Think Happy, Be Happy by Workman Publishing

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Think Happy, Be Happy

Title: Think Happy, Be Happy
Author: Workman Publishing
Publisher: Workman Publishing
ISBN: 9780761177579 (0761177574)
Pub Date: October 2013
Reviewed by: Jennie Bev of BookReviewClub.com
Review Date: May 11, 2013
Rating: Extremely Recommended (5 of 5)

This 400-page gift book is such a charmer. The pages are colorful and filled with quotes from famous people, short passages about happiness-related things, playlists of happy songs, cute drawings, whimsical names, and other feeling-awesome snippets of life and love. This book serves an important purpose: reminding readers to be happy by thinking about happy things. Happiness, after all, is all in the mind and heart.

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Tiger Writing: Art, Culture and the Interdependent Self by Gish Jen

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Tiger Writing by Gish Jen

Title: Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdependent Self
Author: Gish Jen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674072831
Pub Date: March 2013
Reviewed by: Jennie Bev of BookReviewClub.com
Review Date: May 9, 2013
Rating: Extremely Recommended (5 of 5)

In Tiger Writing, a memoir of art, culture, and interdependent self, author Gish Jen said, “Culture is not fate; it only offers templates, which individuals can finally accept, reject, or modify, and do.” Jen was born in the United States of immigrant parents who migrated from Yixing in Jiangsu province, west of Shanghai. The memoir is divided into three sections, which were presented as lectures at Massey Lectures in the History of American Civilization program at Harvard. It is a cultural memoir filled with beautiful passages of Chinese-American diaspora.

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Is College Worth It? by William J. Bennett and David Wilezol

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Is College Worth It?

Title: Is College Worth It?: A Former United States Secretary of Education and a Liberal Arts Graduate Expose the Broken Promise of Higher Education
Authors: William J. Bennett and David Wilezol
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
ISBN: 978-1-59555-422-2
Pub Date: April 30, 2013
Reviewed by: Jennie Bev of BookReviewClub.com
Review Date: May 9, 2013
Rating: Highly Recommended (4 of 5)

The premise of this book is, “The world’s most talented students will be successful no matter where they go to college or if they don’t go at all” (location 123 in the e-book version). Overturning the commonly held belief that everyone should go to college, the authors believe that not everyone should go to college. Success isn’t determined by the degrees one amasses, but by having the right skills and the right knowledge for the job at a certain time.

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