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249. Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation: How Silicon Valley Will Make Oil, Nuclear, Natural Gas, Coal, Electric Utilities and Conventional Cars Obsolete by 2030

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Tony Seba

Genre:  Non Fiction, Science, Business, Public Policy

291 pages, published June 16, 2014

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

In Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation, Silicon Valley Entrepreneur, Stanford Professor and Futurist Tony Seba writes about the coming disruption in energy and transportation.  With a plethora of facts and arguments, Seba sets forth his thesis that wind and solar will be the dominate form of energy within the next ten years and that electric, self driving cars will be ubiquitous.

 

Quotes 

“When the wind of change blows, some build walls, others build windmills.” – Chinese Proverb.”

 

“The solar virtuous cycle is in motion. The lower cost of solar leads to increased market adoption, and this, in turn, lowers the perceived risk and attracts more capital at a lower cost for capital. And this, in turn, lowers the cost of solar, which leads to increased market adoption, not to mention increased investment, more innovation, and even lower costs for capital. Once this virtuous cycle reaches critical mass, market growth will accelerate. Solar will become unstoppable and the incumbents will be disrupted.”

 

“The information technology revolution was not brought about only by the miniaturization of technologies. This was a transition from a supplier-centric, centralized information model to a user-centric, participatory information model.”

 

“The age of centralized, command-and-control, extraction-resource-based energy sources (oil, gas, coal and nuclear) will not end because we run out of petroleum, natural gas, coal, or uranium. It will end because these energy sources, the business models they employ, and the products that sustain them will be disrupted by superior technologies, product architectures, and business models. Compelling new technologies such as solar, wind, electric vehicles, and autonomous (self-driving) cars will disrupt and sweep away the energy industry as we know it.”

 

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

 

My Take

I saw Technology Disruption expert Tony Seba give the keynote speech for the 2018 Conference on World Affairs in Boulder, Colorado and was intrigued by his predictions (backed up by facts) that we were rapidly transitioning to solar energy, as well as electric, self driving cars because the transition is compelling from an economic point of view.  At the the Conference, Seba was well received by both the left (solar and electric cars are huge in the climate change battle) and the right (climate change will be addressed by the market, not by a big government solution).  If this topic interests you, check out his talk or, if you want to go deeper, then read this book.  He’s convinced me.  My next house will be solar and my next car is likely to be electric.

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246. Free to Choose

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Christopher Funk

Author:  Milton and Rose Friedman

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Economics, Public Policy, Business, Politics

368 pages, published September 1980

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Free to Choose is the seminal work by Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman and his wife Rose about the power of free markets.  As economists, they write about the extent to which personal freedom has been eroded by government regulations and agencies while personal prosperity has been undermined by government spending and economic controls.  They demonstrate that the free market is the best mechanism for helping all members of society, provide examples of how the free market leads to prosperity, and argue that it can solve problems where other approaches have failed.

 

Quotes 

“When unions get higher wages for their members by restricting entry into an occupation, those higher wages are at the expense of other workers who find their opportunities reduced. When government pays its employees higher wages, those higher wages are at the expense of the taxpayer. But when workers get higher wages and better working conditions through the free market, when they get raises by firm competing with one another for the best workers, by workers competing with one another for the best jobs, those higher wages are at nobody’s expense. They can only come from higher productivity, greater capital investment, more widely diffused skills. The whole pie is bigger – there’s more for the worker, but there’s also more for the employer, the investor, the consumer, and even the tax collector.  That’s the way the free market system distributes the fruits of economic progress among all people. That’s the secret of the enormous improvements in the conditions of the working person over the past two centuries.”

 

“The smaller the unit of government and the more restricted the functions assigned government, the less likely it is that its actions will reflect special interests rather than the general interest.”

 

“In the past century a myth has grown up that free market capitalism—equality of opportunity as we have interpreted that term—increases such inequalities, that it is a system under which the rich exploit the poor. Nothing could be further from the truth. Wherever the free market has been permitted to operate, wherever anything approaching equality of opportunity has existed, the ordinary man has been able to attain levels of living never dreamed of before. Nowhere is the gap between rich and poor wider, nowhere are the rich richer and the poor poorer, than in those societies that do not permit the free market to operate. That is true of feudal societies like medieval Europe, India before independence, and much of modern South America, where inherited status determines position. It is equally true of centrally planned societies, like Russia or China or India since independence, where access to government determines position. It is true even where central planning was introduced, as in all three of these countries, in the name of equality.”

 

“The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.” 

 

“When the law interferes with people’s pursuit of their own values, they will try to find a way around. They will evade the law, they will break the law, or they will leave the country. Few of us believe in a moral code that justifies forcing people to give up much of what they produce to finance payments to persons they do not know for purposes they may not approve of. When the law contradicts what most people regard as moral and proper, they will break the law—whether the law is enacted in the name of a noble ideal such as equality or in the naked interest of one group at the expense of another. Only fear of punishment, not a sense of justice and morality, will lead people to obey the law.”

 

“For example, the supporters of tariffs treat it as self-evident that the creation of jobs is a desirable end, in and of itself, regardless of what the persons employed do. That is clearly wrong. If all we want are jobs, we can create any number–for example, have people dig holes and then fill them up again, or perform other useless tasks. Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want. Our real objective is not just jobs but productive jobs–jobs that will mean more goods and services to consume.”

 

“The drive for equality failed for a much more fundamental reason. It went against one of the most basic instincts of all human beings. In the words of Adam Smith, “The uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition”9—and, one may add, the condition of his children and his children’s children. Smith, of course, meant by “condition” not merely material well-being, though certainly that was one component. He had a much broader concept in mind, one that included all of the values by which men judge their success—in particular the kind of social values that gave rise to the outpouring of philanthropic activities in the nineteenth century.”

 

“Nor do the spokesmen for these organizations ever explain why, if the public school system is doing such a splendid job, it needs to fear competition from nongovernmental, competitive schools or, if it isn’t, why anyone should object to its “destruction.”

 

“Believers in aristocracy and socialism share a faith in centralized rule, in rule by command rather than by voluntary cooperation.”

 

“The threat to public schools arises from their defects, not their accomplishments. In small, closely knit communities where public schools, particularly elementary schools, are now reasonably satisfactory, not even the most comprehensive voucher plan would have much effect. The public schools would remain dominant, perhaps somewhat improved by the threat of potential competition. But elsewhere, and particularly in the urban slums where the public schools are doing such a poor job, most parents would undoubtedly try to send their children to nonpublic schools.”

 

“The question that has perhaps divided students of vouchers more than any other is their likely effect on the social and economic class structure. Some have argued that the great value of the public school has been as a melting pot, in which rich and poor, native- and foreign-born, black and white have learned to live together. That image was and is largely true for small communities, but almost entirely false for large cities. There, the public school has fostered residential stratification, by tying the kind and cost of schooling to residential location. It is no accident that most of the country’s outstanding public schools are in high-income enclaves.”

 

“A society that puts equality—in the sense of equality of outcome—ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests. On the other hand, a society that puts freedom first will, as a happy by-product, end up with both greater freedom and greater equality. Though a by-product of freedom, greater equality is not an accident. A free society releases the energies and abilities of people to pursue their own objectives. It prevents some people from arbitrarily suppressing others. It does not prevent some people from achieving positions of privilege, but so long as freedom is maintained, it prevents those positions of privilege from becoming institutionalized; they are subject to continued attack by other able, ambitious people. Freedom means diversity but also mobility. It preserves the opportunity for today’s disadvantaged to become tomorrow’s privileged and, in the process, enables almost everyone, from top to bottom, to enjoy a fuller and richer life.”

 

“The widespread enthusiasm for reducing government taxes and other impositions is not matched by a comparable enthusiasm for eliminating government programs—except programs that benefit other people.”

 

“There is all the difference in the world, however, between two kinds of assistance through government that seem superficially similar: first, 90 percent of us agreeing to impose taxes on ourselves in order to help the bottom 10 percent, and second, 80 percent voting to impose taxes on the top 10 percent to help the bottom 10 percent—William Graham Sumner’s famous example of B and C deciding what D shall do for A.”

 

“As these remarks indicate, the Social Security program involves a transfer from the young to the old. To some extent such a transfer has occurred throughout history—the young supporting their parents, or other relatives, in old age. Indeed, in many poor countries with high infant death rates, like India, the desire to assure oneself of progeny who can provide support in old age is a major reason for high birth rates and large families. The difference between Social Security and earlier arrangements is that Social Security is compulsory and impersonal—earlier arrangements were voluntary and personal. Moral responsibility is an individual matter, not a social matter. Children helped their parents out of love or duty. They now contribute to the support of someone else’s parents out of compulsion and fear. The earlier transfers strengthened the bonds of the family; the compulsory transfers weaken them.”

 

“The ICC [Interstate Commerce Commission] illustrates what might be called the natural history of government intervention. A real or fancied evil leads to demands to do something about it. A political coalition forms consisting of sincere, high-minded reformers and equally sincere interested parties. The incompatible objectives of the members of the coalition (e.g., low prices to consumers and high prices to producers) are glossed over by fine rhetoric about “the public interest,” “fair competition,” and the like. The coalition succeeds in getting Congress (or a state legislature) to pass a law. The preamble to the law pays lip service to the rhetoric and the body of the law grants power to government officials to “do something.” The high-minded reformers experience a glow of triumph and turn their attention to new causes. The interested parties go to work to make sure that the power is used for their benefit. They generally succeed. Success breeds its problems, which are met by broadening the scope of intervention. Bureaucracy takes its toll so that even the initial special interests no longer benefit. In the end the effects are precisely the opposite of the objectives of the reformers and generally do not even achieve the objectives of the special interests. Yet the activity is so firmly established and so many vested interests are connected with it that repeal of the initial legislation is nearly inconceivable. Instead, new government legislation is called for to cope with the problems produced by the earlier legislation and a new cycle begins.”

 

My Take

I first read Free to Choose when I was in late teens at the suggestion of my father.  I also watched many of the episodes of the PBS series by the same name in which Dr. Friedman explained in easily understandable language his libertarian economic philosophy based on the virtue and power of free markets.  Both the book and the series resonated with me deeply.  When individuals have the freedom to make their own economic choices with minimal interference from the government, not only the individual, but all of society benefits.  His viewpoints  made so much sense that I was astounded by opposing views.  Since that first reading, it is clear that Dr. Friedman’s ideas have been vindicated.  In the last 40 years, capitalism and global economic freedom and trade have done more to ameliorate poverty than any government program could hope to do.  While the book is a creature of the 1970’s when it was published, the ideas are timeless and well worth consideration.

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241. The Blue Zones of Happiness: A Blueprint for a Better Life

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Dan Buettner

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Happiness, Self Improvement, Public Policy, Health

253 pages, published October 3, 2017

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary 

Having previously explored the Blue Zones of the world (those places around the world where people live the longest lives), author and researcher Dan Buettner turns his focus to the world’s happiest places (with in-depth analysis of particular types of happiness in three different locations, Costa Rica (joy and lightheartedness), Denmark (community and purpose) and Singapore (satisfaction and accomplishment) and provides a blue print for applying lessons from these countries to improve our own communities and our lives.

 

Quotes 

“I wake up in the morning and I see that flower, with the dew on its petals, and at the way it’s folding out, and it makes me happy, she said. It’s important to focus on the things in the here and now, I think. In a month, the flower will be shriveled and you will miss its beauty if you don’t make the effort to do it now. Your life, eventually, is the same way.”

 

“knowing your sense of purpose is worth up to seven years of extra life expectancy.”

 

“Eat your vegetables, have a positive outlook, be kind to people, and smile – Kamada Nakasato, 102-y/o-female fr. Okinawa”

 

“Wine @ 5. People in all Blue Zones (even some Adventists) drink alcohol moderately and regularly. Moderate drinkers outlive nondrinkers. The trick is to drink one to two glasses per day with friends and/or with food. And no, you can’t save up all week and have 14 drinks on Saturday.”

 

“Drink without getting drunk

Love without suffering jealousy

Eat without overindulging

Never argue

And once in a while, with great discretion, misbehave”

 

“Gratitude always comes into play; research shows that people are happier if they are grateful for the positive things in their lives, rather than worrying about what might be missing.”

 

“In places where women have achieved gender equality, for instance, men tend to be happier than women. And in places where women are still not treated equally, women are often happier than men. Other studies have shown that, despite the popular belief that nobody wants to get older, most people actually get happier after a certain age.”

 

“WHAT CAN ADD ON MORE GOOD YEARS? Robert Kane: Rather than exercising for the sake of exercising, try to make changes to your lifestyle. Ride a bicycle instead of driving. Walk to the store instead of driving. Use the stairs instead of the elevator. Build that into your lifestyle. The chances are that you will sustain that behavior for a much longer time. And the name of the game here is sustaining. These things that we try—usually after some cataclysmic event has occurred, and we now want to ward off what seems to be the more perceptible threat of dying—don’t hold up over the long haul. We find all sorts of reasons not to do it. The second thing I’d tell you is don’t take up smoking. The biggest threat to improving our lifestyles has been cigarette smoking. That trumps everything else. Once you’re a nonsmoker, I would try to get you to learn to develop a moderate lifestyle in regard to your weight to build into your daily routine enough exercise to keep you going.”

 

“And as we shall see in forthcoming chapters, purpose and love are essential ingredients in all Blue Zone recipes for longevity.”

 

My Take

As a long time student of happiness, I was interested in reading this book.  It’s approach was to focus on three geographic locations known for high happiness levels:  Costa Rica, Denmark and Singapore.  The author discusses how joy, purpose, accomplishment and community are essential aspects of happiness and then shows how these qualities are present in those countries.  Interestingly, there is a chapter that explores the happiest place in the United States:  Boulder, Colorado.  I live in Boulder and agree that it is indeed a very happy place.  There is a tremendous sense of community here and lots of natural beauty and opportunities for outdoor activities.  A quick and engrossing read.

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240. 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

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Gretchen Rubin

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Memoir, Happiness, Self Improvement

301 pages, published December 29, 2009

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

The genesis of The Happiness Project was author Gretchen Rubin’s epiphany that she was happy with her life, but perhaps not as happy as she could be.  This led her to dedicate a year to her happiness project and, through research and experience, discover if there were things she could to make herself happier.  Every month, she covered a new topic including Order, Exercise and Sleep, Friendship, Children, Marriage, and Money to name a few.  Along the way, she developed her Twelve Personal Commandments, Four Splendid Truths and Secrets of Adulthood.  They are listed below.

 

Twelve Personal Commandments

 

Be Gretchen

Let it go

Act the way I want to feel

Do it now

Be polite and fair

Enjoy the process

Spend out

Identify the problem

Lighten up

Do what ought to be done

No calculation

There is only love

 

Four Splendid Truths

 

  1. To be happier, you have to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right in an atmosphere of growth.
  2. One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.
  3. The days are long, but the years are short.
  4. You’re not happy unless you think you’re happy.

 

Secrets of Adulthood

 

  • The best reading is re-reading.
  • Outer order contributes to inner calm.
  • The opposite of a great truth is also true.
  • You manage what you measure.
  • By doing a little bit each day, you can get a lot accomplished.
  • People don’t notice your mistakes and flaws as much as you think.
  • It’s nice to have plenty of money.
  • Most decisions don’t require extensive research.
  • Try not to let yourself get too hungry.
  • It’s important to have family rituals.
  • If you can’t find something, clean up.
  • Someplace, keep an empty shelf.
  • Turning the computer on and off a few times often fixes a glitch.
  • It’s okay to ask for help.
  • You can choose what you do; you can’t choose what you LIKE to do.
  • Happiness doesn’t always make you feel happy.
  • What you do EVERY DAY matters more than what you do ONCE IN A WHILE.
  • You don’t have to be good at everything.
  • Soap and water removes most stains.
  • It’s important to be nice to EVERYONE.
  • You know as much as most people.
  • Over-the-counter medicines are very effective.
  • Eat better, eat less, exercise more.
  • What’s fun for other people may not be fun for you–and vice versa.
  • People actually prefer that you buy wedding gifts off their registry.
  • Houseplants and photo albums are a lot of trouble.
  • If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough.
  • If we have habits that work for us, we’re much more likely to be happy, healthy, productive, and creative.
  • Save and spend wisely.
  • Stop procrastinating, make consistent progress.
  • Engage more deeply—with other people, with God, with yourself, with the world.
  • Doing a little work makes goofing off more fun.

 

Quotes 

“The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It’s more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted. No one is careful of his feelings or tries to keep his spirits high. He seems self-sufficient; he becomes a cushion for others. And because happiness seems unforced, that person usually gets no credit.”

 

“I grasped two things: I wasn’t as happy as I could be, and my life wasn’t going to change unless I made it change.”

 

“I knew I wouldn’t discover happiness in a faraway place or in unusual circumstances; it was right here, right now— as in the haunting play “The Blue Bird,” where two children spend a year searching the world for the Blue Bird of Happiness, only to find it waiting for them when they finally return home.”

 

“Of course it’s not enough to sit around wanting to be happy; you must make the effort to take steps toward happiness by acting with more love, finding work you enjoy, and all the rest. But for me, asking myself whether I was happy had been a crucial step toward cultivating my happiness more wisely through my actions. Also, only through recognizing my happiness did I really appreciate it. Happiness depends partly on external circumstances, and it also depends on how you view those circumstances.

 

“According to current research, in the determination of a person’s level of happiness, genetics accounts for about 50 percent; life circumstances, such as age, gender, ethnicity, marital status, income, health, occupation, and religious affiliation, account for about 10 to 20 percent; and the remainder is a product of how a person thinks and acts.”

 

“I had everything I could possibly want — yet I was failing to appreciate it. Bogged down in petty complaints and passing crises, weary of struggling with my own nature, I too often failed to comprehend the splendor of what I had.”

 

“As I turned the key and pushed open the front door, as I crossed the threshold, I thought how breathtaking, how fleeting, how precious was my ordinary day Now is now. Here is my treasure.”

 

“To eke out the most happiness from an experience, we must anticipate it, savor it as it unfolds, express happiness, and recall a happy memory.”

 

“In fact, in what’s known as “rosy prospection,” anticipation of happiness is sometimes greater than the happiness actually experienced.”

 

“you have to do that kind of work for yourself. If you do it for other people, you end up wanting them to acknowledge it and to be grateful and to give you credit. If you do it for yourself, you don’t expect other people to react in a particular way.”

 

“I knew I wouldn’t discover happiness in a faraway place or in unusual circumstances; it was right here, right now— as in the haunting play “The Blue Bird,” where two children spend a year searching the world for the Blue Bird of Happiness, only to find it waiting for them when they finally return home.”

 

“Studies show that each common interest between people boosts the chances of a lasting relationship and also brings about a 2 percent increase in life satisfaction.”

 

“Happiness,” wrote Yeats, “is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.” Contemporary researchers make the same argument: that it isn’t goal attainment but the process of striving after goals-that is, growth-that brings happiness.”

 

“Enthusiasm is a form of social courage.”

 

“There is only love.”

 

“One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.”

 

“Happy people generally are more forgiving, helpful, and charitable, have better self-control, and are more tolerant of frustration than unhappy people, while unhappy people are more often withdrawn, defensive, antagonistic, and self-absorbed. Oscar Wilde observed, “One is not always happy when one is good; but one is always good when one is happy.”

 

“Both money and health contribute to happiness mostly in the negative; the lack of them brings much more unhappiness than possessing them brings happiness.”

 

“I realized that for my own part, I was much more likely to take risks, reach out to others, and expose myself to rejection and failure when I felt happy. When I felt unhappy, I felt defensive, touchy, and self-conscious.”

 

“Nothing,’ wrote Tolstoy, ‘can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.”

 

“Keep it simple’ wasn’t always the right response. Many things that boosted my happiness also added complexity to my life. Having children. Learning to post videos to my website. Going to an out-of-town wedding. Applied too broadly, my impulse to ‘Keep it simple’ would impoverish me. ‘Life is barren enough surely with all her trappings,’ warned Samuel Johnson, ‘let us therefore by cautious how we strip her.”

 

“Laughter is more than just a pleasurable activity…When people laugh together, they tend to talk and touch more and to make eye contact more frequently.”

 

“The days are long, but the years are short.”

 

“I always had the uncomfortable feeling that if I wasn’t sitting in front of a computer typing, I was wasting my time–but I pushed myself to take a wider view of what was “productive.” Time spend with my family and friends was never wasted.”

 

“What you do every day matters more than what you do once in a while.”

 

“It’s about living in the moment and appreciating the smallest things. Surrounding yourself with the things that inspire you and letting go of the obsessions that want to take over your mind. It is a daily struggle sometimes and hard work but happiness begins with your own attitude and how you look at the world.”

 

“While some more passive forms of leisure, such as watching TV or surfing the Internet, are fun in the short term, over time, they don’t offer nearly the same happiness as more challenging activities.”

 

“It struck me as poignant that my long relationship with my beloved grandparents could be embodied in a few small objects. But the power of objects doesn’t depend on their volume; in fact, my memories were better evoked by a few carefully chosen items than by a big assortment of things with vague associations.”

 

“Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, but every day is a clean slate and a fresh opportunity.”

 

“It’s easy to be heavy; hard to be light.”

 

“Once I started trying to give positive reviews, though, I began to understand how much happiness I took from the joyous ones in my life—and how much effort it must take for them to be consistently good=tempered and positive. It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light. We nonjoyous types suck energy and cheer from the joyous ones; we rely on them to buoy us with their good spirit and to cushion our agitation and anxiety. At the same time, because of a dark element in human nature, we’re sometimes provoked to try to shake the enthusiastic, cheery folk out of their fog of illusion—to make them see that the play was stupid, the money was wasted, the meeting was pointless. Instead of shielding their joy, we blast it.”

 

“When we do stumble, it’s important not to judge ourselves harshly. Although some people assume that strong feelings of guilt or shame act as safeguards to help people stick to good habits, the opposite is true. People who feel less guilt and who show compassion toward themselves in the face of failure are better able to regain self-control, while people who feel deeply guilty and full of self-blame struggle more.”

 

“Although we presume that we act because of the way we feel, in fact we often feel because of the way we act.”

 

“The pleasure of doing the same thing, in the same way, every day, shouldn’t be overlooked. The things I do every day take on a certain beauty and provide a kind of invisible architecture to my life.”

 

“With habits, we don’t make decisions, we don’t use self-control, we just do the thing we want ourselves to do—or that we don’t want to do.”

 

“Did I have a heart to be contented? Well, no, not particularly. I had a tendency to be discontented: ambitious, dissatisfied, fretful, and tough to please…It’s easier to complain than to laugh, easier to yell than to joke around, easier to be demanding than to be satisfied.”

 

“Never start a sentence with the words ‘No offense.”

 

“When I thought about why I was sometimes reluctant to push myself, I realized that it was because I was afraid of failure – but in order to have more success, I needed to be willing to accept more failure.”

 

“I enjoy the fun of failure. It’s fun to fail, I kept repeating. It’s part of being ambitious; it’s part of being creative. If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.”

 

“Look for happiness under your own roof.”

 

“Studies show that aggressively expressing anger doesn’t relieve anger but amplifies it. On the other hand, not expressing anger often allows it to disappear without leaving ugly traces.”

 

“The things that go wrong often make the best memories.”

 

“It was time to expect more of myself. Yet as I thought about happiness, I kept running up against paradoxes. I wanted to change myself but accept myself. I wanted to take myself less seriously — and also more seriously. I wanted to use my time well, but I also wanted to wander, to play, to read at whim. I wanted to think about myself so I could forget myself. I was always on the edge of agitation; I wanted to let go of envy and anxiety about the future, yet keep my energy and ambition.”

 

“From my observation, habits in four areas do most to boost feelings of self-control, and in this way strengthen the Foundation of all our habits. We do well to begin by tackling the habits that help us to: 1. sleep 2. move 3. eat and drink right 4. Unclutter. ”

 

“Enthusiasm is more important than innate ability, it turns out, because the single more important element in developing an expertise is your willingness to practice.”

 

“When I find myself focusing overmuch on the anticipated future happiness of arriving at a certain goal, I remind myself to ‘Enjoy now’. If I can enjoy the present, I don’t need to count on the happiness that is (or isn’t) waiting for me in the future”.”

 

“[S]tudies show that one of the best ways to lift your mood is to engineer an easy success, such as tackling a long-delayed chore.”

 

“Studies show that in a phenomenon called “emotional contagion,” we unconsciously catch emotions from other people–whether good moods or bad ones. Taking the time to be silly means that we’re infecting one another with good cheer, and people who enjoy silliness are one third more likely to be happy.”

 

“… one flaw throws the loveliness of [everything else] into focus. I remember reading that Shakers deliberately introduced a mistake into the things they made, to show that man shouldn’t aspire to the perfection of God. Flawed can be more perfect than perfection.”

 

“There are no do overs and some things just aren’t going to happen. It is a little sad but you just have to embrace what is.”

 

“I think adversity magnifies behavior. Tend to be a control freak? You’ll become more controlling. Eat for comfort? You’ll eat more. And on the positive, if you tend to focus on solutions and celebrate small successes, that’s what you’ll do in adversity.”

 

“[S]tudies show that one of the best ways to lift your mood is to engineer an easy success, such as tackling a long-delayed chore.”

 

“Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

 

“I can DO ANYTHING I want, but I can’t DO EVERYTHING I want.”

 

“Money. It’s a good servant but a bad master.”

 

“Because money permits a constant stream of luxuries and indulgences, it can take away their savor, and by permitting instant gratification, money shortcuts the happiness of anticipation. Scrimping, saving, imagining, planning, hoping–these stages enlarge the happiness we feel.”

 

“He is my fate. He’s my soul mate. He pervades my whole existence. So, of course, I often ignore him.”

 

“It isn’t enough to love; we must prove it.”

 

“There is no love; there are only proofs of love.” Whatever love I might feel in my heart, others will see only my actions.”

 

“The biggest waste of time is to do well something that we need not do at all.”

 

“What you do everyday matters more than what you do once in a while.”

 

“How we schedule our days is how we spend our lives.”

 

“There’s a great satisfaction in knowing that we’ve made good use of our days, that we’ve lived up to our expectations of ourselves.”

 

“[Benjamin Franklin] identified thirteen virtues he wanted to cultivate–temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility–and made a chart with those virtues plotted against the days of the week. Each day, Franklin would score himself on whether he practiced those thirteen virtues.”

 

“In the chaos of everyday life, it’s easy to lose sight of what really matters, and I can use my habits to make sure that my life reflects my values.”

 

“We won’t make ourselves more creative and productive by copying other people’s habits, even the habits of geniuses; we must know our own nature, and what habits serve us best.”

 

“For work: I bought some pens. Normally, I used makeshift pens, the kind of unsatisfactory implements that somehow materialized in my bag or in a drawer. But one day, when I was standing in line to buy envelopes, I caught sight of a box of my favorite kind of pen: the Deluxe Uniball Micro. “Two ninety-nine for one pen!” I thought. “That’s ridiculous.” But after a fairly lengthy internal debate, I bought four. It’s such a joy to write with a good pen instead of making do with an underinked pharmaceutical promotional pen picked up from a doctor’s office. My new pens weren’t cheap, but when I think of all the time I spend using pens and how much I appreciate a good pen, I realize it was money well spent. Finely made tools help make work a pleasure.”

 

“Sleep is the new sex.”

 

“Another study suggested that getting one extra hour of sleep each night would do more for a person’s happiness than getting a $60,000 raise.”

 

“I had everything I could possibly want — yet I was failing to appreciate it. Bogged down in petty complaints and passing crises, weary of struggling with my own nature, I too often failed to comprehend the splendor of what I had.”

 

“The desire to start something at the “right” time is usually just a justification for delay. In almost every case, the best time to start is now.”

 

“It’s so easy to wish that we’d made an effort in the past, so that we’d happily be enjoying the benefit now, but when now is the time when that effort must be made, as it always is, that prospect is much less inviting.”

 

“The most important step is the first step. All those old sayings are really true. Well begun is half done. Don’t get it perfect, get it going. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Nothing is more exhausting than the task that’s never started, and strangely, starting is often far harder than continuing.”

 

“I’m not tempted by things I’ve decided are off-limits, but once I’ve started something, I have trouble stopping. If I never do something, it requires no self-control for me; if I do something sometimes, it requires enormous self-control.”

 

“In fact, for both men and women—and this finding struck me as highly significant—the most reliable predictor of not being lonely is the amount of contact with women. Time spent with men doesn’t make a difference.”

 

“There are times in the lives of most of us,” observed William Edward Hartpole Lecky, “when we would have given all the world to be as we were but yesterday, though that yesterday had passed over us unappreciated and unenjoyed.”

 

“A sense of growth is so important to happiness that it’s often preferable to be progressing to the summit rather than to be at the summit.”

 

“This is one of the many paradoxes of happiness: we seek to control our lives, but the unfamiliar and the unexpected are important sources of happiness.”

 

“W. H. Auden articulated this tension beautifully: “Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.”

 

“The imperfect book that gets published is better than the perfect book that never leaves my computer.”

 

“It’s easy to make the mistake of thinking that if you have something you love or there’s something you want, you’ll be happier with more.”

 

My Take

As is readily apparent from the sheer volume of quotes that I have included from The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin has many, many pearls of wisdom to impart.  As she herself opines, the best reading is re-reading.  This was my third reading of The Happiness Project and it was still fresh for me and I had new takeaways that I had forgotten about.  I really appreciate her writing style that includes her own personal experience, reference to scientific research on topics related to happiness, relevant literary quotes and lots of practical tips on how to implement happiness improvements into your own life.  More than any other book, The Happiness Project has changed my life for the better.  I consider Gretchen Rubin to be my guru for happiness.  Often as I go through my day, a quote from The Happiness Project (such as “do it now,” “there is only love,” “outer order leads to inner calm,” “by doing a little bit each day, you can get a lot accomplished,” and “people don’t notice your mistakes and flaws as much as you think”) will pop into my head and influence my actions. Her other books, Happier at Home, Better than Before, and The Four Tendencies are also very much worth a read, but my favorite is still The Happiness Project.  A rare five stars and strongly recommended.

 

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239. The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt’s Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:  Michael Koss

Author:  Anne-Marie O’Connor

Genre:  Non Fiction, Foreign, History, Art, Biography

370 pages, published February 7, 2012

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

The Lady in Gold tells the true story behind Austrian artist Gustav Klimt’s portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, known as the Austrian Mona Lisa.  The first part of the book delves into the history of Klimt, a wholly original, headstrong and intriguing figure, and of Adele Bloch-Bauer, a beautiful, free thinking, seductive Viennese woman from a prominent Jewish family who may have been the mistress of Klimt.  After Adele’s death, the Nazi’s marched into Austria and began a wholesale looting of artwork belonging to the country’s Jewish citizens.  One of the paintings they seized was “The Woman in Gold,” Klimt’s portrait of Adele.  Fifty years later, Adele’s niece Maria engaged Randol Schoenberg, a young lawyer related to a friend of hers to engage in an against all odds battle to recover the painting from the Austrian government.  The second part of the book recounts the legal battle which led to justice finally being served.

 

Quotes 

“Happy he who forgets what cannot be changed.”

 

“Any nonsense can attain importance by virtue of being believed by millions of people,” Einstein.

 

“to every age its art; to art its freedom.”

 

“Austrians were allowed to paper over their pasts and portray themselves as unwilling participants. They felt sorry for themselves, and for the proud family names sullied with the taint of Nazi collaboration. The Cold War began in earnest, and the West was eager to hang on to Austria. A 1948 amnesty brought a premature end to Austrian de-Nazification. Austrians began to deny their jubilant welcome of Hitler and to claim that Austria had been “occupied” by Germany.”

 

My Take

A few years ago, I watched the film version of The Lady in Gold (renamed The Woman in Gold) starring Helen Mirren as Maria and Ryan Reynolds as Randy Schoenberg.  It was a very well done, informative and entertaining movie that changed a few of the historical facts, but was otherwise true to the spirit of this fascinating story.  The book version goes several layers deeper and delivers an intriguing read.  As a side note, when I got to the part in the book when Randy Schoenberg (the lawyer played by Ryan Reynolds in the movie), I learned that he was at USC Law School a year before I was.  Sure enough, I googled an image of him and discovered that I remembered him from several classes that we both took.  Later in the book, it is revealed that Randy ended up with close to $100 million in connection with the recovery of The Lady in Gold painting.  Good for him!  Undoubtedly, the most successful of my USC Law School classmates.

 

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233. Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Lisanne and Frank

Author:  Tom Robbins

Genre:  Fiction, Humor

386 pages, published January 5, 2002

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, by irreverent author Tom Robbins, takes place in the 1980’s and follows the journey of the beautiful, young stockbroker Gwen Mati as she responds to a market crash that threatens to wipe her out financially.  Along the way, we encounter her finance who owns a missing ape and Larry Diamond, a guru to and love interest of Gwen with a unique take on the world.

 

Quotes 

“Passion isn’t a path through the woods. Passion is the woods. It’s the deepest, wildest part of the forest; the grove where the fairies still dance and obscene old vipers snooze in the boughs. Everybody but the most dried up and dysfunctional is drawn to the grove and enchanted by its mysteries, but then they just can’t wait to call in the chain saws and bulldozers and replace it with a family-style restaurant or a new S and L. That’s the payoff, I guess. Safety. Security. Certainty. Yes, indeed. Well, remember this, pussy latte: we’re not involved in a ‘relationship,’ you and I, we’re involved in a collision. Collisions don’t much lend themselves to secure futures…”

 

“Would you complain because a beautiful sunset doesn’t have a future or a shooting star a payoff? And why should romance ‘lead anywhere’? Passion isn’t a path through the woods. Passion is the woods.”

 

“Faith is believing in something you know isn’t true.”

 

“We modern human beings are looking at life, trying to make some sense of it; observing a ‘reality’ that often seems to be unfolding in a foreign tongue–only we’ve all been issued the wrong librettos. For a text, we’re given the Bible. Or the Talmud or the Koran. We’re given Time magazine, and Reader’s Digest, daily papers, and the six o’clock news; we’re given schoolbooks, sitcoms, and revisionist histories; we’re given psychological counseling, cults, workshops, advertisements, sales pitches, and authoritative pronouncements by pundits, sold-out scientists, political activists, and heads of state. Unfortunately, none of these translations bears more than a faint resemblance to what is transpiring in the true theater of existence, and most of them are dangerously misleading. We’re attempting to comprehend the spiraling intricacies of a magnificently complex tragicomedy with librettos that describe the barrom melodramas or kindergarten skits. And when’s the last time you heard anybody bitch about it to the management?”

 

“If every time we choose a turd, society, at a great expense, simply allows us to redeem it for a pepperoni, then not only will we never learn to make smart choices, we will also surrender the freedom to choose, because a choice without consequences is no choice at all.”

 

“…the extent to which a society focuses on the needs of its lowest common denominator is the extent to which that society’ll be mired in mediocrity. Whereas, if we would aim the bulk of our support at the brightest, most talented, most virtuous instead, then they would have the wherewithal to solve a lot of our problems, to uplift the whole culture, enlighten it or something, so that eventually there wouldn’t be so many losers and weaklings impeding evolution and dragging the whole species down…. Martyrs…just perpetuate human misery by catering to it…. Individuals have to take responsibility for their own lives and accept the consequences of their choices.”

 

“There’s no such thing as security in this life sweetheart, and the sooner you accept that fact, the better off you’ll be. The person who strives for security will never be free. The person who believes she’s found security will never reach paradise. What she mistakes for security is purgatory. You know what purgatory is, Gwendolyn? It’s the waiting room, it’s the lobby. Not only does she have the wrong libretto, she’s stuck in the lobby where she can’t see the show.”

 

My Take

While my book group really enjoyed Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, it just wasn’t my cup of tea.  There were some interesting thoughts and ideas in the book, but it was still a bit of a slog to get through it.  I had a hard time relating to any of the characters and Robbins’ humor didn’t appeal to me.

 

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230. Before We Were Yours

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Kay Lynn Hartmann

Author:  Lisa Wingate

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction

342 pages, published June 6, 2017

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Before We Were Yours follows the stories of two families, separated by several generations that intertwine as a result of the actions of a nefarious children’s adoption home.  The first story starts in 1939 in Memphis, Tennessee and focuses on twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings who live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat.  When their father and mother leave them alone on a stormy night to go to the hospital for the mother’s problematic birth of twins, Rill and her siblings are stolen and placed in the Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage. Fast forward to modern day South Carolina and we meet the wealthy and privileged Avery Stafford, a successful federal prosecutor with a handsome fiancé.  Avery, who is being groomed to replace her cancer stricken Senator father, discovers some incongruent facts about her Grandmother Judy and starts down a path that will reveal some long-hidden family secrets that connect them to the Foss family.

 

Quotes 

“In my multifold years of life, I have learned that most people get along as best they can. They don’t intend to hurt anyone. It is merely a terrible by-product of surviving.”

 

“One of the best things a father can do for his daughter is let her know that she has met his expectations. My father did that for me, and no amount of effort on my part can fully repay the debt.”

 

“But the love of sisters needs no words. It does not depend on memories, or mementos, or proof. It runs as deep as a heartbeat. It is as ever present as a pulse.”

 

“We plan our days, but we don’t control them.”

 

“And if you haven’t got a single book, the idea of putting your hand on one is like Christmas and a birthday rolled up together.”

 

“Life is not unlike cinema. Each scene has its own music, and the music is created for the scene, woven to it in ways we do not understand. No matter how much we may love the melody of a bygone day or imagine the song of a future one, we must dance within the music of today, or we will always be out of step, stumbling around in something that doesn’t suit the moment.”

 

“A woman’s past need not predict her future. She can dance to new music if she chooses. Her own music. To hear the tune, she must only stop talking. To herself, I mean. We’re always trying to persuade ourselves of things.”

 

“I want a pain that has a beginning and an end, not one that goes on forever and cuts all the way to the bone.”

 

“The good life demands a lot of maintenance”

 

“one of the paradoxes of life. You can’t have it all. You can have some of this and some of that or all of this and none of that. We make the trade-offs we think are best at the time.”

 

My Take

Before We Were Yours was an absorbing read that I whipped through in a few days.  I found the characters to be very relatable and the both plot lines held my interest (although I preferred the older one that focused on the injustice to the Foss children).  I was also interested to discover that the central story of the corrupt and reprehensible Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage is based on a true story.  It is hard to believe that child stealing, neglect and even murder occurred in our recent past.

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226. A Geek in Thailand: Discovering the Land of Golden Buddhas, Pad Thai and Kickboxing

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  Jody Houton

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Travel, History, Foreign

160 pages, published January 26, 2016

 

Summary

While A Geek in Thailand is a travel guide for Thailand, it goes deeper into the history, culture, people and modern life in the Land of Smiles.  Organized with short articles, sidebar stories and interviews and numerous photographs, the author reveals a country a deep respect for nation, religion and monarchy.

 

Quotes 

 

 

My Take

As preparation for an upcoming trip to Thailand with my sixteen year old daughter, A Geek in Thailand was very useful.  After reading this travel guide, I feel that I have a much better understanding of the history, people, culture, food, sights and other aspects of Thailand.  Can’t wait to see it in person!

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224. Celine

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Blair Norman

Author:  Peter Heller

Genre:  Fiction, Mystery, Thriller

352 pages, published March 7, 2017

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Celine tells the story of Celine, a private investigator with a blue blood background who specializes in reuniting families.  After she is approached by Gabriela, a young woman who asks for help in finding out what happened to her missing father, Celine is drawn into a new mystery and a shadowy past.

 

Quotes 

“No: Human beings, by orders of magnitude, remained the most vicious animal on the planet.”

 

“A road trip frees the mind, revitalizes the spirit, and infuses the body with Dr Pepper and teriyaki jerky.”

 

“There might not be a measure of happiness left in a life, but there could be beauty and grace and endless love.”

 

“Pursuing fun is exhausting. Having fun is just fun. Much more relaxing just to do your work, don’t you think? I mean if you enjoy it.”

 

“Happiness was not a word that seemed to apply anymore, when she had lost so many close to her. There was a contentment that felt deeper, that acknowledged and accepted the quieter offerings of small joys– of love and occasional peace in a life that was full of pain.”

 

“The most indisputable beauty may be the one that people cannot ever touch. That God exists up there somehow, in the peaks and remote lakes and the sharp wind. Who knows why that picture stirs joy. It speaks directly to our impermanence and our smallness.”

 

“When we are most scared is the time to summon our clearest concentration and move forward, not back.”

 

“Dusk was moving over the water with a stillness that turned half the world to glass. The wall of mountains had gone to shadow as had the reflections at their feet. In the stillness the rings of rising trout appeared like raindrops. Slowly, in silence, the dark water tilted away from the remaining daylight.”

 

My Take

I went back and forth as to whether to give Celine 3 ½ stars or 4.  I ultimately decided on 4 based on the two things:   the finely drawn character portraits (especially of Celine) painted by author Peter Heller and his beautiful descriptions of the natural world.  The mystery at the center of this book is what weighed on the side of 3 ½.  I found the plot a bit thin and uninteresting.  However, I still really enjoyed this book and can recommend it.  Also, if you like Heller’s writing style, check out The Dog Stars, which is a great dystopian read.

 

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223. Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Dennis Prager

Author:  Dambisa Moyo

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Economics, Public Policy, Politics, Foreign

208 pages, published March 17, 2009

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

In the past fifty years, the rich countries of the world have spent more than $1 trillion in development-related aid in Africa.  Shockingly, all of this money has not improved the lives of Africans.  Instead, things of gotten worse.  In Dead Aid, economist Dambisa Moyo seeks to explain how this happened and what can be done to improve the lives of ordinary Africans.  Moyo draws a sharp contrast between African countries that have rejected foreign aid and prospered and others that have become aid-dependent and seen poverty increase.  She explains how overreliance on aid has trapped developing nations in a vicious circle of aid dependency, corruption, market distortion, and further poverty, leaving them with nothing but the need for more aid.

 

Quotes 

“In a perfect world, what poor countries at the lowest rungs of economic development need is not a multi-party democracy, but in fact a decisive benevolent dictator to push through the reforms required to get the economy moving (unfortunately, too often countries end up with more dictator and less benevolence).”

 

“In 2004, the British envoy to Kenya, Sir Edward Clay, complained about rampant corruption in the country, commenting that Kenya’s corrupt ministers were ‘eating like gluttons’ and vomiting on the shoes of the foreign donors.”

 

“Africa is addicted to aid. For the past sixty years it has been fed aid. Like any addict it needs and depends on its regular fix, finding it hard, if not impossible, to contemplate existence in an aid-less world. In Africa, the West has found its perfect client to deal to.”

 

“What is clear is that democracy is not the prerequisite for economic growth that aid proponents maintain. On the contrary, it is economic growth that is a prerequisite for democracy; and the one thing economic growth does not need is aid.”

 

“It is worth pointing out that there has been some notable success with a concept known as ‘conditional cash transfers’; these are cash payments (in a sense, bonuses) made to give the poor an incentive to perform tasks that could help them escape poverty (for example, good school attendance, working a certain number of hours, improving test scores, seeing a doctor). The idea of conditional cash transfers has met with much success in developing countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru (a similar programme is now being tested in the boroughs of New York City).”

 

My Take

While economist Dambisa Moyo posits an interesting idea that less foreign aid is the key to solving Africa’s poverty issues, her book Dead Aid reads a bit like a master’s thesis.  It was interesting at times, but also a bit boring at other times.  I particularly enjoyed her discussion of micro-lending as part of the solution for Africa.  I was also fascinated to read how much China is investing in Africa, something I was vaguely aware of, and how the future of the continent is likely to be Chinese.

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