What if you could change your life--without changing your life? Gretchen had a good marriage, two healthy daughters, and work she loved--but one day, stuck on a city bus, she realized that time was flashing by, and she wasn’t thinking enough about the things that really mattered. “I should have a happiness project,” she decided. She spent the next year test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific studies, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier. Each month, she pursued a different set of resolutions: go to sleep earlier, quit nagging, forget about results, or take time to be silly. Bit by bit, she began to appreciate and amplify the happiness that already existed in her life. Written with humour and insight, Gretchen’s story will inspire you to start your own happiness project. Now in a beautiful, expanded edition, Gretchen offers a wealth of new material including happiness paradoxes and practical tips on many daily matters: being a more light-hearted parent, sticking to a fitness routine, getting your sweetheart to do chores without nagging, coping when you forget someone’s name and more.

I was reading this book, The Master Key System by Charles F. Haanel, a turn of the century 'New Thought' writer. What's now a complete book, in 1916, it was broken up into twenty-four subsets or periodicals. It has action steps at the end of each subset on how to unlock the law of attraction and change your life forever. Approximately two years after reading a passage from Frederick Elias Andrews in The Master Key System, I set out to find seven like-minded writing partners who were interested in exploring these ideas of guiding principles to becoming happy in their own life. Together, we are writing eight books about our collective wisdom on the affirmations; "I am whole, perfect, strong, powerful, loving, harmonious, happy, and healthy." We call our selves The Wisdom Buffet Writers. Welcome to our first book: Happiness Chronicles - Short Stories and Recipes for a Happy Life. Customer Reviews: Catherine says: - 5 Stars I particularly appreciated the chapter by Katherine Graham, a wife, mother and business owner, about how to be a happy woman in modern society. Her advice: *Let go of expecting yourself or your life to be perfect. *Gain perspective by not taking things personally. *Set boundaries with your time and energy by learning to say no to excessive demands. *Choose to trust the unfoldment of your life. Ruth says: - 5 Stars What a great book that helps us find what we all really want anyway! I love that each chapter is written by someone with a different perspective, so that depending on my mood, I can dip in and pull up something to carry around in my mind for the day. A great book for morning meditation, evening relaxation, or when I'm hold interminable hold on the phone. The little aphorisms are wonderful. "Be yourself, everyone else is taken." from Oscar Wilde. The chapter that spoke volumes to me was Angi Ma Wong's Secrets to Happiness. She advises readers to make a list of the things that make them happy and do at least one, every day. Such simple advice, and how astonished I am that I don't do that! Belinda Mendoza's chapter on pets and the happiness they create is very insightful, especially since it starts with her talking about the loss of a beloved pet. We spend all kinds of money and time pursuing happiness, but this is an inexpensive book that well read, will provide more happiness than all the other diversions of a lifetime. Frankie says: - 5 Stars Excellent inspirational read...you will not be disappointed! I'll return to this book several times this year (and for years to come) to draw on its happiness energy! "M" says: - 5 Stars This is a great book to read in small pieces. The table of contents is perfect as I can chose a chapter based on how I feel that day. Each chapter is a short story, exercise or recipe that reminds me of what it means to be happy. I'm looking forward to their next seven books.

A sequel to Jane Austen's Sense and sensibility. The Dashwood sisters are all grown up: Marianne married on the rebound, but now her first love is back; Elinor and Edward Ferrars must cope with the loss of his fortune; and Margaret attempts to find happiness in a love affair that defies the conventions of the day.

This first biography of a Palestinian writer also provides a moving account of the ways “ordinary” individuals are swept up by the floodtides of both war and peace Beautifully written, and composed with a novelist’s eye for detail, this book tells the story of an exceptional man and the culture from which he emerged.Taha Muhammad Ali was born in 1931 in the Galilee village of Saffuriyya and was forced to flee during the war in 1948. He traveled on foot to Lebanon and returned a year later to find his village destroyed. An autodidact, he has since run a souvenir shop in Nazareth, at the same time evolving into what National Book Critics Circle Award–winner Eliot Weinberger has dubbed “perhaps the most accessible and delightful poet alive today.”As it places Muhammad Ali’s life in the context of the lives of his predecessors and peers, My Happiness offers a sweeping depiction of a charged and fateful epoch. It is a work that Arabic scholar Michael Sells describes as “among the five ‘must read’ books on the Israel-Palestine tragedy.” In an era when talk of the “Clash of Civilizations” dominates, this biography offers something else entirely: a view of the people and culture of the Middle East that is rich, nuanced, and, above all else, deeply human.

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST and REAL SIMPLE A profound and enchanting new novel from Booker Prize-longlisted author Niall Williams about the loves of our lives and the joys of reminiscing. You don't see rain stop, but you sense it. You sense something has changed in the frequency you've been living and you hear the quietness you thought was silence get quieter still, and you raise your head so your eyes can make sense of what your ears have already told you, which at first is only: something has changed. The rain is stopping. Nobody in the small, forgotten village of Faha remembers when it started; rain on the western seaboard was a condition of living. Now--just as Father Coffey proclaims the coming of electricity--it is stopping. Seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe is standing outside his grandparents' house shortly after the rain has stopped when he encounters Christy for the first time. Though he can't explain it, Noel knows right then: something has changed. This is the story of all that was to follow: Christy's long-lost love and why he had come to Faha, Noel's own experiences falling in and out of love, and the endlessly postponed arrival of electricity--a development that, once complete, would leave behind a world that had not changed for centuries. Niall Williams' latest novel is an intricately observed portrait of a community, its idiosyncrasies and its traditions, its paradoxes and its inanities, its failures and its triumphs. Luminous and otherworldly, and yet anchored with deep-running roots into the earthy and the everyday, This Is Happiness is about stories as the very stuff of life: the ways they make the texture and matter of our world, and the ways they write and rewrite us.

A remarkable guide to the quests that give our lives meaning—and how to find your own—from the New York Times bestselling author of The $100 Startup and 100 Side Hustles “If you like complacency and mediocrity, do not read this book. It’s dangerously inspiring.”—A. J. Jacobs, author of The Know-It-All When he set out to visit all of the planet’s countries by age thirty-five, compulsive goal-seeker Chris Guillebeau never imagined that his journey’s biggest revelation would be how many people like himself exist—each pursuing a challenging quest. These quests are as diverse as humanity itself, involving exploration, the pursuit of athletic or artistic excellence, or battling against injustice and poverty. Everywhere that Chris visited he found ordinary people working toward extraordinary goals, making daily down payments on their dreams. These “questers” included a suburban mom pursuing a wildly ambitious culinary project, a DJ producing the world’s largest symphony, a young widower completing the tasks his wife would never accomplish—and scores of others writing themselves into the record books. The more Chris spoke with these strivers, the more he began to appreciate the direct link between questing and long-term happiness, and he was compelled to complete a comprehensive study of the phenomenon. In The Happiness of Pursuit, he draws on interviews with hundreds of questers, revealing their secret motivations, their selection criteria, the role played by friends and family, their tricks for solving logistics, and the importance of documentation. Equally fascinating is Chris’s examination of questing’s other side. What happens after the summit is climbed, the painting hung, the endurance record broken, the at-risk community saved? A book that challenges each of us to take control—to make our lives be about something while at the same time remaining clear-eyed about the commitment—The Happiness of Pursuit will inspire readers of every age and aspiration. It’s a playbook for making your life count. “The Happiness of Pursuit is smart, honest, and dangerous. Why dangerous? Because it is as practical as it is inspiring. You won’t just be daydreaming about your quest—you’ll be packing for it!”—Brené Brown, Ph.D., LMSW, author of Daring Greatly

An outstanding novel about a young Russian woman's life in exile after the Russian Revolution. The Book of Happiness is one of the outstanding novels the great Russian writer Nina Berberova wrote during the years she lived in Paris, and the most autobiographical. "All Berberova's characters live raw, unfurnished lives, in poverty, on the edge of cities, with little sense of belongingexcept in moments of epiphanyto their time and in life itself" (The Observer). Such a character is Vera, the protagonist of The Book of Happiness. At the novel's opening, Vera is summoned to the scene of a suicide, that of her childhood companion, Sam Adler, whose family left Russia in the early days of the revolution and whom Vera has not seen in many years. His death reduces Vera to a flood of tears and memories of the times before Sam's departure, and thoughts about how her life has gone sinceher move to Paris where she lives tied to a brilliant but demanding invalid husband. Berberova spins the story with a wonderful unsentimental poignancy, making it a beautiful testament to the indestructibility of happiness.