Health & Well-being

★★★☆☆ | Health and Well-Being | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

Like Successful Aging by Daniel Levitin, the author’s message here is to never retire.  Work for as long as you can to stay healthy and happy.  If you do retire, make sure to find as much purpose in retirement as you possibly can.

The author used Thrive as his title for a reason.  Thrive has a Scandinavian heritage that comes from Old Norse, thrīfask, which translates “grasp.” You thrive when you grasp what you want from life.  Keep grasping, keep thriving.

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Thrive in Retirement by Eric ThurmanRead More »

★★★☆☆ | Finance | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

I read this because of the “happy” aspect in the title — are there things I should be doing that that I’m retired to improve the overall quality of my life as a retired person? But, in fact, the book is much more focused on the financial aspects of retirement.  To that end, it helped me make sure I haven’t missed anything important in our own retirement planning.

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How to Retire Happy by Stan HindenRead More »

★★★★☆ | Sobriety | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph

One of the best sobriety memoirs I’ve read. McKowen has a wonderful writing voice and uses blunt honesty to share her journey from alcoholic to a well-balanced sober person. The sheer number of highlights I marked (see below) are a good indicator of how much this one resonated with me.

Highlights

I’d been using alcohol to hold things up on the back end for so long — and even though it had only made everything far worse, it offered the temporary illusion of escape and control. For a few hours every night, I didn’t have to see or feel so sharply the mess. 

Drinking, plans for drinking, casual references to drinking, jokes about drinking, memes about drinking, advertisements for drinking were everywhere — are everywhere. 

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We Are the Luckiest by Laura MckowenRead More »

★★★★☆ | Memoir | Audio | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

I listened to the audiobook of this one, which was read by the author himself.  I read it for the personal reflections on alcoholism and sobriety, the processes of rehab and AA, and to get another take on life as a recovering alcoholic.  He goes through a whole cycle of drinking—sobriety—relapse—sobriety in the book.  I was very worried for him before he relapsed, which seemed inevitable, and that worry carried over to myself.  Am I heading for relapse as well? Is it truly inevitable?

Burroughs drank to hide some very painful memories and to block out the loss of a dear friend.  He didn’t drink for the taste. That’s the lesson here.  Look for the underlying pain and address that.  Don’t cover it up with booze.

Sober. So that’s what I’m here to become. And suddenly, this word fills me with a brand of sadness I haven’t felt since childhood. The kind of sadness you feel at the end of summer. When the fireflies are gone, the ponds have dried up and the plants are wilted, weary from being so green. It’s no longer really summer but the air is still too warm and heavy to be fall. It’s the season between the seasons. It’s the feeling of something dying. Sobriety