Showing posts with label Change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Change. Show all posts

Sunday, 17 November 2024

The Holiday Honeymoon Switch

Finished November 12
The Holiday Honeymoon Switch by Julia McKay

This fun holiday romance has a lot happening, and was a page-turner for me. On the evening before her wedding, Holly Beech's fiancĂ© Matt tells her that he won't go through with the wedding, that they aren't really 'in love' with each other, and that he's met someone else. Holly is at her best friend, Ivy Casey's apartment getting ready for the wedding, and Ivy is left consoling her and feeling that she was right in her sense that Matt wasn't the right man for Holly. 
Holly can't bear to go to the luxury Hawaiian resort that her parents paid for, and since it is nonrefundable, she suggests that her and Ivy trade vacations. Ivy, a graphic designer, has an art vacation every year, where she uses her favourite oil pastels to create landscape pictures. Ivy has compartmentalized her art and makes it special for this time only. She has booked an eco-cabin in the Hudson Valley for this year. 
Both women are in for surprises when they arrive at their destinations. Holly finds the host of her cabin, who drops by to help her figure out some of the technology involved, is her high school academic rival Aiden. Ivy finds that someone else is already in the honeymoon suite at the Kauai resort, Matt and his new girlfriend. As she tries to find a place to stay in the popular season there, the extremely attractive bartender at the resort, Oliver, comes to her rescue. As both women weigh the decision to engage in a new relationship, they also must come to terms with their own issues, of confidence and routines. 
This is a novel of friendship, of unexpected love, and of taking chances. Thoroughly enjoyable. 

Tuesday, 3 October 2023

Ready or Not

Finished September 28
Ready or Not by Cara Bastone

This is a romance novel with an unusual twist. As the book opens, Eve Hatch is at an ob/gyn appointment on her lunch hour, looking for confirmation of her suspected pregnancy. She's done some at-home tests, and is already pretty sure of the truth. Eve is not in a romantic relationship. A few weeks ago, when her best friend Willa's brother Shep left his long term relationship and moved in with his sister and her partner in Brooklyn, the three had a fun night out. When Willa and Shep called it a night and caught a cab home, Eva found herself still energized and went into a nearby bar, where she ended up going home with the bartender, Ethan Rise. 
So after she gears herself up to tell first Willa the news, and then Ethan, she must figure out how to tell her siblings, and the wider community.
Eve has a job in an organization that she's always dreamed of working for, a wildlife conservation organization, but she is in administration and dreams of running her own project. When an opportunity in a different direction opens up due to her hard work, she must make a choice and figure out what she really wants there as well. 
She loves her small apartment that she's made exactly as she wants, but worries about whether she can fit her baby into it, especially as it grows. 
With all these changes opening up in her life, Eva finds Shep, her childhood friend to be there when she needs someone. He accompanies her on errands, shows up at her home with exactly the perfect things for the moment, and helps her to focus her mind on the good in what's happening. 
This novel is a journey of self-knowledge and self-life as well as a romance. A real page-turner. 

Friday, 30 June 2023

People Change

Finished June 21
People Change by Vivek Shraya

This short book looks at change from a human point of view. The author herself has undergone many changes in her life: professional changes and personal ones. Here she looks at what factors lead to change for us, based on her own experiences. Sometimes there are things that happen early in our lives, when we are still figuring ourselves out, and events or experiences can influence us in major ways. 
There is also a common fear of change, and that is covered here as well, sometimes trapping us in a place in our lives that we may not always recognize as a trap. 
This book encourages us to celebrate our changes, to be open to experiences that offer different ways of being, and new inspirations for our existence. 
Sometimes, this book feels 'stream of consciousness' in its flow, and other times it digs deeper into the motivations beneath those meandering thoughts. I read this book slowly, pausing to consider different ideas along the way. 

Sunday, 27 February 2022

The Turning

Finished February 23
The Turning by Tim Winton

I always find Australian author Tim Winton's books intriguing. This one is a collection of short stories, loosely linked to each other, all pertaining to moments in people's lives where things changed in some way for them. Most of these stories are told in the first person, and the narrators range in age, and sometimes reappear in a later story. 
Some of these characters we see as children, just as they are coming into adolescence and finding their way, having an encounter that makes a difference in their lives. Sometimes they make a decision to leave somewhere or to return somewhere and that too influences their life in a way they hadn't anticipated. 
Some of these turnings are awakenings, others are a return to a past that was never fully dealt with. All of them take place in Western Australia and give a sense of the land there, the ocean and the landscape. They take place in small communities or rural areas. 
Winton takes you inside the characters' heads, seeing what they are thinking and feeling so that you feel what is happening to them, how it affects them. 
These events are sometimes small, sometimes big, sometimes peripheral to the their lives in many ways except for the effect they have. 
A great read. 

Wednesday, 30 December 2020

Intrapreneurship Handbook for Librarians

Finished June 24
Intrapreneurship Handbook for Librarians: How To Be a Change Agent in Your Library by Arne J. Almquist and Sharon G. Almquist


There is a common saying that the only real constant is change, but too often we get into a rut and do the same thing because it works okay and we're used to it. But sometimes there is a better way to do something, sometimes it is something we don't need to do anymore, and sometimes there are other things that are even better to do. But it is hard to leave that place of comfort and this book helps you help your library make those changes. 
The book is organized into nine chapters plus a couple of useful appendices. 
Chapter One digs into the idea of entrepreneurs and how entrepreneurship is defined, what it looks like, what the history of it is, and what it has looked like in a library context, giving actual library-related examples, and looking into the motivations of those entrepreneurs.
Chapter Two looks at Intrapreneurs and how they are different than entrepreneurs and how they are similar to them. Here we also have a definition and I really liked the idea of the five Ps that is associated with this: Passion, Perseverance, Promotion, Planning, and Professionalism. This chapter looks at the qualities associated with intrapreneurs, and how they measure success in their actions. It also gives some questions that can help you get going.
Chapter Three discusses the idea of Agents of Change and the idea of intrapreneurial innovation. There are many things associated with these people and actions including creativity, communication and collaboration. The role of strategy is discussed, as well as that of conflict, which will definitely happen at some point. Various barriers to change are introduced from groupthink to collective disfunction, and you will likely recognize a few of them. They also differentiate between true innovation and improvements (both good things!), and give some advice on how to become a change agent. 
Chapter Four gets into corporate culture and how to develop an intrapreneurial culture at your library. These include things like accepting for mistakes, taking risks, considering diversity, and working with professional respect. They also talk about how to support that type of culture and to recognize that you will likely need to pick your battles. The idea of competitive advantage is also given some discussion in terms of opportunities versus choices.
Chapter Five looks at process, the nitty gritty of making changes. Ways to get going includes brainstorming, needs assessments, and thinking through ideas. You will have to be prepared to answer the difficult questions that will come up. It can be helpful to think of it as creating your future. Not everything will work as you originally propose it, and they discuss the process as a form of distillation. There are lots of good tools mentioned here: SCAMPER, SCORE analysis, and feasibility studies are some. 
Chapter Six gets into how to pitch your ideas and get others on board. From writing and delivering your elevator speech to a slide checklist for a pitch presentation, this will help you put your best foot forward. It will also help you deal with the reaction, whether it is acceptance, rejection, or something in between. Also included in this chapter are things such as pilots, project plans, and funding plans. Funding can be internal or external, and donors can be one way to get your project going. 
Chapter Seven looks at the team, how you put it together, what the roles and responsibilities of team members are, and how the team and the project are managed. 
Chapter Eight gets into implementation, including tools for project management, how to analyze the failures that may arise, and how to celebrate achievements. 
Chapter Nine takes you from the completion of one innovation to moving on to the next. You want to make this type of change a part of the expected culture of your library.
The appendices give some tests and commentary that may be useful to you as you decide on how you want to do intrapreneurship. 
All in all, this book offers great guidance for the move for you to get your library looking at change in a more positive way.

Saturday, 22 December 2018

The House at the End of Hope Street

Finished December 12
The House at the End of Hope Street by Menna Van Praag






I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Alba Ashby has found herself in the situation where she has lost her advisor for her postgraduate degree and has been made to feel a fool. The reader doesn't actually know what has happened to her until much later in the book, but we definitely know that she feels lost and uncertain of her future. As she runs from her life, she finds herself at the door of a house that she has never noticed before. It is a large and unusual looking house on a quiet street. She is welcomed into the house by an older woman named Peggy, and to stay, with certain conditions: she can stay no more than ninety-nine nights, and she must follow advice to turn her life around.
Alma is a young woman, the youngest PhD candidate at the university. Her father left home when she was quite young, and her mother has had mental health issues. She doesn't really get along with her other three siblings, particularly the two eldest, and she has no real friends.
As Alma learns the secrets of the house, and determines her direction for the future, she learns several things about her family, herself, and others. She learns about past residents of the house, whose portraits are hanging there, and she is able to converse with them. She learns about the current residents of the house, Greer and Carmen, and what their stories are. And we also follow Greer and Carmen and Peggy herself as we see how they come to terms with their pasts that led them here, and move forward in new directions.
As one guesses from the title, this is a book of hope, of humour and friendship. It is a feel-good read that will have you smiling. I loved the premise and the stories of the various women.

Tuesday, 7 August 2018

The New Moon's Arms

Finished July 18
The New Moon's Arms by Nalo Hopkinson

This novel was one I picked because of a challenge over at Following the Thread. The story follows a woman, Calamity, as she undergoes some major changes in her life. Her name as a girl was Chastity, but she changed it to Calamity as it felt more fitting to her. Her family was poor, and when her mother disappeared when she was still a young girl, there were all kinds of rumours that put her on the outside at school. Soon after that, a major storm caused destruction to the island where she'd lived until then, Blessée, and when they evacuated that island, her father was offered a house on Dolorosse. When Calamity was sixteen, she got pregnant, and her father kicked her out. She survived, and made a life for herself and her daughter Ife, and eventually when her father became terminally ill with lung cancer, she returned to look after him. As the book opens, she is at his funeral,
When she was young, Calamity was a finder, who seemed to have the skill to locate things that people had lost, but that disappeared around the time her mother did. Lately though, something like it seems to have returned. Calamity feels warm, and her hands go tingly, and something shows up unexpectedly. Her doctor says it is just menopause, but she thinks it is more than that.
At the funeral, it is her pin, that her mother gave her, that she has been missing since childhood. That appearance is followed by others, some former possessions, some larger than herself, and one hurt little boy on the beach near her home.
As new people come into Calamity's life, from old friends, to new men, she finds herself needing to adjust her attitude, and not every interaction goes well. She hasn't talked to Ife's father in years, but finds herself reaching out to him again, and dealing with Ife's choices for her own life. She fights against the term grandma, but loves her young grandson Stanley.
She believes in things that can't be explained, from her finding ability, to the personality of her car Victoria, to the strange physical attributes of the young boy she has found. She calls him Agway, from a noise he makes often, and finds herself wanting to both protect him, and care for him. He reminds her of a child she met a couple of times when she herself was just a child, and we see these memories. There are also a few times where an employee of the local Zooquarium notices things that are odd about the endangered monk seals, and these are interspersed at key moments in the story.
From the salt factories, to the cashew groves, the monk seals to the pressure of hotel chains and resorts, we see how the island and its inhabitants are under pressure to change.
I've all kinds of ideas percolating in my brain about how to take instances and themes from this book and create something, and will post it when it comes to fruition.

Monday, 30 April 2018

Clara Voyant

Finished April 28
Clara Voyant by Rachelle Delaney

This children's novel features middle school student Clara Costa. Clara is in her first year of middle school, and has just moved from living with her mom and grandmother near High Park, to an apartment with her mom in Kensington Village. Her grandmother, Elaine, has retired to Florida, and Clara misses her a lot. Her grandmother was a no-nonsense woman with lots of rules and strong opinions. Clara's mom, Gaby, had recently finished a college program in herbalism, and got a job managing a herbal remedies shop, that came with an upstairs apartment. Clara isn't sure about the new neighbourhood, and for sure doesn't believe in all the new age stuff her mom is into. She's also not keen on her mom's new friends who hold seances, and specialize in haunted real estate.
But there are some good things too. She has a new best friend named Maeve, so seems to like her mom's ideas, and is supportive of Clara's journalism goals. Clara has garnered a spot on the reporting team of the school paper, although she would definitely like a more challenging assignment than reporting on school clubs. And the guacamole at the restaurant across the street is the best ever.
When Clara gets assigned to write a new horoscope feature though, she isn't happy, nor is she thrilled with the new pen name that goes with it.
But as Clara diligently completes her assignment, she finds that she seems to be getting things right, and when she secretly takes on a investigative story, things get even more interesting.
This is a story about growing up, learning more about oneself, and discovering that change can come to people at any age. A fun read.

Sunday, 29 January 2017

One True Loves

Finished January 21
One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid

The novel opens with an introduction to 31-year-old Emma Blair by herself. Emma is a woman comfortable in her own skin and satisfied with her life. She is engaged to be married to a man she loves, Sam, and happy running a bookstore in her hometown of Acton, Massachusetts. But her world is thrown into a spin when her phone rings and a voice on the other end that she immediately recognizes tells her he is alive. It is her husband Jesse, a man thought to be dead years ago. Now what?
The novel then jumps back to Emma in high school. She is a young woman raised by loving parents in Massachusetts. Her parent's run a bookstore in Acton, and fully expect her and her older sister Marie to take it over one day. Marie is popular, pretty, and smart and intends to be a writer someday. Emma has no interest in the bookstore or reading the books her parents push on her, despite working their after school and on weekends, and her only real aim is to get away. Emma feels that she can never measure up to Marie and that Marie resents her. But when the boy she admires takes a sudden interest in her, she gains the confidence to move forward and make her life what she wants it to be.
We see her life develop into a rich and busy one until the tragedy of Jesse's disappearance and assumed death devastates her entirely.
Then we watch her rebuild her life into one that suits her now, until the sudden reappearance of Jesse makes her question everything once more.
This is a story of love, of the changes that life puts us through, and of the choices we all make along the way.

Wednesday, 30 November 2016

The Best Worst Thing

Finished November 23
The Best Worst Thing by Kathleen Lane

This children's novel follows Maggie, who is just starting middle school. She is also the middle sister in her family, with Polly two years younger and Tana older than her. A lot is changing in her life and she's noticing things she hadn't noticed before, like the rabbits her neighbour keeps in his backyard, and the behaviour of the boy who lives behind her.
Her friendships change as new alliances are made, and she has trouble realizing an old friend isn't really there for her any more, and trouble recognizing a new friend is actually a good thing.
Lots of dealing with the changes that growing up brings, and realizing that some of them are good.
There is a light plot here around what is going on in Maggie's life and how she deals with it, but it isn't a book with a lot of action. More thoughtful.

Monday, 14 November 2016

The Life-Changing Magic of Not giving a F*ck

Finished November 13
The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck: How to Stop Spending Time You Don't Have with People You Don't Like Doing Things You Don't Want to Do by Sarah Knight

This is a book for all of us who feel overwhelmed by life and its demands on us, or as the author says "all of us who work too much, play too little, and never have enough time to devote to the people and things that truly make us happy." A parody of the decluttering book by Marie Kondo, this book deals with mental decluttering and the tidying up of our fuck drawers. The author explains her ah-ha moment in the introduction, and how she went about gradually focusing her time, energy, and money on the things she really cared about and that made her happy. The rest of the book is split into four sections. Each one has tasks or exercises to assist with your changes.
Section 1 deals with the theory, the whys, and defines what the book's aim is. Not Giving a Fuck means taking care of yourself first; allowing yourself to say no; releasing yourself from the worry, anxiety, fear, and guilt associated with saying no; and reducing mental clutter. One of the essentials associated with this is making the change to only give the fucks you really want to give is to do it in such a way that you don't turn into an asshole. One of the biggest hurdles to overcome is to stop giving a fuck about what other people think, and she gives some tips for dealing with that. She explains the method at the heart of the change, which she calls NotSorry. NotSorry combines honesty with politeness to avoid being an asshole. and she advocates the use of a chart to assist with this. She also discusses feelings and opinions and the differentiation. We don't necessarily care about someone's opinions (especially their opinions about us), but we do care (usually) about their feelings and don't want to hurt those. She does talk about those people who won't like this change. She has a nice flow chart to help with deciding on whether to give a fuck or not.

This section ends with a visualization exercise.

Section 2 helps you to decide what to stop giving a fuck about. The first category is the easiest: things. They are easiest because they don't involve other people. They may be inanimate objects or concepts. Some may be things you have no control over (perfect for this list). Ask yourself, does it bring joy or does it annoy. She gives a lot of examples to get you started. The second category is work, and here it is important to remember to not give a fuck about the things you can't control. That should eliminate quite a bit. She has special sections dealing with meetings, conference calls, dress codes, and useless paperwork. She also deals with those calls from co-workers to support their outside interests. The third category is friends, acquaintances, and strangers. This category is all about setting boundaries. She has a section specifically dealing with donations, solicitations and loans. She talks about the usefulness of personal policies in helping to set boundaries. She also includes a section around children and parents. Because this category involves people, she also talks about when it is okay to hurt someone's feelings, which is not often, and most of those involve strangers. The fourth, and most difficult category is family. She discusses the dangers of guilt and outlines the understanding of choice over obligation. In her research, she asked a lot of people and outlines here the six most mentioned things that people don't give a fuck about in terms of families. She discusses shame, holidays, and in-laws. At this point, you consolidate your lists from the 3 categories and physically cross off all those things you will no longer give a fuck about. She warns against some of the dangerous thinking that will still arise.
Section 3 is all about putting the change into action. You've got your list, but now you actually have to change your behaviour. This is when focusing on the time, energy, and money you are gaining for the things you actually care about comes in. She recommends you start with the easy ones and organizes them into levels from easy (yellow) to hardest (red). She talks about honesty and politeness and deals with each category in turn, with a special section around weddings. Here, with the use of charts for honesty and politeness, she shows how to choose the response that meets your need. She also talks about rewarding yourself for making changes. She has a section near the end for frequently asked questions.
The last section talks about how making these changes transforms your life, giving you back time, energy, and money for the things you actually give a fuck about. She shows how making lists showing these gains is helpful for motivation.  She talks about the effect on your body, your mind, and even your soul. She also talks about some things you might actually want to give a fuck about.
I really enjoyed this book, and it has me thinking about some of the things I do in a new light.

Tuesday, 28 June 2016

Year of Yes

Finished June 25
Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person by Shonda Rhimes, read by the author

The impetus for this book started on Thanksgiving 2013 when Shonda was trying to impress her oldest sister by listing off all the things she's be invited to go to. He sister shut her down by asking if she was going to do any of them, and Shonda said she was too busy. Her sister told her that she never said yes to anything. A few weeks later, after an event where she was told, not offered a choice, that she had to share a box at a theatre with the Obamas, and she did, she woke up in the middle of the night realizing that her sister was right. If she'd been offered the choice, she would have said no. She began to wonder what other experiences she missed. She decided to spend the next year saying yes to the things that scared her. The first one was to agree to give the commencement address at Dartmouth, her alma mater, but it wasn't one of the first ones she actually had to do. One of those was going on Jimmy Kimmel. She set some rules to increase her comfort level with doing it, but did it, and as the year went on, she began to actually lose the fear and enjoy the experiences.
Some things were small intimate things, like agreeing to stop and play with her kids when she was going out the door to an event, and thus was a little late to the event. Others were huge like saying yes to the life she wanted to live and who she wanted in it.
She also learned that sometimes an outward 'no' is a yes in disguise, a yes to being true to her own values, to her own needs, to her own self. During this year, she lost a large amount of weight, she ended up with a smaller, but tighter group of friends, she grew closer to her family, and most important she became happier. By the end of the year, she was ready to continue saying yes to her life forever.
This was an inspiring read, with her reading the book herself, giving expression to her own vulnerabilities, mistakes, and breakthroughs. This is a book that spoke to some of my own issues and fears. This is definitely a book I'll be reading more than once.

Monday, 2 May 2016

Letting Go of Legacy Services

Finished May 2
Letting Go of Legacy Services: Library Case Studies edited by Mary Evangeliste and Katherine Furlong

Libraries are being asked to do more with less these days, and many of us find it difficult to stop offering services that we've been offering for years to free up resources for those new things people want us to provide. The libraries here looked at the concept of planned abandonment, a concept popularized by Peter Drucker, and how it applies to libraries. Also included are several interviews that look at solutions to common pressure points.
This book contains a number of case studies of libraries who have taken a good hard look at either those things "we've always done" or things "we've always done that way" and determined if they are still worth doing or if they should be done differently. Each case study is wrapped up with a summary by the editors called Bookend.
Case studies included here are:
* a college library that changed the way they provide periodicals to their patrons.
* a county library system that took a good look at their web-based services, overhauled their website and improved community outreach.
* a university library that eliminated their reserve services.
* a university library that redefined reference service.
* a university library that used a series of crisis situations over six years to redefine mission critical services.
* a university library that used ethnographic research techniques to help them redefine library spaces to better meet student needs, reexamine resource delivery, checkout service, fines, ILL, and equipment lending.
* a university library who used collaborative strategic planning to facilitate the shift towards electronic resources.
* a public library who responded to a natural disaster and a financial crisis to look for efficiency opportunities in technical services, acquisitions, and cataloging.
* a university library used surveys and space analysis to create more useful spaces for their patrons

Interviews include:
* talking with David Consiglio about data driven decision making in a library context
* talking with Valerie Diggs about communication strategies for successful change

The conclusion to this book provides a lot of reflection on change in the library community. One sentence in particular spoke to me: "Among the many things we need to abandon is the nostalgia that unfortunately gives us an inaccurate perception of the past and hinders discussions of the present, and the future of libraries." Insights here range from the urgency of library as space for our communities to come together in a variety of ways, you can never had enough communication, and that fostering leadership and diversity is a necessity.

Monday, 22 September 2014

Choosing Change

Finished September 19
Choosing Change: How Leaders and Organizations Drive Results One Person at a Time by Walter McFarland and Susan Goldsworthy

This book has two parts. Part I is The Change Focused Leader and Part II is The Change Focused Organization. Both have the base relationship of the 5 Ds: Disruption, Desire, Discipline, Determination, and Development.
For the individual, Disruption is the event or experience that triggers a conscious choice to change.
For the organization the Disruption is more threatening and the natural reaction can be more of a entrenchment as the disruption is usually a revolutionary change that has come about due to external forces.
The Desire is what the person or organization wants to achieve, how much it believes in the possibility, and how serious it is about making the change happen.
Discipline is applying those small, consistent and frequent steps that are required to build the momentum that delivers sustainable change. Discipline is necessary to manage the many demands and still keep the pressure on the process of change.
Determination is having the resilience to focus on and deliver change, even when faced with setbacks.
Lastly, Development covers the continuous improvement, reexamination, and learning that is needed.
There were many things that were aha moments for me here, and I found this book really useful in giving clarity to the process of change. Here are some of my ahas on the individual side:
* "We are not afraid of the unknown, because, how can we be afraid of something we have no idea about? Instead, we are afraid of letting go of the known."
* the 5 attributes of the learning person: self-knowledge, self-acceptance, self-respect, autonomy, and seeking of both solitude and company.
* the opposite of play is depression
Here are some of the ahas on the organizational side:
* make organizational change a formal part of organizational strategy, learning is correlated with performance
* integrate change into the business so that change becomes a routine part of doing business
* develop people continuously, ensuring organization-wide learning as well
* model collaboration in everything
* develop a change leadership competency and integrate it into the overall leadership model
* take time to reflect: you learn more from reflecting on your experiences than you do from the actual experiences themselves
This book gives the reader much to think about and a guide to how to make change a part of your life and a part of your organization.

Friday, 16 May 2014

Mandela

Finished May 14
Mandela: An Audio History: Commemorative Edition
Hosted by Desmond Tutu, Commentary fy Nelson Mandela

This CD takes audio footage from different points in the history of South Africa that involves Mandela's story and adds commentary to give additional context bringing Mandela's story to life in an interesting way.
There is a brief introduction and then the story is broken into five parts.
The Birth of Apartheid (1944-1960)
The Underground Movement (1960-1964)
Robben Island (1964-1976)
State of Emergency (1976-1990)
Democracy (1990-1994)
It was interesting to see the change in attitude toward Mandela and his compatriots. From a young man and competent lawyer trying to influence social change, to a terrorist, to hero, to benevolent but wise leader. As he moved into the world seeing him as a terrorist, it was like no one saw how the actions of the government were what cornered him into this behaviour as the only way to bring change. In our current world of multiple terrorist groups, it makes one stop to ask what else is going on that made these men reach the point of violent protest.

Wednesday, 20 March 2013

Heartbreak Hotel

Finished March 18
Heartbreak Hotel by Deborah Moggach

This amusing novel is in the same style as her previous novel These Foolish Things (read before I started blogging), later made into the popular movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Here we have aging actor Russell "Buffy" Buffery, who is unhappy with the direction his London neighbourhood seems to be going on, taking a chance on the impulse to move to Wales. Why Wales? Well, an old friend of his has died and left him her bed and breakfast house in Knockton, and he decides to try running it himself. He comes up with the idea to  add on a variety of courses to appeal to city folk, as package deals.
Buffy is a fascinating old charmer, who has had three wives (one now dead) and 5 children (by four different women, only two of them his wives). He has decent relationships with all his kids and his stepdaughter, and they all make appearances of some sort here.
Along the way we meet a variety of people all either looking for some sort of change in their life, or who have had change thrust upon them. As various courses attract them to Knockton, they find different sorts of change than they had been looking for, but mostly very satisfactory ones. From postmen to writers, makeup artists to bankers, we meet an interesting group of characters.
A humourous, upbeat novel that will have you laughing out loud, touched, and definitely entertained.

Saturday, 23 June 2012

The Power of Habit

Finished June 23
The Power of Habit: why we do what we do and how to change it by Charles Duhigg

This fascinatiing book looks at the nature of habits, explaining how habits work, why habits never really go away (but can be changed), and what goes on in our brains around them.
The basic structure of habits is the habit loop. Some sort of cue leads us to a routine or habit, that leads us to some sort of reward. The chapter on creating new habits led me to begin a habit I'd been unsuccessful at instilling in myself until now, flossing my teeth daily. I decided to start with this simple habit, and see how well this habit creation worked before starting some other, potentially more difficult, habits. I've found it worked very well. It also talks about how bad habits can be replaced with new, better habits.
The book doesn't only look at personal habits, it also looks at habits in terms of organizations, and in terms of society. It shows us how corporations use the study of people's habits in influence marketing and directed marketing to increase purchase of products. It also shows how societies are influenced, and changed by habits and by sudden changes in habits.
There is an appendix that walks the reader through the process of identifying the routine, reward and cue to a habit you want to change, and how to effect that change.
Just knowing how habits work and how others try to influence our habits can make us less susceptible to that influence. Awareness of both the process and one's own habitual behaviours is the first step in making changes.

Saturday, 18 April 2009

Change Your Life

Finished April 18
The Power of Less: the fine art of limiting yourself to the essential . . . in business and in life by Leo Babauta
This short book addresses the issues we all face of having limited time and many things to do. Babauta addresses the issues of attention, productitivy and motivation as he gives advice to help you do less, but do it better. One of his key concepts is to only make one change at a time. Trying to change too many things at once is a recipe for failure. Another concept is to start small. When we go to make a change, the tendency is to make a big change, but that can be hard to keep up. If you start small and add to it gradually, you are more likely to stick with it. Another key concept is to go public with your change. Let others know you are doing it and keep them up to date with your progress. This reinforces the change you are making and adds external motivation.
Babauta talks about both work and personal life, and his later chapters deal with health and fitness as necessary changes to make. There are a lot of good ideas here. Just don't get too excited about that and try to do more than one thing to start!