The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt

I read book 59, The Happiness Hypothesis, over quite a long period so to me it's all a bit of a blur. It's OK in patches but I'm honestly not sure what it's actually about even though I have read the whole book!

It's one of those books that is vaguely inspirational but you instantly forget. There were a few things I got from it that I hope will stay with me for a bit. Firstly, it's better to spend money on experiences than things, and secondly that money will never make you happy for very long. Other than that it's all a bit vague and gets 5 out of 10.

Next up I return past the door and start my second loop of the library. That will see me return to crime to complete the section where I started.

Hopefully I've managed to get something not full of cliches and stereotypes like so many books on the crime shelves.

The Persian Boy by Mary Renault

I finished The Persian Boy a couple of week ago, and a very annoying book it was. It didn't start too badly and then deteriorated, which is the worst way round because by that stage it's too late to ditch it and I was forced to plough through the last 200 pages with no enjoyment or interest.

The Persian Boy is a historical novel set in the time of Alexander the Great and told from the perspective of a eunuch who attaches himself (no pun intended) to Alexander. They go on lots of campaigns and endless wars. There are lots of characters with names I could never recall and stopped trying to remember who they all were. Eventually Alexander dies, sort of mid-campaign, and it ends. His eunuch is a pathetic creature who adores Alexander and doesn't regard his life as worth living without him.

Next up is a work of psychology in the style of The Road Less Travelled (I presume) called The Happiness Hypothesis

I am guessing this is one on those vaguely inspirational self-help books which really make you question your life and then promptly forget. I did like The Road Less Travelled and even read it twice, but it no longer has any sort of role in my existence.

I'm taking the Library Challenge a bit slower this year as I have a few other books to catch up on, some also from the library, but they are books I want to read rather than ones I stumble across. Once I have got them all out the way it will be full steam ahead again, but at the moment I am reading about six different books.

Shadowman by Della Galton

Shadowman was my first ever Mills and Boon book. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and it certainly wasn't the worst book I have read, fiction of non-fiction, during my journey around Dorking Library so far.

I was surprised the book wasn't about romance at all really. I was expecting a boy meets girl, swept off her feet and sail off into the sunset sort of book, but it was none of that. It was a book about relationships, where a jealous former lover tries to get in between a husband and wife. Shadowman wasn't the most sophisticated story ever, but was easy enough to read and held my interest. Shadowman gets 4 out of 10.

That concludes Large Print and I now move back into the world of normal typefaces. My next book is from a completely unnamed bookcase in Dorking Library which just seems to contain historical novels, mainly by one author, so I picked one of them.

The Persian Boy is "one of the greatest historical novels ever written" according to Sarah Waters on the front cover. I have enjoyed Sarah Waters's books in the past so if she thinks that there is a chance I might agree!

Little Mercies by Heather Gudenkauf

I actually enjoyed a book for the first time in a long time after a few stinkers recently. Little Mercies was an enthralling novel exploring different aspects of child abuse.

For once I was interested in the characters and the plot. They seemed real people and an original storyline, not the wooden stereotypes conforming to a pre-determined script like so many books appear to me.

Heather Gudenkauf really loves children from the book you can just tell. She thinks all children are special and treasured, her love of them just drips from the pages. In fact Little Mercies was written with so much compassion, not just for the children but even the adults in the book. Even the minor characters well good.

The actual story was written from two perspectives, one of a child who has been abused in the past and becomes separated from her father. The second voice is of a social worker who was so absorbed in her job saving children that she endangered the life of her own child by accident. The two stories eventually merge as the plot unfolds. I award this book 8 out of 10.

Next I move on to the final bookcase in the Large Print section which was entirely populated with Mills and Boon books. I must confess I haven't read a Mills and Boon novel before. I must also confess that I am not particularly keen to do so, but in the interests of completing the project it is a necessary task I have to undertake, and I think I will have to read another as well much later on when I reach the romance section towards the end of my project.

I picked Shadowman pretty much at random I am have no way of knowing whether any of the Mills and Boon books is any better than another, because they all seem to have very similar storylines.

Money: The Unauthorised Biography by Felix Martin

Bookcase 55's offering Money: The Unauthorised Biography was I am afraid was another dud. It was one of those irritating books that starts of well then gets worse and worse.

As I said in my previous post this might have been a book I would have chosen, the subject matter was of interest to me and the general content looked quite promising. But after the first few chapters which talked about what money wasn't it just degenerated into meaningless babble.

Maybe the failing was mine and this book was beyond me, but it doesn't feel like it. It wasn't especially technical and the fact there isn't an index or meaningful contents page suggests this was just what it resembled, a big brain dump of gibberish. I award it 2 out of 10. The first chapter was OK!

Next I jump back to the "Enjoy!" section and return to bookcase 48 for my second official attempt at reading a book from this case. If I succeed then there will be nothing left in my wake and I will be able to continue just looking forwards.

I think Little Mercies is a thriller about a kidnapping. Hopefully it doesn't involve my pet hate of a deranged serial killer, I never really read the back of books to find out the plot beyond the most cursory scan, it ruins the story a lot of the time, so I am never 100% sure what I am getting into until I am a few pages into a book.

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

My third attempt at reading Book 51 finally succeeded as I managed to plough through The Shining Girls but I didn't think much of it.

As everyone knows by now my pet hate in books is a serial killer/maverick detective novel which seem to be churned out in their droves and are all alike. This one took a while to evolve into a story but basically The Shining Girls is yet another book which conforms to this pattern of a madman driven to kill endless women being tracked down by a rookie reporter who was also one of his victims, but who managed to escape.

The only plot element which varies from the standard script is that this killer can travel in time, so selects his victims when they are young children and comes back to kill them once they are grown up. Consequently the book jumps around from decade to decade and it took me quite a while to actually get to grips with what was going on.

Suffice to say the maverick journalist gets in all sorts of trouble and breaks lots of rules but eventually tracks the killer down, despite his ability to travel in time. All very tedious and The Shining Girls only gets 3 out of 10.

Next I continue with the Large Print section, and a non-fiction book from bookcase 55.

Money is actually the first book I might actually pick to read for quite some time. I read a similar book The Secret Life of Money on bookcase 26. I was a bit disappointed by The Secret Life of Money because it was too incoherent with lots of unconnected essays. Hopefully Money will explain the nature of the beast a bit better to me.

Strictly Off the Record: On the Trail of World Records with Norris McWhirter by Anna Nicholas

Book 54. Strictly Off the Record was a look at the author's time working with Norris McWhirter on The Guinness Book of Records in the 1980's. As far as I can tell it was written several decades after the events described took place

That means every tale has been told and retold so how much they resemble the truth after three decades of oral tradition is debatable. Norris McWhirter is long dead of course so he can't argue with the contents. Irritatingly whole conversations are recreated verbatim in the book. Surely nobody can remember so many little details from so long ago?

I wouldn't mind but every story is pained in the same golden light. Not a bad thing is said of anyone, it was all such fun. I didn't even  find many of the stories especially funny. It was an irritating book amd gets 3 out of 10, which at easy is an improvement on the last couple.

I know return to bookcase 51 for my third attempt at completing a book.

The Shining Girls I am afraid is yet another spree killer thriller, my pet hate, though you do find the odd good one.