Melanie's Blog - The Itinerate Mom

Three books in Three days – my life in solitary confinement

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose   by Tony Hsieh

The Dam Committee   by Earl H. Smith

Boomerang: Travel in the New Third World   by Michael Lewis

Okay, granted, all three books have been started for weeks.  I just hadn’t finished any of them.  Don’t judge me. It’s like changing the channel on the TV before one show is over. I started Boomerang in late October in response to a recommendation from one of my head hunters. I admitted, I knew nothing about the world economy or how we got in this mess.  The book was readable and educational and was actually easier to finish than Delivering Happiness. I picked Delivering Happiness up after a Jon Stewart interview with Tony Hsieh, the really young CEO of Zappos. The description of his philosophy of delivering excellent customer service struck me like lightening in direct contrast to whatever was going on at work that week.

Earl Smith was my fun, witty, eloquent Dean when I was at Colby College. I went to his book signing at the China Library this winter and he was very self-conscious that there were no books available to sign at the time. It will be hard for him to sign my Kindle, but the book was light and entertaining… It might annoy people in Belgrade (where Earl lives) because it’s all about characters in “Belfry, Maine.”

Completed in between:

The Help       by Kathryn Stockett (because Oprah told us to read it)

A Hope in the Unseen   by Ron Suskind  (for Kelcy’s Freshman reading at UMASS)

And

Fifth’s Business    by Robert Davies   (for book club that hasn’t happened yet)

Now I’m in the middle of Into the Wild   by Jon Krakauer  (about a young man on an Alaskan wilderness adventure that ends badly, downloaded on Kindle when I was flying to Anchorage and was too lazy to schlepp Alaska by Michener that Omer loaned me – also too lazy to read it! It's a very heavy book.) Next are all the books people gave me for presents....