The Sunday Salon: Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes, Village School and a Spinybacked Orbweaver

  

Welcome! I am happy that you joined us here at the Sunday Salon. 

What is the Sunday Salon? 

The Sunday Salon is a place to link up and share what we have been doing during the week. It's also a great opportunity to visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

I swam almost every day, learned to play Maggie May and Changes on guitar, went to the Galveston Art Walk, and ate lunch with friends at Landry's right on the water in Kemah this week. Even though it was in the 90s all week, I nevertheless made my first pot of soup of autumn, and I baked some Blue Cornbread Muffins.

What I Read Last Week:

Village School by Miss Read (fiction)

The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War by Ben Mcintyre (nonfiction)

The Caretaker by Ron Rash (fiction)

What I'm Reading Now:

The Imagined Life by Andrew Porter (fiction)

10 Keys to Happier Living by Vanessa King (nonfiction)

What I Posted Last Week Here at Readerbuzz:

The Sunday Salon: Shall We Try to Be Happier?

̶L̶i̶t̶e̶r̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶C̶a̶n̶d̶l̶e̶s̶ ̶I̶’̶d̶ ̶M̶a̶k̶e̶...

How to Be Happy: 10 Keys to Happier Living: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

I began to list 3 Good Things every day during the pandemic. Now I've established a regular routine of writing down my 3 Good Things. Here are 3 Good Things from last week:

Good Thing #1:

My friend Karen contemplates

joining a band of pirates

during the Galveston Art Walk this week.

Good Thing #2:

Madison, the person who cuts my hair 

and my dad's hair, sent this photo

of her oldest customer (my dad, 98)

and her youngest customer (her baby girl, 5 months old).

Good Thing #3:

Spinybacked Orbweaver,

at my house

Weekend linkup spots are listed below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

        

I hope you will join the linkup for Sunday Salon below.

How to Be Happy: 10 Keys to Happier Living: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

  

Today's Featured Book: 

How to Be Happy: 10 Keys to Happier Living

by Vanessa King

Genre: Positive Psychology

Published: March 10, 2016

Page Count: 518 pages

Summary: 

We all want to be happy but what does that actually mean and what can we do in our everyday lives to be happier? Fortunately, psychologists, neuroscientists and other experts now have evidence of what really makes a difference and helps us to be happier and more resilient to life's ups and downs.

In this book, Vanessa King of Action for Happiness has drawn on the latest scientific studies to create a set of evidence-based practical actions. They will help you connect with people, nurture your relationships and find purpose. You'll get ideas for taking care of your body, making the most of what's good and finding new ways to stimulate your mind.

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY is hosted by Rose City Reader. What book are you happy about reading this week? Please share the opening sentence (or so) on BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY! Add the link to your blog or social media post and visit other blogs to see what others are reading.

Happy Friday and welcome to the FIRST LINE FRIDAY, hosted by Reading is My Superpower! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line.

Your happiness matters. People who are happy not only enjoy life more and are more resilient, they also tend to have more and better relationships, be physically healthier, and be more engaged and do better at work. These are just a few of the benefits recent research has revealed.

King, Vanessa. How to Be Happy: 10 Keys to Happier Living.

THE FRIDAY 56 is hosted by Anne of Head Full of Books. To play, open a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% on your e-reader). Find a sentence or two and post them, along with the book title and author. Then link up on Head Full of Books and visit others in the linky. 

A national survey in the US asked over 28,000 people how much stress they had experienced in the past year: a lot, a moderate amount or relatively little; and also how much they perceived that stress had an effect on their health: a lot, some, hardly any, or none. The results showed that either experiencing a lot of stress or believing it harmful had a negative relationship to health outcomes. But a combination of both was worse. Those who scored highly for having a lot of stress and believing that it was very harmful had a much greater risk of dying prematurely eight years later. In another study, psychologist Alia Crum and colleagues found that people who saw stress as being enhancing showed fewer negative health outcomes than those who saw it as being debilitating. Both Crum and Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist, argue that instead of always trying to eliminate stress, we need to view it differently.

King, Vanessa. How to Be Happy: 10 Keys to Happier Living.

Action for Happiness is an action-based nonprofit movement, based on science, that aims to make the world a happier place. 

Action for Happiness focuses on 10 Keys to Happier Living that together form the acronym GREAT DREAM: Giving, Relating, Exercising, Awareness, Trying Out, Direction, Resilience, Emotions, Acceptance, Meaning.

Action for Happiness has archived many wonderful videos about these keys to happiness and other topics as well as monthly happiness calendars and other resources here to help us all take action to become happier.

The purpose of THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, and befriend other bloggers. THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.    

September 19th - 25th - Do you know more than one language? If so, do you read books published in other countries? (submitted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer)

I am a native English speaker. I have been learning Spanish for the last forty years. I've studied French and Italian off and on over the years. 

I can read children's books in Spanish, French, and Italian, but grownup books in those languages are a little beyond me.

 

̶L̶i̶t̶e̶r̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶C̶a̶n̶d̶l̶e̶s̶ ̶I̶’̶d̶ ̶M̶a̶k̶e̶...

Our assignment today: Pick a book and assign it a fragrance or fragrance combo that would make a nice candle.

My mind is in perpetual emergency mode these days. Please forgive me, but I can't seem to do this today.

Instead, I'd like to go in another direction. 

The Daily Stoic message today reminded me that not everyone has had the same education that we have, and that sometimes others can’t imagine what it's like to be someone else.

That's something we can get from reading books, I think---we can develop empathy for people who have had different experiences than we have had.

I've been thinking about books that gave me empathy for others, both fiction and nonfiction.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

L'Assommoir by Émile Zola

Germinal by Émile Zola

James by Percival Everett

Roots by Alex Haley

How about you? 

What suggestions do you have to help us develop empathy for others?

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.    

The Sunday Salon: Shall We Try to Be Happier?

 

Welcome! I am delighted that you joined us here at the Sunday Salon. 

What is the Sunday Salon? 

The Sunday Salon is a place to link up and share what we have been doing during the week. It's also a great opportunity to visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

Several people asked me to tell more about my Happiness Habits course, so here goes...It's through Action for Happiness located in Great Britain. It's a six-week course delivered over Zoom, moderated by two rather cheerful volunteers, with a small group of other partakers. The course is designed to cover gratitude, self-care, relationships, resilience, kindness, and meaning, and it focuses on the actions we can take, based on science, to be happier. 

Here's the link to the course.

Here is a link to the Action for Happiness website.

What I Read Last Week:

Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami

Katabasis by R. F. Kuang

What I'm Reading Now:

Village School by Miss Read

Tiny Habits by B. J. Fogg

10 Keys to Happier Living by Vanessa King

It was the first night of the 45th season of Inprint Author Readings in Houston and it was a full house at the Wortham Theater for author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Adichie talked about her latest novel, Dream Count, which led to a discussion about the promise of immigration in America historically around the world. As always, it was wonderful to be around thinking, compassionate people.

What I Posted Last Week Here at Readerbuzz:

The Sunday Salon: Sunrise, a Burrowing Owl, and a Happiness Class

Villains

Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami

I began to list 3 Good Things every day during the pandemic. Now I've established a regular routine of writing down my 3 Good Things. Here are 3 Good Things from last week.

I've been cheered this week by 

some lovely surprises in my mailbox/inbox!

Thank you so much, my friends!

Good Thing #1:

Sunflower photos 

from Janet in Kansas.

Good Thing #2:

Margaret Atwood stamps

from Jackie in Canada.

Good Thing #3:

A birding book by Kenn Kaufman,

sticky notes, cards, a fan,

and a beautiful crocheted hot pad

from Patricia in New Mexico.

Weekend linkup spots are listed below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

        

I hope you will join the linkup for Sunday Salon below.