground floor of Google and working as the chief operating officer at Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg has plenty of experience as a working a woman. She’s seen firsthand the challenges women face in the workplace, including the way women sometimes hold themselves back. This book includes some great advice for helping women overcome their own fears and others’ steretypes to become stronger participants and potential leaders in the workplace.

This book had all the hallmarks of a great self-help book. As I’ve said before, to me that means solid research which teaches you something interesting and leads to actionable advice, all spiced up with some interesting personal stories. Lean In nailed it on all counts. Sheryl makes a very strong argument for why it’s better for everyone if more women become leaders. Even if you personally don’t want a high-powered career, it’s nice to have someone at the top who will think about things like pregnancy parking. Companies with women leaders are more successful and people are happier working in diverse teams. She presents a ton of studies showing the stereotypes women have to overcome to be successful and she also does an incredible job giving practical advice for dealing with stereotypes without perpetuating them.

Given the focus of the book, Sheryl talks most about areas where women are more likely to be weak in the workplace, but a lot of her advice seemed to me like it would be useful to anyone. She also includes suggestions that nearly anyone can implement, whether you are currently a leader or in a more junior position, male or female, business woman or academic. I enjoyed reading this book so much! I gained a lot of insight into myself and a lot of helpful suggestions for ways I can personally do more to push myself at work. This is one of the few books I’ve read that makes me want to just buy everyone I know a copy, because I truly think the world woudl be a better place if we were all aware of the insidiousness of stereotyping. For instance, did you know that women who negotiate for a higher salary are more likely to be disliked as  a result than a man who does the same? Or that men are more likely to raise their hand in class? Or that women perform more poorly on math tests if they have to fill in their gender before doing the test? Because I think everyone knowing is an important first step in changing things. So, read this book. Then give it a to a friend.

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Title: 

The stereotypical introvert is not viewed as someone who could be a great leader, lawyer, or salesperson. Susan Cain challenges that view with both fascinating research and enjoyable anecdotes. This research strongly suggests that society could benefit from the complementary strengths of extroverts and introverts. However, much of American society is designed to favor extroverts. Cain discusses why that is; why we should try to change it; and how we can begin doing so.

As you’ve probably heard already, this is an awesome book. It has all the right ingredients to make me love a science-y non-fiction book. A dash of well-explained previous research, spiced up with anecdotes that relate the research to real life. A tasty new blend of old ideas forming the authors own theories. And a pinch of practical, research based advice for improving your life and that of the introverts around you.

These ingredients are all pulled together by the author’s clear writing and intelligence. She drew me in and made me understand how some very different people feel about being introverts. She gave wonderful answers to complex questions, starting by acknowledging that some questions have no simple answer. She also very tactfully makes it clear that she is not saying that introverts are better than extroverts, just that both types of people have something to contribute. All together it made for an enjoyable and inspiring read.

Amazon|Goodreads

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