Chapter One Hundred Forty-Nine: Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

This memoir by Jenny Lawson is actually her second book, and I definitely plan on reading her earlier memoir (Let's Pretend This Never Happened) at some point in the near future.  When I saw the taxidermied raccoon dancing in golden glitter on the front cover of Furiously Happy, I simply couldn't resist.  (Also one of my trusty co-workers had started reading the book and was regaling us with hilarious anecdotes from it.)  Lawson provides a humorous account of her daily life and her serious, sometimes debilitating struggles with various mental illnesses, including depression and anxiety.  This is a fascinating read for anyone interested in a first-hand account of one person's experience of living with mental illness or for people who enjoy contemporary memoirs.

Chapter One Hundred Forty-Eight: Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World

After seeing a Google Doodle featuring Hedy Lamarr, I was inspired to learn about this pioneering woman who helped invent spread-spectrum radio transmission, a technology key to the later development of the internet and mobile phones.  I looked up biographies of her, and found this one by Richard Rhodes, a well-respected non-fiction author, which also happened to be available at my local library!  Because this was such a busy semester for me, it took me some time to read it, but I did find it really interesting.  Hedy Lamarr led a fascinating life: not only was she a hobbyist inventor, but she was also a famous early Hollywood actress and a person of Jewish descent who fled a pro-Nazi arms-manufacturing husband in her native Austria.  This book also includes information on the life and times of George Antheil (her co-inventor of spread-spectrum radio transmission), an avant-garde American composer who made a living by writing news articles and scoring Hollywood films.  This book chronicles how these two became unlikely inventing partners and how their invention, after years of neglect and obscurity, came to be the unsung technology that makes so much of our modern life possible.  If you want a bit of interesting inventing information or heady Hollywood history, Hedy's Folly is the book for you!

Chapter One Hundred Forty-Seven: Lonely: A Memoir

Lonely: A Memoir is basically what it sounds like: a memoir of chronic loneliness, with a healthy helping of the author's research into international studies on loneliness.  Author Emily White, a Canadian ex-lawyer, intersperses accounts of her own periods of loneliness throughout her life with the interviews she conducted with self-identified lonely people from around the world whom she met online when she started a (now-defunct) blog about loneliness and her research into more clinical studies of loneliness--its causes and its effects, mental, physical, and social.  Along the way, she addresses stereotypes about loneliness and lonely people as well as her own efforts--successful and otherwise--to combat loneliness.  As someone who has experienced loneliness at times, I found this to be an engaging and fascinating book, and I think it would be valuable for everyone to read, even if they have only experienced situational (rather than chronic) loneliness.  As White notes, chronic loneliness is a social issue that affects everyone, whether they experience chronic loneliness or know people who do, yet few people discuss loneliness and there is so much shame associated with loneliness.  Her book is an excellent introduction to the subject of loneliness and I highly recommend it.

Chapter One Hundred Forty-Six: The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

So I read a New York Times review of this (nonfiction) book by Marie Kondo, translated from the Japanese, about a year ago, and I finally had the chance to get it from the library!  It is a small, compact book that is about precisely what its title suggests.  Marie Kondo offers a fun and informative mix of anecdotes from her years of working with people to tidy their homes and her resultant rules for tidying.  Spoiler alert: basically, she suggests that you get rid of anything that doesn't spark joy.  Kondo tends to anthropomorphize objects, from socks (which she urges you to roll instead of folding, which she says socks dislike) to the home or apartment itself (which she urges you to greet when you return to it each day), and yet this is not a sentimental work in any way.  The writing (or perhaps I should say the translator's rendering of Kondo's writing) is lucid, to-the-point, and humorous.  Whether you need to seriously declutter or are simply curious about different organizational methods, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up is a useful and entertaining source.

Chapter One Hundred Forty-Five: Come Rain or Come Shine

Come Rain or Come Shine is Jan Karon's latest installation in the Mitford/Father Tim series, and it is just as delightful as its predecessors.  I have such an affection for these books!  They may be a bit slim on the plot, but the characters are so lovable that whenever I return to these books I feel as though I'm seeing old friends again.  Come Rain or Come Shine is different from the other books in this series in that large parts of it are told from Lace's point of view, and I found this to be a refreshing and intriguing change of pace.  This novel is also a bit more plot-oriented, focusing as it does on the run-up to and celebration of Dooley and Lace's wedding.  The whole book felt like a party to me, in fact, and it makes me want to re-read the whole series again!  (Though that probably won't happen while I'm in grad school...)  If you like this series, you won't want to miss this newest volume.

Chapter One Hundred Forty-Four: The Steady Running of the Hour

I have mixed feelings about this novel by Justin Go.  I finished reading it last night, and I didn't love the ending then, and I don't love it now.  It made the whole novel feel kind of pointless to me, though I won't say more in case any of you are planning on reading it.  As for the rest of the novel, it had its highs and lows.  The vivid descriptions of life in the trenches in WWI were a bit more than I had bargained for, but what bothered me the most was the rather strange choice to narrate the story--both the parts happening in the present and in the past--using the present tense.  I found this rather disconcerting, and occasionally the narrative would slip into the past tense for reasons that were unclear to me, which in turn was mildly distracting.  I didn't love the characters, nor did I even really dislike them: they were just sort of there, not making me care about them, so I didn't feel particularly invested in the outcome of the story.  It was really the plot that kept the story going--it's a fairly fast-paced adventure, at least in the thread of the plot that happens in the present day, taking the main character all over Europe on a frantic search for information that would enable him to claim a large inheritance, if he can find the information in time.  I guess on the whole, I would say, read it if you want a story that's mostly predicated on the plot, rather than the likability of the characters, but it wasn't one of my favorites.

Chapter One Hundred Forty-Three: The Grift

I encountered The Grift by Debra Ginsberg when I was browsing at the local library, and the title caught my eye.  I wondered what exactly a grift is--and, handily, there is a little epigram at the very beginning defining it as a swindle, basically, and the theme of honesty is certainly central to the book.  The story follows a woman, Marina, who makes a living as a psychic, but she does not believe in psychic powers--until one day she suddenly starts being able to see into other people's lives--past, present, and future.  Her whole world is rocked, of course, and she's also suspected of a murder, there's quite a lot going on in this novel.  I wasn't blown away by The Grift, but it held my interest pretty well, and it was an engaging read in general.