Resolution52 – Brian Utley & Jenny Dalton

Did I ever tell you about the time I ran away and changed my name to Beth Murray? I only bring it up because The Geography of Bliss begins with a very similar story. Five years old, and the author recalls dragging his reluctant best friend towards the unknown world that lay beyond via a major thoroughfare close to home, looking for an adventure and possibly some happiness along the way. After all, he “always believed that happiness is just around the corner. The trick is finding the right corner.”

I picked this book up last summer at a yard sale for twenty-five cents, which, right away, makes it awesome. However, I did not expect to love this book as much as I did. Let me just say, hands down, best book I’ve read this year. In fact, while reading, I actually got out a pen and starting underlining passages and making notes, and I want you to know, I NEVER do that. The Geography of Bliss chronicles the quest of a self proclaimed grump who, with the help of scientists at the World Database of Happiness, or WDH, (yes, this actually exists) travels to almost a dozen locations around the world, whose people say they are among the happiest, (and a couple miserable places for good measure) and tries to find the secret to this alleged happiness. This book is as insightful as it is entertaining. Whether lamenting about his pornographic-esque addiction to bags, (his obsession is hilarious and completely relatable) or mulling over the Bhutanese government’s commitment to Gross National Happiness, he does so with not only a comical edge, but a genuine desire to find the root of this thing we call happiness. The book is laugh-out-loud funny and equally witty throughout, and despite all I learned, once again, made me long to be geographically somewhere else.

The travel bug hits many of us at a young age, and despite both the author and I being thwarted of our young attempts at adventure and bliss, (yes, I was discovered stowed away in the back of my neighbors car and promptly returned home) and though I’ve had itchy feet for as long as I can remember, I think running away for the first time and changing my name at the ripe age of six, for me, was just as much about changing my person as much as it was changing my location. For me the changing of location is what makes me feel different, alive. It makes me feel like I am a character in one of the books I’ve read, albeit a character with a much better storyline. In fact, I have a long history of using travel as a means of escape. As I’ve grown older, I realize the error of this thinking, and, as I have become a mother who can’t just up and move whenever life gets uncomfortable, I’ve learned to deal with life and its many pitfalls, and hope I come out a little stronger, a little more experienced, a little more able, in the end. I’ve also realized that, regardless of locale, you can never outrun yourself or your problems, and also despite said locale, one has to find a happiness inside yourself before a place, person, job, money, or circumstance will ever make you happy. That’s the point really; finding contentment, which in many minds seems to be the equivocal to happiness, regardless of circumstance. And, consequently, according to this book, that’s what the people in the happiest places have found.

And even though I think I’ve learned the importance of finding contentment and happiness in myself and my geography, I still believe, like many others who make appearances in The Geography of Bliss, that certain places feel like home, or call to us more than others. Certain places such as, surprisingly enough, Iceland, seem to be filled with happy, content people, which in turn fosters happiness and contentment in others. Thus, the old adage, surrounding yourself with happiness and goodness, will eventually breed, yep, more happiness and goodness.

That said, regardless of the personal contentment I’ve found here in Pleasant Grove, Utah, (yes, it is relatively pleasant) in Ireland there’s a small island called Inish Bofin that can only be reached by ferry. It is the most beautiful place I have ever seen. And when I close my eyes at night, I see it in my dreams. And one day, you will find me there, and I will be happy.*

*And yes, we all just had a very special Shawshank moment just then.

2012, Book Thoughts, Eric Weiner, Geography of Bliss, Jenny Dalton Eric Weiner, Jenny Dalton, The Geography of Bliss

Every time someone finds out that Stephen King is my favorite author, I somehow always feel the need to begin with, “but, in my defense…..” Regardless, I should probably clarify something right away; my top three favorite books were not written by Stephen King, in fact, if I had to make a list, I’m not sure he would even make the top ten.  That said, let me tell you why he is, number one, my all time favorite writer, and that number two, meeting him and getting his autograph is on my bucket list, and three, if writers had groupies, I would definitely follow him around on tour  in hopes that he would throw a bookmark or something at me from on stage.

As a lover of most things written, I too have a need to better myself through the reading of great classic works of literature.  I feel an obligation to tick down the classics list and mark them as read on my Goodreads account.  But, I’m gonna be honest with you, sometimes a read like that can be tough to take in.  It doesn’t always get me excited to find the social commentary or hidden messages written between the lines. These days, as I read on my own and not as a student, although I still find it necessary to better myself through the books I choose, sometimes I just….don’t.  And in my old age, so help me, it gets exhausting even considering bettering myself, let alone doing it. The last few reads have been pretty serious stuff.  Stuff I needed to analyze and make applicable to my life. It’s akin to knowing I should be watching that film that won all the awards on like the mass genocide of a nation, but instead I just really feel like watching Dumb and Dumber.  And don’t get me wrong, the last few reads were a real treat, but this time I just wanted to read something I knew I would enjoy, without the need to find some meaning in the subtext.  So I turned to my old friend Stephen, who just came out with a new book called, 11/22/63, a novel that questions the morality and dangers of trying to change history and what life would be like if JFK had never been assassinated.

Honestly, it wasn’t my most favorite of his books, but I still very much enjoyed it and read it in only a few sittings (it’s almost 900 pages). The thing about Mr. King is not only does he have the most crazy awesome imagination, but he is seriously the most talented writer. The way he weaves a story and his ability to keep you turning the pages is unlike any other.  I mean this guy writes 800+ page books and I just keep on reading. To me, he is the epitome of what it means to be a true story teller. My only beef with him is his hardbacks are so heavy I can’t take them in the bath with me.

In a nutshell, and in his own words, I like King because “sometimes a cigar is just a smoke and a story’s just a story.” At the end of the day, most of the time, I just want to be entertained, and that’s what he does for me.  So if its King for me, or Twilight or whatever for you, I say, whatever floats your boat. For heavens sake, I’ll even listen to pop music here and there if it makes me want to tap my feet.  Because in the end, if it’s good, it’s good. Who am I to judge?

Author’s Note**** A few of my favorites that you might want to check out are, in no particular order: The Stand, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, (which is included in the book Different Seasons along with other great novellas like Apt Pupil and The Body((movie adaption, Stand by Me)) Just After Sunset, (particularly the novella, The Gingerbread Girl), Needful Things, It, On Writing, Salems Lot, The Shining, and most recently, Under The Dome.  Seriously though, there’s not a story of his I haven’t enjoyed.

Book Thoughts 11/22/63, Jenny Dalton, Stephen King

I remember sitting in classrooms through the years and often times feeling completely in the dark, not having a clue as to what the professor was going on about. One time in particular is burned in my memory. I was taking a class where an entire lecture centered around one word: misogynist. Well, I had no idea what that word meant, (and in my defense it was a class focused on medieval poetry, which, in my mind, is kind of a cruel and inhumane prerequisite. Furthermore, in my humble opinion the only tolerable poetry is the kind set to music, preferably with a drum solo somewhere in there, thank you), and I spent the entire class trying to figure out what in the world this guy was yammering on about, while everyone else seemingly understood with the noddings of the heads and of course that one kid in class who just has to have a ridiculously insightful comment, which I didn’t latch onto as well, which further drove home my ineptitude.  So I sat there in silence, too embarrassed to raise my hand and ask the meaning, wondering if I was completely alone in my academic short comings.

I’d like to say this feeling of inadequacy in comparison with those around me has faded since my younger days, but alas, it is not so.  A good example of this would be my first, and every year after, mothering stint I’ve been involved in. At first, I thought I might collapse under the weight of the pressure.  With the having of a child, a feeling of unavoidable guilt quickly becomes a mainstay feature in the hollows of your soul. Guilt about things I wasn’t doing right, wasn’t doing at all, or was going to do in the future that would inevitable be the ruin of my offspring, and subsequently probably be the downfall of a nation at some point.  I was getting about 1.5 hours of consecutive sleep a day, I was frazzled, rarely showered, and that baby WOULD JUST NOT STOP CRYING! I could do nothing to soothe her and because all the other young mothers around me seemed to have everything together, I was convinced, once again, that I was the one falling short. And that just made it worse.  It wasn’t until years later, when I started really talking to my close friends, that stories of the pressure felt, depression, inadequacy, and the feeling that they alone were the ones not keeping up, not daring to admit they were struggling for fear of appearing weak, began to emerge.  And I couldn’t help but wonder, if we had all just admitted years before that our problems and fears existed, would we have been comforted? Would we have been shored up knowing we were not alone, that we were in good company in our inadequacies?

The memory of those times and many others through my life came flooding back while reading Jeffery Eugenides novel, The Marriage Plot.  The book follows the lives of three college graduates, immersed in a love triangle as they embark into the world trying to find themselves and the path they are destined for as they deal with all sorts of unexpected and most times ill prepared for events of love, mental illness, friendship, marriage, and religion.  Tolerance, understanding, acceptance and forgiveness weave through this tale as the characters find the strength to sacrifice for each other and in the end, sacrifice for themselves. I couldn’t help but wonder while reading this book, if the characters had shared their weaknesses, and trusted others with their flaws, would things have turned out differently? Would their lives have met less resistance and despair with the relief and support that can come with voicing our fears and our perceived shortcomings, while being honest about who we are as individuals?

I guess my thought is this: If we raise our hands and admit that we really don’t know everything, that we are not perfect, that we are struggling and we aren’t quite sure if the decisions we make and have made are the right ones, will it be worth it, if only maybe for that one other person in the world who sighs and is relieved that they are not the only one? Well, I’d like to think so.

2012, Book Thoughts, Jenny Dalton Jeffrey Eugenides, Jenny Dalton, The Marriage Plot

As my birthdays come around more frequently, or so it seems, I’ve been increasingly weighed down with the feeling that time is no longer my friend.  I remember when time moved slowly and I had plenty of time to accomplish my goals.  As I get ready to turn thirty-two, I can’t help but feel the panic set in. I have yet to DJ at a radio station I founded, I haven’t even begun to run that really cool I-think-I’ll be-young-and-hip-forever record shop, I haven’t saved the world, or opened an orphanage, and I’m certainly not the JD Salinger of my time. My mortality seems to loom as the years go by, and I am unable to stop it. But, despite these failures, I continue to read.

Rachman’s, “the imperfectionists” (aptly, the title is not capitalized) is a series of short stories following a group of mostlyAmericans, all connected by one thing; a small floundering newspaper in Rome.  Each character is defined by their position at the newspaper and the perfection that is required to work there, although the focus is the imperfections that surround their personal lives and the concessions they make for themselves, their lives, goals and relationships.  Although you only get a glimpse into each life, it’s enough.  You quickly realize the same perfectionism that is demanded in each character’s work atmosphere is not mirrored in their personal lives, which, seems to make it that much harder for them to accept.  Rachman has a unique way of making you sympathize and personalize with each of his characters. Though I had little in common with any, I went away understanding and even respecting the decisions and lives of each in their search for personal happiness.

Ironically, for me, inspiration came in the form of Herman Cohen, the corrections editor, who puts out a staff article every week, called “Why?” (an article detailing the staffs most recent and unforgivable literary mistakes), who also has compiled a style guide called “The Bible” currently containing 18,238 words and phrases journalists should never use, and who is often heard yelling out the word, “Credibility!” while making jabbing gestures into the air.  The character who is in the most obvious demand of most literal perfection in the work place, makes no such demand of himself or others in his personal life or otherwise (he can’t even bring himself to correct his grandchildren’s grammar). At work he is forceful, demanding, and respected, while at home, he is humble, loved, and grateful.  He’s content in a perfectly ordinary, happy life that I’m not sure it ever occurred to him to expect.  Even at the end, when he was too entranced with his grandchildren to write that novel he always thought he’d write, there was not a flicker of regret.  In his grandchildren, he had found something better than his previous ideal.

The thing is this; ordinary is subjective.  Ten years ago my idea of ordinary was very different than it is today. So what if I’m thirty-two and haven’t made my “mark” on the world? The long and short is this: My ordinary life, filled with children that I adore (mostly when they’re sleeping), a partner whom I love, admire and who inspires me every single day, family and friends who make my life rich and full and who give me more of a sense of accomplishment in thirty-two years than I could have hoped for, are to me, anything but ordinary. Like any life, I too have regrets. But, regretting that I was born tone deaf and will never sing alongside Jon Bon Jovi in a concert put on in my honor for the inspiring work I’ve done fighting for animal rights coupled with the banning of cell phones in movie theaters, isn’t keeping me up at night anymore. Because in reading this book, instead of being critical of life unexpected, I’m more sympathetic, understanding, and grateful for it.

2012, Book Thoughts, Book Updates Jenny Dalton, the imperfectionists, tom rachman

I’m not a writer. And I’ve never blogged. Publicly anyway.  But I was an English Lit major, (not an English Everything is Spelled/Grammatically Correct major, I might point out) once upon a time, and I do enjoy a good over-analysis when I’m all worn out from honing that skill set on my current romantic relationship.  So here I am, reading some books and giving you the what for.

So I was perusing my tiny, somewhat pitiful they-do-an-okay-job-with-what-they-can-get, local library a couple months ago, when my eyes fell on a familiar author that I had never gotten around to reading, Agatha Christie. Turns out she is literally the best selling author OF ALL TIME.  She is the third most widely published after William Shakespeare and THE BIBLE. That’s insanity! Anyway, despite not knowing this impressive resume at the time, I proceeded to checkout Christie’s, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.  Wow, was I surprised at the ending.  And I don’t get surprised by endings.  You wanna know why? Because I watch a ton of CSI and Law and Order and I have read almost every Stephen King novel.  That’s the kind of training that has made me nearly un-surpriseable (it’s a word). And I’ll tell you what else- Agatha wrote a real page turner.  I couldn’t put the book down.

So I told Brian, I said, “Brian, you gotta read this,” and he said, “Jenny, I’m in the middle of something,” and I said, “I don’t care,” and he said, “Ok. Sigh (he actually said the word ‘sigh’ which was weird).”  So then he read it and loved it too, and we also read Murder on the Orient Express, which was also fantastic.  We decided Christie was a real pioneer in the detective novel genre and began to wonder how this came to be.  She must have had influences as all writers and artists do, after all, there’s always someone who changes things just enough that the wheel starts spinning in a totally different direction, like Elvis and rock ‘n’ roll, or Nirvana and the era of grunge and alternative music. Coincidently, Brian had recently begun reading Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, and it was toward this famous detective that we began to look for Christie’s inspiration.

So we started with the basics.  We read the short stories, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.  Then we moved on (grudgingly) to A Study in Scarlet and The Hound of the Baskervilles.  I’m not saying they were bad. Because they weren’t, obviously. I’m just saying, me reading Christie before Doyle was basically akin to my kids growing up watching Toy Story and Tangled and then expecting them to be impressed with the plot and graphics of Snow White.  I mean of course, still today his stuff is impressive, but I imagine, as new things often are, it was pretty amazing in 1887.  Sir Conan Doyle was a major founding father of the great mystery detective novel, (who of course was, I’m sure, influenced by Poe), and laid the groundwork for one of my most favorite genres- the mystery novel.  But I’ll tell it straight.  What I didn’t like about Holmes was, as a reader, you only got the basic story and all the detective work was already done, without the reader, and summed up concisely at the end.  There was no way I could even try to solve the clues because I wasn’t given the same information that Holmes had.  And that was frustrating, because just as I have perfected all my major karate skills from watching reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I’ve also honed my detective skills from picking up the subtle clues left to me by my favorite mystery novels and television shows.  I’ll be watching Bones or Psych for instance, and some might say I’ll “annoyingly” tell you my predictions through constant commentary on character dialogue, body language, and plot details until I have solved the crime. It’s fun and enjoyable (for some more than others) and all part of the experience! The long and short is this; Christie allows you to participate, while Doyle, not so much.

My conclusion? Agatha does it better – but, without Doyle, she probably wouldn’t have done it at all.

Book Thoughts, Jenny Dalton, Mystery Novels Agatha Christie, Blogging, Jenny Dalton, Sherlock Holmes