Title: The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want
Author: Sonja Lyubomirsky
Genre: Non-Fiction

I’m not much of a self-help book kind of person. In fact this may be the first self-help book I’ve ever read all the way through. This one came highly recommended from a friend though and several weeks ago I kind of made the decision that I’ve got to figure out how to live again. I full well know that sounds melodramatic but it’s the truth. After my “event” life isn’t the same for me and my connection to the world isn’t the same and I’ve got to figure this shit out again. And by “this shit” I mean how to live and be happy about it.

So I’m doing everything I can to stack the deck in my favor, everything I can to better my chances of success. If a book filled with “happiness activities” and scientific research about happiness can even potentially offer me something useful then I’m going to read it. I’m actually quite glad I read it. I came away with four concrete actions that suite my personality and natural inclinations. I also came away with a few general concepts that I’m going to try to integrate into my life as well.

If you suffer from depression (or if you’re super lucky like me and have what’s called “double depression”) I’d highly recommend this book on one condition: you have to buy in. You have to have made the choice that you want to get better, that you want to be happier. That’s a hard decision to make. For people who don’t have these issues that must sound crazy (ha!) but it’s actually really logical. If you don’t think you deserve to be happy then how on earth can you make the choice to try and be happy? If you aren’t able to make that choice right now then I don’t think you’ll get a lot out of this book. If you are able to make that choice, to say that you want to be happy and you deserve to be happy then this book is a good starting point. Buying in to the book’s premise (that there is a certain percentage of happiness level that you can increase no matter what your genes or circumstances have done to you) is the big hurdle. If you buy in though I think you’ll find the book valuable. 

Title: A Whole New Mind
Author: Daniel H. Pink
Genre: Non-fiction

Title: The Lost Art of Walking
Author: Geoff Nicholson
Genre: Non-fiction

Title: Every Tallit Tells a Tale
Author: Debra W. Smith
Genre: Judaism

I went tallit shopping yesterday and couldn’t help but pick up this book since it was so topical. My rabbi has been encouraging me to buy a tallit for a while now. A couple weeks ago, while things were so hard for me, I had a dream about a magical tallit. In the dream the tallit was like a bullet proof super hero’s cape. If you were wrapped in the tallit everything was ok, everything was going to be alright. I commented about the dream on Twitter which got fed to Facebook where my rabbi saw it. This past shabbat he nudged me again about buying a tallit, he said he thinks the dream was telling me to. I don’t know about that but I did agree that it was time to buy one. I’m still processing what the tallit might potentially mean to me and processing why I chose the one that I did.

In any case this book is a collection of (mostly) first person essays about tallit. Lots of stories about how the writers chose their tallitot, what the significance of the tallit is to the individual, etc. It was a very fast read and it actually gave me a lot to chew on as I define what my tallit means to me and my place l’dor vador (from generation to generation).