Contentment: wisdom from around the world by Gillian Stokes

This book was given to me as a gift a while ago and it’s been sitting on my shelf since then. I read it this morning while waiting for the Vancouver part of the Olympics closing ceremony. I wanted to read something fast to up my book count for this year 😉 It took me about an hour to read with one eye on the TV. Which is funny, because a good part of the book is about concentrating on whatever you’re doing, not multi-tasking or having the TV on in the background. Haha!

So, the book itself is like a coffeetable book, except smaller. Thick paper, some nice art prints, attractive layout. The content consists of quotes mixed with the author’s musings. What makes her an expert, I don’t know. There’s no bio or anything. But the advice seems sound (if mostly common sense) and the quotes are pretty good.

There’s a Thomas Jefferson quote that made me laugh because Lawrence Lessig uses it in The Future of Ideas to bolster the Creative Commons concept. (Yes, I am a nerd.)

It did disturb me somewhat that someone gave me this book now when I’m probably more content than I’ve ever been (I think sometimes people read snarky/cynical as unhappy?). But no doubt I’m reading too much into what is, after all, just a gifty-book. What I thought about most while reading this: Hmm, how many words is this? How do you pitch a piece o’ fluff like this? Wonder what the profit on something like this is… 😉