Book Review: The Happiness Project

Book 1/30 in the 2012 Reading Challenge.  Date completed: January 15, 2012.

Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project was the perfect book for me to read at the start of a new year.  Uplifting and optimistic, Gretchen details how she spent a year making and combining various resolutions to expand on her happiness.  Each month she focused on a different aspect of her life and carefully thought out resolutions that she could apply to her daily life.  The book is basically the reflection of how things panned out for her.  I believe a friend recommended this book to me a while back and I sort of shrugged it off.  Then I started seeing it on Pinterest.  Again mostly shrugged it off.

It wasn't till I was standing in the airport in our home town waiting to board the first flight out of our Christmas vacation at home with our families and into our newest adventure in the UK that I picked up the book at the newsstand from the bestsellers shelf.  That was December 29.  I dove in as soon as we were airborne.

The Happiness Project doesn't exactly read as a "self-help" book.  Nor does it truly feel like a "how-to" guide.  It's more a concentrated memoir of sorts.  I enjoyed the format quite a bit.  I said to myself several times while reading it that it couldn't have been better timed for me - the new year hanging over us, the new adventure, and the bittersweet month we'd spent re-familiarizing ourselves with our families from whom we were so long detached...  It was certainly a good time.  I felt like the book was really speaking TO ME because I had such mixed emotions on December 29 about the road (or skies) ahead.

However, I only gave The Happiness Project something like two stars.  It wasn't my favorite book.  I found Gretchen to be a bit annoying at times, though I can't pinpoint why exactly I felt this way.  Parts of the book I very much enjoyed, other parts I just found to be so-so.  For example, I felt like most of the mentions of her husband were very blah.  It could be just her writing style but I kept getting irritated by his personality.  I wanted to shake her up and tell her to dump the loser.  But at the same time she kept talking about how wonderful he was and how she needed to cut him more slack.  I guess I just don't really subscribe to the doting, obedient, overly-serving wife ideal.  Maybe I should.  But I immediately assumed she was extremely religious and then in a later chapter she goes into how she isn't, actually.  So I think that threw me off, too.  Minus her husband, I'd probably have rated the book higher.  Reading back over that sentence it seems unfair but I can't help it.  It's not a book I'd recommend to everyone I met, but certainly I'd recommend it in some cases.

And I will say this:  it was inspiring.  Made me want to sing in the mornings (which I now sometimes do) and clean out my closets (which I admit I pretty much enjoyed before, too).

Overall, it was the right choice for the first book of the year.  I just couldn't justify giving it a super high rating.  Call me stingy.  ;)

Little by Little

We finally got our internet functional last night, so as far as my nerdy self is concerned, we are back in business.  I might never browse the web and check my email from my iPhone again.  Good grief!

Really though, thank goodness for small favors - without the iPhone I'd have been even more disconnected from the world.

I've been reading (and listening to audiobooks) a lot lately to fill my time.  So I've got some book review updating to do.  The biggest reading news for me is that I met my goal of 25 books last year.  It's not a lot, but I'm so excited about it.  This year I've resolved to try and hit 30.  We'll see how it goes, I hit 25 on the nose last year and basically by the skin of my teeth.  I just joined a book club, though, so that'll help.  I am pretty sure it's going to lean towards "the classics", which sadly really aren't my most favorite, but I am open to it anyway for the experience of finally being in an actual book club and having some geeked out camaraderie.

A is settled in at her new school and thriving.  She's also getting involved with her new girl scout troop and we have cookies out the wazoo here at home.  M is settling in at work.  We added a puppy and a kitten to the family (insert sound of exasperation here), and we got our first snow this past weekend.  Things have been good - mostly.  We are still waiting on two of our four household shipments to arrive.  By this, I basically mean we have yet to receive any of our furniture.  Fortunately the government offers temporary furniture so we haven't been forced to sit on the floor so far.  And we bought new mattresses since we left our mattresses behind in Okinawa (we wanted to err on the side of caution where all that mold and humidity was concerned...) so we've been sleeping comfortably.  Still doing much of our living out of suitcases and boxes, though, until our proper things arrive.  Hopefully it'll be soon, but I'm not holding my breath.

C just had her third birthday (sniff!) and is doing well.  She's such a monkey.  She's just like me - super suspicious and cautious of new people.  A is just like her daddy - the social butterfly.  C is the opposite.  It makes me laugh.  We went to a play group and she got completely overwhelmed and asked to come home.  She'd prefer to sit on the couch with me and color and have Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on TV over playing with other similar-aged children.

Haven't taken any grand European adventures just yet, but we are certainly adjusting.  Missing certain aspects of Okinawa and of course aspects of America - we talk about missing grandma on a daily basis - but we're optimistic.  Book reviews coming up.

Holy hiatus, Batman!

The bad news: I am typing this out from my iPhone because we don't have Internet till 3 February or so.

The good news: I finally have an iPhone! Hehe. And I have arrived (a month ago) in the UK! We are waiting on our personal property to arrive but have settled as much as possible in housing.

So much to update on but so little keyboard to type with, so for now just accept my belated holiday wishes. We'll be back to normal soon.

Bento Post - the last one of 2011!

I'm WAY behind on my bento pictures.  Since last week my poor spoiled child has been taking Lunchables to school for lunch, since we're out of housing and all of my snazzy bento supplies are in transit to the UK.

Anyways, I thought I'd post a few photos of some of the lunches I missed posting last month when they were relevant...  Ooops!

This one's pretty old but I can't remember posting it before.

Cherries, kiwi, mini salad with cheese stars, mac and cheese and under-the-sea dogs: mini octo and crab.

This was C's lunch on a day when we were out and about running errands.  It's a mini-version of the same lunch A had that day - apples, edamame, ham and cheese wheels, grapes, and a pumpkin candy.

The A version included a cookie.

Simple onigiri, hot dogs, apples, edamame and a pumpkin spice cookie

Bunny love.  ;)

Actually really liked this one - it's an olive spider and ham and cheese sammy rolls that say EEK with carrots, apples, and edamame - in the view below you can see how cute the spider is.  Hehehe

Red-dyed spaghetti (she won't eat spaghetti sauce, but red spaghetti is cool) with grilled chicken and a heart shaped bread, carrots, kiwi-love, cherry tomato and a brownie bite.

Sunbutter and jelly jack-o-lantern on skinny buns bread, mini-weenie, grapes, cheese, kiwi, and carrots.  There is a story behind this lunch.  Ask me some day.

Boo sammy with apples, grapes, carrots and cookie

Mini-mummy pizzas, apples and carrot-o-lanterns

The laziest ghost onigiri ever.  Fortunately my kiddo is pretty indiscriminate about rice.  Plus this one came with sprinkles - which she LOVES.  Also had candy corn, edamame, carrot-o-lantern, and mini dogs.

And that's that.  I may have a few more photos but since we're operating in-transit now, those won't be uploaded at all till we are settled in at our new address.  For the moment, I'm on vacation.  ;)

Book Review: Room

Book 25/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  (I DID IT!!)  Date completed: November 28, 2011.

Room.  I took an interest in this book months and months ago while it was first on the bestsellers list, but because of VERY mixed reviews, I put off reading it.  Then my friend (the same friend that recommended I listen to Crank) said it was great and that I should give it a go but only if I was doing the audiobook format again.

So, like I said, I had been looking for entertainment for my upcoming flights and I downloaded Crank, Room, and one other book right then and there on her suggestion (I believe it's Still Missing, but my iPod is like 5 feet away from me at the moment and I can't be bothered to double check the title...  Sue me!)

Like with Crank, I "spoiled my appetite" and started listening to it as soon as our move started.  I sat out in the hallway as the movers packed up our belongings with my headphones on and listened to this book.  And then I just couldn't stop and ended up subjecting my children and husband to listening to this book (and my incessant hushing) during each of our car rides together.  At first listen, this book is absolutely obnoxious.  I didn't read any reviews thoroughly before starting the book so I wasn't sure what exactly I was getting myself into.  Room is told from the perspective of a (very sheltered, to put it lightly) five-year-old, and as my husband pointed out, it sounds like a really long cheesy radio commercial, or maybe a radio show from the 50s.  It's told entirely in the voice of a small child, save for the parts where other characters are talking.  As I adjusted, though, I wasn't so bothered by Jack's voice any more, nor was I bothered by his childish grammar - actually, I found myself repeating "Jack-isms" to my husband, who I do believe got pretty involved in this book too.

As a sidenote - I don't recall if I've ever mentioned it before, but I bought my husband The Hunger Games trilogy audiobooks and he listens to them like they're going out of style.  It's pretty much the only way I can get him to share in my book obsession with me.  So for him to be cool with listening to Room at every opportunity with me is probably because of that.  He has probably listened to the full Hunger Games trilogy at least 10 times now.  And no, he's not sick of them yet.  They're that good!

Anyways once I got used to Room, I absolutely could not stop listening to it.  It's the story of a woman who is abducted at age 19 and kept isolated by her captor in a modified garden shed for seven years.  The story of her and the wonderful, charming, sweet product of her abuse - her five-year-old son, Jack.  Going into the story, none of that is entirely apparent however and it just seems like Ma and Jack are a couple of weirdos.

This is a definite good read.  I gave it four stars, one short of five because Ma's character did, on occasion, drive me crazy...  But I think that's sort of to be expected from someone so detached from the world.  This book doesn't leave anything out.  It includes all the details from Jack's perspective and it's extremely haunting.  I don't want to say too much and give the story away, just know that you really should read Room.

Book Review: Crank

Book 24/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Date completed: November 21, 2011.

This was different for me in many ways.  Crank was recommended to me by a friend who said it was really different and that she'd really enjoyed it.  I didn't know what to expect, but she suggested the audiobook as that was how she'd taken it in.  So, ok, I'm up for new stuff.  Plus, I've been wanting something to entertain me on the plane that doesn't require my eyes.  Figured an audiobook would be appropriate.

But I didn't wait till I got on the plane to start listening to Crank.  I started listening to it in the car on a drive to one of the other bases here on island to keep me company since I was going solo.  Right away I noticed how it was written much differently than anything else I've ever read.  I looked it up when I got home and found out that the book was written entirely in verse, almost as poetry.  (Which explains why the recording was only a little over four hours long total.)  It is from the perspective of a 16-going-on-17-year-old girl, Kristina, as she spirals downward into addiction.  It's very raw.  Talks about rape, talks about specific drug usage, talks about scandal of all sorts, teen pregnancy, abortion, and all those things that mothers of daughters worry about incessantly.

Anyways, at just four hours, I finished this book pretty quickly.  I put on my headphones and listened while I folded laundry and did dishes, I listened in the car on a couple of errand runs, and before I knew it, the book was over.  It scared the shit out of me, if I'm being honest.  I only gave it two stars, but not because it was bad - just because it really wasn't my thing.  I didn't relate at all to the plot - I was always pretty straight-edge - most would say my teenage years were quite boring and I'm alright with that.  But I did find it...  Well, fascinating, because of the absence of such chaos in my own life.

Apparently this book is the first in a series that continues to follow Kristina's life.  I'm not sure if I'll read the others, but this was definitely an interesting experience for me.  And makes me want to squeeze my children a little tighter.

Book Review: Divergent

Book 23/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Date completed: November 14, 2011.

I stumbled upon Divergent because I am such a fan of The Hunger Games trilogy.  Divergent is the first (and currently the only - book number two, Insurgent, is due out next May) book in Veronica Roth's new trilogy.  It is very similar in feeling to The Hunger Games.  Maybe it's biased for me to review it in comparison but I couldn't help myself all throughout from feeling like they were spun from the same thread.

Beatrice (aka Tris) is a sixteen-year-old girl in a dystopian civilization divided into five factions: Abnegation, whose people are known for their selflessness; Amity, whose people are known for being caring; Candor, whose people are known for honesty; Dauntless, whose people are known for their fearlessness; and Erudite, whose people are known for their intelligence.  Beatrice is born and raised in Abnegation, but when her turn to choose her life's path and designated faction comes about, she opts to leave behind the family and the life that she has always known.

The story details the sometimes brutal initiation process for the teenagers entering into the Dauntless faction, but more specifically, it follows Beatrice's unique case as she tries to conceal the dangerous truth (and understand what it really means) that she is, in fact, a Divergent.

This is Veronica Roth's first book and I think it's really good.  I only gave it three stars on Goodreads, because I feel like it has a lot of potential but it just felt so much like The Hunger Games to me that I want to see what else is going to happen in the trilogy before I commit to absolutely loving it.  I felt like some parts were very predictable, where I never felt that way with The Hunger Games.  It's another time where I wish I could give ratings with half-stars, because Divergent certainly would merit three and a half if I could do it.  I'll definitely be reading the next book when I get my hands on it, and the other reviewers that say if you liked The Hunger Games you'll enjoy Divergent were right.

Book Review: Love Walked In

Book 22/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Date completed: November 3, 2011.

Ok, so this was another Pinterest find because I liked the cover.  I'd probably have never heard of this book or Marisa de los Santos otherwise.  I gave it a three-star rating on Goodreads, but it was one of those times where I really wished instead of a five-star rating system, they used a ten-star.  I think this book would have merited more than six stars out of ten but probably only about seven total.  So, yeah, I suppose what I'm getting at is that I feel like about a 3.5 star rating is more honest.

The book started out really well.  I was hooked on it right away, especially from the first Clare chapter as her mother seemingly goes insane...  And Cornelia certainly was a lovable character, too.  She made a lot of classic film and book references and I like that sort of thing.  She's a hopeless romantic and a bit of an under-achiever, but content with her life in general.  The book creates a very unlikely connection between Cornelia and Clare, who we several chapters in discover is the daughter of Cornelia's super-suave boyfriend, Martin.  When Clare's mother goes off the proverbial "deep end," Martin finds himself suddenly solely responsible for the 11-year-old daughter he has essentially spent carefully avoiding her whole life.  He turns to Cornelia for help with Clare, and this was about the point where I sensed a plot-twist approaching that I wanted to dig my heels into the mud to prevent.

Without spoiling the story, I can only say that things changed about halfway through this book.  I felt it coming and I was really hoping against all hopes that it wasn't going where it was, but I was right.  Nothing terrible happens, just that it was really..  well, unbelievable.  And sappy.  And that was why it took me nearly a month to get through.  I lost interest.  It ends happy, it's just not the ending I'd have chosen.  The first half of the book, though, I really enjoyed!

Oh well.  On to the next.  It's definitely crunch-time.  I'm running out of days to complete the last three books.  I have started Divergent this weekend so hopefully I'll get through it pretty quickly and painlessly, but with the move and our vacation so quickly approaching and my husband going in for gallbladder surgery this week...  I'm slightly stressed out lately.  So we'll see.  Need to do a bento update soon, and a life-in-general update, too!

Another Bento Catch-up

I really need to get myself into a good, solid routine.  With the upcoming move, though, I am fighting it.  Anyways my blog of course is the first thing to suffer - oops.  I have been bento-ing though and generally taking photos.  Here's another attempt to get the blog caught up on what A's been eating for lunch.

Sheesh.  I was SO intimidated on the morning I put this lunch together.  The day before, A had accidentally forgotten her standard lunch bag at school.  Which is technically not an issue since I bought her two different lunch bags that match her backpack exactly for this reason.  But this lunch box is a LOT bigger and I had bought the Pottery Barn Kids insert that fits inside of it to put her meal in.  I hadn't used the insert before so I was kind of concerned about how it was going to work out.  The box is way too big for a 5-year-old.  But I did manage to fit in her drink (Apple Qoo) and a pretty balanced meal in there.  Just, a lot of it came back.  She had cheeseburger buns, a cucumber roll (her favorite), carrot shapes, fruit jelly, and kiwi.  Not my favorite way to pack a lunch but I figured I'd document it anyway just for fun, since it was such a big deal at the time.  Here is a link to the container, if anybody's interested - it would definitely be a great box to use for an all-day outing - you could even stick something breakfasty in the covered space if you wanted to and have it separate.

HK onigiri and mini dogs, cucumber, carrots, strawberries, "cherry" tomatoes, cheese and a fruit jelly

Pizza wheels, edamame (on the animal picks), strawberry, banana, and carrots

Ham and cheese roll ups, cherry tomato, banana, carrots and jelly

Onigiri, broccoli, tomatoes, hot dog, apple and cheese

Banana, carrots, edamame, tomato balloon, and pizza rolls (crescent dough wrapped around pepperoni and string cheese)

C's mini-version of the pizza roll lunch

Under the sea - girly octodog, carrots, tomato, seal with olive, goldfish crackers, strawberry, and fish-shaped onigiri

Ham slices, diced peaches, tomatoes, carrots and olives with mac-and-cheese lion face

The first Halloween bento of 2011 :)

Mini mummy dogs - used lit'l smokies and seamless crescent dough - they're propped up on a banana and sharing space with a black cat sugar cookie

Mac-o-lanterns.  :)

Fresh fruits and veggies, leftover fried rice and gyoza with animal picks. 

Ok, that's all I've got.  Phew!  Here's to being caught up!  :)

Book Review: The Help

Book 21/25 in the 2011 Reading Challenge.  Date completed:  October 5, 2011.

I feel like The Help doesn't really need to be reviewed.  I feel like this book's reputation speaks for itself and I am just predictably giving it another five-star review.

I'm sure nearly everyone who might encounter this review already knows that The Help follows the lives of several women in Jackson, Mississippi and the lives of their black maids, also known as "the help".  Somehow a book whose main issues are racism in the mid-20th century and toilets is one of the most moving books I've ever read.  I felt like I was best friends with Skeeter Phelan, Aibileen Clark, and Minny Jackson.  And Hilly Holbrook - well, I just wanted to punch that woman in the face.

I bought The Help several months ago when it had been lingering at the top of the bestseller list, and I didn't know a lot about it except that it was getting rave reviews.  And then the movie came out and I heard from stateside friends via Facebook how incredible it was.  So I decided I'd go ahead and read it finally.  I had a very hard time reading Winter's Bone and blamed it largely on the vernacular but in The Help, I loved the way the maids sections were written in their own casual (if grammatically incorrect) language.  I could hear Aibileen, Minny, and the others speaking in my ears just as clear as could be and after I'd set the book down, I found myself wanting to talk the way I'd been reading.  Fo' sho.  Law have mercy!  I don't know why this is, but I just found the maids SO endearing.  I could not get enough of them.

Skeeter Phelan crosses an "invisible line" between white and colored women and secretly befriends maids in her quest to put her newly earned degree to good use and write a book about something that bothers her and seemingly nobody else - a book from the perspective of "the help" regarding exactly what it's like to be a colored woman in the very repressed state of Mississippi.  This secret work changes the lives of nearly everyone in the community, as well as poses a huge danger to many of the maids involved and Skeeter herself.

Certainly a book worth reading, though I'm sure you already knew that.  Seriously though, sit down with this one.  It's good.  And if you're like me you'll be waiting on pins and needles to watch the movie afterwards.  It's not out here yet, so I'm about dying with anticipation.