Heard this for the first time today – think it is a keeper….

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

I just finished reading a book titled Happier. It is a New York Times Bestseller, written by Tal Ben-Shahar.  He is one of Harvard’s most popular lecturers, with his classes attended by over 1,400 students per semester.

The book is a good guide to thinking about happiness and what we can do to become happier.  Once you read the book you’ll think that many of the ideas are obvious, but we really don’t think about them often.  Getting a reminder to be more grateful and to think about what really, really gives us pleasure is really valuable.

There are a number of exercises throughout the book to help drive home the important points.  I hope to try some of these exercises and see if they are helpful.

Overall a good read, and a quick one, so I certainly recommend this book to others.

For all you John Grisham fans, you might know that he has released a collection of short stories, called Ford County.  Read an excerpt from the first story, called Fetching Raymond.

Just finished reading The Associate by John Grisham.  I haven’t read a Grisham book in a long time.  I had moved over to James Patterson – thank to my dad.  But I picked up a copy of the Associate at the local library and read through it very quickly.  The book is about a Yale Law School student who is influenced to impact a major Federal case from inside the world’s largest law firm.  It is set in downtown Manhattan, on Broad Street, which provides a nice point of interest for me since I worked on Broad Street for so many years.

I enjoyed the book – it has the usual Grisham style of keeping you turning page after page, long after you were supposed to get up and do something else.  The ending is a little disappointing however, as the true story of what happenned is not told.  Just left to your imagination.  But overall the book is certainly worth a read if you are a fan of Grisham’s prior legal mysteries.