Review: The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World

The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book. Unlike some other reviews of it, I found the research aspect quite interesting and would have enjoyed even more detail about it. I didn't expect him to come to any absolute answers, and he didn't, but I did find the exploration of the topic through various and within diverse cultures interesting. Since there has been some discussion in the news right now of the differences between urban and rural living, I was glad he included side trips away from the big cities as well.

I agree with some of the answers he found: money matters, but only so much. Culture matters: it sets the stage. Community matters: it can change how we react to the places. Personal characteristics matter: they often mitigate what you might expect in those surroundings.

It would be interesting to do this on both a larger and smaller scale - more countries, especially including Africa and South America; and, on the other end of the scale, states within a large country, cities within large states. Even on the micro scale, I have seen differences. I have worked quite a few years as a substitute teacher. Some schools are definitely happy schools. Some made me anxious, just being in them. Intriguing.

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Review: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Gorgeous art work. Great addition to my already large HP collection.

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Review: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am enjoying these illustrated versions. This one has some especially good pictures of Fawkes, the phoenix, plus some additional wonderful spreads of Diagon Alley. It is interesting to me that these illustrations don't seem to detract from my own imaged visions of the people and places in the books, but the movies did. I stopped watching the movies after the third one, because it was so unsettling to me to see the differences between my imaged HP world and the movies' imagined HP world.

It would be interesting to me to know how the illustrator chose which scenes to elaborate. He has chosen some that I would not have and omitted others that I would have included. Maybe I will go look that up.

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Review: Calvin und Hobbes: Von Tigern, Teufelskerlen und nervigen Vätern

Calvin und Hobbes: Von Tigern, Teufelskerlen und nervigen Vätern by Bill Watterson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love Calvin and Hobbes above all of the comics I have collected. I am happy I am still able to read German well enough that I could understand almost all of this collection.

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Review: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

I could only read this book in fits and starts, because it made me so anxious - that pit of your stomach feeling that this is not going to turn out well. Should we cry for humanity or cheer for whatever comes next?

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Review: Calvin und Hobbes: Von Monstern, Mädchen und besten Freunden

Calvin und Hobbes: Von Monstern, Mädchen und besten Freunden by Bill Watterson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For me, the Calvin and Hobbes series is the best comic strip ever. Sometimes silly, often much more profound than I ever expected. I have read all of the strips in English several times and now I am reading them in German.

Thanks, Mr. Watterson.

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Review: In Defense of a Liberal Education

In Defense of a Liberal Education by Fareed Zakaria
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think this book has some good points, but they didn't seem to be clearly presented - for me, at least. One member of our book group agreed with me; another one completely disagreed; the rest were somewhere in between.

I grew up in an education-oriented home. My mother was a teacher; my father was a member of first the local school board and later the county school board. Together they helped found a statewide association for gifted children. Education through college was expected (and achieved) for all four of their children. But, in a way, those expectations and privilege meant that I didn't feel the pressure to go after education myself. It was just taken for granted. I enjoyed school and did well at it, but I never had to work very hard at defining what I wanted out of it. It was an expected path that I dutifully followed and did as was expected of me. Thus, some of the advantages this book touts, e.g., learning how to think critically and to write well, didn't seem like huge targets. I could write well and I wasn't sure what thinking critically really meant. I could analyze, I could make arguments. But I wasn't especially intellectually engaged.

In some ways, I think undergraduate education is wasted on new adults. They need to learn the liberal arts skills of thinking critically, writing well, making arguments verbally, etc., which is the point of this book, but they DO need specific job skills, too. As an older adult now, I crave a more active role in my own education. Some of the things that I wish I had more of are the very things that Zakaria thinks I should have gotten as a liberal arts student, but which I undervalued at the time. Now that I am retired, I am taking several short classes and I find them worthwhile. I would like even more. At my age, I am ready for seminars, for arguments about subjects.

I get a lot of this on Facebook, interestingly. There is also a lot of less useful stuff there, but I am finding a community of like-minded people to talk to there. Maybe Facebook is liberal arts education for some of us.

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