Adventure, laughter and happiness: book reviews

I may be cheating a little bit with this edition of the books I've read for 2012. 2 of these I started in 2011, but finished in 2012. If I make my goal of 25 books without counting these cool, if not, I'm counting them. Besides, this is my goal, not yours.

1) Pass the Butterworms: Remote Journeys Oddly Rendered by Tim Cahill

Cahill is a Montana based travel writer. His stories range from poignant tales of death in the Amazon to hilarious quips about his lack of ability to kayak. I liked this because I could read it when I was in between other books. So you should read it.








2) Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert

Gilbert is a psychology professor at Harvard. I picked it up after buying in on Amazon on a whim and thought I would be totally overwhelmed, but was pleasantly surprised. Gilbert discusses why we as humans fail to have enough foresight to do today what will make us happy in the future. He uses a lot of references to research studies, some of his own included, and as somewhat of a research nerd I totally appreciated that. He is also hilarious, so I liked that too. Again, I recommend it.










3) Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling

Let me start off by confessing I read this in 2 days and embarrassed myself several times in Starbucks because I was laughing out loud. Kaling is both an actress and writer for The Office. She basically writes about her life in a really hilarious, pseudo-self-depricating way. She takes about not peaking in high school, her play Matt & Ben (in which she and her bff dress up like Matt Damon and Ben Affleck), and BFF and Man Rules among other things. I already sent this to my best friend to read, so obviously I recommend it.