The Novel Habits of Happiness, Alexander McCall Smith

Francis Cadell, Iona, Looking North, ?1912-30

(December 28) Loved it, as always with Alexander McCall Smith… I love the way Isabel thinks.

This one was about open-mindedness often, explored in a variety of ways.

Really interesting: the rehabilitation of one of Isabel’s enemies (conributes to the open-mindedness theme, obvi)

As usual: an ambiguous problem “solved” ambiguously (= not solved)

Interesting: Cat is going to marry Jamie’s doppelgänger??? (McCall Smith is surprising and creative)

I want to spend all my time reading about what Isabel and Jamie do during a routine day... how they prepare their meals and open their bottles of New Zealand wines and bathe their adorable son, sit in their back garden and later sing a few “old” songs to each other at the piano… so peaceful and civilized… ::big sigh::

Why Not Me?, Mindy Kaling

Raja Ravi Varma, The Goddess Saraswathi, 1896

(December 17, 2015) I loved this book as much as or more than her first one… just so great.

I laughed out loud so much.

Pages 47-48: laughed out loud then choked up within the space of a half-page:

One very gratifying compliment I sometimes hear is that women want to be my best friend. This endlessly amuses my actual best friend, Jocelyn, because in her estimation I’m “a good friend, but not that great” 

... And all that stuff I do to “appear” better has actually made me a better person. I wish I had always acted like I was a little bit famous.

P. 116:

The Emmy announcements take place at 5:30 a.m., Pacific Standard Time, because when we are finding out the top six contenders for best miniseries, movie, or dramatic special, it’s important that the whole nation watch as one.

So many lines like that throughout … this is her comedic specialty.

It was interesting that on p. 123 she alluded to Catcher in the Rye, because she does sound exactly like Holden Caulfield sometimes … and she is making fun of her own pretentiousness … but, in fact, she does have the kind of wisdom you find in literary works.

Love Style Life, Garance Doré

Réné Gruau, La Cigarette, 1983

(December 11) I liked this quite a bit and am surprised by that!

First, I was surprised that this book was so popular… I was always kind of “meh” on Garance Doré's blog… I liked her aesthetic but didn’t register how well done the writing was… now that I've read a whole book of it at once, I've fallen for the charm and can see the appeal… but initially it surprised me that the library already had copies circulating when I looked it up, whereas Alyson Walsh’s Style Forever and Lisa Eldridge’s Face Paint hadn’t been ordered yet. So Garance Doré is incredibly popular. So I lined up for the library copy.

Charming: even though I read a lot of these blogs and these kinds of books, this book had a few great little tips I’d never heard before and am glad to have,* and I learned a few more details about different fashion-related things, like the names of the various Ray Ban sunglasses, e.g. I knew “Aviator” and I knew “Wayfarer”... but I never knew “Clubmaster.”

I like Garance Doré's take on “being French” or dressing like a Parisian, which is such a hot topic right now: she doesn’t exalt either the French or the Americans but she does find both funny and she identifies the points of view that are completely opposite -- useful to know.

But mostly I fell in love with her voice and her perspective, which had never impressed me that much before from the blog. She’s kind of wise. She pays lip service to fashion and beauty, but mostly she wants to talk about manners, etiquette, social elegance, strength of character… good topics for real human beings.

I love the way she draws… I always liked that about her… the clean, spare sexiness of her lines… but I eventually realized it’s a style she stole a bit from Réné Gruau.

* I no longer have these, three years later when I actually post the review.

Style Forever, Alyson Walsh

Dean Marsh, Camila Batmanghelidjh, 2008

(November 18) I keep reading these style guides looking for the Holy Grail nugget of advice that will make me stylish or at least make old-age dressing interesting …. but hmm.

I have followed Alyson Walsh’s blog for a while and quite enjoy her aesthetic… this book offers a little more detail about her aesthetic ...and I notice with all these style "guides" that, really, you’re being offered the details of one individual aesthetic… even though the premise of these guides is to find the reader's style. So -- ::shrug::

This book had a few proofing and copy-editing errors, and was printed in teeny-tiny type. There were no photos, just illustrations (beautiful, but impressionistic).

It was very British, too…. references, language, media, “style icons”....

Odd, a bit formulaic (a few pages of notes on a topic then an interview with a “style icon,” repeat), but likable, like Alyson Walsh herself.

She Always Knew How: Mae West, A Personal Biography, Charlotte Chandler

(October 15) This was good biography in that it was almost all direct quotes from Mae West herself …. or those who knew her (maybe 10 per cent the latter). She was very smart and a feminist, and the creation of her signature persona was interesting.

The Knockoff, Lucy Sykes and Jo Piazza

Yiying Lu, Anna Wintour with a QR Code Top, 2011

(September 16) I really didn’t think much of this novel from early on, and was disappointed since it was touted by Nick Wooster and a few other fashion bloggers / experts I follow… but now I realize they probably know the two authors personally and wanted to use their powers to help their friends.

And everyone is always hoping for another The Devil Wears Prada, which made such a good movie (I haven’t read the book).

But it was kind of cheesy and predictable on the one hand, and implausible and tacky on the other. 

Here's a sample sentence: “A band, one that was fairly well known among hipster yuppies in gentrifying Brooklyn, was setting up on the stage.” (p. 314)

I have to agree with the 1- and 2-star reviews on Amazon:

The characters were over the top, but not in a fun, whimsical way like in Bergorf Blondes, which I enjoyed. A 42-year-old who has been on a brief medical sabbatical reacts to this brave new world like a caveman being unfrozen from a glacier, befuddled by the concept of internet traffic and bemoaning the demise of the floppy disk. A graduate of Harvard business school who lands a prestigious position at an important fashion magazine tweets that she is “bringin da pinky swear back. Booya!” Because that's how adult women talk in 2015. Nailed it.

More at this link.

No One Understands You: And What to Do About It, Heidi Grant Halvorson

(August 18) This book was recommended by Jezebel's Tracy Moore, whose teasers made it seem like the book would teach you that when you say “x,” people hear “y,” so say “z” instead to make sure you're understood.

There was a little bit of that, but the whole perspective of the book was from the other direction: it was about the lenses perceivers wear, and how to identify and offset these. This will help you avoid making a bad first impression or reduce any misperception you struggle against (mostly in the workplace it seems), plus show you how to reverse such situations.

So some of that is what most people do in life -- you figure out people around you and engineer your comments and intentions to work with them. But this is a much more in-depth version of that, helping you with people you have no way of interpreting otherwise.

Tracy Moore does offer a good summary.

Betsy-Tacy, Betsy and the Great World, and Betsy's Wedding, Maud Hart Lovelace

Émile Vernon, Best of Friends, 1917

(July 14, July 25, August 3) Got Betsy-Tacy out of the library because Mallory Ortberg was rhapsodizing about Betsy and the Great World and I realized I had read those books as a kid.... had read them and really loved them, because I can remember naming paper dolls and other “people” we had “Tacy” and “Tib”... and I just remember being really fond of the stories and nodding in approval whenever I saw societies and reading groups devoted to them.

Re-reading Betsy-Tacy was a bit of a shock -- I had to wonder how drab my life was at the time that I loved those stories so much: they are the plainest vanilla stories ever... sweet, but too young for anyone who can read for herself. The Bobbsey Twins books were way more inventive and absorbing it seems to me even now.

However, the grown-up Betsy books redeemed Maud Hart Lovelace for me. They are totally enjoyable. The two later books are not profound, and the plot lines are a little predictable… but Lovelace always puts a little twist into things that keeps them interesting.

They're sweet, like Anne of Green Gables books without literary pretensions, and they have that travel-to-a-different-time effect that I like…. full of strange daily activities and customs taken for granted then (early 1900s), completely forgotten now.

I’m missing them now…. wishing I had the outcome of a little luncheon party or a letter to Somebody Significant or such like to look forward to reading.

You Can Heal Your Life and Heal Your Body, Louise Hay

Bill Morrison (art director), "Godfellas" episode of Futurama, 2002

(July 6) You Can Heal Your Life contains Heal Your Body, as probably do most of Louise Hay’s books, which I didn’t realize till I bought both. :} But I don’t mind investing in a guru.

This does not contradict Abraham-Hicks thinking -- but it seems to offer different routes to finding feelings of happiness which are perfectly in keeping with A-H, yet different. More general, and more “your mind controls everything anyway”... A-H is more about reducing resistance (although they do recommend fantasizing everything into place)... well, whatever… they are different, but mutually inclusive.

I think Hay even kind of answers the question of why there is the resistance… something that has always nagged at me and is still not perfectly clear as a context, even with Hay’s explanations of early deep-seated grudges. Why do we go for grudge-bearing?

It’s like A-H, her thinking, but it’s a little more woo-woo somehow. It’s definitely complementary, though. It’s like: A-H tells you to get rid of resistance, but Hay knows exactly what your resistance is and gives you a way to get rid of it permanently.

She has definitely focused on physical health more than anything and I thought at first she was appealing a little more directly to the victim point of view… but I realize from reading her that I do have a victim point of view, to my surprise.

How did I come to this book? I saw the movie enthusiastically recommended by a trusted blogger and got it out of the library (had to wait a long while since it was in heavy demand). The movie made me want to read her books, and I bought them, I was in such a hurry.

[The episode of Futurama illustrated above contained a godhead figure who was the wisest, most benevolent godhead figure you could ever imagine.]

No One Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July

Tina Mammoser, Intertidal, 2014

(June 22) Funny -- I heh-heh’d aloud throughout as I did through the novel (The First Bad Man).

So interesting -- many of the same themes as TFBM -- love, female identity, language jokes: “the dynamic had moved down the block and was serving others” is one of many, many, funny little metaphors… I could quote every page.

The First Bad Man, Miranda July

Miranda July, from Kids Activity Pages for Apartamento Magazine, 2011

(April 20) I loved this book. I laughed helplessly on every page.

It’s all crazy and improbable stuff but it’s, like, that never matters, fundamentally.

Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity, Edward Slingerland

Woman Playing Polo, 8th C. CE

(April 3) Really liked this subject, wu-wei and de -- basically, Taoism (Daoism?) compared and contrasted with other ancient Eastern philosophies.

It is styled to be about the modern desire to "get in the groove," an angle that feels like it was foisted on Slingerland by his editors so that this otherwise scholarly / academic study would appeal to a lay public (I always resent it that these topics are not considered interesting enough their own, and resent it almost as much that the imposed "hook" never gets full shrift either).

Got the title from the Utne Reader e-newsletter .

I was interested because all I had ever heard about Eastern thought beyond the clichés of Chinese aphorisms was in those Xena episodes where she falls in love with Lao Tze's wife, who was the real author of the Tao texts (lol). Loved those episodes and always swore I'd read more about this mystical power the Tao texts seemed to have for Xena.

Despite this interest, the book's briefness and Slingerland's very readable style, I took forever to get through this -- had to renew it twice (the maximum at the time).

The A-H index: sometimes it supported Abraham-Hicks thinking; sometimes it didn't.

Hot and cold cognition were fascinating concepts at the time, but now, lo, these two years later, I can't remember a thing about them.

Paper Towns, John Green

Eoin, Endlessly Slipping, 2013

(February 19) I wanted to read Paper Towns because I enjoyed The Fault in Our Stars so much. This seemed slow at first, perhaps because TFiOS was so great and started off so grippingly right from the beginning, and I was maybe worried that this was going to fall A LOT short if it didn't get right down to business.

I also gave it a little side-eye at first because it felt like Green was doing a Manic Pixie Dream Girl story, but then it got very good with a well-done plot point and the story became quite suspenseful. At that point it seemed superior to TFiOS.

It features many, many interesting literary allusions and tropes and many profound insights into how we see and don't see ourselves and each other, and I enjoyed all this very much. Like TFiOS, Paper Towns somehow interweaves literary / philosophical references with down-in-the-dirt teenage crudeness, creating a nice combo of comic lows and lofty, intellectual highs.

The resolution, though? :/ I thought it kind of undermined the suspense that was so beautifully built… and it got too mushy right at the end -- this causes it to lose some power.

So I'm reading along like this… just loving Paper Towns and thinking I'm going to give it 3.5 stars… and then I read some online reviews, to see if anyone else was disappointed like I was by the ending… and I get lost in the vortex of the_whittler’s trenchant observations… and I begin to hate John Green and both his books…

Never experienced such a 180 about a book in my life.

The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself, Michael A. Singer

J.M.W. Turner, The Morning After the Deluge, ca. 1843

(January 31) I am untethered re The Untethered Soul -- I read it 22 months ago and cannot remember a thing about it, and when I read my notes on it they spark nothing.

I read it because Jennifer Scott, the Madame Chic author who captured a bit of my fancy back in 2015, scheduled it as a “virtual book club” read. I hadn’t heard of it before but I always like to sample "spiritual books" to see if they jive with or contradict Abraham-Hicks stuff. And so off I went. I may even have purchased this one.

It definitely jived with Abraham-Hicks and maybe promises even more than A-H does.But none of it has stuck with me.