Thankfulness -- BOOK NOTES

 

BOOK NOTES

A Thankfulness Stack

It’s Thanksgiving week, so I’ve put together a thankfulness stack to remind me to focus on my blessings, be content, give thanks, and show gratitude. I love Thanksgiving and the entire Thanksgiving holiday weekend. It's is a time of reflection for me, and filled with nostalgia. Thanksgiving is also the gateway to Christmas, which I really love. 

🦃 The Blessing by Nancy Mitford

🦃 A Little Book of Japanese Contentments by Erin Niimi Longhurst

🦃 Thank You for Smoking* by Christopher Buckley

🦃 Gratitude: Reflections on What We Owe to Our Country by William F. Buckley

I haven't read The Blessing yet. I picked this one for the title. I love Nancy Mitford, though, so I look forward to this one, which is described as her most autobiographical novel.

A Little Book of Japanese Contentments is one I really enjoyed. The author looks to Japanese traditions like "forest bathing" and wabi-sabi to gently advise on how to be more grounded and live in the present. The modernist, Japanese-style illustrations make the book beautiful and a good gift idea.

Thank You for Smoking may seem like dark satire for a post about thankfulness, but it’s actually right on point. My husband, also a lawyer, spent a big chunk of his career litigating cases for Philip Morris. Around our house, there’s more truth to that title than we care to acknowledge. 

The William Buckley book, Gratitude, is still on my TBR shelf but one I'd very much like to read. I think I might read it over Thanksgiving weekend. 

For my fellow Thanksgiving celebrants, what are your plans? My husband and I are on our own this year and plan to have a very laidback holiday. We certainly are not cooking a turkey dinner for the two of us! We are going to get lobsters from the tank at the Chinese grocery store. And I will be avoiding Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and all the rest of it, like I do every year. 

Also, as is the tradition around our house, I'll go to the tree lot and get our Christmas tree on Saturday or Sunday. I no longer make my husband crawl around in the Oregon mud to cut our own tree, but I still insist on a fresh tree. 

Book Notes: Last, Now, Next - What I'm Reading in September

I've enjoyed playing around with Instagram book posts lately. Instagram inspires me to take more pictures, obviously, and the bookstagrammers start discussions or post hashtag challenges that give me ideas for blog posts and the creative energy to sit down and write them.

This morning I had fun with a hashtag challenge on Instagram called #lastnownextread where participants list the book they just finished, the book they are currently reading, and the book they plan to read next.

My last read was The Little Book of Lykke: The Danish Search for the World's Happiest People by Meik Wiking. I thought it was interesting, approached important ideas in a creative way, and was more substantive than his earlier book, The Little Book of Hygge, which I adore. I didn't agree with all his conclusions. For instance, while some programs might work in Denmark, I don't know that they would transfer or scale up for other countries. But I like that he is thinking about and discussing what makes people happy and how to achieve that on a broad scale. It’s a book I’d like to discuss with people face to face, which would be a very lykke thing to do.

My current read is The Small Room by May Sarton. I’m enjoying this one a lot because I love “campus novels” and middlebrow, Midcentury fiction. This is set in a women’s college in upstate New York, contemporaneous to when it was published in 1961. So this one is my exact cup of tea! I keep this list of campus novels if others share my enjoyment for Ivy Tower fiction.

My next read is Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy. I read this in college, and I’m slowly, in fits and starts, rereading some of the classics I read so long ago.

The three are stacked on one of my favorite needlepoint pillows because fall is here and I dug out that pillow to toss on the living room sofa.

So, what are your three? Feel free to share.