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A journal in which you are given different activities to improve your happiness.
I was provided with a complimentary copy of this book so I could give an honest review.
Everyone, including me, can use some more happiness in their lives so I requested to read The Happiness Diary: The Practice of Finding and Savoring Things to Be Joyful About by Barbara Ann Kipfer.
The Diary is not a book to read in one sitting. It is a journal in which you are given different activities to improve your happiness. Some are reflective exercises. Other suggest an journal prompt to complete then review after a specific time period - days, weeks, months, or more. Rereading your entry allows you to see how your life, goals, and happiness have changed during that time period.
It offers different ways to help express your happiness. It encourages you to try all of the techniques to find which one or ones are preferable to you.
One of the entries I have been doing for years. For homework for a Positive Psychology class, you needed to think of 3 good things that happened that day. It is a great exercise.
One of my favorite entries is the Newness Challenge. It suggests you try something new every day for a month. I have been trying to learn something every month for years. It is challenging but fun.
Review published on Philomathinphila.com on 3/17/19.
Everyone, including me, can use some more happiness in their lives so I requested to read The Happiness Diary: The Practice of Finding and Savoring Things to Be Joyful About by Barbara Ann Kipfer.
The Diary is not a book to read in one sitting. It is a journal in which you are given different activities to improve your happiness. Some are reflective exercises. Other suggest an journal prompt to complete then review after a specific time period - days, weeks, months, or more. Rereading your entry allows you to see how your life, goals, and happiness have changed during that time period.
It offers different ways to help express your happiness. It encourages you to try all of the techniques to find which one or ones are preferable to you.
One of the entries I have been doing for years. For homework for a Positive Psychology class, you needed to think of 3 good things that happened that day. It is a great exercise.
One of my favorite entries is the Newness Challenge. It suggests you try something new every day for a month. I have been trying to learn something every month for years. It is challenging but fun.
Review published on Philomathinphila.com on 3/17/19.
Goddess in the Stacks (553 KP) rated Spinning Silver in Books
Dec 25, 2018
I had previously read Uprooted, and adored it, so I was eager to get my hands on this book as soon as it came out. I was very excited to see it as a Book of the Month choice for July, and quickly made it my pick!
I received the book last weekend while I was at Anthrocon, so I didn't get a chance to sit down with it until yesterday. (It officially came out Tuesday.) I proceeded to read straight through the entire book because it was SO. GOOD. Novik writes absolutely ENTHRALLING fairy tales. And in Spinning Silver, she has written fae as beautiful, alien, capricious, and as absolutely bound by rules as they should be. Doing a thing three times, even by normal means, gives one the power to ACTUALLY do the thing; in Miryem's case, turning the Staryk's silver into gold (by creative buying and selling) means she gains the power to LITERALLY turn silver into gold. Which then gets her into the trouble the rest of the book is built on.
One of my favorite lines was very near the end of the book, about the Staryk palace:
"The Staryk didn't know anything of keeping records: I suppose it was only to be expected from people who didn't take on debts and were used to entire chambers wandering off and having to be called back like cats."
My only real quibble with the book is that it shifts viewpoints between at least five characters, and doesn't start their sections with names or anything, so it takes a few sentences to figure out who's talking. It never takes too long, but it did occasionally make me go "Wait, who is this....ah, okay."
The plotlines weave in and out of each other's way for most of the book before all colliding into each other at the end and showing how everything connects. I was definitely confused on occasion, but it was that enchanting Alice-in-Wonderland kind of confusion more than actual puzzlement. The book is, by turns, a mix of Rumpelstiltskin, Tam-Lin, Winter King vs Summer King, Snow Queen, and a little Hansel and Gretel. I love seeing elements of so many fairy tales woven together and yet still remaining recognizable.
And the ending! Oh, the ending was absolutely, marvelously perfect.
I loved this book, just as much as I loved Uprooted. I can't wait to see what fairy tales Novik spins next!
You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.com
I received the book last weekend while I was at Anthrocon, so I didn't get a chance to sit down with it until yesterday. (It officially came out Tuesday.) I proceeded to read straight through the entire book because it was SO. GOOD. Novik writes absolutely ENTHRALLING fairy tales. And in Spinning Silver, she has written fae as beautiful, alien, capricious, and as absolutely bound by rules as they should be. Doing a thing three times, even by normal means, gives one the power to ACTUALLY do the thing; in Miryem's case, turning the Staryk's silver into gold (by creative buying and selling) means she gains the power to LITERALLY turn silver into gold. Which then gets her into the trouble the rest of the book is built on.
One of my favorite lines was very near the end of the book, about the Staryk palace:
"The Staryk didn't know anything of keeping records: I suppose it was only to be expected from people who didn't take on debts and were used to entire chambers wandering off and having to be called back like cats."
My only real quibble with the book is that it shifts viewpoints between at least five characters, and doesn't start their sections with names or anything, so it takes a few sentences to figure out who's talking. It never takes too long, but it did occasionally make me go "Wait, who is this....ah, okay."
The plotlines weave in and out of each other's way for most of the book before all colliding into each other at the end and showing how everything connects. I was definitely confused on occasion, but it was that enchanting Alice-in-Wonderland kind of confusion more than actual puzzlement. The book is, by turns, a mix of Rumpelstiltskin, Tam-Lin, Winter King vs Summer King, Snow Queen, and a little Hansel and Gretel. I love seeing elements of so many fairy tales woven together and yet still remaining recognizable.
And the ending! Oh, the ending was absolutely, marvelously perfect.
I loved this book, just as much as I loved Uprooted. I can't wait to see what fairy tales Novik spins next!
You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.com
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FilmIntuition (33 KP) rated The Kiss Quotient in Books
Jun 28, 2018
Bold & Original Romance Adds Up
Back when I read the First Impression excerpt of The Kiss Quotient on Bookish First this past spring, I knew Helen Hoang's novel was sure to be one of the most talked about romances of 2018.
Bolstered by its inclusion as one of June's Book of the Month Club titles (which is where I nabbed my copy), it has fulfilled that promise and more as the genre's most popular summer beach read.
Taking familiar romance genre paradigms and giving them a new spin, Hoang's startlingly sexy title might bill itself as a gender swapped Pretty Woman but it actually reads more like a politically correct version of Fifty Shades of Grey... only with econometrics, martial arts, and fashion design filling in for the Red Room.
Centering its sexy Pygmalion narrative around a heroine with Asperger's whose disability does not define her – a premise that originally attracted me to the novel – the book is both a refreshing step forward for fictional disabled representation and a bold work all around.
While it inevitably suffers from predictable genre conventions including a slightly clunky start that moves from Point A to Z at an unrealistic pace, once Hoang balances out her equation, The Kiss Quotient really adds up.
Note: I would probably give this book 7.5, if able to award half points.
Bolstered by its inclusion as one of June's Book of the Month Club titles (which is where I nabbed my copy), it has fulfilled that promise and more as the genre's most popular summer beach read.
Taking familiar romance genre paradigms and giving them a new spin, Hoang's startlingly sexy title might bill itself as a gender swapped Pretty Woman but it actually reads more like a politically correct version of Fifty Shades of Grey... only with econometrics, martial arts, and fashion design filling in for the Red Room.
Centering its sexy Pygmalion narrative around a heroine with Asperger's whose disability does not define her – a premise that originally attracted me to the novel – the book is both a refreshing step forward for fictional disabled representation and a bold work all around.
While it inevitably suffers from predictable genre conventions including a slightly clunky start that moves from Point A to Z at an unrealistic pace, once Hoang balances out her equation, The Kiss Quotient really adds up.
Note: I would probably give this book 7.5, if able to award half points.
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