Why did you read this book? It was on the kindle app, and it sounded interesting. The subtitle is “Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking”, and I certainly hate all that “anything bad that happens is your own fault for not being positive enough”

Has Jeremy read it? Yes.

42-word review: Author tries out stoicism, buddhism and other approaches to accepting uncertainty and failure and being happy anyway. It’s not anything groundbreaking, but it’s an easy-to-read summary of different perspectives on happiness. I found the parts on survivor bias and insecurity most interesting.

Overall rating: 3 smiley faces (out of 5)

Why did you read this book? I really liked this guy’s first book, Bad Things Happen. I didn’t like his follow-up so much, but still decided to give this a go.

Has Beckie read it? No, she’s not into crime stuff so much unless it’s Kate Atkinson or car reading.

42 word review: Guy’s girlfriend gets murdered. Turns out she was investigating another murder herself for university’s Innocence Project, and of course everything ends up connected. Twisty plot with more good twists than bad — but some are bad — and good-humored, better-than-pulp-but-not-that-much-better writing.

Selected quotes:

• He glared at me. “You’ve dodged a bullet. Stop trying to get back in front of it.”
• She put it back on the shelf and took down the empty pill bottle.
  “Ambien,” she said. “Is this another clue?”
  “It might be. It’s a kind of sleeping pill, isn’t it?”
  She nodded. “A strong one. It can cause sleepwalking. Blackouts. Memory loss. It’s nothing you want to mess around with.”

Overall rating: 3 discarded popsicle sticks (out of 5)

Why did you read this book? I read it the first time after seeing good reviews. I reread it because I was in the mood for something sweet and light-hearted and the only unread book at hand was Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem.

Has Jeremy read it? Yes, pre-blog.

42-word review: Lincoln is responsible for monitoring employee email, but he enjoys reading Beth and Jennifer’s exchanges too much to reprimand them. Sounds creepy, but Lincoln falling for Beth somehow avoids crossing that line. More than a little contrived, but a sweet romantic comedy.

Overall rating: 4 flagged emails (out of 5)

Why did you read this book? This was Book #3 in my resolution to read 24 books related to personal growth in 2014. I chose this after reading The Happiness Project, as I thought something about the downside of pursuing happiness might be a useful juxtaposition.

Has Beckie read it? No.

42 word review: Basic premise: focusing on happiness and positive thinking often makes people angsty and miserable in short-run, or bad decisions that provoke extra hardship in long-run. Yay, melancholia! All the good ideas toward the front; last half either filler or redundant.

Useful quotes:

• The worst thing about any event, Ellis liked to say, ‘is usually your exaggerated belief in its horror’.
• Taking a non-attached stance towards procrastination, by contrast, starts from a different question: Who says you need to wait until you ‘feel like’ doing something in order to start doing it? The problem, from this perspective, isn’t that you don’t feel motivated; it’s that you imagine you need to feel motivated.
• ‘The truth that many people never understand’, he wrote , ‘is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt.’

Overall rating: 3 out of 5 imps of the perverse.