Happier, Tal Ben-Shahar, Ph.D.

 

Based upon the most popular class at Harvard University, Tal Ben-Shahar’s Happier is an examination of human happiness; it attempts to define what we mean when we use the word “happiness” and it tries to apply this feeling in our personal and professional lives.  Can we make ourselves happier?  What do we need to do?

 

The author of this book has a number of theories he has found in his studies of happiness.  One is that work is integral to happiness; as he puts it, “to be happy we need to work” (98).  But not just any work.  Meaningful work.  Work that has personal meaning.  And to find what this means, an individual has to know what is personally meaningful.

 

Ben-Shahar has done his homework. He cites many studies and statistics regarding human happiness—and his findings, ironically, made me quite sad! For example, he claims that the “rates of depression are ten times higher today than they were in the 1960s, and the average age for the onset of depression is fourteen and a half compared to twenty-nine and a half in 1960” (ix).   Sad stuff!                          

 

Why?  Why are so many people currently depressed?  Some of Ben-Shahar’s theories are a bit surprising.  For example, he claims that the happiness we feel when helping others is more long-lasting than the happiness we feel when doing something for ourselves, something we want to do.  For this reason, some of the exercises in the book focus on this point, on the reader doing something for someone else, like “giving flowers to a loved one, reading to your child, or donating to a cause you believe in” (128).  Afterward, he advises readers to “experience the deep happiness that can come with each act of generosity” (128).

 

Ben-Shahar also feels that difficulties are good for people, as he states, “struggles and hardships and challenges” are, in his view, not just important but necessary (89).  He thinks that some people have had their lives handed to them, that they haven’t had to struggle enough; he writes, “Life, for many young people, has quite literally been too easy” (89).  Since these people have not had to work for the positive things in their lives (or toward any life goals), they are unhappy.  They are depressed.

 

Depression is clearly an important issue today—and the theories in this book have really made me think…. J

Hmmmmm..... I Wonder....

Ah, Sisters.  Check out the following article:

"Why Sisterly Chats Make People Happier," By Deborah Tannen
25 October 2010

Having a Sister Makes You Happier-- that was the headline on a recent article about a study finding that adolescents who have a sister are less likely to report such feelings as “I am unhappy, sad or depressed” and “I feel like no one loves me.”

These findings are no fluke; other studies have come to similar conclusions. But why would having a sister make you happier?

The usual answer — that girls and women are more likely than boys and men to talk about emotions — is somehow unsatisfying, especially to a researcher like me. Much of my work over the years has developed the premise that women’s styles of friendship and conversation aren’t inherently better than men’s, simply different.
A man once told me that he had spent a day with a friend who was going through a divorce. When he returned home, his wife asked how his friend was coping. He replied: “I don’t know. We didn’t talk about it.”
His wife chastised him. Obviously, she said, the friend needed to talk about what he was going through.

This made the man feel bad. So he was relieved to read in my book “You Just Don’t Understand” (Ballantine, 1990) that doing things together can be a comfort in itself, another way to show caring. Asking about the divorce might have made his friend feel worse by reminding him of it, and expressing concern could have come across as condescending.

The man who told me this was himself comforted to be reassured that his instincts hadn’t been wrong and he hadn’t let his friend down.

But if talking about problems isn’t necessary for comfort, then having sisters shouldn’t make men happier than having brothers. Yet the recent study — by Laura Padilla-Walker and her colleagues at Brigham Young University — is supported by others.

Last year, for example, the British psychologists Liz Wright and Tony Cassidy found that young people who had grown up with at least one sister tended to be happier and more optimistic, especially if their parents had divorced. Another British researcher, Judy Dunn, found a similar pattern among older adults.

So what is going on?

My own recent research about sisters suggests a more subtle dynamic. I interviewed more than 100 women about their sisters, but if they also had brothers, I asked them to compare. Most said they talked to their sisters more often, at greater length and, yes, about more personal topics. This often meant that they felt closer to their sisters, but not always.

One woman, for example, says she talks for hours by phone to her two brothers as well as her two sisters. But the topics differ. She talks to her sisters about their personal lives; with her brothers she discusses history, geography and books. And, she added, one brother calls her at 5 a.m. as a prank.

A prank? Is this communication? Well, yes — it reminds her that he’s thinking of her. And talking for hours creates and reinforces connections with both brothers and sisters, regardless of what they talk about.

A student in my class recounted a situation that shows how this can work. When their family dog died, the siblings (a brother and three sisters) all called one another. The sisters told one another how much they missed the dog and how terrible they felt. The brother expressed concern for everyone in the family but said nothing about what he himself was feeling.

My student didn’t doubt that her brother felt the same as his sisters; he just didn’t say it directly. And I’ll bet that having the phone conversations served exactly the same purpose for him as the sisters’ calls did for them: providing comfort in the face of their shared loss.

So the key to why having sisters makes people happier — men as well as women — may lie not in the kind of talk they exchange but in the fact of talk. If men, like women, talk more often to their sisters than to their brothers, that could explain why sisters make them happier. The interviews I conducted with women reinforced this insight. Many told me that they don’t talk to their sisters about personal problems, either.

An example is Colleen, a widow in her 80s who told me that she’d been very close to her unmarried sister throughout their lives, though they never discussed their personal problems. An image of these sisters has remained indelible in my mind.  Late in life, the sister came to live with Colleen and her husband. Colleen recalled that each morning after her husband got up to make coffee, her sister would stop by Colleen’s bedroom to say good morning. Colleen would urge her sister to join her in bed. As they sat up in bed side by side, holding hands, Colleen and her sister would “just talk.”

That’s another kind of conversation that many women engage in which baffles many men: talk about details of their daily lives, like the sweater they found on sale — details, you might say, as insignificant as those about last night’s ballgame which can baffle women when they overhear men talking. These seemingly pointless conversations are as comforting to some women as “troubles talk” conversations are to others.

So maybe it’s true that talk is the reason having a sister makes you happier, but it needn’t be talk about emotions. When women told me they talk to their sisters more often, at greater length and about more personal topics, I suspect it’s that first element — more often — that is crucial rather than the last.

This makes sense to me as a linguist who truly believes that women’s ways of talking are not inherently better than men’s. It also feels right to me as a woman with two sisters — one who likes to have long conversations about feelings and one who doesn’t, but who both make me happier.

Deborah Tannen is a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University and the author, most recently, of You Were Always Mom’s Favorite! Sisters in Conversation Throughout Their Lives.

Hmmmmm..... Thoughts?

What Will You Remember?

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… I was a junior/senior at good old New Paltz High. Yes, I was a student here long, long ago, and it was my first day as a junior/senior (I graduated in three years). It was September of 1975, and I was starting my last year of high school. I was excited for my junior classes (since I had known most of my fellow classmates since third grade, when I moved to NP from Long Island), but I was a bit nervous about the senior part of my schedule, as I’d be with kids who were a year older, kids I kind-of knew, but not very well. I remember wondering how it would all shake out. Not really worrying, exactly, but…. wondering.

Little did I know that my biggest surprise of that first day (and one of my strongest resulting memories) would occur in U.S. History (a junior-level class) with—you guessed it—Mrs. Clinton as my teacher. I had heard that she was demanding, that I would be challenged by her class, but I wasn’t really worried.I thought I was fairly well-read, so I felt fairly well-prepared.

I shouldn’t have been so confident. Mrs. Clinton shocked my classmates and me when she handed each student a quiz as we walked in the door.

She ignored our whiny responses of “What?” “Huh?” “But we haven’t learned anything yet!” She simply said, “I want to know where we are starting. So do your best.” She smiled ever so slightly, but not enough to encourage further questioning (or whining). We knew she was no-nonsense.

Heads were bent over desks. We read.

I wish I could remember all 20 of the quiz questions, but suffice it to say that they ranged from constitutional amendments to current issues, from “Who wrote the national anthem?” to “Who is Karen Ann Quindlen?” I know I answered some of them correctly, but not nearly enough of them to feel in any way confident that I was well-informed (much less cocky). I do remember, though, that one question had to do with Watergate (which prompted a few of the boys to do Richard Nixon “I am not a crook” impressions), and the last one asked, “Where is Jimmy Hoffa?” (Ask your parents—or Google him—there is an interesting story there!).

Why is this important? And why did it create such a strong memory for me? Well, memories are funny things. So many events and experiences happen to a person over a lifetime, how does the mind select what to remember? I’ve done a bit of reading about this and, if you follow Virginia Woolfe’s theory, our memories are formed when our inner version of reality brushes up against (collides with) actual reality.

Again, huh? What does that mean? Well, Woolfe thought the average human being was divorced from reality, that we each exist in our own separate reality, looking out at the world through our own little perspective, but that there are moments when our inner realities collide with what is actually happening in the real world—and that these moments form our memories.

So, as a sixteen-year-old, I had been fairly confident I knew what was going on in the world. While I didn’t grow up in an academic household (neither of my parents had gone to college), I was a huge reader—so, by comparison, I had felt that my reading habit had kept me up-to-date with current events. I learned on that day that I had a lot to learn. While I was far from the lowest-scoring student in the class, I was nowhere near the top. I learned I better get my study on.

Mrs. Clinton said in class that Newsweek Magazine had a student subscription rate, and she recommended that we get either Time or Newsweek at home. And that we start to read newspapers.

Since I didn’t like to feel ignorant (or anywhere in the uninformed range), I took advantage of that student subscription rate—and, believe it or not, I have subscribed to Newsweek ever since. Here are some of the tasty tidbits I’ve picked up in the last few months. (Yes, this would be my current event quiz for 2010, if I were to give one to my students. Give it a whirl—and scroll down for the answers!):
1. January 4, 2010 issue: Name the top five movies—and TV shows—of the past year (or as many as you can!)
2. February 8, 2010 issue: Americans’ most popular medication is antidepressants. According to top researchers, do antidepressants work?
3. March 22, 2010 issue: Michelle Obama is on a mission to fight the skyrocketing obesity rates in American children (obesity rates have tripled among kids ages 12-19 since 1980)—what is her movement entitled?
4. March 29, 2010 issue: How much did the average American salary increase in the last 30 years (and how much was it then vs. now)?
5. Also in the March 29, 2010 issue, here is a quote (fill in the blank): “Despite earning higher GPAs, one year out of college, young women will already take home just _____ percent of what their male colleagues do.”
6. April 19, 2010 issue: When President Obama was looking for a Supreme Court replacement for the retiring Justice David Souter, what was the main quality he was searching for? (Hint: it wasn’t years on the bench.)
7. April 26, 2010 issue: The first Earth Day was in 1970—has anything improved on our home planet? (Specifically consider acid rain, the ozone layer, endangered species, and energy use.)
8. Also in the April 26, 2010 issue: The State Board of Education of Texas is rewriting history by changing the history books—what has changed?
9. May 10, 2010 issue: Wall Street doesn’t seem to be making any friends, but the Harvard Business School is trying to change the way future businessmen/women view their profession—so they now ask M.B.A. candidates to take the M.B.A. oath. What does it say?
10. May 24 and 31, 2010 issue: The health care debate is still raging. True or false: “Although [Americans] pay the most for our health care, the U.S. has higher rates of preventable deaths than almost all other industrialized nations.”


Answers:
1. Movies: “Transformers 2,” “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince,” “Up,” “The Hangover,” and “New Moon.”
TV Shows: “American Idol,” “Dancing With the Stars,” “Sunday Night Football,” “NCIS,” and “The Good Wife.” (Guess I am a loser—I have never watched a full episode of ANY of these shows… and I’ve only seen one of the films, “The Hangover.”)
2. “Only in patients with very severe symptoms was there a clinically meaningful drug benefit.”
3. Let’s move (go to letsmove.gov for tips and info)
4. By 233% since 1981 (from $11,900 to $39,653).
5. 80% (I did not expect this to be true when I was in high school…)
6. According to Newsweek’s Dahlia Lithwick, he “dropped the E bomb” when he said, “ I view the quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.”
7. Acid rain has declined (though it is still higher than it should be), the ozone is recovering (a bit), but the number of endangered species has more than quadrupled and energy use hasn’t changed (“despite substantial increases in energy efficiency of homes and appliances”).
8. “Thurgood Marshall and Cesar Chavez were among those on the chopping block, while the inventor of the yo-yo [I’m not making this up] was cheerfully inserted.”
9. “To value ethics as much as they do profits,” since “doing the right thing is always in the long-term interest of share-holders.” Believe it or not, even Harvard agrees that business schools have “gotten worse at teaching ethics.”
10. Sadly, this is true. How can people be proactive about their health? Make sure your doctor knows your interest, that you’d like to remain healthy, or as Dr. Jonathan Finkelstein writes in this Newsweek article, “be sure you make it clear that you also expect him or her to help protect you from things that might bother you tomorrow.”


So here is your challenge—take a look at your junior year, and fully describe what you will remember most—yup, the event/experience that will make your strongest memory--especially considering your personal literacy ...

Post 3: Moms and Dads and Kids..... Oh, My!

Reading literature has brought so much to my life (God that sounds cheesy…whatever, it’s true—the joys of escapism), but there is much to be said about reading other “texts,” other forms of communication, like the in-person kind, with real people.

Ah, so much to say…

Had a conversation with the parent of a student the other day, and it was a bit like the movie Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray experiences the same day over and over. I’ve had this particular conversation soooooo many times. It is interesting, the experiences that we all have (as students, as parents, whatever roles we are playing at the time…I digress, haha…)

So here goes: I feel like I am Bill Murray when a parent tries to explain to me that she is both worried about -- excited for -- exasperated by her teenage son, who is coming down the home stretch of his oh-so-critical junior year. He is doing well, but she isn’t quite sure that he understands how important the next piece of the puzzle is—the dreaded college application process. She wants him to start early, to talk to other people about the process, to practice writing college essays—basically to walk into it with his eyes open, fully understanding the decisions he will be making. (And it is here that I wonder, can anyone?   I made my college decision based upon where my boyfriend already was…omg…kids don’t try this at home…). Her son, on the other hand, is a bit reluctant to discuss the topic (for many reasons, I imagine, certainly too many to describe here…). He isn’t mean or rude. He is a great kid. He is just young—and he doesn’t particularly want to discuss things with his mom. She takes a step forward; he takes a step back.

The dance of parenthood. Of adolescence. Each of them, I’m sure, meaning well, but not quite meeting in the middle of this particular dance floor.

Back to Groundhog Day. While this conversation with this mom reminded me of so many other conversations, it was also like having a conversation with my younger self, for there was a time when I was steeped in all of those worries. My daughters are all past high school now, but I won’t soon forget all of those feelings—being worried, yet so excited. Trying to share in the process with them, yet only being allowed to do so up to a certain point (and how hard it is to admit that there is a real moment in parenthood, when you realize it is your child—not you—who is driving the bus). Each of my daughters wanted independence. Each of them, toward the end of high school, at a different stage of readiness, each so very different, but certain touch points were the same…

Back to the mom (yikes, this is beginning to sound rather like a journal entry, where I wander in nine different directions at one time, perhaps I should let my students grade MY blog, haha…). In between the lines of our conversation was something neither of us said, the fact that she was also wondering if she was ready, wondering about the changes his absence would make in her life. She knows that her life will shift and change, but she isn’t quite sure yet how this will feel. And, again, I felt like I was talking to my younger self. Because I sure did wonder. And it (like most things you know are coming) has been better—and worse—than I had expected.

Digression number twelve. In my AP Lit class this year we read Ordinary People, and there is a scene in the book (and even in the movie, although the movie doesn’t really follow the novel all that well) where the dad is talking to one of his colleagues about his son, who is also in his junior year of high school. To make a long story short, the dad in the book has far more to be worried about in terms of his son than most parents, but the worry is the same—most parents want to be there, want to be closer to their adolescents, to be helpful (please, they think, let me be helpful! Why doesn’t he recognize that I have learned a life lesson or two?). Parents know they can’t live their kids’ lives for them, but they want to lend a bit of their life experience to their children (my God, they wonder, she used to need me!) The kids (of course) want to begin to make their own way.

The dance of parenthood. A step forward, a step back. Strangely, in Ordinary People the dad’s colleague tells him not to worry—and not simply because everything will turn out alright—but that such worry is a waste of time, because the teenager in question will be “gone,” off on his own in the blink of an eye.

What? Is that true? Are our worries for our children wasted? That is not at all what I wanted to say to this mom, to any mom.

I want to tell her that he is smart, that he is ready. And I do. I do so want to be consoling, not just to ease her worry and to make her go away, but because I know it is true. What I don’t say, however, is that I truly do believe he will be more than fine—because there is no way to say this, really, without sounding condescending, like I am trying to minimize her concerns. But I want to communicate this somehow. Because I believe it.

So, since everything (everything!) reminds me of a movie, I downshift into the movie Parenthood, where a mom is telling her son, “These feelings… You are right to have all these feelings.”   Because it all sounds so familiar. Each year, students and their parents come in and out with the tide.

The Joy of Non-Fiction: Best (Most Influential) Pick

In January of 2007 I read a New York Times article entitled “Happiness 101” that described a George Mason University class called The Science of Well-Being, “essentially a class in how to make yourself happier” (7 Jan. 2007). The class studied gratitude, hope, and optimism, and there was an interesting distinction made between feeling good and doing good. Students were assigned to perform one act of each, to do something they enjoyed doing and to do something that would provide something positive for someone else.  Interestingly students later decided that doing good--doing something for someone else--actually resulted in a longer lasting feeling of happiness. The focus wasn’t only about personal happiness, but “embracing civic engagement … connectedness, hope and charity.” Discussing the article with my students raised even more questions: Can happiness be studied? What role does environment play in our happiness, like family and /friends? I later found that the most popular course at Harvard is a class just like the one the original article described, and its professor, Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, wrote this book, Happier, in 2007 to describe his course. After reading the book I’ve raised many of his points in my own classes, and I have used them to help students analyze the literature we read. Some ideas have been future-focused, ideas about goal setting (and postponement of gratification); others are more recursive, exploring feelings of connectedness with others, from students’ families to their communities to the world.
Why select this book as the most influential work of non-fiction? Well, I can’t think of a topic more important than the study of happiness. In terms of my students’ opinions, while statistics may vary in terms of high school dropout rates, no matter what sources you read they are high, and anyone involved in education knows that adolescent depression is an issue (Ben-Shahar writes that “rates of depression are ten times higher today than they were in the 1960s, and the average age for the onset of depression is 14½ compared to 29½ in 1960,” Ben-Shahar cites, on page ix). Other serious issues, like self-esteem, as well as health concerns like anorexia and obesity, are undoubtedly tied to levels of personal happiness. And, as reported quite consistently in our media, these issues are present in every strata of our society. (The cover story for Newsweek Magazine this February discusses antidepressants, calling them “the nation’s most popular pills,”  for example, 8 Feb. 2010). If, as parents and as educators, we are creating lifelong learners, a focus on the theme of happiness is important; it is also important for me to remember that I am not merely a teacher of literature—I am a teacher of young people—and my teaching must encompass the whole child. A huge challenge, most definitely…

What have I learned from this text? Many, many things—I’ve worked through many of Ben-Shahar’s exercises myself. And I know they would be quite informative for others. Our overly-hectic, twenty-first century lives sometimes deplete our feelings of happiness, and many people feel the need to simplify their lives. While the expectation of constant happiness is unrealistic, increasing our level of happiness is possible—it can be gained by greater knowledge, through education in its broadest sense, through examining ourselves, our literature, and our world.

My Literary Travels

I heart books.

While I’d be hard-pressed to select my favorite book ever, these are a few of my top choices, books that really impacted me:

Young Travels:
• The Hobbitt, J.R.R. Tolkien. Travel Middle Earth with Bilbo and the gang. Yes, this is the original, the book that started it all. All kids should read this timeless book of friendship and personal trial (I've even read it a number of times since I was a kid....soooooo good—my first car even had a “Bilbo Baggins for President” bumper sticker, haha).
• Gone With The Wind, Margaret Mitchell. Ah, Miss Scarlett, I love you so! This is the first book I ever really fell in love with in middle school (such a long, long time ago--but the memory is still strong). Read me! Yeah, the movie is good, but the book is infinitely better (“I’ll think about that tomorrow!”... omg…)
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee. Timeless. Scout and Jem learn invaluable lessons from their dad, a role model if I ever saw one. (One of my literature professors used to say that “Literature changes lives,” and, although that may sound a bit corny, it is true. When I read this book as a kid, for example, it made me want my kids to call me by my first name). Such a classic, not to be missed. (Go Calpernia!)
• East of Eden, John Steinbeck. The very, very best of Steinbeck. What a personality study (they don’t make scarier characters than Cathy Ames….yikes! And poor Adam, for falling in love with her…why does love make us so blind?). This was the first book that, when I finished the last page, I turned immediately to page one to start it all over.  It is awesome...and insightful each time.

More Recent Choices (in no particular order):
• The Stand, Stephen King. Classic King. While I’ve read everything he’s written, this is my top choice—good vs. evil—an entertaining and thought-provoking story by an amazing storyteller. Yeah, yeah, I know that King isn’t considered great literature by the powers-that-be(or, as the AP Lit Exam would phrase it, "a text of literary merit), but I can’t think of many other writers whose work I fall into. I can sit for hours reading his stories--and everything else just falls away; time just goes by. (I also loved It, The Body, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, though; King makes the characters so real, so believable. “Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” Someday I will marry Andy Dufresne. I will.)
• A Prayer For Own Meany, John Irving. Ah, the baseball. And Baby Jesus. And Hester the molester. And Vietnam. And the penguins. And how poor Owen outgrows his parents. I could go on, but I will stop here… (Loved The World According to Garp, too, but little Owen wins…)
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon. Haddon hits the ball out of the park here--Christopher Boone is a hero for a new generation. Part mystery, part family drama, and crazy-funny with dramatic irony. Yet my heart goes out to Chris--and his parents. This book opens up a new world, to show the difficulties of raising a child with special needs in an often less-than-friendly world. Excellent!
• Case Histories, Kate Atkinson. You will not soon forget Jackson Brodie--or the strange cases detailed in this book. Bottom line? When the front cover cites a Stephen King quote directing you to read this book, DO IT. I was not at all sorry--I could not put it down.
• Straight Man, Richard Russo. Hands-down the funniest book I have ever read. EVER. Since I work in a high school English department (and I have worked at a university English department), I fell in love with this cast of academic oddball characters. Couldn't put it down--wanted it to last far longer! LOVE!!! (Also notable: Russo’s other works: Nobody’s Fool and Empire Falls—good stuff.)
• In the Lake of the Woods, Tim O’Brien. Haunting--and unforgettable. Love O'Brien's The Things They Carried--and, if possible, I love this even more. What DID happen in that cabin that night? What is truth? Who is Sorcerer? Did war change him, or did it encourage him to evolve into the man he was meant to be? Love the random quotes throughout the text, the blend of fact and fiction; love the characters and their descriptions; love the uncertainty.  Love, love, love. (Warning: NOT for the feint-hearted; I gave this book as a gift, and my friend found it rather disturbing.)
• A Million Little Pieces, James Frey. I know that this book caused a lot of hoopla (is it fiction? Is it non-fiction?), but I don’t care about the answer to those questions—because the truth is this book is awesome. I don’t care whether it is Frey’s experience or not. I don’t care if every word is a lie. It is unforgettable.
• I Know This Much is True, Wally Lamb. I read this book years ago--yet it is still one of my top-ten reads--it is gripping from the first page. It is the story of adult male twins (twins being one of my favorite topics, surprise, surprise). Pick it up, but beware. It is tough to put down...
• The Book of Joe, Jonathan Tropper. I’ve given this book as a gift to three very different reader friends (and they each loved it--high praise!). So much more than a-guy-returns-to-his-hometown story. It is described as "by turns howling funny, fiercely intelligent, and achingly poignant"--and it IS each of these--and more. Read this book! I'd love to know what you think after you do (tell me whether you really believe in second chances)....
• How to Talk to a Widower, Jonathan Tropper. Tropper has done it again--I so enjoyed The Book of Joe and Everything Changes, and this has the same characterization (smart AND funny) and introspection--I want to read slowly so it isn't over too quickly! Love it! (Bottom line?  Pick up anything by Tropper...)
• The Post Birthday World, Lionel Shriver. Just finished this one--and I loved it. It makes me question whether our choices really matter, or whether there is an end-game all prepared....hmmmm…. Like We Really Need to Talk About Kevin in the way that the author's use of language illustrates her intelligence (and often brings a wry smile), yet this tale-with-two-story-threads is completely different. If you read it, do let me know what you think…

Truth be told, there are two writers whose books I buy in hardcover, as soon as they come out (as a teacher, I can’t always afford to buy every book I want, as soon as it is published, nor do I have the time to read every book I’d like to read, but that is my idea of heaven, all the time in the world to read all the books I want, sitting in a big, comfy chair, next to a blazing fireplace…)—and those two are Jonathan Tropper and Stephen King. For them, everything else in the world stops.

“Half my life's in books' written pages,
Live and learn from fools and from sages
You know it's true,
All the things
Come back to you.”
--Aerosmith, “Dream On”