March Reading

April 3, 2011 Written by Frances Schagen

Coastliners: a novel by Joanne Harris.  Another of the Gretchin Rubin happy novels.  This one at least has a happy ending.

The Sentamentalists: a novel by Johanna Skibsrud.  Published here in Kentville at Gaspereau Press and winner of the Giller Prize.  I didn’t get all of it, but I still enjoyed it.

How to Be Good: a novel by Nick Hornby.  I get why this one would be on a happiness novel list.  Our narrator is a Doctor and a good person (except for the part where she has an affair and asks her husband for a divorce) who questions what being good means when her husband takes up with a healer and starts doing radical good (giving away money and their dinner and getting the neighbours to open their spare bedrooms to street kids).

The Guinea Pig Diaries: my life as an experiment by AJ Jacobs. My life as a beautiful woman; my outsourced life; I think you’re fat; 240 minutes if fame; the rationality project; the truth about nakedness; what George Washington would do; the unitasker; whipped.  He’s a funny guy writing for Esquire.

Poke the Box: When was the last time you did something for the first time? By Seth Godin. This is the first book for the Domino Project.  Seth calls it a pamphlet of Linchpin.  It’s a quick easy read with all the great Linchpin concepts.  Seth has created a free workbook to go with it. http://www.thedominoproject.com/_/PoketheBox_Workbook.pdf you can find printer-friendly versions, too.

He Shall Thunder in the Sky: a novel by Elizabeth Peters. An Amelia Peabody novel of suspense set in 1915 Cairo.  Elizabeth Peters is an Egyptologist.  This was purely for fun.

The Art of Non-conformity: Set your own rules, live the life you want and change the world by Chris Guillebeau. Chris’s thoughts on his life of travel and writing about it with encouragement and practical how-to’s so you, too, can live the life you want.  The on-line, international book club finished discussing it on Friday.  It’s a wonderful book to use as a launchpad for talking about life, dreams, travel and living.

Bird by Bird: some instructions on writing and life by Anne Lamott.  This is a game-changer for me.  The biggest revelation for me was that you don’t have to have a book fully formed in your mind before you start.  You can have ideas, start writing and see how they work out.  You can always go back and change things as the book develops.  So I started writing a novel.  Just for me.  To try the process, to see what happens, to stretch myself and I’m really enjoying it.

Book Report
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