Latest Reads

.
There seems to be a bit of a self-improvement angle to most of my latest reads. And that's cool. Never hurts to improve oneself, even when you're Practically Perfect in Every Way.

3. What I Know Now: Letters to my Younger Self - Ellyn Spragins
4. Breaking Dawn - Stephenie Meyer
5. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
6. Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor E. Frankl
7. Who Moved My Cheese? - Spencer Johnson, M.D.

Breaking Dawn was good, but a bit too clean and neat an ending. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed the book, as I did the other three in the Twilight series. Total easy reading, total fluff, but enjoyable, suck-you-in fluff.

The Great Gatsby took a little getting into, but I have to say I really enjoyed it. I can't believe that I had never read it before.

What I Know Now was a collection of letters that famous written would write to their younger selves. I found Camryn Manheim's letter to be the most applicable for me, and the most impressive, but I also jotted down words from Barbara Boxer, Olympia Dukakis, Macy Gray, Jane Kaczmarek and Nora Roberts.

Man's Search for Meaning. Read this book. Do it. The first half is about the author's time in concentration camps during WWII, but it's peppered with so much wisdom and perspective that it's mind-changing. The second half is about his approach to psychotherapy, which he called logotherapy (logos is Greek for meaning). Logotherapy "considers man as a being whose main concern consists in fulfilling a meaning and actualizing values, rather than (as psychotherapy does) in the mere gratification and satisfaction of drives and instincts."

Frankl believes that suffering is noble and has meaning in and of itself. That the meaning of life is found within the world, not within the individual, that man needs tension and disequilibrium to motivate him toward a goal and that "... each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible."

There was so much in this book that I found myself nodding about and recognizing in myself and in my own core beliefs, yet there was still more that I found myself realizing I *don't* achieve or recognize.

Who Moved my Cheese? is a small, quick-reading book that hopes to change how we look at and feel about change. Cheese is used as a metaphor for what each of us wants out of life, and the Maze that the Cheese is found in represents where we spend our time looking for the Cheese. Change happens, it's how we react to the change that determines whether we stay in one place waiting for our Old Cheese to come back or whether we venture back into the Maze to find New Cheese.

It's perfect for me at this juncture because I've had a lot of change over the past year, and I have a lot more coming. There's a phrase from the book: "What would you do if you weren't afraid?" that I need to incorporate as a daily mantra. I usually embrace and am inspired by change, but the big change coming - my returning to work outside the home and putting my kids in full-time care - scares the heck out of me!

.