On the Beach by Nevil Shute

On the Beach by Nevil Shute
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Truly horrifying account of a slow apocalyptic end to humanity. It has stayed with me for many years now.

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You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero

You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life by Jen Sincero
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

She has a lot of good points and the book is very funny which makes the book very readable, but it's not earth-shattering. I agree that you need to be positive and just go out and do stuff to make progress in life. And there's a lot of science to back up meditation.

And oh, boy do I agree with her message that THERE IS ENOUGH TIME FOR WHATEVER YOU WANT TO DO. Yeah, some months might be crazy, but most people I know watch television and spend time on the internet... so probably there is time to do whatever you want, especially if it can be done in small chunks. Assuming you actually want to do it. Relatedly, the self-introspection advice is solid as well.

But I struggle with the super aggressive message of being constantly positive. A lot of people are very positive, the rest of us can work on being more positive, sure. But there are a lot of huge problems in life, and the aggressive focus on positivity suggests that people get what they deserve which is most often not the case.

I am always happy for friends that are achieving great things. Their happiness adds to the happiness of my life in so many ways. What I don't enjoy is when people subject me to huge positivity lectures via social media. It's not sensitive to everyone else's life struggles. Really? Don't you know people are caring for their dying parents or taking their kids to cancer treatments-- you're just going to tell everyone to manifest their best life with positivity? Barf. Not coincidentally, a lot of these people who "manifest" their positivity propaganda all over the place are not big readers.

I completely disagree with her message about buying the more expensive car and then "manifesting" the money. Horrible. Americans already have plenty of debt. They need to learn to live in a budget. I also don't understand this super hyper-capitalist schpiel from someone who supposedly meditates. Money is important, but science has pretty much proved that once our needs and some fun luxuries are met, excessive amounts don't make us any happier. Here's one of the "bad stories" I told myself about money: when my income was at the highest it's ever been, I was the unhappiest I'd ever been. It's not that it has to go together, but if your main focus is money, and you happen to live in America, it likely will go together because we're not a labor-friendly country.

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A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this! I've always thought I'd love to hike the Appalachian Trail (#bucketlist) but now I've been dissuaded. I actually appreciated that Bryson cheated quite a bit because I think that's what I'd prefer to do one day.

He went from Georgia to West Virginia, discussed Pennsylvania a bit, and then returned to the Northern part of the trail later. In general, I enjoyed the discussion of the Southern locations more, either because I am somewhat familiar with those locations, or because having actually hiked that part of the trail all at once, he gave it more color.

The book was very funny, especially some of his friend's jokes, but sometimes it was a little unnecessarily mean.

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The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan

The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first fourth and third fourth went slowly for me, but I appreciated the resolution and the world that had been created mostly by that resolution.

Jason is a bit less developed than Percy, probably because he has memory loss. Piper is pretty well developed and Leo a little bit less so. I read this a long time after I read the first three Percy books and I was struggling to remember everyone at camp, though it wasn't strictly necessary. I also enjoyed the survey of mythological people as the heroes traveled from city to city in the US.

I'll probably read the next one in this series, though I'm not in a huge hurry to do so.

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