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If you love books, you've come to the right place. Here's where you'll find great books and more that our tomato reviewers have read and think other tomatoes will love too. Happy reading.
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Editor’s Note: Our book reviews can not be bought. We only review books that we and other tomatoes have read and think you’ll enjoy. And while this section may occasionally be sponsored by a publisher or author, it does not guarantee that the book will be reviewed here, unless it stands on its own merits.
The Happiness Project:
Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
by Gretchen Rubin
Reviewer: Mary L. Holden
Happiness. It is no longer elusive, like the proverbial bluebird. It is now a solid, hardcover book that you can pick up and hold in your hand. It will not fly away.
What gives this book its gravity is the thorough analysis Ms. Rubin gives to the topic—across a full year, through interactive projects and in twelve chapters that cover happiness as it relates to “issues” such as play, money, contentment, passion, energy, goal-setting, relationships, literature, spirituality and the fact that she now has a closet with one empty shelf.
Throughout the book she worries that working on the project and writing the book might be considered too selfish a project. But she opened the project up on the Internet (www.happiness-project.com) and many people helped contribute to her book. Using incredible analytical skill, she probes every corner of the subject of happiness through lots of different viewpoints.
The book is 300 pages long and I read it over the course of a weekend trip to visit my in-laws. While also suffering a cold. While reading, I scribbled all kinds of notes in the margins. Rubin tells of her own personal truths about happiness uncovered in the act of writing it. Reading it, I uncovered my own truths that I wrote into its pages with a pen. That was a lot of fun, and that made me happy!
And now, a tale of two Rubins. Gretchen Rubin may not be related to another of my very favorite authors, Lillian B. Rubin, Ph.D., but both authors came across my reader radar recently. Gretchen, now a mother of two young daughters, has published a total of four books. But, over the course of her long lifetime, Lillian Rubin published many, many books. Lillian’s Women of a Certain Age was published in 1979 and enjoyed a 25-year print run. When I read it in 2009, it resonated for me just as it did for the women it was written for when I was merely a twenty-something. While you can find Gretchen’s book in hardcover at most any bookstore, you’ll have to order Lillian’s on the Internet. Both books are now side-by-side on my personal bookshelf and I highly encourage avid readers to make both of these amazing women authors part of your literary lives.
The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin. Publisher: HarperCollins, 2009.
Reviewer: Mary L. Holden of Phoenix, AZ is assistant editor for Raising Arizona Kids magazine (raisingarizonakids.com) and a freelance book manuscript editor (marylholdeneditor.com).
