REVIEW: The Secrets of Happy Families (For Real)

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Tis the season for family disharmony. Before you get divorced/abandon your home and kids/vow never to celebrate another holiday with your in-laws again, try implementing some of the tips from The Secrets of Happy Families from Bruce Feiler.

I was skeptical at first, but I followed some of Feiler's tips on a recent family vacation. No joke, it was the best one we ever had. Why? Because instead of all sitting around trying to fulfill everyone's vision of a perfect vacation we banded together to dig a huge hole in the sand, and to rescue a rubber chicken from a tree. That sentence would make sense if you had read this book. Well, maybe not, but it worked, and I would have never instigated this kind of nonsense if it weren't for this wonderful, wonderful book.

If your family is already perfect, try this book:

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Five Facts I Never Knew About the Wright Brothers

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I started listening to the audiobook version of David McCullough's The Wright Brothers, and I'm hooked. It's the kind of audiobook that has you driving around aimlessly just so you can listen to it a little bit longer. I'm amazed that there is so much that I didn't know about these famous brothers. Here are my top five favorite new to me facts about the Wright Brothers:

  1. We think of them as geniuses, but at the time most people thought they were crazy.
  2. They lived in a tent while they built the first plane.
  3. They learned to fly from watching birds.
  4. They gave leftover plane material to a local to make dresses for her daughter.
  5. There was a Wright sister, and she was awesome.

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REVIEW: A Place We Knew Well by Susan Carol McCarthy

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A Place We Knew Well is a fascinating novel that takes place in the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It hits all of my sweet spots: a historical novel with likable characters, and a good story line. Besides the likability though, what fascinated me the most was the exploration of the ways people act in times of extreme stress.

In the novel we learn about the crisis, mostly through the character's reactions to newspaper articles and television reports. At the same time, we get caught up in small town drama heightened by the fact that the residents are kind of worried that World War III is going to start at any minute. You really get a personal and nuanced look into the Cuban Missile Crisis from the point of view of a variety of people. Reading this book encouraged me to read more about the Cold War.

If you liked A Place We Knew Well try:

When I was reading this, I kept thinking about one of my favorite brain science books Willpower.  The reasons people use (or don't) when making decisions is fascinating to me, and very applicable to the story line in A Place We Knew Well.

People see the name Stephen King, and immediately decide they won't like it. What's great about 11/22/63 though isn't any kind of mystical horror woo woo stuff. What's great is the historical detail, and obvious research that went into this most excellent time travel novel.

Books I'm Adding To My TBR:

Note: Links to amazon.com are affiliate links. I was given a copy of A Place We Knew Well as part of the Library Thing Early Reviewers program, but all opinions are mine.