Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton

There is no other word for May Sarton's journals than "lovely." They are deep, examining, and honest. She certainly lived up to Socrates' desire by examining her life. My copy of Journal of a Solitude is well worn and much underlined. There is much that speaks to me here, and much that pushes me to examine my own life.

She examines her own depression and rages, her desire for solitude to get work done, her need for some socializing for intelligent conversations, the joys of gardening, and a dying love affair (albeit only indirectly). It is a fascinating look into a year of the poet and novelist's life.

Some of my favorite quotes:

- I have written novels to find out what I thought about something, and poems to find out what I felt about something.

- For poetry lives in places where people work in their gardens or let them go wild and do not leave it to impersonal firms of gardeners to plant and trim.

- My own belief is that one regards oneself, if one is a serious writer, as an instrument for experiencing. Life--all of it--flows through this instrument and is distilled through it into works of art.

Now I'm in the mood to read one of her other journals.

The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond

Oh, this, The Year of Fog, was a sad delight. Sad, because of the story, but a delight because of the writing. I love books like this!

Abby, a photographer, takes her soon to be stepdaughter, Emma, for a walk along the beach. The book jacket talks about her "greatest error." But in truth, she looks away for a few minutes, not long, and the girl is gone when she looks back. I don't think she made an error. She does, of course. The dad, her fiance, does. But no one can watch a child 60 seconds a minute, 60 minutes an hour, 24 hours a day. The fact is someone else had a plan and implemented it in those few minutes.

Regardless of what I think, Abby and the fiance blame her looking away.

Most of the book is from her perspective, trying to make amends, trying to find Emma. The exploration of experiences, of what parents and loved ones of missing children go through seems very well done, but I have no direct experience.

It's a sad but lovely story. And very well written.

Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina

I've been reading StevePavlina.com for about a year. There are some excellent articles and blog posts on personal development, creating new habits, setting goals, motivating yourself, and the like. What I've always liked is that he's very personal. After reading how much he shares of his own inner thoughts and experiments he's tried, I feel like I can trust him to be honest. (I started to write "very honest" but I don't think you can have a modifier. You are either truthful or not.) His 30 day experiments, where he adopts a new habit or a new method of something for 30 days and reports on his experiences, are fascinating.

When I saw that he had a book being published, my first thought was "about time." My second thought was "Oh, but I've already read so much of him I wonder if reading the book will be worthwhile or if it will be just a rehash of old blog posts." I've seen other bloggers have books come out and several have been disappointing. So I didn't order it right away or try to get a free copy from him to review, as he offered to those of us who blog.

But I kept reading his blog and one day when I was on Amazon ordering something else, I added his book, Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth, to my order.

I should have known that he would create something with a new focus and not just a rehash. It's not actually a new focus and he does write about some of the same incidents that he's blogged about. But the book has a framework that I am guessing he couldn't have spelled out so succinctly before he set down to write the book. Blogs let you wander and explore ideas and I think he was figuring out his framework as he blogged. The book gives him a place to present a orderly progression and lay out his beliefs and ideas within a framework that helps tie it all together. It's not that it didn't exist before. It just hadn't been mapped out so clearly. The design already existed though, as his blog posts all resonate. But because the web site was written as things emerged, it didn't have this framework that is now so clearly defined.

So in summary, if you're interested in living better, striving to improve not your circumstances but your way of thinking and living, go buy Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth, even if you already read the web site.